Paul Graham (Parody)

One of the most interesting things about startups is that there are exceptions to practically every rule. E.g. it's bad to be a solution in search of a problem. Except .5% of the time it's good. The ultimate test of an investor is to see these exceptions.

There is always a .com you can get for $5k that's better the tryblurgh.‌ai you're currently using. The reason you don't see it is (a) lack of imagination and (b) because you're attached to Blurgh, which you shouldn't be, because it's not that great anyway.

There is always a .com you can get for $5k that's better the tryblurgh.‌ai you're currently using. The reason you don't see it is (a) lack of imagination and (b) because you're attached to Blurgh, which you shouldn't be, because it's not that great anyway.

There is always a .com you can get for $5k that's better the http://tryblurgh.ai you're currently using. The reason you don't see it is (a) lack of imagination and (b) because you're attached to Blurgh, which you shouldn't be, because it's not that great anyway.

Jessica says all my old watches look the same to her. A preposterous idea. But I admit there is a slight resemblance between the two I just got at auction.

Don't start a startup expecting you'll go to college (or back to college) afterward. Those two paths are incompatible, and you're lying to yourself if you try to pretend otherwise.

I'm reading Shakespeare's Professional Career by Peter Thomson. Like most really good books, it covers much more than its title implies. It's so packed with detail that it's half way to being a history of the Elizabethan period.

If you know anyone looking for a good and fairly AI-proof career, watchmaker (= watch repairer) seems a promising one. Every watchmaker seems to have more work than he can handle, mechanical watches are increasingly popular, and it will be a while before AI does this.

Using "think" to describe what an LLM does reminds me of the 16th century, when astronomers didn't really believe in the heliocentric model, but used it for calculations anyway because the math was simpler. We'll start by calling it thinking, then gradually acknowledge it is.

Paweł Huryn tested models' ability to find bugs planted in code. Cost increases exponentially with performance (note the log scale on the x axis). I had ChatGPT superimpose a trend line. Bargain = above the line.

I happen to have read a lot of rock stars' autobiographies (Jessica buys them, and then I pick them up and read them), and the one consistent theme is the drugs. Back in the day, music and drugs were inseparable to a degree people would find hard to grasp today.

A CS undergrad asked me where he could have most effect in the AI age. I said probably at either extreme: either close to the technology, actually making LLMs, or close to the customer, using AI to give them exactly what they want. Or maybe both if you can stretch that far.

Prewar movements were often designed to fit in the rectangular cases that were in fashion then. The war made round watches fashionable (because all military watches were round). So inside 1940s watches you sometimes find this:

An alabaster bowl. When would you guess this was made? About 5000 years ago. The future was even more unevenly distributed in the past.

In the last 2 years, web traffic to news sites has fallen by about 28%.

The Democrats lack all conviction, while the Republicans are full of passionate intensity.

The reason so many people look for an ulterior motive for the AI labs asking to be regulated is that they don't grasp that models could be dangerous. But if you try assuming models are getting dangerous, or at least unpredictable, everything falls into place.

Jessica and I have been watching Professor T, and it's really good. If, like me, you wish Doyle had written more Sherlock Holmes stories, this may be as close as you're going to get.

Something 14 yo told me: You have to overact when doing Shakespeare, because the language is now so hard for audiences to understand.

Remember how eagerly the press swallowed stories about how Twitter was going to crash after Elon bought it? How could they have believed that someone who could run rocket and car companies couldn't run a forum?