KB

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

I turn 50 today. This is a message to my kids but I offer it to you in case any of it rings useful.

I was born in Sri Lanka in 1976 in a country that, at the time, was about to enter a decades long civil war. My father was able to get stationed at the Sri Lankan High Commission in Canada for four years in the early 80s - when some of the fighting was most severe - and which from our vantage point in Canada gave us some respite from an otherwise omnipresent conflict.

He came as a diplomat but then my father filed for refugee status after four years when his life was threatened by militants. We stayed in Canada as refugees. My dad never really landed on his feet and we grew up on welfare.

My mom stepped up. She did an incredible thing and put our family on her back and kept marching forward. Sometimes the steps were very small but she always tried to keep moving forward.

I worked at Burger King starting at 14, giving my paycheck to my mom and dad to support our family in the role that I was assigned - earn enough to pay for our bus passes because we couldn’t afford a car.

I was a loser growing up. Some friends, some good memories but mostly forgettable and lonely. I wasn’t very studious but did get my act together in my final year and got into a great university.

I immigrated to the US soon after graduating and found an opportunity. Things clicked and I have been traveling a path to find myself ever since. Only in America is this possible…

I worked hard, followed the rules, paid my taxes and stayed in California out of loyalty for the opportunities it has given me despite its dysfunction.

I found my wife here. Had my kids here. Found my tribe here.

There have been some very hard times as well - deaths, divorce, financial pain, mistakes of omission and mistakes of commission. You can’t dwell on these things - they are weights that will pull you down if you’re not careful. Learn from them. Respect them. BUT MOVE ON.

To think 50 years ago I could have ever gotten a chance to meet the people I’ve met and have had the experiences I’ve had would have been mind boggling to my parents. It’s mind boggling to me now.

We forget often and try to convince others it’s not true but America truly is the best country in the world. Everything and anything is possible here. I can testify. Be grateful to be here.

This is the only place that gives EVERYONE a chance to live a great adventure. The first 50 years have been that for me - an incredible adventure.

Notice there is nothing here about accomplishments or money. Because it doesn’t matter and it won’t matter.

You will be dust in less than 100 years from now and the decision to be remembered won’t be yours so stop sweating it. It’s not in your control.

So what is in your control?

Be kind. Have fun. Work on something meaningful to you. Find your tribe. Try to find perspective. Find an incredible partner. Have a bunch of kids. Live an adventure. Forgive your parents - they were doing the best they could even if that wasn’t what you deserved.

I will do what I can to make my next 50 years a wild ride.

You should too.

I love you and thank you. ❤️

🙏🏽🙏🏽

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

This is concerning. For the first time, a Chinese model Kimi K3 has taken #1 on the Frontend Code Arena and is scoring at or near the frontier on other benchmarks.

Meanwhile America is tying itself in knots: politicians and bureaucrats are banning new data centers, piling on state regulations, and pushing for new federal agencies to pre-approve frontier models.

This is how you lose the AI race. The rest of the world won’t play by our rules if we bog ourselves down. Permissionless innovation is how America won the internet and became the technological envy of the world. We can do it again with AI -- while addressing risks in a targeted way -- or we’ll watch our lead evaporate.

[Satya Nadella @satyanadella]

https://t.co/vLmiBKTtX3

[KB @Zaappd]

Beautiful

[🎼🌺Music Love♥️ @ThoNg676733]

26-year-old Polish guitar virtuoso Marcin Patrzałek responds to those claiming his music is fake.
He created this tutorial-style video to show exactly how he plays so incredibly well – and yes, it’s all performed live on a single guitar.
He is incredible! 👌

[F.O.L.A @folaoftech]

She has no clue what her son is up to… honestly, I don't get it either.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Optimus will be amazing for protecting and taking care of your elderly parents

[KB @Zaappd]

@ScottAdamsSays RIP Scott! Will miss your posts and podcast.

