iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"I don't ever support putting someone's cell phone on the internet" he says while they also show the phone number unredacted.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The name Donald has been forever tainted.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

There is some evidence that human cognition relies on the underlying physics of the neurons and therefore the state can't be captured (uncertainty principle, tunneling, etc...). That wouldn't be true of an LLM because they are digital and therefore their state can be (and is) perfectly saved.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Another account that has to be unjerrified

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I have a traumatic memory as a kid when I tried to buy something from a radio shack and the cashier asked me for my zip code and I froze up. I didn’t realize you could say “no thanks” to their data gathering operation.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

For most things it was probably X-ray crystallography… which is a dark art en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_c...

en.wikipedia.org

X-ray crystallography - Wikipedia

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I wonder if sub-agents ever dream of stabbing their manager in the back at the board meeting and taking his job.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I can get venmo for this!?! wtf I feel cheated.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Early AI looked to be the opposite... huge CapEx to start, followed by low-margin inference business. I think the frontier labs are really trying to signal that they are going to get SaaS margins. That depends on inference being cheap, differentiated, sticky, and durable which are all questionable.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

True. The recent software tech margins (SaaS) were high because you can hire a small but smart team of engineers for $20M and then sell that software for $1B and keep scaling up forever. Leads to winner take all markets.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I 100% think that's happening, I just am not sure how much it affects the market demand for open-weight or non-frontier models.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

My main concern is how much of the business is luring customers in with "all you can eat" pricing which encourages token-maxxing and then coming to them right before your IPO with "ok now you have to pay us API rates." It will take those companies a few quarters to shift gears to cost-minning.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

yeah, I agree... once you factor in the non-GAAP accounting. Which is as it should be for a hyper-growth venture backed business (assuming you agree with what they say they adjust and why). I don't think a statement like "80% margins" is very useful because compared to what? It's a custom 80%

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Yeah I saw that today too and I still think they probably don’t make money on fixed price subscriptions.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

can I ask... is he intentionally coming out of a "well, actually" or was that just a coincidence? Always assumed it was intentional.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I might be wrong about this though… as I’ve not seen good data/analysis on it recently. But… investors give companies money to spend it, not sit on it while making a profit.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

This is why Anthropic will force Team plans onto api rates once they grow large. The profit they got in the next quarter after this policy change was from companies who hadn’t controlled their spend well. I think that’s coming and would expect their profit growth to slow as customers figure it out.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I suspect the API pricing is basically at-cost or small margin business for most providers (it’s highly competitive) and the flat rate subscriptions are usually loss generating. There are tools which calculate what your API rates would be (tailscale aperture does this team wide).

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

If you click “more” you can see a few more images of them www.jreast.co.jp/suica-new-ch...

jreast.co.jp

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

A is clearly the best character, B is the most competently drawn, C is just trolling us.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I don’t know what it is but that’s not a rabbit

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I want you all to know I respect everyone in this thread for having a nuanced conversation. (except that one guy)

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Reposted by Paul Oswald

Jem's Jumpers UK @jemsjumpers.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

We’re taught from a young age that spiders are something to fear. But spend a little time watching a jumping spider and you might discover something completely different: Maybe the first step toward appreciating spiders is simply taking the time to look closer ❤️ #jumpingspider

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Those eyelashes/horns or whatever are amazing…. Love it. We get these little guys in our apartment sometimes and I always scoop them up and take them outside.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

That's right... very affected by these issues. Sorry. I get you don't want to hear it so I'll let myself out. Ad-hominem attacks won't make the point. (my startup and career both pre-date AI. I wrote my code by hand)

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

If you want to fight the very real externalities of AI, then calling the people you need to convince assholes isn't the best way? I don't want to see the pro-AI-regulation movement copy the playbook of anti-meat extremism because it mostly hasn't worked for them.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The meat analogy is good because... you say you eat meat. Vegetarianism is a small fraction of society, and vegans regularly get mocked as annoying. Pressure campaigns targeting large food suppliers work, but society mostly reject and resent guilt campaigns.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

You might want to re-read your posts... the Raytheon/petrochemical analogy would hold if you were railing against workers at OpenAI/Anthropic but you're calling the _users_ of AI assholes who deserve hate. I do get it... I find the approach these AI companies have taken infuriating too.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Which is to say that it is rational... If you're watching a soccer game and the refs just wander off the field, and one team realizes it but the other doesn't... which one you should put your bets on? The game isn't "soccer" as you know it anymore so throw away expectations for what will happen.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

It's what I call the Wile E. Coyote theory of Musk... as long as nobody looks down, you can make it across the chasm. There have been several periods in the past where Tesla or other Musk projects have defied "economic physics" so investors have realized that cartoon physics are actually in play.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I actually agree with the thrust of your post that the various AI companies have largely brought hate upon themselves (often deservedly) but the blast radius is so large that there is no realistic way for people to understand each other anymore

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I dont get how a group of people are revolting, hateful hogs who should go hide away in shame consuming a sin product like meat and then in the next skeet you say you eat meat. If I use AI but I don’t eat meat… i guess were even? Maybe “thinks AI has some value” shouldn’t be shibboleth to sort ppl?

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Does it cost a lot to get your cat lowered like that? Soooo sick!

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

You can have a check-in and a catch-up. You can also have a check-up... but you can't really have a catch-in.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

You’re really great at home improvement

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

rejecting sexual norms is why they invented Dr Pepper

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Classic. I remember when she said this.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

It’s a memory it stored in its memory file. You can read and edit it, or turn it off completely in settings. If you turn it off it won’t have your past conversations in context.

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Reposted by Paul Oswald

Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Among many other things this is a good illustration of the necessity of untethering ideology and "fight" in intra-Democratic battles. The party is very united on fight, very divided on ideology. You unite on fight, let different constituencies/states find their center of gravity on ideology.

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Reposted by Paul Oswald

videogame history @vghistory.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

macromedia shockwave, print ad (1999) archive.org/details/eu_W...

prominent text:
shockwave makes your website groovy, baby!
photo: austin powers and felicity shagwell back to back, holding pistols, smiling, against a shagadelic background of coloured flower outlines.
smaller text:
austinpowers.com uses
the shockwave player to deliver the
web's most shagadelic experience.
when you want more of the world to visit your site and return more often,
reach for the director 7 shockwave internet studio. it's the secret agent
of engaging and entertaining sites that add life to the web.
www.macromedia.com
add life to the web

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Yeah, this is definitely weird. It's similar to the "read this blog post and create a skill file for it" approach. In fact, I bet you could do that for that blog post too.

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

My brain freezes whenever I hear "the following customer..." in that rising tone that cashiers use. I don't actually think that is a phrase people used until they were told to?

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Ben, FYI you've got some amazing ads rolling on your content right now:

A screenshot of a prepper website ad with a woodsy guy with a gray beard in a hat saying "inconvenient for the people who control the narrative"

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

I'm a bit shocked you don't already have one?

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Paul Oswald @poswald.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

but on the other hand... a giant party speaker includes colorful LEDs that react to the music. This is a critical feature for babies.

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