Recent content by philostam

Running a SaaS company: 2020: can you survive a pandemic? 2021: still here? we’re going to give all of your competitors $100m series A rounds. 2022: wow, you made it? okay, all engineers cost $600,000/year now. 2023: nice job! okay, SVB failed and we’re going to take away your bank account...

BREAKING: An Iranian source tells Qatar's Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that Iran is leaning toward accepting a two-week ceasefire "out of respect for the Pakistani mediator...and in order to give diplomacy an additional chance." CNN is also reporting that a regional source says that a deal between the US...

I don't disagree. I'm also a luddite when it comes to AI. I hate it, think it's retarded, and hate the vision of the world that AI accelerationists are pushing. I understand it from the business-owner perspective, but a lot if is just opportunism (the corporate world needed a new narrative to...

Ray Dalio is pretty good, yeah (and his results testify to that). I learned a lot from him. John Mearsheimer, that you mentioned above, was also spot on on Ukraine - Russia for a long time. I do see your point - probably on the brink of WW1 I would also say that cooler heads will prevail and...

I don't really know where you're going with this or what advice you seek. I think there was a similar thread here in the past dicussing if introversion is "sickness' (I forgot the exact word that was used). As an introvert myself, I can only tell from my experience that this "holding back" never...

So? Do you think that high profile academics make the most accurate predictions? I read a book a while back (think it was Geopolitical Alpha by Marko Papic), concluding (with data) that the more high profile public appearances an analyst makes, the less accurate their predictions. They might be...

Remembering this quote: "Subjective confidence in a judgement is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that this judgement is correct. Confidence is a feeling, which reflects the coherence of the information and the cognitive ease of processing it. It is wise to take admissions of...

About facts of the past, yes. I'm from Europe as well, and some of our decisions are just baffling. Seems like our EU leaders are stuck in the idealistic/normative view of how the world should look, instead of accepting the new geopolitical reality. Honestly, I think Trump's presidency is...

If Trump says "OK, we have achieved our goals, we are out" but Iran continues blockading the strait of Hormuz, I am almost sure that everyone (except Russia) would unite against Iran. Yes, US fucked up but the consequences are felt by everyone. And China will suffer the consequences more than...

Maybe. I think this war was a mistake by the US after Trump spent the whole of last year trying to lower the price of oil and running on "no war" promises. However, now that we are here, I think it's disengenious to portray it as complete disaster for the US. Iran is suffering too, especially if...

Sure, I get that Russia benefits from this conflict. China? Less so, I don't think they give a damn about Iran, they just want their oil from the Middle East (they import way more from Saudi and UAE than Iran). But more importantly, this symbolic support is to no use to Iranians when US is the...

I wouldn't pay too much attention to what they leak out in the media. Obviously both sides want to appear strong and appear to have escalation dominance. Another thing is to differentiate between preferences and constratins. Trump already proved many times that he has low pain tolerance (no...

I think US will try to TACO very soon (within 1-2 weeks), the issue this time is that the spillovers of the conflict may already be too broad. Iran may as well continue their drone operations in the strait of Hormuz. Then US may be forced to lash out more to impose more pain to force them to...

Mad Men is my favorite show. I keep telling that to everyone who asks, but they either didn't watch it or say "it was OK, a bit slow for me". I first watched it as a teenager around 2013 and just found it aesthetically so appealing. Later on second watch in 2017 I discovered its different layers...

I subscribed to Claude Code and played with it for last few days. While it does produce some nice scripts that I would not be able to do myself, this vibe-coding is only useful to the extent you have domain knowledge and know what you're doing. Meaning, human intelligence and knowledge are still...