Key take-away: "Domain knowledge makes you better at using LLMs. [...] Human expertise will continue to be useful even as models get stronger. The human is the bottleneck for many tasks,not the model: the difficult part is communicating to the model exactly what kind of solution the human wants. The information is “in the model” already, but it takes a very smart human to pull it out."
tldr; Here are five signs your startup may still be a hobby:
1. You are not making real offers that include a price, delivery date, and a promised result.
2. You rely on a spouse, significant other, inheritance, savings, or a tolerable day job for support, but you have not shared a credible plan for reaching break-even and then profitability.
3. You have not defined working hours, milestones, and what you expect to accomplish in a specific timeframe.
4. You are only getting feedback from people you already know.
5. You have not set up a separate bank account, business structure, and expense log.
"While reviewing a list titled “Retractions by Nobel Prize winners” (https://retractionwatch.com/retractions-by-nobel-prize-winne...) compiled by the industry watchdog Retraction Watch, historian Yves Gingras found that two essays by physics pioneer Max Planck had been retracted. Gingras, a historian at the Université du Québec à Montréal, found that the papers were retracted decades after their publication in 1940 and 1942 in Die Naturwissenschaften. [...]
Tim Kersjes, the publisher’s head of research integrity, explained that the “decision to retract the papers was a human error and we can confirm that no software or ‘bot’ would have been involved in the process. Unfortunately, our records are limited, as the retractions occurred in 2011, the individuals involved have mostly left the company and the systems by which we record integrity matters have since changed.”"
I don't care if it's trivial to implement and impossible to bypass: it's an effort to eliminate anonymous Internet browsing/commenting because everyone over 16 has to submit ID as well. Its the end of free speech on the part of the Internet the UK controls.
That was my experience as well. Paid for it for a year, it was a clean presentation of a subset of Google results, but when I was really looking for something I would fall back on Google. It's a shame their execution does not match their brand promise.
"Our main cargo is a one-time cryptographic pad. The source is Commercial Security at Sjandra Kei; the destination is the certificants' High colony. It was the usual arrangement: We're carrying a one-third xor of the pad. Independent shippers are carrying the others. At the destination, the three parts would be xor'd together. The result could supply a dozen worlds' crypto needs on the Net for --"
I agree: a "state of nature" leads to lives that are "nasty, brutish and short." How do we find legislators who are good stewards for the public trust and welfare. We subject public companies to transparency regulations, perhaps legislator would benefit from more transparency. I am not sure where to draw the line to prevent mob rule or other undesirable outcomes, but legislators manage enormous budgets. Arnold Kling looks at ways to reorganize to create tighter accountability in https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/the-unbalance-of-power
We are truly living in a science fiction future where quantum code cracking is not a remote possibility but a near term risk we are planning for.
In Vernor Vinge's novel "A Fire Upon the Deep" one of the most valuable commodities were one time pads that are physically transported to communication nodes to enable unbreakable communication. The pads are split into three pieces that are XORed to create the actual pad to reduce risk of compromise.
The Chinese are at peak family connection density. I found this analysis very interesting, here are some highlights:
+ The simulations show that the Chinese family is about to undergo a radical and historically extraordinary evolution, as extended kinship networks weaken across the nation and close blood relatives disappear entirely for many.
+ In terms of sheer quantity, Chinese networks of blood kin were never before nearly as thick as at the start of the 21st century. Due to dramatic increases in survival, men and women in their 30s as of 2020 have on average five times as many living cousins as in 1960. China’s kin increase may be a significant, previously overlooked factor explaining the Chinese economy’s astonishing performance since Mao Zedong’s death.
+ The kin explosion has reached its peak, and China is now on the cusp of a severe, unavoidable, and relentless kin crash, driven by its sustained and progressively steep sub-replacement fertility relationships. The implosion of consanguineous family networks, in the models, means that China’s rising generations will likely have fewer living relatives than ever before in Chinese annals.
+ Any encounter by China’s security forces involving significant loss of life will almost inevitably foretell lineage extinction for many Chinese families.
+ Researchers and decision makers in China and the West pay close attention to many major Chinese population trends and their consequence. Among these are pronounced and continuing sub-replacement fertility, shrinking working-age manpower, rapid population aging, and emerging surpluses of marriageable men, partly due to sex-selective abortions.
+ Despite this, the looming macroeconomic consequences of old- age dependency burdens, the most significant economic impact of China’s coming revolution in the family, may actually concern the micro-fundamentals of the national economy. Since earliest recorded history, China’s guanxi/social & business networks have helped get business done by reducing uncertainty and transaction costs. Just as propagation of blood relatives likely proved a powerful stimulant for growth during the era of China’s extraordinary upswing, the severe coming plunge in living biological kin in China between now and 2050 may prove an economic depressant.
+ The ability of China’s increasingly sparse younger working age cohorts to support many times their number of elders is very much in question.
I think your statement is correct in the absence of a clear statement of direction and/or product launch by Kagi. I tried Kagi for a year and came away disillusioned as you were.
Key graf on page 5: "Prior to the pandemic, downtown San Francisco saw strong net new business formation, with 711 net new establishments in the information, financial, and professional services sectors in 2017 (Figure 3). The trajectory reversed sharply during the pandemic and by 2025, this figure fell to just 25 – a decline of 96%."
That "American business advocated most for weakened Western market regulation and the expansion of China's industrial base" is clearly stated in the excerpt I posted from the article: "The West’s greed and complacency became Chinese tailwinds, IP theft was rampant, expertise and trillions of dollars were willingly transferred, industrial and institutional leverage was ceded."
As for the strategic thinking elsewhere in the world, I think a secondary problem with all the cover stories and columns marveling at China’s overwhelming strength and infinite wisdom is that they not only mischaracterize Chinese motivations today, but they confuse the qualities that were the primary drivers of this story all along. China became a superpower not because of uniquely clever or patient industrial planning (which was tremendously successful, but not particularly novel), but first and foremost because of a political and corporate culture that was both entirely rational and absolutely relentless about understanding and capitalizing on Chinese advantages (winning on scale and service with a massive and unusually skilled workforce, leveraging a billion consumers to lure foreign investment, and offering the world lax environmental and labor laws that helped them grow their economies), while simultaneously exploiting a raft of weaknesses in the Western system. The West’s greed and complacency became Chinese tailwinds, IP theft was rampant, expertise and trillions of dollars were willingly transferred, industrial and institutional leverage was ceded, the PLA was modernized, and now here we are.
http://www.bootstrappersbreakfast.com/ You buy your own breakfast and take part in a serious conversation with other bootstrapping entrepreneurs.
http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/skmurphy