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Maybe the most unambiguous "ai will automate work" example I've seen yet.

Absolutely does not imply the workers are automated since they can now use the current models to do more complex tasks at the vast number of new AI training data startups.

Turk was simply not designed for greater complexity tasks and so much of their lunch has been eaten by startups specifically built to collect AI training data.

Maybe I’m an outlier but I’d rather this than accidentally block legit sites.

Otherwise this becomes just another tool for Google to wall in the subset of the internet they like.

This is the first time in recent memory that software has had high variable costs so the surprise at these rules is understandable.

In this case, a the difference in context cache hit rate between openclaw and antigravity.

For example if openclaw starts every message with the current time hh:mm:ss at the top of the context window, followed by the full convo history, it would have a cache hit rate if ~0. Simply moving the updated time to each new message incrementally would increase hit rate to over 90%. Idk if openclaw does this but there’s many many optimizations like this. And worse, thrashing the cache has non linear effects on the server as more and more users’ cached contexts get evicted from cache due to high cardinality. The cost to serve difference could be >10x.

Google is the furthest behind on coding agent adoption and has all the incentives to allow off policy use to grow demand. But it would probably be better to design their own optimized openclaw and serve that for free than let any unoptimized requests in.

One big reason supersonic can be economic now is the increase in wealth in Asia since the 80s.

Transpacific flights from California have no sonic boom population issues for 90% of the flight, and there’s already a large market of people spending $10k on business travel.

Reducing travel time from 12hrs to 4hrs would be a product with a lot more demand than 7hrs to 3hrs to Europe.

80% on swebench verified is incredible. a year ago the best model was at ~30%. i wonder if we'll soon have a convincingly superhuman coding capability (even in a narrow field like kernel optimization).

this is the most interesting time for software tools since compilers and static typechecking was invented.

1yr timeline is ambitious if it means fully deployed.

Clearly the right thing for Sweden and others to do. Also worrying that even 3yrs into the Russian invasion, bordering countries are urgently increasing their preparedness for future conflicts.

This is awesome. Coolest hacker demo I've seen in a while.

These critiques of zirp never explain what should have been done differently.

It's very unlikely the Fed kept rates too low because inflation didn't exceed 2% for 12 years from 2008 to 2021. If the Fed had actually made money "too cheap" inflation would have kicked in much earlier.

More likely, we made it very hard to do new stuff in the country, which made the value of borrowed money low.

Congress spent decades adding regulations (often for good reason) that ultimately resulted in it being too expensive to do most things inside the US. If a business is banned from investing in most new things, it won't need to borrow more money.

The Fed just responded to the market's appraisal of money value. You can even see this in the long term charts - interest rates declined almost continuously from 1984 to 2022.

The entire time, inflation stayed at or below 2%. If the Fed had kept rates higher, theory would predict they would have caused a recession (and Scott Sumner has spent more than a decade arguing this is actually what caused the long deep recession of 2008 - money was too expensive, even at 0%).

Ultimately money is neutral in the long run. The things that truly matter for growth are laws, culture, natural resources and education. These are the causes of our present social dysfunction. These are the issues we should focus on fixing. Not fiddling with interest rates.

Have people been dropping cursor usage for Claude code? I have dropped to using cursor as just an ide with auto complete. Curious if others are doing this too.

In the abstract it discusses that most of the effect (16deg Celsius) is from reduced radiative heating and only a few degrees from evaporation.

Mostly the benefit is instead of having the concrete under you absorb and emit the sun, the leaves above you do.

This dramatically reduces the heat we feel at human height.

A lot of normal consumers pay $20 a month for ChatGPT. I think most software gets bid down in price bc the marginal costs are zero. Where it’s not (llm token generation) prices don’t plummet and consumers build a different expectation.

this might be a good thing if viewed from the opposite perspective: people with kids/elderly parents usually can't afford to pay as much per person as people traveling alone for fun/corporate travel.

This is incredibly well written.

The oil example is very compelling for import substitution. And the covid example is interesting in showing the savings rate only went up as an offset of gov spending.

I'd love to see a follow up on (a) is it important for the US to increase domestic savings and (b) what are the best policies to do so, and why are they the best?

I imagine blanket tariffs might actually increase the savings rate because they increase the cost of importing all goods when the domestic alternatives are either inferior or more expensive. But I'm curious if they are the best way to achieve the savings goal.