All the opponents are helping YIMBYs make a comprehensive list of California laws that need to be repealed
Laura Waxmann: The fight over the Marina @Safeway project has taken a new turn. Neighborhood opponents are now asking San Francisco officials to halt its fast-tracked approval under CA law over what they say is an unresolved environmental testing gap. @sfchronicle
https://shorturl.at/O2bkz
Nicolas Dessaigne
I sat with a founder recently who had just raised a good round. Almost immediately, he got slower. They had raised, and he felt they were supposed to behave like a much larger company: OKRs, a responsibilities matrix, quarterly planning, etc. But the team was still only a handful of people. The two-week goals they used during the batch worked much better for them!
We did our own version of this mistake at Algolia. Our first HR hire wanted to build a career framework. The idea sounded good to me, I wanted people to be able to see how they could grow. But it backfired. People started looking at the ladder instead of what the company needed.
Processes are good when they can help make things faster. Hiring and support are good examples. But don't put in place processes that are going to slow you down!
Do the thing that gets you users. OKRs can wait.
Armand Domalewski
ah yes, a progressive yimby club from the campaign that endorsed one of SF's premier NIMBYs
Mission Local: Staff and volunteers from Saikat Chakrabarti's congressional campaign are launching a new progressive YIMBY Democratic club.
Their bet: "20 percent in a city like this is more than enough — far more than enough — to swing a race.”
https://missionlocal.org/2026/08/saikat-chakrabarti-backers-left-leaning-yimby-democratic-club/
hedonic treadmill of model expectations
Elon Musk
Grok 4.6 runs The Gauntlet
Matt Shumer: Grok 4.6 worked non-stop for 48 hours to build this shooter.
Turns out Grok is powerful enough to run Gauntlet Loops.
Let the game-making begin!
If you want to learn how to run one: https://somethingbig.ai/gauntlet-loop
Grok Build harness is likely best but you can also run this in Grok Bot!
Elon Musk: Grok 4.6 runs The Gauntlet
Matt Shumer
Re @elonmusk Gauntlet Loop prompt to build games like this: https://somethingbig.ai/gauntlet-loop
try reservation search in chatgpt!
Adam Fry: This week's ChatGPT feature drop - Aug 14:
1/ Quizzes - "Quiz me on [topic]" will now automatically generate quizzes right in Chat. Learn any topic!
2/ Reservation search - "I'm looking for a reservation for two next Saturday for a place with a great outdoor patio". Nice thing
luca. ∆ИƉЯƐΛ
Yesterday made it one year since I joined @Replit. I keep trying to summarize it and failing, because no single thread captures it.
I’m beyond grateful to be part of this incredible journey and couldn’t ask for a better team. @pirroh and @amasad are two of the best leaders in Silicon Valley, and getting to help them build toward 1 billion software developers is the privilege of my career.
Grazie @pirroh for believing in me and letting my creativity (insanity) flourish under your leadership.
Tomorrow, I’m really excited to share a new episode with @rileybrown on how he uses Codex to run his entire content business.
I particularly loved watching him demo how he creates YouTube thumbnails with AI:
1. He uses Codex to find 100 top-performing thumbnails in his niche and add them to a Paper canvas.
2. He uses Paper to mix and match those thumbnails with photos of himself until he creates something he’s happy with.
Honestly, you have to watch the workflow to see how crazy it is.
📌 Subscribe to get the full episode tomorrow: https://www.youtube.com/@PeterYangYT?sub_confirmation=1
Peter Yang
Tomorrow, I’m really excited to share a new episode with @rileybrown on how he uses Codex to run his entire content business.
I particularly loved watching him demo how he creates YouTube thumbnails with AI:
1. He uses Codex to find 100 top-performing thumbnails in his niche and add them to a Paper canvas.
2. He uses Paper to mix and match those thumbnails with photos of himself until he creates something he’s happy with.
Honestly, you have to watch the workflow to see how crazy it is.
