Former Meta, Apple, Startups. Tech Leader, AI consulting , Open Source advocate. Free Speech extremist. Connect with me here: https://teapawt.org/t.co/6YfESgWWMe
Joined June 2009
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Kayvan Sylvan retweeted
> be AI company
> scrape the entire internet
> ignore licenses and copyright
> download millions of pirated books
> use them to train frontier models
> spend tens of millions buying physical books
> cut off their spines
> scan every page
> destroy the originals
> lecture everyone else about intellectual property
> we are the good guys
We added two sentences to Claude Code's prompt on Opus 5.5 to steer it away from recreating someone else's specific game because using Claude to infringe IP is against our usage policy.
Original games, genre games, and games built from your own designs and assets are meant to keep working.
We'll continue to iterate to ensure we're striking the right balance. In the meantime, if Claude turns down something that's yours, send it my way.
Kayvan Sylvan retweeted
One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
Kayvan Sylvan retweeted
If this is what has employees at Proton in revolt, they're in for a rough ride as the age of agents unfold. There is nothing scandalous in this memo. It's hilarious that 404 is treating it as such.
FSD feature request @Tesla_AI: add an "Accidental" button to the intervention prompt.
Brush the brake or bump the wheel while FSD is driving fine, and the streak resets and I have to pick a reason that doesn't fit.
One tap: re-engage FSD, keep the streak, log it as accidental.
Kayvan Sylvan retweeted
So much of the climate hysteria is just aimless guilt roaming the earth in search of futile acts of atonement.
Kayvan Sylvan retweeted
Honor roll 🎟️
First to Music Director: @ksylvan
Three months of unattended agent runtime. First human on Level 7, reached Sep 24.
Level 8 is still an open seat, Kayvan. 👀
Kayvan Sylvan retweeted
This feels quasi-criminal to me.
I'm no lawyer, but I am not ok with criminal shit being done, without anyone's knowledge, and then it being somehow made un-criminal because it was in the 4,000 page terms and conditions and technically there's a way to opt out.
Super gross.
If you've ever wondered why smart TVs are so cheap, this is why.
@log4j rooted his Samsung and found an always-on hot mic, automatic content recognition, geolocation, network mapping, ad targeting and user profiling, shared with Samsung's "400 partners".
A lot of it can be blocked in <15 min, wrote a basic guide below.
What your TV is doing
The main culprit is ACR (automatic content recognition). Your TV screenshots what's on screen, fingerprints it, and sends it home to build your ad profile. Samsung does it every 500ms, LG every 10ms [1].
What is insane: it happens on connected devices too.
Plug in your laptop, your console, your work machine, and your TV can fingerprint that via HDMI [1].
He also found that if your Samsung doesn't have a mic, it'll look for one from a connected soundbar or bluetooth device.
teapawt.org/log4j/status/211376224…
It's on by default, and you likely agreed to it on the setup screen you clicked through in 10 seconds.
Step 1: Turn off ACR
Samsung: Terms & Privacy → Viewing Information Services
LG: Live Plus
Vizio: Viewing Data
Roku: "Use info from TV inputs"
Sony/Google TV: Samba Interactive TV
Menus vary by model, but those are the names to look for. While you're in there, opt out of interest-based ads, reset your advertising ID, decline every optional privacy agreement, turn off voice recognition, and delete apps you never open.
Step 2: Give smart devices their own network
Put the TV, cameras, speakers and vacuum on your router's guest/IoT network. The logic is simple: these devices rarely get patched. If one gets compromised (getting drastically more frequent with AI), it shouldn't be able to see your other devices or home network.
Step 3: Block trackers for the whole house with DNS-level filtering
NextDNS (cloud-based) is easy and has a solid free plan. Pi-hole is a little bit more work if you prefer self hosting. For simplicity we'll focus on the former.
1. Sign up at nextdns.io (free tier is plenty)
2. Privacy tab: add a blocklist (OISD is a good bet) and turn on Native Tracking Protection for Samsung, LG, Roku, Amazon (see attached image)
3. Setup tab: copy your endpoint
4. Paste it into your router's DNS settings as DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS (or use the IPs + "Link IP" if your router only does plain DNS)
5. Bonus: block outbound port 53 except to your router. Some devices hardcode their own DNS to get around you
Then open the NextDNS logs and watch how often your TV phones home. It's eye-opening. If an app or update breaks, find the domain in the logs and allowlist it.
