Adam Breindel retweeted
Californians were supposed to get a completed high-speed rail system by 2020 for $33 billion.
We're 6 years past deadline. We have 0 trains, 0 tracks, and a new price tag of $230 billion.
Meanwhile, your tax dollars are funding tiki bars, luxury travel, and escape rooms for consultants. This madness needs to end.
Adam Breindel retweeted
Turns out Polymarket probably not the financial industry’s largest operational loss today.
I (regretfully) speculate this is not primarily because crypto is uniquely incompetent at software and simply because they’re the lowest hanging fruit to successfully monetize.
BREAKING: World's largest crypto exchange Binance hacked with over $5.6 billion stolen:
• $1.45 billion $BTC
• $875 million $ETH
• $234 million $TRX
• $50 million $XAUT
• $1.57 billion $USDT
• $823 million $USDC
• $75 million $WBETH
• $88.5 million $RLUSD
+ $447.5 million additional cryptocurrencies
This is the largest hack in crypto history.
Adam Breindel retweeted
Introducing Gemini 4 Carbon, it's a big jump over Argon which we released just 2 weeks ago.
Gemini 4 Carbon is SOTA on cyber, long horizon tasks, ranks #1 on Artificial Analysis V5, significantly improves on usability in domains like coding, and is more aligned.
Adam Breindel retweeted
If AI labs want personal assistants to take off at scale, they need to stop marketing vacations, reservations, party planning, etc. These are not problems.
Focus on *the* problem facing Americans: the cost of living. Agents can offer a ton of help.
Some ideas: (🧵)
Adam Breindel retweeted
.@DanielLurie delivers a massive dose of common sense on @CNN:
“We got so entrapped in our progressive values...we weren’t taking stock of what was happening on our streets.
“We had 810 people die of overdose in SF 3 years ago. There’s nothing progressive about that.”
Adam Breindel retweeted
"Outdoor household water use runs to about nine billion gallons a day, most of it landscape irrigation."
"Suburban sprinklers use more water in two days than all data centers in the country use directly in a year."
humanprogress.org/the-ai-lan…
Adam Breindel retweeted
Uzbekistan (GDP per capita $4,600) has a high-speed rail line, and California (GDP per capita $108,000) does not
I made an interactive map of every passenger rail line in the world.
High-speed rail, commuter rail, metro systems, trams, even Disney monorails, including in countries like Russia, China, and North Korea where Apple Maps lacks coverage.
trains.theojaffee.net
Adam Breindel retweeted
Opus 5.5 designing LEGO 👀
I asked it to design a Microduck I can build with real LEGO pieces. It:
> designed it life-size using 1113 real LEGO parts
> verified: 3,204 connections, 0 collisions, every step buildable, centre of mass inside the feet 🤯
> made a 141-page LEGO-style booklet (237 steps)
> priced every piece in the browser and prepared the orders on BrickLink
Adam Breindel retweeted
But YOU declined the debate 😂
With just over 40 days until Election Day, voters deserve to know where we stand.
Christine Drazan won’t face a live audience in Portland to answer for her support of Donald Trump’s MAGA agenda. But I’m ready to make my case directly to Oregonians, because I will keep fighting for our state and standing up to federal overreach.
Adam Breindel retweeted
This paragraph from a good article on administrative bloat in higher ed might be the head-hurtingest thing I've read today
Adam Breindel retweeted
In 1937, a flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong took 6 days and $20k in today’s dollars…
And took off from Alameda!
Adam Breindel retweeted
People are about twice as likely to approve of **coal plants** being built nearby as opposed to data centers.
Coal plants use more water and pollute more. They create comparable noise pollution. There's no way this makes sense outside a media panic.
Adam Breindel retweeted
I am losing my f—-ing mind
If these data centers are so essential to our national security and economy and have such amazing benefits they should prove it by building them in the richest zip codes in America first.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Loudon County, Virginia is the richest county in the United States and also has the most data centers.
usnews.com/news/healthies…
visualcapitalist.com/mapped-u-s-sta…
Adam Breindel retweeted
NYC ran an experiment: a separate minimum wage for construction workers on buildings above 99 units ($72.50 an hour)
As a result, almost all construction has been scaled back to 99 units, and we’ve built significantly less housing
Adam Breindel retweeted
Those who follow my feed know that I test new video models by having them show an otter using a laptop on an airplane.
The new Flux 3 video model is really good, so I had it do a variation on theme, which will become apparent a couple seconds in. See the change from 2 years ago.
Adam Breindel retweeted
>i got banned from OpenAI for "Cyber Abuse"
>no idea what I did
>paste the ban notice into Codex
>ask it to figure out what triggered the ban
>Codex found that I asked it for an API key to my own server
>Codex writes appeal
>Codex submits appeal
>a few minutes later appeal auto-approved by some AI at OpenAI
banned by AI, convicted by AI, defended by AI, and pardoned by AI in about 10 minutes
Adam Breindel retweeted
Denmark has started sinking 89 mega concrete blocks that are 712 ft. long into the Baltic Sea to build the world’s longest immersed tunnel.
Only four of these blocks could span 2,800 feet of the Columbia River for an I-5 immersed tunnel.
teapawt.org/BOrtblad/status/206764…
Adam Breindel retweeted
Data centers didn’t raise electric bills nationally from 2015–24. Surprise! Actually, they modestly lowered them. That's because big fixed grid costs get spread over more kilowatt-hours, and new demand can unlock economies of scale.
@arxiv
