Startup mechanic. Previously CEO of @Macrofab and Co-Founder of @Alertlogic.

Joined February 2009
3,466 Photos and videos
Degrowth movement now has a policy paper written by superstar economists who have "done the maths". Main ideas: - We don't need GDP growth. We already produce enough. - We must to redistribute these slower gains more evenly. - Economy will be just fine even with eroded incentives. - We don't even need to work hard. Lets say 4 days a week, to start. Maybe less. Coming to elections near you. neep-poverty.org/wp-content/…
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This is pure inexperience by Anthropic. First, you don't antagonize the government by flexing your superior morals. US Government isn't going to allow an extremely powerful AI model to be freely available to everyone except for US Government. Second, mature companies drive and dominate technical industry standards. Anthropic refuses to lead here. We don't have AI National Labs (we should). No one really knows how to evaluate safety or security of frontier AI models. So the government uses blunt force instruments they do have. Export controls are the easy button. Instead, Anthropic (and OpenAI) make hysterical claims about the future and "invite" the government to regulate them. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Time to grow up.
I’ve had a number of conversations with folks inside and outside government about the current situation with Anthropic, and here is what I believe to be true: — As we know, Anthropic publicly released its Mythos class models earlier this week under the commercial name Fable. — Fable is Mythos with guardrails. But if those guardrails fail, then you’ve exposed Mythos and its advanced cyber capabilities to people who shouldn’t have them. (Keep in mind that Anthropic itself widely promoted the idea that Mythos was a cyberweapon and needed to be regulated as such. They asked for government regulation of Mythos and championed the guardrails on Fable. If there is a vulnerability — big or small — it is Anthropic’s responsibility to patch.) — A highly credible trusted partner of both Anthropic and the USG who was testing Fable came forward with a jailbreak of those guardrails. The Admin asked Dario to fix the jailbreak or de-deploy the model. Dario refused. — In their blog post, Anthropic defended its decision by saying the jailbreak isn’t serious. That is not what the trusted partner and the USG believe; nor is that kind of minimizing language consistent with Anthropic’s brand as the AI safety company. It’s difficult to fathom how they could claim a jailbreak allowing operability of a cyber weapon could be defined as not “serious.” — In the past, Anthropic has always said that safety must be top priority and taken super seriously. In this case, Anthropic prioritized the continued offering of the consumer model over safety. — In reaction, the Admin issued the export control. The Admin did this reluctantly. It’s been very surprised that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to cooperate with a reasonable safety request (ie fixing the jailbreak issue). Anthropic’s reaction is very much at odds with their branding and ethos as a safe AI research community. — The Admin’s hope now is that Anthropic remediates the safety issue, the export control is lifted, and Fable goes back into general release. The Admin wants all of this to happen as soon as possible. It is frankly bewildered that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to comply with safety requests that it previously said were its highest priority. — Those trying to misdirect and tie this action to the prior DoW/Anthropic issues are wrong. The Admin values Anthropic’s technical capabilities and feels that this issue, while serious, should be easily resolved. The ball is in Anthropic’s court.
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Misha G. retweeted
Let me explain exactly why OpenAI will sell you $14,000 of compute for $200, because the margin math only looks suicidal until you read it like an actuary. A subscription is a premium. Tokens are claims. The weekly limit is the coverage cap. Insurance books get priced on the pool's average utilization, and that $14,000 figure is the maximum. Back out the breakevens from SemiAnalysis's 75% gross margin assumption. A chatgpt-pro-20x subscriber stays profitable for OpenAI up to 5.7% utilization. Anthropic's max-20x plan holds to 10%. Meanwhile the median $20 subscriber asks a few questions a day and burns low single digits of their cap. Whales blowing through weekly coding limits get carried by millions of quiet users who barely touch theirs. The caps hide the best detail. $700 vs $400. $3,500 vs $2,000. $14,000 vs $8,000. OpenAI's ceiling sits at exactly 1.75x Anthropic's at every single price point. One constant ratio across three independent tiers. Somebody set these limits with a competitor's spreadsheet open. Rate limits do the actuarial work too. The worst possible whale costs OpenAI about $3,300 a month and Anthropic about $1,800, and the loss stops there by design. A hard ceiling on claims, written directly into the product. Actuaries spend entire careers wishing for that clause. Now the deflation argument, and the catch inside it. a16z measured inference cost falling 10x per year, but that decline holds for a fixed level of intelligence. Whales never sit at a fixed level. They ride each new frontier model the day it ships, so the cost curve never catches up to them. Which makes the model behind the plan the entire game. Cutting limits triggers public backlash that trends for a week. Routing the $200 tier to a model deflation already made cheap is silent and repairs the book overnight. SemiAnalysis predicts labs will withhold new models from subscriptions, and the actuarial math agrees. Last year's frontier at this year's serving cost turns every whale profitable without touching a single limit. Insurers take claims costs as given. AI labs choose theirs. Limits are the lever everyone watches. The model behind your plan is the lever nobody sees.