📌 Subscribe to get the full episode tomorrow: https://www.youtube.com/@PeterYangYT?sub_confirmation=1
Chris Hoofnagle
"I teach mathematics at UC Berkeley. Three days a week, I stand in front of lecture halls with 500 to 1,400 students. By the second week of the semester, I already know who is in trouble. Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school." https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2026/08/15/uc-berkeley-sat-test-blind-admissions-math-scores/
LiveFromVR
I think this tweet rewired my brain
Amjad Masad: @GavinSBaker To make a bit of an excuse for Microsoft: the world is just waking up to the fact that coding agents are general agents.
It’s bitter lesson adjacent: Writing and executing code will likely outperform years of handcrafting vertical-specific agents with expert knowledge.
Actually
Anyone else's Codex Desktop app erroring out on chats?
It’s still going! Should I let it run for another day?
Guide to Gauntlet Looping: https://somethingbig.ai/gauntlet-loop
Matt Shumer: Grok 4.6 worked non-stop for 48 hours to build this shooter.
Turns out Grok is powerful enough to run Gauntlet Loops.
Let the game-making begin!
Kenneth Roth
As Trump fuels inflation with his arbitrary tariffs and his pointless war of choice with Iran, workers’ wages are not keeping up. That spells trouble in the midterms for the Republicans who cowardly support him. https://trib.al/gbTmpn8
Francois Chaubard
are you running a startup? have you launch this week? why not? JUST LAUNCH! ya its not perfect. who cares. launch early. launch often. kill shit that doesnt resonate. rinse wash repeat. $60B exit.
(see cursor for details)
Gregor Zunic: How to get acquired for $60B
1. post on HN
2. get ignored
3. profit
towards never having to manually select a model again
eric provencher: This went under the radar this week, but we just shipped the ability for models with multi agents v2 to delegate to any supported model, including Luna!
Took a bit of time to make sure this worked reliably
Whitepill timeline cleanser:
Progress and abundance looks like record production of crops, year on year, progressing upwards and to the right. This is the output of markets and technology working together for millenia.
https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/tracking-global-food-usda
Hiten Shah
https://x.com/i/article/2088662457103577088
Teaching Grok Bot to build games in Unity.
Updates soon!
Matt Shumer: Grok 4.6 worked non-stop for 48 hours to build this shooter.
Turns out Grok is powerful enough to run Gauntlet Loops.
Let the game-making begin!
Prasenjit
Re it's the same process btw
i used .@mattshumer_ 's gauntlet loop, everytime it works perfectly, never disappointed
i highly recommend you to use opus 4.6 to modify it.
Richard MacManus
I'm loving working for @latentspacepod and I'm also learning new tricks (ref old dogs and all that). @swyx has been teaching me his method of doing developer diagrams — graphics that are good enough to be added to the official documentation of a project!
Of course I'm not at his level yet, but I toiled for several hours today to come up with this diagram of Flue. The idea was to get across in one diagram how Flue 1 evolved into Flue 2. I hope it does the job (🙏 @FredKSchott).
Just to be clear, I used Claude Design as the final tool for this diagram, but let me tell you there were many loops involved! And I used a few other tools to help get there, e.g. https://deepwiki.com/ (a @cognition project — "Deep Research for GitHub").
This is the full post: https://www.latent.space/p/flue-2
Mark Cuban
Ro, I like you. You know that. But you need to read the state of the state.
The number of Deca Unicorns in Cali is growing by the day as investors chase amazing startups.
A unique feature of these 10b startups is that even if they raise a billion, little, if any of that money goes to the founders, who are now worth billions of dollars over night. They are the definition of cash poor, stock rich
How are you going to tax them ? Make them borrow money against their shares, if they can? They just raised money to grow their company and a bank will come along and loan them money ? A company that has been in business maybe less than a year ? lol
Will you take their stock if they can’t ?
Do you really think each of multiple founders, who started an amazing company in Cali and is now a billionaire, can each just pull out $250m per billion of net worth from their raise ? You know they can’t.
If this passes , and it doesn’t directly impact me at all, I won’t be a cali resident, but you can bet if I’m investing in a multi billion dollar startup, I’m asking them to move from California first.