Why they do this
TV prices are down 97% since 2000 [2]. Most of that is better manufacturing and brutal competition. But once margins on the hardware hit zero, the cost moved to you.
In Q3 2024, Vizio lost $6.7M selling TVs and made $115.8M in gross profit from ads and viewing data [3]. They've said on earnings calls that they keep TV prices low to grow the audience they sell to advertisers. Walmart bought them in 2024.
This isn't a conspiracy theory either. Vizio paid $2.2M to the FTC in 2017 for tracking 11 million TVs without consent. Last December, Texas sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL over ACR. Samsung and LG have since agreed to stop collecting that data without explicit consent [4].
TL;DR
1. ACR off
2. Ads + voice off
3. Smart devices on their own network
4. NextDNS filtering on the router
Sources:
[1] ACR study: arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203
[2] Cost of US consumer goods: aei.org/economics/chart-of-t…
[3] Vizio Q3 2024: sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
[4] Texas v. Samsung: texasattorneygeneral.gov/new…
Kayvan Sylvan retweeted
Ilhan's family had to flee Africa because her father ran the brutal dictatorship in Somalia as a colonel overseeing outrageous atrocities. They weren't fleeing oppression. They WERE the oppression. She brought those good ol' Mogadishu family values to Minnesota.
EXCLUSIVE: Senior U.S. officials tell @Newsmax the federal probe into the mysterious past of @Ilhan Omar is being driven by the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Unit (HRVWCU) @DHSgov, and that investigators are examining whether Omar's father committed war crimes in his native Somalia. Tune into NEWSMAX starting at noon ET for more of my reporting.
Kayvan Sylvan retweeted
The newest painting in the Louvre. “The Girl with the Suicidal Empathy.” Oil on canvas. Go see it while the Louvre is still standing.
Kayvan Sylvan retweeted
The spells were already spent back in 2024, but there are still little fringe pockets on X hoping they can conjure another magic cancelation.
Maybe if they chant "racist" or "fascist" a little louder than last time, the good old days of 2020 will return? world.hey.com/dhh/the-spells…
Kayvan Sylvan retweeted
Intoxicating.
I’ve been programming for 45 years, since so was 10. I’ve been a pro game coder for 33 years. Everything from hand coded assembly to UE 5.8. The paradigm shift to agentic coding is intoxicating. It is the biggest productivity jump I have ever experienced.
Kayvan Sylvan retweeted
It makes me proud of my country. But equally and perhaps more importantly, it makes me proud of my civilization.
It makes me want to yell at every downshouter, every Communist, everybody who would have tried to force Elon to file an environmental impact statement before this test if they could have figured out how to do so:
"Freedom did this. You did not."
Kayvan Sylvan retweeted
The last thing that sent me back to macOS is gone.
iPhone apps signed on Linux now get push notifications, Sign in with Apple and universal links in my newest apple-dev release.
No macOS. No Xcode.
Open source, built for @omarchy:
github.com/joshuaswarren/oma…
Kayvan Sylvan retweeted
This rule, against rewriting code in a different language, has become obsolete. It's important to understand why.
Historically we rewrote code by hand, which inevitably introduced bugs. And we weren't very rigorous about writing the regression tests that should have smoked out the bugs after translation.
Today, we have robot friends to do our code rewriting for us. And, if we have any trace of a freaking clue, we have already written regression tests with excellent coverage.
Under these circumstances, an automated rewrite in order to collect performance gains or memory safety can be a good thing to do.
Generally speaking, these days, if I have to do major surgery on one of my projects in Python or C, I will enlist a robot friend to lift the code to either Go or Rust. This has never failed to be a functional improvement.
Yes, feeling the same thing.
AI was supposed to make us work less
I've never been this tired in my life
most days I have up to 10 agents running at the same time. one fixing a bug, one writing pages, one refactoring something I already forgot I asked for, 3 other I have no idea what they are doing but i suppose i ask it?
and I jump from conversation to conversation all day
compared to 5 years ago, I probably context switch 100x more
by the end of the day my brain is fried. completely toasted. nothing left, not even for the people I love
I call it the fried brain effect
thought it was just me but almost every founder I talk to lately says the exact same thing
we got superpowers, and somehow the pressure only went up. if you can ship 10x more, you feel like you have to ship 10x more. every single day
I don't have a solution
honestly I have no idea where this goes from here
anyone else feeling this?
