It's time for a South Bay renaissance Might be hard to recall, but used to be not that long ago that the center of Silicon Valley was squarely in Palo Alto, not SF. When I came to the Bay in 2010, that's where I lived and that's where I stayed and settled down to build my startups It's a beautiful place to live, maybe the best weather in the world, teeming with top talent, safe and family friendly.... but the locus of tech has moved to SF., leaving the startup scene down here somewhat bare and deprived. Most of us are too busy to make it to SF more than 1-2x a month. I'm committed to revitalizing the South Bay for startups - with events, dinners, social activities (incl parent/kids activities), etc. We can build a vibrant hub down here if a few of us make it happen. If you're with me and want to be a part of this renaissance, reply or DM me and let's make it happen

Fields Medal winner Yu Deng to @LiYuan6: “If I were making the decision in China today,” he said, “I would think much more carefully about whether to come to the United States.”

My Foursquare/Swarm MCP is working. I have a weekly ChatGPT task that reviews my financial transactions. Now this MCP can corroborate whether I was at the venue where the credit card charge happened. If you are interested in using this MCP, let me know. I’ll open it to more users soon.

What Makes China’s Red Aristocracy Different I have written extensively about China’s “red aristocracy” in my book. But the term can be misleading to readers outside China. We probably need a better term for it. The recent passing of Zhu Rongji, premier in 1990s, revived the debate over whether he was genuinely the clean Party leader he insisted he was, or whether the careers of his family members made that claim hypocritical. His son became CEO of China’s largest state-owned investment bank while Zhu, as premier, was directing SOE reforms. His daughter worked for American investment banks serving Chinese SOEs in their financing. His son-in-law headed the overseas operations of China’s largest state-owned mining company. All three were already multimillionaires in USD decades ago, when most Chinese were earning only a few hundred yuan a month. This debate illustrates a broader problem in understanding China’s elite. The word aristocracy evokes a privileged class with inherited wealth, family names, estates, social prestige and elite networks. China’s Communist aristocracy may have all of those. But it is fundamentally different. Its defining privilege is not wealth or access to networks. It is proximity to political power—and the ability that comes with it to OPERATE ABOVE THE LAW, MARKET RULES AND SOCIAL NORMS. European aristocrats historically enjoyed immense legal privileges. But modern European aristocracy is largely the residue of that system. A British duke may inherit a fortune, a castle and powerful connections, but he still has to operate within a legal order. He cannot simply make a criminal case disappear, induce a regulator to punish a competitor, or decide that certain law does not apply to him. His privilege exists within the system. China’s red aristocracy emerged from a different structure. The descendants of Communist revolutionaries did not inherit formal titles. They inherited something more valuable in a Leninist state: access to the Party-state. Their family names open doors to senior officials, ministries, state-owned companies, banks and the enforcement apparatus. Connections can bring political sponsorship, regulatory approvals, financing, inside information and business opportunities unavailable to ordinary people. More importantly, political protection can determine not merely how much opportunity you have, but which rules apply to you at all. That is the distinction Western observers often miss. A Chinese princeling is not simply the equivalent of an American billionaire or a European aristocrat. The deeper privilege is arbitrariness in your favour. In a rule-based society, the wealthy have greater resources to operate within the rules. In China, political connections can influence how rules are written, interpreted and enforced—and sometimes whether they are enforced at all. That is not merely inequality of wealth. It is inequality before power. There is also a profound historical irony. The Communist revolution destroyed China’s old landed and commercial elites in the name of abolishing inherited privilege, only to create a new hereditary elite of its own—as socialist systems so often do. China’s red aristocracy is therefore not simply another privileged upper class. It is the product of a political system in which proximity to power can place a person above the rules governing everyone else. Western aristocracy today is largely inherited status operating within a legal system. China’s red aristocracy is inherited access to power operating above it.

Lots of people asking about the shift to permanent daylight savings. The data clearly show locking to standard is best. For mental and physical health. That am sunlight is key, But if not, then locking to daylight savings second best. Shifting back-and-forth is the worst choice.

Some updates on the creator rev share program: 1. Soliciting engagements (“I’ll follow everyone who replies”) 3 or more times will results in removal from the program and your account will be forwarded to the policy team for suspension. Grok now catches all of these. Nearly 4000 accounts were removed from the program today. 2. Our new model now detects duplicated content at 3x the rate of the previous model. Adding watermarks, intros and other edits will send monetized impressions to the original uploader. This also includes copying viral text posts (most common one: “Twitter is like the smoking section of the internet”). We detected 1.5 million posts that were stolen this cycle. Repeated or intentional circumvention will lead to removal from the program. With these changes, over $1 million will be given back to original content creators.

I resigned from Google DeepMind bc it broke its founding promise by selling AI to the military without restrictions against killer robots or mass spying. For months, I worked to stop this but watched powerful ethicists and institutions choose silence. Here's what happened. 🧵

~10 years ago I did yearly talks about "new JavaScript features". When Chrome 100 shipped in 2022, I started a habit: a tiny live demo page for every Chrome release. 50 versions later, I unified them all into one site 👇

Most solo companies fail for the same reason: no real unfair advantage. AI can cover your weaknesses to a 60/70 level. Better than random hires who cost you equity and leave. But it CAN'T invent your edge. That 90/100 skill, network, or insight — that's still on you. Once you have it though: AI learns how you operate and scales it. Your strengths get amplified. Your gaps get covered. And the game changes entirely. Used to take years to test one idea. Now it takes hours. So stop betting on one thing. Test 100. Kill the losers fast. Double down on what works. That's the one-person company playbook.