IMO, if this passes, only idiot startup founders stay in Cali.
I’ve done it before and will do it again. Dallas. Pittsburgh. Indiana. I will make NOT being in California a pre requisite for an investment
Ideology is not a strategy Ro.
Ro Khanna: The California Democratic Party and the California labor movement just stood with @BernieSanders and me in supporting 5% wealth tax on 250 California billionaires.
California voters want a Democratic Party that will stand up for the working class over the billionaire class.
I’m interesting in finding and funding the next Disney.
True to its original values, focused on the American spirit. Merit, family, overcoming of adversity, optimism, the pursuit of happiness.
AI makes everyone able to create. What will define our next generation is *what* we create with it. The next icons. The next unique brand that goes further than how it’s drawn or rendered.
Mickey Mouse survived several technological revolutions because of what it represented. I think most big entertainment companies have forgotten that.
If you’re creating something cool in this space and need help, technologically or financially, slide into my DMs.
Keith Humphreys
Some activists and academics in San Francisco warned that Lurie's new policies would cause a huge surge in overdose deaths. Remember who those people were and never listen to them again.
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/public-health/san-francisco-sees-lowest-overdose-deaths-on-record-in-july/article_e1d51def-275d-40a7-b5e8-0121569e6073.html
I’m interested in finding and funding the next Disney.
True to its original values, focused on the American spirit. Merit, family, overcoming of adversity, optimism, the pursuit of happiness.
AI makes everyone able to create. What will define our next generation is *what* we create with it. The next icons. The next unique brand that goes further than how it’s drawn or rendered.
Mickey Mouse survived several technological revolutions because of what it represented. I think most big entertainment companies have forgotten that.
If you’re creating something cool in this space and need help, technologically or financially, slide into my DMs.
in case you’re not living in the tech bubble, as a general rule i’ve been surprised by how infrequently top tier folks actually meet/know each other. as an outsider i might have assumed that everyone is in secret illuminati group chats. those exist, but are very much short lived exceptions rather than the rule. what you see of the major headlines is pretty much what they also see. i guess one way to interpret this is also simply that most effort is still on doing the work rather than working the narrative or the gossip. and that, to me at least, is genuinely quite reassuring, this far in to my career.
Internal Tech Emails: Anthropic cofounder emails Noam Shazeer
November 21, 2021
sounds accurate
a16z: Wild adoption gap: the top 1% of AI spenders are spending more than 600x as much as the median company
Charts of the Week: https://www.a16z.news/p/charts-of-the-week-head-in-the-neoclouds
I think people don’t realize how much of the success of React is actually @shadcn.
I once referred to React as the actual “LEGO brick for adults.” But in reality it was more the description of the geometry of the bricks. The spec.
Shadcn is what people actually wanted from React. Reusable high quality components that also tunable. It’s a pseudo-library. There’s code but it’s actually meant to be digested into your context window and remixed.
I 100% agree with Dario that using AI to cure diseases (and speeding up the regulatory approval of AI breakthroughs in healthcare) could bring 10x the benefit to humanity as everything else combined.
Dario Amodei: 2/2 Second, on the messaging around AI. I do not agree that my messaging has been disproportionately negative. In fact it has been about equally balanced between risks and benefits: I’ve written one major essay about each, and even in interviews where I discuss the risks, I
I am a fan of Grok Bot but @X is the #1 differentiated data source that it should have access to and it doesn't seem to work?
The connector doesn't work and I can't even login to X on the cloud computer.
Am I doing something wrong?
Sheel Mohnot
So crazy that the representative for Silicon Valley is in favor of this tax that would be most damaging to the area he was elected to represent… and worse, he doesn’t seem to understand that.
We REALLY need to find someone strong to run against him in the primary in 2 years.
Ro Khanna: The California Democratic Party and the California labor movement just stood with @BernieSanders and me in supporting 5% wealth tax on 250 California billionaires.
California voters want a Democratic Party that will stand up for the working class over the billionaire class.
