Wasiq Wadud

I experiment with different opinions that I don't take too seriously

[Deedy @deedydas]

Google is an incredible company that I’ve always rooted for that trips over its own bureaucracy in frenetic times.

They ironically do a middling job at their first priority, but crush it at their second or third. We’ve seen this with Search, Google+, Assistant, Cloud and now even AI. Why?

The internet would be unrecognizable without Google. This is a company that has Search, Chrome, Android, Workspace (Docs/Sheets), Drive, Play Store, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, Photos, Translate, Gemini, Calendar, Meet, Chromebooks, Waymo: some of the most widespread and most undermonetized products in the history of the world. It is inconceivable for most of us to live life without software Google has made available for $0.

And truly, having worked there, this is a company that continuously prioritizes their users over profits. Even as a casual reader, it might be trivial for you to imagine 100s of ways to monetize all of Google’s products. But they usually don’t. They don’t just launch experiments because it’s high engagement, but only when it’s actually good.

So how does a company like this falter?

My observation has been that these frenetic eras either attract or condone the worst behavior out of execs that trickle down to the rest of the company. The most “ambitious” L3-L7 people who feel stuck finally see a company-wide priority and their eyes light up with the gleaming prospect of a promotion. A lot of people in big orgs’ entire sense of self esteem is wrapped around their level. They will do a lot for an N+1. “Did you know Sergey is personally working on this?” “Sundar referred to my project in the all hands” In turn, everything in these orgs become a knife fight for getting the most “high impact” projects, fighting for credit, flagrantly hiding concerns around juiced metrics. More work goes into a promo packet than the actual project. Goodhart’s Law kicks in and the metrics measured for a promotion are abused beyond measure.

On the other hand, second and third priority things work brilliantly. It attracts people with genuine interest, sincerity who are willing to play longer term games. Many products have grown and thrived when left alone.

When there is immense pressure for a number to go up, it eventually does but often at the cost of product quality (the small product polish things don’t get me a promo), core innovation (why take on a high risk bet if I can get promoted for copying oai/ant) and cultural cohesion (a lot of bad blood amongst people in the org, tons of reorgs). There is a certain type of individual that thrives in this environment, and they are typically not very likable nor “Googley”. This is why an incredible number of people leave or allow jesus to take the reigns as they cash in the bag.

I lament that every time this happens, we, the billion users, lose out on yet another beautiful Google product.

[tobi lutke @tobi]

Hearing so many of these stories.

[Jacob Beckerman @j_becke]

"It's on our roadmap" or "eng is looking at it" is no longer an acceptable response to customers. Acceptable repsonses:

- "good idea, here is the PR __link__ let's chat about it real quick"

- "we're actually taking a slightly different approach, it already works, here's how"

- "the code is fully open source, we're jammed this week but we'd welcome a PR for this from you/your agent"

Code is cheap these days, there is literally zero excuse other than a lack of urgency or cultural failings that prevent rapid progress.

[Murtaza Hussain @MazMHussain]

Any random strip plaza in Toronto is liable to have the best food in the world. A Darwinian competition effect has also set in which is constantly forcing things to get better to survive.

[arshia @arshia__]

sometimes i get scared of leaving toronto because what if other cities don’t have a pakistani karahi spot where they serve the naan hanging on a giant hook

[a16z @a16z]

.@OpenRouter co-founder Alex Atallah on the "everyone is building the same thing" take:

"This reminds me of this tweet I saw... Everybody's building an agent loop with notifications, third-party connectors, context management, memory, sandboxes, agentic web search, an always-on agent on top."

"This product is showing up everywhere. It is showing up everywhere, but these are just the new table-stakes primitives."

"A 2005 version of that tweet would be: 'Oh, everybody's building the same thing. A database, a users table, a sign-in page, a sign-up page, a profile page, a logout page. Everything's the same.'"

"There's like a lot of differentiation really. There's table-stakes needs for AI just like there's table-stakes needs for the web."

@alexatallah @amasad

[Startup Wisdom @StartupWisdom_]

Peter Thiel on how you should think about your future:

"What you end up doing when you think of the future as indefinite is you pick a job that you think will look good on your resume, because it will lead to a different job later on. There's even a credentialing version where you go to grad school, you get a consulting job, and you think of it as this branching tree diagram where you never really do something that you want to do.

You can think of the future on three horizons. Very short-term is: are you going to be happy, and will you be learning a lot? Medium-term is: how good is it on your resume? And very long-term is: are you working on something important or meaningful? We're in a skewed world where we overweight the medium-term and underweight some combination of the short-term and the long-term. I would recalibrate to focus on the short-term and the long-term, and forget about the medium-term."

[Solus @Ersatz_Solus]

I find something strangely profound about how polar bears always have this look of boyish innocence to them no matter what the context is. Even covered in the blood of his prey, the bear looks like a silly little guy. Much to learn.

[Ruben @rdominguezibar]

Alexandr Wang says the number one trait he hires for is care

interviews reveal who phones it in and who has their soul invested

Wang reviews every hire at Scale AI and says he cares immensely

[Alexandr Wang @alexandr_wang]

🚨 MUSE ECOSYSTEM ALERT 🚨

today we are announcing Muse Gadgets!

this is an open-source ESP32 firmware and Linux SDK for anyone to make hardware that works with Muse

we are also releasing our own gadget—Muse Home Link—to enable your muse to work with your smart devices (TV, speakers, etc.)

