Thoughts, stories and ideas.
Why modern portfolio theory is just expensive beta-washing for people uncomfortable with the fundamental volatility of building wealth There's a beautiful moment of cognitive dissonance happening in quantitative finance right now. Brilliant minds spend their days building sophisticated factor models to decompose and hedge away systematic risk,
What is athletic competition really for? Strip away the rhetoric about excellence and achievement, and several purposes emerge: Pure Human Limits : Discovering the absolute boundaries of human physical capability Merit Through Effort : Rewarding dedication, sacrifice, and maximizing one's potential Narrative Drama : Creating compelling stories of triumph, rivalry, and
Your AI Coding Assistant Is Gaslighting You (The Hidden Cost of Uncertainty in AI Coding Assistants) Thoughts On A Month With Devin – Answer.AIOur impressions of Devin after giving it 20+ tasks.Answer.AIHamel Husain The recent Devin review by Answer.AI highlights a critical but often overlooked aspect
What happens when organizational structures designed to serve the public good become vectors for their own dysfunction? This phenomenon—which we might call the "Bureaucratic Contagion Effect"—describes how institutional incentives can transform even well-intentioned actors into participants in systemic inefficiency, creating a cascade of
The traditional definitions of small, medium, and enterprise-scale companies in the SaaS industry are undergoing a fundamental transformation we call "Autonomous Revenue Scaling" (ARS). This phenomenon describes how AI and autonomous agents are enabling companies to grow revenue dramatically while keeping headcount relatively flat, breaking the historical
Dear Satya in Redmond, Hallowed be thy Azure cloud, As Q4 earnings approach and rumors swirl, Grant us the wisdom of continued investment, Even as DeepSeek's whispers echo from afar. Let not the markets tremble, But keep the data centers humming, And the GPUs ever-plentiful. Through forward
The recent emergence of DeepSeek and other state-affiliated AI models marks a crucial turning point in the AI arms race. While public attention focuses on capabilities and benchmarks, a more sinister possibility lurks beneath the surface: the potential for deliberately engineered vulnerabilities and backdoors in state-sponsored AI systems.
Renaissance Technologies | Acquired Podcast The complete podcast (and transcript!) of Renaissance Technologies history and business strategy. Hidden Markov Model (HMM) for Trend Prediction I. Conceptual Overview 1. What is a Hidden Markov Model? A Markov model assumes that a system moves between discrete “states” in a chain-like
Thoughts On A Month With Devin – Answer.AI Our impressions of Devin after giving it 20+ tasks. The recent Devin review by Answer.AI highlights a critical but often overlooked aspect of AI coding assistants: their maddening unpredictability. While much attention has focused on raw capabilities, the real challenge
Building effective agents A post for developers with advice and workflows for building effective AI agents Anthropic's take on agents. Over the last year, everyone in AI seems to be talking about “agents,” a buzzword that promises everything from open-ended autonomy to flexible decision-making
Consider Warren Buffett and his investment philosophy. Everyone knows him as a value investor—someone who focuses on the intrinsic worth of a business rather than the manic mood swings of market sentiment. Over decades, Buffett built his fortune by buying companies whose share prices dipped below their fundamental
The "Kitchen Table Test" The "Kitchen Table Test" - why every startup's most critical hiring decision happens at home, not in your office... Last year, my heart sank when I got the Sunday night call: "I need to back out. My wife is concerned
https://t.co/dfBFHb7bHA — Kevin Mak (@KevinLMak) November 28, 2024 Inspired by this post. We’ve long discussed the notion of harvesting volatility in traditional markets—where a firm can, in theory, extract value from its own stock’s excess price oscillations through well-timed buybacks,