Replying to @SemiAnalysis_
Recently, we purchased one of each Anthropic/OpenAI subscription plan and randomly ran long horizon coding tasks until we exhausted the weekly limit. It's widely believed that a $200/month plan maxes out at ~$2000/month worth of tokens (assuming API pricing). However, we found that the subscriptions are actually far more generous. (2/4)
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One step closer to nationalizing frontier AI labs.
The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees. The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance. Access to all other Claude models is not affected. We apologize for this disruption to our customers. We believe this is a misunderstanding and are working to restore access as soon as possible. Read our full statement: anthropic.com/news/fable-myt…
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Misha G. retweeted
Incredible. Publishing what appears to be (if you care to read the "evidence") a totally legitimate US program, and even citing the risks of these being used as "Russian information campaigns", Tulsi Gabbard - the gift that kept giving - presents the Kremlin with yet one more information operation. Read our investigation from 2025 where we presented evidence that the hybrid ops unit of GRU's 29155 came up with the whole "bio-labs" concept - and co-opted Tulsi into it. theins.press/en/inv/281731
Today, I’m releasing never before seen intelligence revealing new evidence of past US government funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries, including Ukraine. In support of President Trump‘s Executive Order to end federal funding of dangerous gain of function research around the world, and increase transparency and accountability, ODNI will continue working with partners across the Administration to identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain, and what “research” is being conducted. odni.gov/index.php/newsroom/…
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If this is the deal, it an unmitigated disaster.
Iran’s Mehr news agency publishes the purported text of the draft agreement with Trump. It will keep the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian control, will promise Iran $300 billion in reconstruction money in addition to an immediate cash transfer of $24 billion, a suspension of sanctions and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Middle East. Also, a commitment not to bother Iran again about its missiles and proxies, and restraining Israel in Lebanon. The U.S. gets in exchange a pinky promise to respect the NPT. Let’s see what happens in coming days. Link: mehrnews.com/news/6857718 Full text: A permanent and immediate cessation of war on all fronts, including Lebanon. A U.S. commitment not to interfere in Iran’s internal affairs and to respect the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Full lifting of the naval blockade within 30 days. A U.S. commitment to withdraw its forces from areas surrounding Iran. Reopening of the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days under arrangements determined by Iran. Suspension of sanctions on the sale of oil, petrochemical products, and related derivatives, along with full Iranian access to the resulting financial revenues. The United States and its allies would be required to present reconstruction plans for Iran worth at least $300 billion. A 60-day negotiation period aimed at reaching a final agreement covering nuclear issues and the complete removal of U.S. primary and secondary sanctions, as well as the repeal of relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and the IAEA Board of Governors. Reaffirmation by Iran of its commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) not to produce nuclear weapons. During the negotiation period, the United States would commit not to deploy additional forces to the region and not to impose any new sanctions. The release of $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets during the 60-day final negotiation period. Half of this amount must be made available to Iran before negotiations begin. Establishment of a monitoring mechanism to oversee implementation of the agreement. The final agreement would be approved through a UN Security Council resolution. Final negotiations would not begin before the release of half of Iran’s frozen assets, the suspension of oil sanctions, and the lifting of the naval blockade. The final agreement would focus exclusively on the future of enriched nuclear material and uranium enrichment, sanctions relief, and a program for rebuilding Iran’s economy. Discussion of Iran’s missile program and its support for resistance groups would be definitively excluded from the agenda. As stated by the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, this text still requires review and final approval by the relevant authorities in Iran.
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Misha G. retweeted
I believe what Anthropic is doing, gating the ability to do certain harmless things like LLM research, and with incredibly sensitive filters that even medical questions are often blocked, is *deeply* wrong. They got open research, the Transformer, GPT2, ...
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I would like to vomit now.
