Co-founder/CEO @QRB_Labs. Formerly: co-founder/CTO @GroIntel ; founder Contributor by Google; Search & AdX @Google ; co-founder/CEO https://xitter.cf/t.co/R1xZIEUiwa

non sum uni angulo natus
Joined April 2007
Does #Bitcoin use too much energy? Is it bad for the environment? What happens to mining when the price of #BTC changes? When hardware changes? All you ever wanted to know about the dynamics of #Bitcoin mining but never dared ask: arxiv.org/abs/2201.06072
2
5
2
30
In the last 1/4 century, the income of the poorest 3/4 of the world has grown 2x.
How has global poverty changed in our lifetimes? No matter what poverty line you choose, the share below it has declined globally.
1
1
197
That's less than 3%/year. Not great. Considering how low the starting point is, and that much of the gain is low hanging fruit in terms of knowledge, we should expect 10%, so a quarter century should give 10x.
1
58
City sizes follow a Pareto distribution remarkably closely. And there happens to be an easy to remember point right near the middle: ~500 cities with population greater than 1M. How convenient!
1
3
231
This aged well
Replying to @MKBHD
I’m not. Will use SpaceX cold gas thruster system with ultra high pressure air in a composite over-wrapped pressure vessel in place of the 2 rear seats.
6
427
Mathematically, Bitcoin mining energy consumption will tend to (block reward) / (value of energy in BTC). Even in a maximal Bitcoin adoption, energy has a non-declining real value in BTC, and yes mining power will level off at at level dictated by the reward aka security budget.
1
3
464
Hardware efficiency improvements change the competitive dynamics but don't change the ultimate equilibrium of total energy use. No guarantee the "budget" given by the reward is sufficient, just an expectation b/c as value goes up, security increases. arxiv.org/abs/2201.06072
100
Every person was once the youngest person in the world.
2
7
381
Let's go! Put me in coach
Did you know that humanity has never launched a spacecraft to another star? That is about to change! I'm super excited to share that my cofounders, @AdiOltean, @EzraFeilden, and I, have created a non-profit to attempt to send humanity’s 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗰𝗿𝗮𝗳𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿… and we need your help! We have formed a non-profit called The @FermiExplorer Mission with the goal of launching a minimum viable spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, leaving in 3 years and arriving in around 80,000 years. We hope it will be both the first spacecraft to leave Earth for another star, and the last to arrive, as per this concept video! The mission is intended to make the idea of interstellar travel real, and to encourage more people to confront one of humanity’s biggest unanswered questions when we look beyond our planet: "Where is everybody?" (the Fermi Paradox) The mission has four high-level objectives: - Aim: To launch the first spacecraft to another star. It should get at least 99% of the way to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, within 80,000 years. - Payload: It should have at least a 1kg, 10x10x10 cm payload. - Schedule: It should launch before the end of 2029 - Cost: It should cost less than $15M to design, build, launch, and operate. The mission was planned with the help of the folks at @astrodigitalgeo, @MattGialich and the folks at @AstroForge, and @alexwg+@matthew_pines physical AI lab PSI, who devised the final mission profile. The mission will be executed by full-time program manager @GarrettJameson, who joins us after 10 years as a US Air Force Officer, in collaboration with a US bus manufacturing partner that will be selected over the coming months. We will need your help to complete the mission, so if the idea of the mission excites you, please check out the Fermi Explorer website in the comments to find out more about why we are doing the mission and how to get involved! Thanks to London Studio @ZeroOneCreative and @ashkan01C for producing the concept video 🙏🙏
1
1
5
753
Nemo Semret retweeted
Africa both has more electricity than its power lines and markets can deliver, and less electricity than its people need. Two different problems.
1
16
65
1,966
Ethiopian electricity generation capacity has reached 9.7GW. Congratulations @EEPethiopia !
