Here in California, PG&E has a "base service fee" of $24/month. That you owe even if they sell you no (as in ZERO) electricity:

https://www.pge.com/en/account/billing-and-assistance/base-s...

My understanding is that the S-1 showed a Q1 loss of xAI of $2.47 billion in Q1. But with the Anthropic Colossus-I rental agreement at $1.25B/month or $3.75B/quarter, xAI should now be net-neutral to cash-flow positive.

If Colossus-II rents networked GB-200s, that could be up to +$47B/year at $9/hour/GB-200 for 555,000 GB-200s. For reference, current rental rates are $10-$27/hour for the same hardware. With Anthropic at a 55% month-over-month growth rate (implying a $150B/year run rate by August, or, more likely, sometime in late 2026), it seems very possible that xAI could be highly profitable as the only available compute resource.

I'm not saying +$47B Colossus-II deal will happen, but even a small fraction of that remains highly material to xAI economics. xAI is likely already cashflow neutral. (Where am I wrong?)

https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healt...

Two articles that cover this in depth are: 1. Revised Fold-Away Rotor Aircraft Concepts Emerge From Special Operations X-Plane Program. December 2024: https://www.twz.com/air/revised-fold-away-rotor-aircraft-con...

2. Bell’s Plan To Finally Realize A Rotorcraft That Flies Like A Jet But Hovers Like A Helicopter. September 2021: https://www.twz.com/41997/bells-plan-to-finally-realize-a-ro...

The second article covers decades of prior wind tunnel testing on the folding rotor concept.

This crap will only stop when there is: 1. A ton of new housing for all people. 2. Treat everyone the same. Same amount of test time etc.

Otherwise, our society is just a race to see who can claim the most special 'privilege' via some form of 'issue' or 'need'.

It would be great to see detailed demographic breakdowns of exactly who's making these heavy special-privilege claims, as the details may surprise a variety of commentators on this forum. Though I don't think Gary has access to that data.

US origins of the key technology here give the US a veto here regardless of ASML's Dutch headquarters.

Honestly, to me, one of the most exciting aspects of Lip-Bu Tan as CEO of Intel is actually spinning in his US startup portfolio. To use the old John Doerr quote, "No conflict, no interest!"

But my hope is that Intel becomes a successful operating business. I'm still not convinced that the Chairman of the Board of Intel doesn't want to break it up in a "part out" deal. And I'd strongly suspect that the media focus here is part of a larger fight.

Until the board of directors that oversaw the disastrous 10 years of Intel is fully replaced, Lip-Bu Tan's "Conflicts" are great things in my book.

So let me propose: a wealth tax on land! ("Georgism"). But not a tax on the "value of improvements," i.e, buildings. This disincentivizes single-family homes near train stations (widespread in the town I grew up in) and is very low-cost to collect.

I don't know where you're writing from. But here in California, the source of all evil (Prop 13) originated with single-family homeowners trying to *escape the property taxes that result from their opposing new development.

Given how spectacularly CA housing policy has failed, perhaps it's time to try the opposite: Let's abolish all income taxes and exclusively tax land instead! (Land taxes have the property of being extremely progressive wealth taxes that are dead simple to administer.)

Because I noticed I have zero self-control with the short-term video format. So now I don't touch it and consider it similar to cigarettes.

Note, PG is the founder of YC, Sam's former boss, and the one who removed Sam from the position of President of YC after first appointing Sam to succeed him as President of YC. (Sama was more focused on OpenAI than on YC at the time, which doesn't work when you're supposed to be leading YC.)

2008 Essay "A Fundraising Survival Guide" https://www.paulgraham.com/fundraising.html

Sam Altman has it. You could parachute him into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king. If you're Sam Altman, you don't have to be profitable to convey to investors that you'll succeed with or without them. (He wasn't, and he did.) Not everyone has Sam's deal-making ability. I myself don't. But if you don't, you can let the numbers speak for you.

2009 Essay "5 Founders" https://paulgraham.com/5founders.html

5. Sam Altman I was told I shouldn't mention founders of YC-funded companies in this list. But Sam Altman can't be stopped by such flimsy rules. If he wants to be on this list, he's going to be. ... What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they're going to get whatever they want.

That's PG's take on Sama.

I would say, looking at a wide range of Sam Altman's more investments https://observer.com/2025/06/sam-altman-startup-investments/

from OpenAI to Helion energy (Fusion), to Retro Biosciences (longevity), Neuralink (brain computer interface), to Reddit

Sama really wants to "build the future," and when some of those investments "hit", like OpenAI did - basically become the first new company with a clear path to a $1T valuation since Facebook or TikTok), you gain immense credibility for "betting the future will happen and getting your organization there first."

If YC's motto is "build something people want," and OpenAI is now serving 800M active users while delivering incredible revenue growth (and investors want to see both). Sama gains power by giving investors what they want, by giving users what they want, and basically authoring an entire new type of software company and a new part of the economy.

A thing to note here is that, being a YC partner and top angel investor from 2011 to 2020, you can argue that Sam himself is "the most successful YC graduate." He saw thousands of companies go through YC. He saw hundreds of 'hard tech companies' go through YC. And in that decade, he could only have learned an immense amount about how VCs/successful CEOs think and make decisions. Certainly, we see the learnings of those experiences in what he's been able to pull off since.

And, part of the appeal of the product, is they only pay out if *all of them are in the money. Hence the "lotto-like" return profile.

In terms of "free cash flow" expectations, are you aware that approximately 90% of "space" revenue and profit comes from satellite telecom services, with launch services accounting for about 10% of the mix? SpaceX's development of a telecommunications constellation (Starlink) is highly consistent with historical industry patterns of what makes profit in space.

https://brycetech.com/reports/report-documents/global_satell...

Why not put massive, grid scale batteries “behind the meter” at a nuclear or coal plant to enable continual production but only sell power when prices are high and store power when prices are low?

Mass movements arise when populations, that had had large increases in living standards, find their living standards are no longer rising. Hoffer cites something like 30% of the country is now 'middle class' and then depressions etc. set in.

Take the quote, "A society so thoroughly steeped in the work ethic and committed to the pursuit of individual achievement cannot but fail to prepare its members for any other kinds of lives."

The reality is the opposite. When work doesn't pay (i.e. when hard work can't lead to buying a condo/house and starting a family) the original premise of "work hard to get ahead" breaks. And here we are.

Any civilization where two 30 year old elementry school teachers can't buy a 1,200 sq-ft 3bdr/2bath condo for less than 30% of their income - is morally bankrupt. Aka 99% of the bay area, or DC, NYC. So people tern to idleness without the ability for work to result in personal progress.

The solutions are simple: make it easy to build housing. If you're bored, deadlift. Spend time outside. And, most of all, change our national household economics to allow ownership and family formation.

While I'd love to see more nuclear reactors in our society. The "nuclear everything" argument breaks a core tenant of US national security policy, making U235 very hard to get.

If housing were far cheaper and traded just at the cost of new construction. ($250/sq-ft for new build 6 story, $400/sq-ft for 30 story mass timber, $600/sq-ft steel and concrete). We'd see that people can easily live in the current job market!

The fundamental problem in our economy is the artificial scarcity of housing (through local regulation) in the cities and towns where the economy is booming.