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Misha G. retweeted
Houston is quietly becoming one of the most important manufacturing markets in the U.S. The mega-deals landing here are staggering: - Eli Lilly: $6.5B pharmaceutical plant (1M SF, 600 jobs) - Bristol Myers Squibb: $1B pharma campus (500 jobs) - Foxconn/Nvidia: $450M AI supercomputer factory - Apple: expanded to 500K SF for Mac mini AI servers 🔗 hcre.short.gy/Fex6QB
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² I started with the "Zionism" article - the conceptual and narrative core of Wikipedia's entire coverage of the conflict. Turns out that after the takeover only about 20% of the pre-October-2023 article survived, while the other 80% had been effectively replaced.⏬
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Really good thread on rise of EV industry in China. The main argument is that its de-centralized, not state planned. Not exactly. Chinese EV boom looks like decentralized, organic growth - and it was in terms of execution. Private firms (BYD, Geely, NIO, Chery) did the heavy lifting. These are fierce competitors and brilliant operators. But where did the risk capital come from? LGFVs (local government) > state controlled banks > the state. Beijing didn’t micromanage every EV factory or even choose EV as a category, but it provided the vast majority of the risk capital through a state controlled banking system funding both local governments and private businesses. There is no equivalent to this in the west. Risk capital in US is private, and in Europe it barely exists. As an aside, this is exactly why official government debt-to-GDP looks fine at 88%, while non-financial debt is closer to 336% of GDP. (3x higher than US, if you're keeping score). Banks act as off-balance-sheet vehicles for state policy. Result: massive overcapacity. Not just in EVs, but across dozens of industries at once - steel, solar, batteries, autos, semiconductors, all forms of electronics. This is Chinese industrial policy: decentralized execution, centralized risk. The playbook is very much written in Beijing.
🚗🔋 Many think Beijing masterfully planned China's EV takeover. Fengming Lu (@ANUBellSchool ) and I spent 3 years and 60 interviews finding out what actually happened in our latest article @TheChinaJournal. A thread 🧵
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It has begun. Manhattan is being shipped to Texas. (h/t @fortworthchris)
According to @tylercowen the biggest losers of AI revolution will the $2M a year coastal masters of the universe. They will be… … sent to Houston to subsist on $350k. Hidden upside: Houston taquerias are much better than NYC. He’s not wrong.
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Misha G. retweeted
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In an exclusive interview with CNN, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun tells CNN's Christiane Amanpour his message to the IRGC and Iran. cnn.it/43M4QHs
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This happens more often than you’d think and continues at later stages. You don’t have to fire your executive team. I’ve had multiple offers to structure funding rounds in a way would hurt the executive team, common shareholders or seed investors, while accruing more equity to me as CEO. I declined each time, but what struck me is how routine it was. Just a trial balloon to see if there is interest. Every stage of the business, people with “fiduciary duty” routinely trying to fleece early shareholders.
Replying to @eastdakota
One more I forgot until just reminded: 3. Khosla Ventures wanted to invest in our Series C. Vinod took me, Michelle, and Lee out to dinner after he’d given us a term sheet. Near the end, Michelle and Lee got up to use the restroom. Vinod leaned over and said: “I’m impressed with you, not so much with them, what if you fire them and I’ll give you all their stock?” I think the charitable read was it was a test of my character. But I was so offended that we never spoke again. Literally blocked his number.
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Discovery must be in Houston. This was a historic mistake. Time to fix it.
Two senators earmarked $85 million for the move to Houston—but safely shipping an 86-ton shuttle orbiter cross-country could prove a herculean feat. 🔗 on.wsj.com/4udSvXa
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Misha G. retweeted
My post about forced heirship proved very timely. The law, dating from Napoleon's time, might get a modern rethink sooner rather than later.
America's cultural ideal has been the self-made entrepreneur while Europe's was rooted in aristocracy, with status inherited rather than earned. Europe's inheritance laws show this divide. Many European countries have "forced heirship" laws that require people to leave 50-75% of their estates to their children. Want to leave the majority of your wealth to charity? not allowed. Your kids are estranged from you, struggling with addiction, or irresponsible? still required to give them the money. Want your kids to avoid a life of entitlement? tough. Incredibly, these laws look back at transfers made during your lifetime. If you have 3 children in France, you're required to bequeath them a minimum of 75% of your estate. Because French law calculates this based on your assets at death plus all lifetime gifts, giving away more than 25% of your wealth while alive means your heirs can legally sue to force charities or foundations to return the funds. This has limited the development of the nonprofit sector on the continent. The cultural gap between an entrepreneurial society and one shaped by dynastic wealth is enormous. If you make it yourself, you tend to want your kids to do the same. If you inherit it, the primary goal is protecting the estate for the next gen. Countries like Spain, France, and Italy legally entrench family dynasties, while America has historically sought to limit them through estate taxes. The result is not only a weaker culture of philanthropy and civil society in Europe, but also less economic dynamism.
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According to @tylercowen the biggest losers of AI revolution will the $2M a year coastal masters of the universe. They will be… … sent to Houston to subsist on $350k. Hidden upside: Houston taquerias are much better than NYC. He’s not wrong.
Second for second, @tylercowen packs more substance into a talk than anyone I'm aware of. This is a clear, non-hysterical, and somewhat soothing discussion of our AI future.
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Thats because the food is much better than Austin. By a mile. Would rather travel to eat in San Antonio over Austin 10 out of 10 times.
Charles Barkley seen so much fat people in San Antonio it motivated him to work out😭😭😭😭
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