Smartphone cameras didn't turn everyone into a professional photographer, but they did radically expand who can take usable photos, experiment, and occasionally produce something valuable without years of training

Replit has been around for years, has real users, and now reportedly real revenue

That doesn't necessitate a fair valuation.

So success buys you ideological latitude

Do you know how many politicians switch sides once they have lost their power? (well, not many have been in that situation, but still!)

As a powerful figure, you become a literal puppet in front of the public. Your opinions don't matter

Billionaires wouldn't run their mouths, if that wasn't the case.

What's the minimum threshold for that, I wonder?

Having "Fuck You" money[1] means you don't have to listen to anyone (but you still can be shunned, as described in the article). You'll substantially greater wealth that FU money to make people listen to what you have to say and be "uncancellable", like owning a media outlet, hiring a PR firm, or buying a pet politician or seat in government. Amjad seems to have crossed from the former to the latter by economic power: not only can a deal with him now could potentially generate lots of wealth, but it may not be a good thing to be on his shit-list later when he is the bigger fish.

1. A subjective amount that depends entirely on the lifestyle, burn rate and life expectancy.

Well, for the sake of being an aspiring contrarian, more power to him. Last thing I want is billionaires all being unified around one opinion.

Effect weakly linked to Affect

The funniest part is that the "implicit cooling cycle" might be more valuable for grid alignment than raw efficiency

I agree with you: the real test isn't whether it's 30% cheaper today, but whether it holds its economics over 20–30 years at scale

Even if sodium-ion really gets to $10–20/kWh, you still have degradation, cycle limits, fire risk, and a practical lifetime that's maybe 10–15 years

If Google is colocating these with data centers, even low-grade heat that would otherwise be a loss could still be useful, or at least reduce how much active cooling the DC needs

The real question for me isn't the physics so much as ops over 20–30 years: maintenance, leakage, real-world efficiency after thousands of cycles

The iPad line in particular feels like the part of Apple's ecosystem that hasn't figured out what it wants to be

But I don't think the choice is quite as binary as "pivot to AI" vs "ignore AI entirely." What's changed in the last two years is that user expectations are shifting at the OS level, not just the app level

Yep. User expectations are leading people away from the slop-filled Windows 11 trainwreck and into the arms of Linux and macOS. Last thing we need is macOS to copy Redmond. (Used to be the other way around!)