[Jared Weiss @JaredWeissNBA]

Victor Wembanyama was asked if he would ever sign a deal with a sports betting company: “Absolutely not. Honestly, I think it’s very sad to see some players promote it.”

[The Nassr Tribune™️ @AlNassrTribune]

🇪🇸🗣️ Edu Aguirre:

"Everyone has a limit to their tolerance when it comes to feeling disrespected; that's a fact.

Honestly, I would have left earlier; I would have withdrawn immediately. Why?To ask me to warm up for 30 minutes... just warm up for 30 minutes... that's just too harsh.

There's a huge difference between agreeing that you 'won't start the match' and being told, 'Go on, warm up for 30 minutes.'

That's awful, absolutely awful.

The match ends and you're still standing there, looking like a fool.

It's provocative.

It's like what Jorge Jesus—a shrewd fellow—does when he goes to the press conference and boasts, 'I'm the boss here.'

He swore, 'I'm the one who makes the decisions.'

Prestige is important, yes, but the idea that 'all players are equal'? Sorry, but no.

It's not like that.

And whether you like it or not... you know Cristiano gets furious in situations like this.

José, not all players are the same. When the Portuguese national team is eliminated from the World Cup or the European Championship, the criticism doesn't fall on Jorge Jesus, Roberto Martinez, João Félix, or Bernardo Silva, but rather on Cristiano Ronaldo.

Because every Portuguese newspaper and television channel talks about Cristiano, whether positively or negatively.

Therefore, you must take care of your star, and preserve your legend.

You must appreciate a man who puts his heart and soul into football, and into serving his country and the Portuguese people."

[Naval @naval]

When you look back, you’ll wish you’d just done the long-term version of everything.

[Micro2Macr0 @Micro2Macr0]

.@chamath made a killer point yesterday on the @theallinpod.

@Apple and @Google Android store revenues are fxcked in an Agentic AI world. Because they will be able to easily bypass these GUIs to give you whatever you want.

Think about this when you're invested in these companies.

Also, think about how much more revenue will be able to go to creators that are currently being robbed for 30% of whatever they make.

[Xiaoyin Qu @quxiaoyin]

We just launched Agentsky @agentsky_dev, world’s 1st Agent Market!
OpenRouter is for models. AgentSky is for agents.

Use 40+ agents—Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Hermes, Pi in your browser(even your phone!) or via one API. All without installing or setting up anything.

Hit Codex Astra’s weekly limit? Hand off to another agent such as OpenCode + DeepSeek V4.1 in browser without losing any context.

You can compare any agent + model directly in browser and that's how I found Astra costs $5.3 while deepseek v4.1 cost $0.12 on the same dashboard task. (I actually preferred deepseek)

Try it at https://t.co/m1ARPKrG8h

If you can try any agent easily without install, which agent do you want to try next? Type the agent name and I will give $20 credit (you can use it for any model)

[Dear Self. @Dearme2_]

OCTOBER IS GOING TO BE A GOOD MONTH.
OCTOBER IS GOING TO BE A GOOD MONTH.
OCTOBER IS GOING TO BE A GOOD MONTH.
OCTOBER IS GOING TO BE A GOOD MONTH.
OCTOBER IS GOING TO BE A GOOD MONTH.
OCTOBER IS GOING TO BE A GOOD MONTH.
OCTOBER IS GOING TO BE A GOOD MONTH.

[Xiaoyin Qu @quxiaoyin]

Prediction: from now on, great product leaders will get $100M comp package, not researchers.

1. 2022-2026 is all about killer models. Right now models still matter, but only for frontier tasks like science, math, trading etc. etc. You either kill cancer or you don't matter.
2. Instead, great products like muse, grokbot make AI truly accessible for people. The proliferation of AI matters way more now.
3. Open weight models make it cheaper and better, and the margin for most models will go down significantly, leading to less profits.
4. Training techniques are copyable, but unique data is not. All things equal(compute, training techniques), unique data is the new oil. Even if your training techniques are second-tier, with unique first-tier data you win.
5. Great products attract sticky users who provide unique data that lead to even better models.

Therefore, product is the one that matters. We are finally entering the gold era of product visionaries.

[Ivan Zhang @1vnzh]

@unpromptedhuman i rather die than have unpaid interns

[Alexandr Wang @alexandr_wang]

Here’s to the wanting. Here’s to the dreaming. Here’s to everyone. https://t.co/FHcmqU3fYf

[Nicolas Bustamante @nicbstme]

One thing I’ve noticed: you can almost predict how well someone understands AI by how much time they spend on X.

You don’t even need to try every model yourself. You constantly see other people testing agents, computer use, biology, math, and random niche products.

At lunch I’ll mention a new AI product like Muse to someone who isn’t on X, and they’ll have no idea what I’m talking about. Meanwhile, everyone on X has seen what it can do and probably tried it already.

I keep doing this test and the correlation is kind of crazy. X is still the best place to understand what AI can actually do right now because so many AI researchers and builders are posting on the platform.