🇪🇹 ኢትዮጵያ በ2019 ዓ.ም ሦስት የኃይል ማመንጫ ፕሮጀክቶችን መገንባት ልትጀምር ነው ሲሉ የኢትዮጵያ ኤሌክትሪክ ኃይል ዋና ሥራ አስፈጻሚ አሸብር ባልቻ ለስፑትኒክ አፍሪካ ገለጹ አዲሶቹ ፕሮጀክቶች፦ የገናሌ ዳዋ 6 የውኃ ኃይል ማመንጫ፣ በደዋሌ አካባቢ የሚገኝ የነፋስ ኃይል ፕሮጀክት፣ በሶማሌ ክልል የሚገነባ 125 ሜጋ ዋት የሚያመነጭ የፀሐይ ኃይል ማመንጫ ናቸው። 📹 ዋና ሥራ አስፈጻሚው፣ ከዓመታዊ አፈጻጸም መግለጫ ጎን ለጎን ለስፑትኒክ አፍሪካ በሰጡት ቃለ መጠይቅ፤ በመጠናቀቅ ላይ ስላሉ ፕሮጀክቶች የተናገሩበትን ቪዲዮ ይመልከቱ፡፡
1
4
13
1,355
Faster than expected. Here was our (@qrb_labs ) estimate in 2024:
1
177
But that is just the beginning. It needs to be 100GW just to reach middle income level. Acceleration is welcome and necessary! More here: qrb-labs.com/Electricity%20P…
105
I was once in the water near a dolphin, and I could swear it was talking to me. Now we may finally be able to understand what they are saying. Cool stuff!
i think AI is about to uncover an entire hidden world of animal communication and what it's already found is insane... > AI found evidence that elephants call each other by name. when researchers played one its name-like call, it approached the speaker faster and called back more, revealing a form of personal naming once thought almost uniquely human > AI analyzed 53,993 marmoset calls and found tiny monkeys may use names too. entire families use similar labels for the same monkey, suggesting they learn names and dialects from each other > AI learned to tell what Egyptian fruit bats were arguing about: food, mating, sleeping spots or personal space. it could even partly identify who was shouting at whom inside a colony of thousands > AI discovered a “phonetic alphabet” in sperm whale clicks, with rhythm, tempo and tiny timing changes combining into at least 143 recurring patterns. their communication system is nearly 10x more expressive than scientists previously believed, and we still don't know what most of it means > an AI trained on 1.5 million zebra finch calls held real-time vocal exchanges with living birds, generating calls as they spoke and getting them to respond with the same timing and flexibility they use with other birds > Google trained an AI on decades of dolphin recordings to predict what sound comes next, then paired it with an underwater device that gives objects their own synthetic whistles. the goal is for a wild dolphin to copy a whistle to ask a human for a specific object, creating a tiny shared vocabulary between species > AI combined microphones worn by wild crows with nest cameras and uncovered quiet calls that may announce when a crow is arriving at the nest and help entire families coordinate caring for their chicks > a robot bee performed the waggle dance real bees use to share the direction and distance of food, and the bees changed their flight paths based on its instructions. researchers effectively sent a destination into a hive in bee language
3
1
4
469
In Ethiopia, overall electricity is from > 95% renewable sources, and Bitcoin mining in particular is ~ 100% powered by renewable, as it doesn't connect to non-renewable.
1
130
Nemo Semret retweeted
Stablecoins CBDCs What is hard currency? Nothing stops this train! The dollar milkshake theory... And of course Bitcoin My latest blog post "Feynman Diagrams of Currencies" nemozen.semret.org/2026/01/f…
1
2
4
379
Podzinger was a search engine for podcasts. In 2007, I thought it was a good idea whose time had finally come! nemozen.semret.org/2007/05/p… Turns out it was still 2 decades too early. Lucky timing and good execution are at least as important as good ideas.
Introducing the PB Media Archive. It lets you search across all 77 (and counting!) episodes of PBJ (@PresidioPod) as well as all 39 (and counting!) episodes of @HBerkoe's 21-in-21, among other PB event content. You can look up information by theme or topic, and you can also ask AI about it. For example, if you want to learn more about @ProjectLoupe's AI security scanning, you can search for it and find snippets of what was said + specific episodes and timestamps. Give it a try and let us know what you think! pbarchive.ai/ask.html?q=proj…
1
1
5
1,044
Relatedly, at my own startup, we had predicted that 2006 would be the year where podcasts would become huge: invisiblehand.net/index.php?… We were right but 14 years early (translation: we were wrong). COVID was what really made podcasts mainstream.
131
Nemo Semret retweeted
Replying to @Farida_N
Singapore consistently ranks near the top of the world in - trade freedom - business freedom - investment freedom - low government spending as % of GDP - strong property rights - government integrity.
1
1
4
556