Hacker News: askafriend

New comment by askafriend in "When Genius Fails: The Intellectual Arrogance of the AI Labs"

askafriend — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 20:52:58 +0000

He did not sell the fund. He sold the publicly traded portion of it.

He currently still has $10B under management.

What's the point of posting blatantly wrong details? It's pretty easy to look them up.

New comment by askafriend in "When Genius Fails: The Intellectual Arrogance of the AI Labs"

askafriend — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 16:01:08 +0000

You're so caught up in irrelevant details like a rhetorical device that you've missed that this guy's fund is up 80% for the year and his investors are having a GREAT year. Worth reflecting on.

New comment by askafriend in "When Genius Fails: The Intellectual Arrogance of the AI Labs"

askafriend — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 15:57:43 +0000

It's a no-signal or slightly-positive signal until paired with other signals.

For example, doing it at Columbia is meaningful. Doing it at a random school, not so much.

New comment by askafriend in "When Genius Fails: The Intellectual Arrogance of the AI Labs"

askafriend — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 15:54:28 +0000

His fund did not fold.

In fact, the returns were so astronomical that they took a $35B loss (around 67%) which means they were still UP 80% for the year in 2026.

Today they have around $10B under management.

As an investor, how would you feel about being up 80% for the year? Exactly. They're having a phenomenal year.

New comment by askafriend in "When Genius Fails: The Intellectual Arrogance of the AI Labs"

askafriend — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 15:34:55 +0000

I'm not writing a technical paper and I refuse to write like what you're suggesting. It's just a rhetorical device!

New comment by askafriend in "When Genius Fails: The Intellectual Arrogance of the AI Labs"

askafriend — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 15:26:31 +0000

That's fair and I guess we're about to find out! The thing to appreciate is there's a lot that's unprecedented about all of this. Some of it has to do with Leopold but then there's a whole lot that doesn't. I'll definitely be following along as the story develops over the years...

New comment by askafriend in "When Genius Fails: The Intellectual Arrogance of the AI Labs"

askafriend — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 15:20:15 +0000

Well it's not a random 25 year old. He became valedictorian at Columbia and graduated at 19. He was then briefly a part of OpenAI's superalignment team.

After he got fired, he wrote a 165 page thesis on AI in early 2024 that all ended up becoming true in 2026; you can read it for yourself and be the judge: https://situational-awareness.ai

That's what he based the fund on.

It's generational foresight not available to 99.999999999999999999% of 25 year olds. I want to get ahead of the default cynicism and "oh it's just dumb luck woe is me" aspect of HN.

New comment by askafriend in "Ask HN: How has the software industry changed for you personally?"

askafriend — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 04:54:56 +0000

A nightmare client would be a nightmare client regardless of the technology involved. I can definitely believe that it's way more annoying with the false confidence effect it tends to have for non-experts.

New comment by askafriend in "Ask HN: When did computers stop being fun?"

askafriend — Tue, 19 May 2026 14:49:28 +0000

25 years ago, you were 25 years younger. Maybe it's not the computers that you miss.

New comment by askafriend in "I Quit. The Clankers Won"

askafriend — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 13:30:46 +0000

You can see their ego trying to protect itself.

New comment by askafriend in "Web development is fun again"

askafriend — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 01:07:02 +0000

> The AI makes an indecipherable mess

Humans are perfectly capable of this themselves and in fact often do it...

New comment by askafriend in "Don't Become the Machine"

askafriend — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 07:55:33 +0000

I think it’s exactly like going from paper spreadsheet to Excel in some very important aspects of engineering (but not all).

I really encourage you to update your priors since capabilities are very different than even 6 months ago.

New comment by askafriend in "IBM to acquire Confluent"

askafriend — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 15:42:00 +0000

Why didn't you ask to get the accounts provisioned?

New comment by askafriend in "Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?"

askafriend — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 18:49:07 +0000

I bet poor investment planning and low-paying roles despite the years of experience.

New comment by askafriend in "Tesla Recalls Almost 13,000 EVs over Risk of Battery Power Loss"

askafriend — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 16:11:49 +0000

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, I guess.

The entire car dealership lobby hates Tesla, for example.

New comment by askafriend in "LLMs can get "brain rot""

askafriend — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 17:45:32 +0000

Why shouldn't the author use LLMs to assist their writing?

The issue is how tools are used, not that they are used at all.

New comment by askafriend in "LLMs can get "brain rot""

askafriend — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 17:41:53 +0000

If it conveys the intended information then what's wrong with that? You're fighting a tsunami here. People are going to use LLMs to help their writing now and forever.

New comment by askafriend in "Ask HN: Has AI stolen the satisfaction from programming?"

askafriend — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 14:20:11 +0000

It's because A LOT of people are. I can't imagine doing it any other way now that I've adopted all the tooling.

I haven't hand-written more than a dozen lines of code in months. The models are really really good now if you can learn to use them. There's definitely a learning curve though as is true with anything new.

New comment by askafriend in "Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android"

askafriend — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 19:25:45 +0000

I'm actually quite familiar with the history of app stores and getting people to pay for software on the internet. I grew up in this timeline so I have first-hand experience too.

Before the App Store, the picture was mostly a disaster of security, reliability and quality. There was no trust and so people didn't bother parting with their credit card information to buy software...especially not on their phone.

Apple's App Store model dramatically grew the pie because it was one of the few platforms that people were willing to actually transact confidently on and trusted. This is why millions of developers flocked to the platform. This is also why Apple has traditionally maintained an iron grip on it; it was beneficial for everyone involved.

Over time, they are being proven right as more open platforms realize that openness at the expense of trust doesn't work for the masses.

New comment by askafriend in "Anthropic raises $13B Series F"

askafriend — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 17:10:23 +0000

Great thought, that seems very likely since so many "founder stories" are heavily spun tales.