Viewing profile — shawndrost

It seems to me that Trump's second term foreign policy is obsessed with dismantling the "shadow" oil market -- ending the system where China captures upside when sanctioned countri…

Think of your product as part "content" and part "container". When I say "content" I mean "stuff that could fit on a content platform". When I say "container" I mean, the bundle of…

I don't understand this POV, can you explain what I'm missing? Usually when people say "corporations aren't people" I think they are confused about the need for an abstraction. But…

Do they include the costs of dead-end runs?

This article is a midwit dismissal; it may contain valid corrections but it is ignorant on the core topic at hand. This is a shame, because it is extremely interesting and under-re…

I have loved Cormac's books since I was a child, but never read Larry McMurtry until recently. If you're in the same boat, I implore you to give one of the below a try. Lonesome Do…

I think of you as a direct person, so it's strange to hear you dismiss "stablecoins are regulatory arbitrage" as misguided or incurious. Maybe I am wrong about something. Would you…

My argument is really not about the 58->176 transition (which was slower than 20% YOY) but the rapid datacenter deployment that started around 2022. It is basically all LLMs (McKin…

Does anyone know why "Hours spent in childcare" started skyrocketing in the 1990s? Here is the graph from the article: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!2g7_!,w_1456,c_limit.…

The below DOE link substantiates my quotes about US data centers and power usage, which I'll reproduce here. "[D]ata centers consumed about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 […

As a matter of fact, the police return fewer stolen USD to rightful owners than the "financial system" (ie regulated banks, credit card companies, etc). If you report an identity t…

My statements about the recent history of declining US power sector emissions are pretty vanilla and I won't source them here, but they should be pretty easy to verify. What I'm as…

You have this extremely wrong. TLDR: LLMs singlehandedly reversed the secular decline in US power emissions, which were the only reason for climate optimism. The story of US power …

"THOSE ARE NOT MY CHOICES. THOSE ARE YOUR CHOICES."

But which is it? Do you agree with Graham's essay and your own graph, or do you disagree? It sounds like you believe in the graph, but don't want to turn people off. Just own your …

+1 to this analysis. Urban ratepayers in CA subsidize rural and fire-prone ratepayers. (Utility rates are a stealth tax. Same story as home insurance.) The fight is ultimately poli…

I work in hydrogen and I have semi-solid information* that there is a real economic case for hydrogen as a fuel for large mining equipment. The story as I heard it: the overall out…

Calling out something that seems obvious to me, but is not visible ITT: This is Facebook doing their main MO, which is to reproduce social products that are exhibiting hockey-stick…

One of the most interesting things to me about LLMs is the set of emergent anthropomorphic behaviors which they exhibit. Confabulation is one of them -- what a deeply human behavio…

I imagine the argument here is: FDP wants lower energy prices enough to horse trade with Greens for new conservation designations. That kind of thing.

This is not just some art thing. People note it in every field. It's not the only predictor; the author of Chrome reportedly did most of it offline IIRC. But it's a real phenomenon…

You can find the text of the original OpenAI/MSFT deal here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5jjk4CDnj9tA7ugxr/openai-ema...

It seems you have convinced me that IC fabrication is a dark art, despite your intentions.

I have to repost an earlier comment of mine ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27752798 ) on this topic: I have a tip on finding a cofounder. I've been looking for the last 12 …

> Imprecative retorts in English > While not a mood in English, expressions like like hell it is or the fuck you are are imprecative retorts. These consist of an expletive + a pers…