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Techno-Optimism

AI is now writing 95% of code at a quarter of YC startups, compressing two-day engineering tasks to 15 minutes and enabling teams under 10 people to hit $10M in revenue—a shift Garry Tan argues moves the scarce resource from technical skill to taste and judgment. The energy grid powering this boom is straining to keep up, with US data centers projected to consume 10% of national electricity by 2028, while Germany's nuclear phase-out stands as a cautionary tale: Chancellor Merz now calls it both "a serious strategic mistake" and "irreversible."

Merz Called It a Mistake. Then He Called It Irreversible.
Techno-Optimism Tech

Merz Called It a Mistake. Then He Called It Irreversible.

March 15, 2026 · 6 min read

Germany's nuclear phase-out is costing factories, workers, and the climate. The man who said it was wrong now says nothing can be done.

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GPT-5.4 Cracked a 20-Year Math Problem
Techno-Optimism Tech

GPT-5.4 Cracked a 20-Year Math Problem

March 13, 2026 · 6 min read

A Polish mathematician spent two decades building a research-level problem no AI could touch. Run 11 proved him wrong.

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Karpathy Just Turned One GPU Into a Research Lab
Techno-Optimism Tech

Karpathy Just Turned One GPU Into a Research Lab

March 07, 2026 · 7 min read

The human writes a Markdown file. The AI runs 100 experiments overnight. The bottleneck isn't compute, it's your program.md.

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Trae Stephens Wants to Buy Wired. He's Right.
Media & Narrative Tech

Trae Stephens Wants to Buy Wired. He's Right.

March 03, 2026 · 6 min read

A 2011 article about male birth control became a Founders Fund investment. That's what great journalism does. Wired forgot.

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Anthropic's War on Its Own Power Users
Tech Tech & Startup Regulation

Anthropic's War on Its Own Power Users

February 25, 2026 · 4 min read

Paying $200/month and getting banned for using what you paid for isn't "abuse." It's a business model failure.

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Data Center NIMBYs Are Killing $1 Trillion in AI Infrastructure
Techno-Optimism Budgets & Fiscal Policy

Data Center NIMBYs Are Killing $1 Trillion in AI Infrastructure

February 21, 2026 · 5 min read

Housing NIMBYs already took 36% of GDP. Now the same playbook is blocking the AI economy. The states that figure out how to share the upside will win the future.

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