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

"My name's Raymond. I'm 73. I work the parking lot at St. Joseph's Hospital. Minimum wage, orange vest, a whistle I barely use. Most people don't even look at me. I'm just the old man waving cars into spaces.
But I see everything.

Like the black sedan that circled the lot every morning at 6 a.m. for three weeks. Young man driving, grandmother in the passenger seat. Chemotherapy, I figured. He'd drop her at the entrance, then spend 20 minutes hunting for parking, missing her appointments.

One morning, I stopped him. "What time tomorrow?"
"6:15," he said, confused.
"Space A-7 will be empty. I'll save it."
He blinked. "You... you can do that?"
"I can now," I said.

Next morning, I stood in A-7, holding my ground as cars circled angrily. When his sedan pulled up, I moved. He rolled down his window, speechless. "Why?"
"Because she needs you in there with her," I said. "Not out here stressing."
He cried. Right there in the parking lot.

Word spread quietly. A father with a sick baby asked if I could help. A woman visiting her dying husband. I started arriving at 5 a.m., notebook in hand, tracking who needed what. Saved spots became sacred. People stopped honking. They waited. Because they knew someone else was fighting something bigger than traffic.
But here's what changed everything, A businessman in a Mercedes screamed at me one morning. "I'm not sick! I need that spot for a meeting!"

"Then walk," I said calmly. "That space is for someone whose hands are shaking too hard to grip a steering wheel."

He sped off, furious. But a woman behind him got out of her car and hugged me. "My son has leukemia," she sobbed. "Thank you for seeing us."

The hospital tried to stop me. "Liability issues," they said. But then families started writing letters. Dozens. "Raymond made the worst days bearable." "He gave us one less thing to break over."

Last month, they made it official. "Reserved Parking for Families in Crisis." Ten spots, marked with blue signs. And they asked me to manage it.

But the best part? A man I'd helped two years ago, his mother survived, came back. He's a carpenter. Built a small wooden box, mounted it by the reserved spaces. Inside? Prayer cards, tissues, breath mints, and a note,

"Take what you need. You're not alone. -Raymond & Friends"
People leave things now. Granola bars. Phone chargers. Yesterday, someone left a hand-knitted blanket.
I'm 73. I direct traffic in a hospital parking lot. But I've learned this: Healing doesn't just happen in operating rooms. Sometimes it starts in a parking space. When someone says, "I see your crisis. Let me carry this one small piece."

So pay attention. At the grocery checkout, the coffee line, wherever you are. Someone's drowning in the little things while fighting the big ones.

Hold a door. Save a spot. Carry the weight no one else sees.
It's not glamorous. But it's everything."

Let this story reach more hearts....

Credit: Mary Nelson

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

https://t.co/op5s4ZiSwh version 0.1 is now live.

Version 1.0 will be 10X better, but even at 0.1 it’s better than Wikipedia imo.

[Robert Scoble @Scobleizer]

The Chinese AI glasses are ahead of ours, this report is saying to me.

Silicon Carbide waveguide.

Waveguides are the displays in front of your eyes. Looks like a piece of glass but has a tiny projector projecting image into the side of the glass, which has tiny mirrors embedded in the glass to reflect that into your eye.

That is what Meta showed, but can’t ship, because they are hard to manufacture. So blessed I made friends in Israel at @LumusVision which is one of the manufacturers of the waveguides Meta is expected to use. I have watched them for years. Such amazing technology. Our F-35 pilots use them to see the battlefield under their planes.

What does this mean?

The image it will show to wearer has a bigger field of view than what Meta is expected to announce in October and brighter with fewer weird reflections. In other words, bigger and brighter viewport for the Holodeck.

Cost? About $800.

Apple isn’t expected to have better until 2027.

A Chinese company announced a Holodeck last week. The one Google announced yesterday is better.

This matches what Chinese robotics engineers tell me. They are ahead in manufacturing. We are ahead on AI.

And this is a small company not a Buidu or @insta360. Not much reach or brand. So small numbers of sales, is my expectation but will be keeping in touch with Chinese friends to see what they think.

