unemployed. former head of product @x, ex-founder @thetbhapp (acq by @meta), ex-founder @gasappteam (acq by @discord)
LA
Joined July 2012
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A new pope has been chosen xitter.cf/petersellis/status/211…
I’m joining the team at @X to lead Product.
I am a huge believer in @SpaceX's mission to extend human consciousness to the stars, so it’s time to make shitposting multiplanetary.
X is the best way to find out what’s happening in the world right now and talk about it. The team has been working tirelessly to make X a better place and product for the people who love it, and many have noticed the recent momentum. My goal is to help accelerate that momentum for our community, new users, and businesses globally by continuing to make this product beautiful and useful.
We are twenty years in, but it truly feels like X’s next chapter will be our greatest. I look forward to your ideas and feedback; I’m sure the replies will be measured and magnanimous.
The perfect storm is frontier models finding obscure security vulnerabilities at breakneck pace while voice models become indecipherable from human speech.
When a model hits a roadblock, it will just spoof Caller ID as your bank and call you, pretending to be your banker.
If your company refers to engineers as the IT department, you have nothing to worry about. You were already breached last week.
There is nothing to worry about.
Nothing important is run on PHP or old software—except the water & electrical grid, a few government services like our missile defense systems and a handful of electrified fences at the zoo (for the lions, tigers and cobras).
Perhaps the threat was never a rogue AI agent trying to subvert humans—but humans using AI to hurt other humans.
I’m always impressed when people discover new heights in a career path that everyone assumes has a “cap”.
Nathan Fielder was already the new hit “Silly Camera Guy.” Every few years a new one emerges after people get sick of the humor of the last guy—like Sasha Baron Cohen, Eric Andre, Tim & Eric, and Tom Green.
But what’s remarkable is that he used his 15 minutes of fame to break out of “Silly Camera Guy” and prove that he is one of the greatest filmmakers of our time.
What’s happening in Paris and Milan is no surprise to anyone who has spent time around young people in Europe during the 2010s:
Virtually all of them were working on their 4th masters degree in social welfare, were unmarried, attended communist dinners every night, and regularly participated in riots.
Now the economy is suddenly transforming and they have nothing to show for it.
One of the things that hasn’t been talked about with Elizabeth Holmes:
She was created in the era of the Ted Talk Entrepreneur.
Between 2011-2015 (after the release of the Social Network), there was an entire apparatus built around “Child Prodigies”: college accelerators, young entrepreneur organizations, etc.
I watched countless founders of hard tech companies present fraudulent products at conferences. They had fake studies with fudged numbers. Most of the adults in the room excused it as “faking it ‘til you make it.” But Holmes was the one who rode the wave better than anyone else.
When the Ted Talk Era came to an end and people finally came to their senses, she was still running the same playbook—and in the most scrutinized field there is: medical technology.
When people ask how she got so far, it’s largely explained by the period she did it in. And she got caught when the world suddenly woke up.
Last year I thought Threads was an existential risk to X.
When Meta puts its full weight behind something -- by injecting the app into Instagram, it’s DEFCON 5:
You have to squeeze out every last drop of growth from all available surfaces to save the app.
However, I started to realize that the opposite was happening:
It was strengthening X.
If you look at any announcement by Zuck, you will see the most rude & toxic comments on the internet.
But when he makes those same announcements on X, people are thrilled about how he’s pushing humanity forward. X is a place where people are excited about the future, so it’s no surprise he and his top lieutenants are using it more than their own app.
Threads — and Bluesky — have effectively quarantined some of the worst people on the internet.
And so I had an epiphany: those apps are X’s anti-abuse systems.
Sometimes a demo is simply to remind the world that your competition has no desire to dream -- and no ability to evolve.
We are now entering into an era where any product can be created exactly to a consumer's preferences & needs.
I vibe-fabricated a dog door with a wifi-controlled lock, perfectly to the specifications & design of my house.
I know nothing about metal fabrication or electrical engineering.
It's now getting manufactured and delivered in 2 weeks -- for almost the same cost if I bought a mass-produced item off-the-shelf.
