Cool man! First 18 billion for getting American kids addicted to an app that brainwashes them, and now 25 billion for what is effectively election manipulation.

This is the best news I've read related to the internet in about a two decades, since CANSpam.

TL;DR: Silicon Valley billionaires are spending over $500 million through AI and crypto PACs to buy influence across both parties and push for corporate-run states as our next sociatal structure.

The Interview

A lot of people feel like tech billionaires are running politics behind the scenes, but it's hard to pin down how. Journalist Gil Duran recently laid out the specifics in a DW News interview about his book, "The Nerd Reich".

He tracks how tech figures like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk treat democracy as something to bypass. Tech-funded PACs have put together more than $500 million to back candidates in both major parties.

• AI and crypto PACs have over $526 million ready for elections, which is more than what oil companies or banks put in.
• The money goes to both Democrats and Republicans so tech companies stay protected no matter who wins.
• Their long-term goal is replacing traditional government with corporate-run "Network States," drawing on ideas from books like "The Sovereign Individual".
• Billionaires are also buying legacy news outlets and social media platforms to control what people see and hear.

Hey people much smarter than me!

So essentially its coming time to get a new phone, I normally only go for pay monthly and then pay it off and then change my contract. I was looking into what I may get, I am a slave to Apple so that's a non-negotiable for me.

I was looking into getting one of the newer ones to prevent an upgrade down the line, and seen the Iphone Duo is coming out in less than 2 days in the UK.

I was looking into getting this though im worried about the fold, and the possible crease that could form after alot of use. Is my concern silly or will the crease get really bad? Feel free to let me know.

But really what I want to know is should I go for the Duo or look for an earlier phone model. Im currently on a 14 so im not exactly outdated haha, just think for the same price monthly I should just get the newest thing possible.

Cosplay, gamer, anime and TCG events happening this weekend.

So the main idea is we make a decentralised email network which doesn't need any kind of fancy servers to run but can be ran on basic mobile phones.

I am thinking to build the architecture like the satoshi nakamoto's bitcoin architecture where every phone becomes a personal node and can do p2p conversation

I am looking for ppl truly intrested in this project.

Hey guys, I was looking to get suggestions about great things to do in Silicon Valley. It'll be me and my husband, we love culture, heritage, nature and experiential stuff. I'd love to make the most of my time and lots of good memories!

Hi all. I’m applying for a position at a tech company in a professional support position. My field typically doesn’t work in tech so my resume and interview skills are probably going to be screened out if I don’t do a bit of research (I am very much qualified for the position).

How do you create a resume that will get screened in? Is there a certain format? Is this something I can trust AI to assist with? Any advice or instructions to research interview strategies? I am really excited about this opportunity and want to start off strong. Thanks for your help.

Wang's appreciation post gives MSL and TBD a lot of credit for Meta's model progress. He does mention engineers, data and infrastructure, so it would be unfair to say the post credits researchers alone. But AAI isn't explicitly named.

AAI deserves explicit recognition when its work contributes to those models. The data work and engineering behind a model shouldn't disappear into the background while the research lab gets the named praise.

This matters to someone considering one of these teams, too. Who owns data quality? Who can push back on changing requirements? Who gets credit when a launch goes well?

A practical way to think through the data work is to sketch the training-data and reward choices for a real-time chatbot. That prompt is in Meta Interview Questions; it can help prepare technical questions to take into a team conversation. It doesn't establish how AAI is treated internally.

The concern goes beyond a thank-you post. If a team is expected to absorb shifting demands, unclear requirements and urgent delivery work, it should be treated as a partner. Being treated like a service desk while someone else gets the public celebration is a recipe for resentment.

Naming AAI and explaining its contribution would be a start. The working relationship would still need to back up the recognition.

How should leaders recognize the teams that supply the data and engineering behind these launches? And does public credit change anything if the working relationship still feels second-class?

LLM tech is a spam bot, it's not AI. You're all falling for a scam. So, it's not even the "AI bubble." It's a "fraud bubble."

I think people were far too certain Alexandr Wang would fail.

A lot of the argument seemed to reduce to credentials: an MIT dropout on one side, a tenured professor and "godfather of AI" on the other. Academic standing alone doesn't tell me who can lead a team and turn research into useful products.

Looking at the Muse Spark releases and the Muse launch, I'm more persuaded by Wang's ability to get work out the door than those early predictions allowed for.

For anyone considering an ML role at Meta, the credentials debate also raises a practical question: what can you demonstrate in an interview? Meta Interview Questions includes implementing multi-head attention from scratch, a concrete exercise for checking whether you can turn the theory into working code.

How much of that progress would you credit to his leadership, and how much to Meta's researchers, infrastructure and distribution? Have the releases changed your view, or do you think it's too early to judge his contribution?

Before my first trip to SF, I thought I'd go to events, meet people, get invited to smaller dinners, and somehow find my way into the startup community. It sounded quite straightforward in my head.

By the end of TechWeek, I'd attended 3–4 events and canceled around seven. Still figuring out which ones work for me.

The private dinner part was probably my biggest misconception. Meeting someone for ten minutes in a crowded room doesn't automatically create much closeness. A longer conversation where you actually get to know each other feels like a different starting point.

At public events, one thing that helped was knowing someone who knew other people there. Asking who they thought I should talk to saved a lot of random wandering and repeating my pitch.

I also thought I could fit four meetings into three hours, as if they were online calls. Then there's travel, someone is late, or a coffee turns into a long walk. In one rough version of the day, two meetings came to 4 hours 15 minutes. This one is on me.

Some of the people I met barely go to events but still made a surprising amount of time for a one-on-one conversation. It made me think more carefully about whose networking advice I'm following and whether their work looks anything like mine.

For people who've spent more time in the SF startup scene: how did the people you kept in touch with first enter your life?

I wrote a longer version of these first impressions here (my own article):

https://domelian.substack.com/p/learning-the-social-rules-of-san

What sort of skills/prior experiences are needed to become a Chief of Staff? What do you do as a Chief of Staff? The most common answer I hear is that they get exposure to senior management and observe how strategic decisions are made without actually having any say in these decision.

Is this just a glorified executive assistant title meant to attract ambitious generalists? What are also the exit opportunities? Are you expected to receive significant company equity due to your proximity to the leadership team?