@IrenaCronin visited there a few months ago and she says they are way more into Spatial Computing than USA is.

Not a good trend, but can change quickly.

One day on New York subways there was no white headphones.

The next day there were. The day iPod shipped.

Someone has to sell them to everyone. Zuckerberg has three billion users. Which is why I am bullish on its glasses that come in October even with their limitations.

But Google put on quite a show yesterday.

I don’t see anyone competing with Meta or Google until Apple comes.

My thesis?

Meta has my family and friends.
Google has my data.

Darn it, probably will have to buy both for different reasons.

This is why @elonmusk is in the driver seat.

He has a simulator. A Holodeck. Like what Google showed but with much better real time data. There are about 20 Teslas on the Golden Gate Bridge right now.

By 2028 if you want to see a car on fire on the bridge, and be able to walk around it, you will be able to do that in the Tesla simulator.

And @grok is way better than Siri already and improving way faster. One of the cofounders of Siri, Tom Gruber, told me years ago that when that happens you must make massive changes to get the model to lessen a lot faster otherwise your AI will soon be irrelevant.

In other words, out of business.

Elon has the solution to both problems.

@tim_cook must get rid of OpenAI soon because @sama and Jony Ive have aspirations of building consumer electronics that will do Apple in.

This is why @Figure_robot left, insiders tell me. OpenAI is building a robot and it would bee stupid to help train a competitor’s robot models, which is what Figure would be doing if it stayed.

I hear OpenAI has visited every brain/computer interface company since it knows that is how we soon will compute.

Zuckerberg is also expected to announce,in October, the first of its BCI devices, an arm band that gives you human super powers.

This combination will give Meta a leg up for a while.

American innovation is still alive so there is hope.

But the future will be decided by how fast people buy and use the glasses.

The audio-and-camera-only Raybans sold a couple of million. Ones with displays will be 10x more popular. Maybe more.

Can Zuckerberg learn to sell them?

And will Elon and Cook join forces to keep Zuckerberg from taking the market?

Tomorrow I will be talking with a VC with billions to invest. They are putting finishing touches on a thesis that is pretty close to this.

Yesterday kicked off the American Holodeck.

The freeways are packed in Silicon Valley are packed lately.

https://t.co/sR0PRWOPsI

[NASA's Kennedy Space Center @NASAKennedy]

🚀🌎Launching to help protect our Earth!

NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) - the first joint satellite mission between NASA & the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is launching July 30 at 5:40 p.m. IST/8:10 a.m. EDT from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on India’s southeastern coast!

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🚨🇺🇸URGENT: ALASKA ELEVATED TO TSUNAMI WARNING - IMMEDIATE EVACUATION RECOMMENDED

Alaska has been UPGRADED from Advisory to full TSUNAMI WARNING following the massive Kamchatka earthquake.

WARNING ISSUED 7:19 PM for:

Attu

Samalga Pass

Areas 30 miles SW of Nikolski

This elevation to WARNING status means dangerous tsunami waves are imminent or already occurring.

IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED:

EVACUATE coastal areas NOW

Move to high ground immediately

Do not wait for waves to be visible

The earthquake magnitude dispute continues (8.0 vs 8.7) but tsunami threat is confirmed and escalating.

3+ meter waves still possible for Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and Russia.

Source: Tsunami Warning Center

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🚨🇺🇸BREAKING: THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES WEST COAST IS NOW UNDER A TSUNAMI WARNING

The U.S. Tsunami Warning Center has issued a Tsunami Warning following a magnitude 8.7 earthquake 315 miles southwest of Bering Island, Komandorski, Russia.

The quake struck at 6:24 PM local time at a depth of 46 miles.

Tsunami waves over 3 meters high are possible along the coasts of northwestern Hawaiian Islands and Russia.

The U.S. West Coast and parts of Alaska are on alert, with watches and advisories in effect across the Pacific.

Updates expected as wave activity and aftershocks are monitored.

Source: Esri

[KB @Zaappd]

All kids and their parents 🤣