Caveat: optionality isn’t everything.The best long-term relationships (commercial and otherwise) are actually with just one party. If you switch too much, you don’t compound over time.Like the multi-armed bandit problem. Exploration (optionality) vs exploitation (commitment).Suhail Kakar (@SuhailKakar):@balajis this actually applies to everything in life. optionality is the most underrated form of wealth :) ...

Also holds for supply chains.If you have at least two independent vendors, you have one reliable supply chain.But if you have only one vendor, you may end up with zero margin.So: if you have two, you have one, and if you have one, you have zero. ...

The lesson of deals is that if you have two, you have one. And if you have one, you have zero.In other words: the second bidder sets the price and ensures the deal goes through. If you only have one bidder, the price floor is zero. And the deal may not get done at all. ...

No one is explaining the joke, so I will. It’s multi-layered.First, there was a fun Oct 2017 Twitter exchange about the right way to render a burger emoji. Obviously this was trivial, but Sundar said “we’ll drop everything else we are doing and address on Monday” as a joke.The new post uses that old reference to show off Gemini 3’s image rendering capabilities. Normally, AI models struggle with spatial orientation, particularly with respect to the relative position of objects. They also struggle with text ( ...

I don’t think the goal is remaining “pure” forever, particularly if that’s defined as never becoming useful enough to make money.Instead, if an organization truly starts losing sight of its original purpose, it is eventually replaced. If however it is correctly *balancing* that purpose with practicality, it’s not easily replaced.Nayak Satya (@NayakSatya_SG):@balajis But don’t the art/ideology companies either turn into cash machines the instant payroll hits 9 figures, or die broke ?Name one that stayed pure ...

Different people are wired differently, but I basically agree.Salesforce and Oracle were indeed built by money-motivated men. But Apple and Twitter were art projects. SpaceX and Tesla were engineering feats. And Bitcoin and Zcash are ideological campaigns.So: money is a metric, but not the only one, and the “capitalism” part of technocapitalism has been stressed a bit too much in recent times. Because the drive to make great art, to advance science, to win in a just cause, will always produce more peak ener ...

Good AI use can produce great results. But that usually means a lot of work on prompting, or a creative prompt, or both.Because prompts are tiny programs, and prompting is programming. Bad AI use is like being a bad programmer. It’s a leaky abstraction, and the source code is poking through the wallpaper.Lewis (@0xLewis_gg):@balajis People lacking discernment falsely believe AI conceals their lack of effort.Use AI with high effort (both prompting and manual refining of outputs) can be superior to manual eff ...

This objection is worth rebutting, as I’m normally sympathetic to an argument like this.But the issue is that AI radically increases the cost to *verify* even as it slashes the cost to *generate*. So in many verticals it increases costs, because verification was cheap and is now costly.Fundamentally that’s because current AI tools (a) consistently produce *subtle* errors and (b) are used to spam channels that weren’t built to detect that many convincing forgeries. For example, the market for (say) email has ...

In general, if the text sounds like AI, it's usually bad. AI is for suggesting as opposed to writing.The one exception is for people who speak English as a second language. But even then they should add a note saying "this is an AI translation."https://t.co/Uq5QCe0N9SDK (@pinokole):@balajis What if you use AI to refine our texts/email (not write everything by itself) is that also verboten? ...

AI Usage Heuristic - The optimal amount of AI in most applications is neither 100% nor 0%, suggesting a balanced approach [1] - "No public undisclosed AI" is presented as a key rule for AI implementation [6] Rules for AI Implementation - Avoid using AI-generated text in public communications such as emails, DMs, and websites, as it can appear verbose and lacking in original thought [2] - Exercise caution when using AI-generated images or videos, especially without careful prompting and refinement, as low-quality AI imagery can be perceived as fake [3][4] - AI is acceptable for private research and prototyping, but disclosure is crucial when using it publicly [5] Implications of Undisclosed AI - Using AI text in communications may signal laziness, poor writing skills, low reading comprehension, or a lack of thoughtful consideration [6] - Disclosing AI usage can prevent the impression of passing off AI-generated content as original work [8]