iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

One final note: Assuming no investment gains or losses, if Brin were to live to be 100, he could spend nearly $15 million *a day* for the rest of his life without running out of money.

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One other side note: According to U.S. Census data, the age group with the highest median net worth is households aged 70-74, who have about $427,000. Proportionally, those folks are closer to having $330 million than someone with $330 million is to being as wealthy as Brin.

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One side note: if the billionaire tax were to take effect and it applied to Sergey Brin and Forbes' estimates of his wealth are accurate, he'd owe around $5.2 billion. So, he almost certainly sees spending ~$100 million to kill the tax as a good investment.

All told, spending on the billionaire tax fight has now topped $160 million, making it the *5th most expensive* ballot measure battle in state history. And we still have about three months to go before Election Day.

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The Yes on Prop. 40 campaign also disclosed it had raised new funds from its chief supporter, SEIU-UHW. The total amount? About $21,400 or around 1% of what Brin just contributed.

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The source of that money? Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who has now contributed $102 million by himself to defeat the billionaire tax.

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A day after we published that story, the campaign committees behind the rival measures — Prop. 41 and Prop. 42 — disclosed they'd each raised another $10 million from Building a Better California, the billionaire-backed group leading the charge against Prop. 40.

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$140 million raised in battle over billionaire tax

I wrote last week about how spending on the billionaire tax and two competing propositions has already topped $140 million, making it the eighth most expensive ballot measure battle in California history.

sfexaminer.com

Prop. 40 fight already among state’s priciest ever.

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Reposted by Troy Wolverton

@TJChambers @tjchambers.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

@troywolv.bsky.social: @gilduran.com Identifies Silicon Valley Elite And Their Embrace Of Fascism As Threat To Democracy | @sfexaminer.bsky.social www.sfexaminer.com/news/technol...

sfexaminer.com

Thiel, tech elite chief villains in ‘Nerd Reich’

New Book details tech’s ties to anti-democratic ideas.

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I don’t think constructing — much less supplying, operating and maintaining — a 100M sf facility will be “easy.” The sheer construction cost would be enormous. And what happens if the return on investment isn’t what you thought it would be? That’s an enormous sunk cost!

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Also, a 100-million-square-foot facility, something that’s more than five times bigger than the biggest facility currently in existence? That’s just ridiculous on its face.

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There’s a reason why Apple, which prizes vertical integration just as much as Musk and has been super successful at chip design, has never gotten into manufacturing its own chips.

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And, sure, Tesla/SpaceX is teaming up with Intel on the “Terrafab,” so maybe that gives the project something of a leg up, but I would be very skeptical about whether Musk can pull this off, much less in a way that makes economic sense.

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Trying to do both designing and manufacturing of advanced chips? Basically the only company that does that now is Intel— which, despite its decades-long experience in both, has been struggling for years to keep up with TSMC on the manufacturing side and ARM-based chips on the design side.

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Troy Wolverton @troywolv.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Designing advanced chips is hard. That’s why only a handful of non-chip companies do it — think Apple, Google, Amazon. Manufacturing advanced chips is even more difficult; there’s a reason why TSMC has a virtual monopoly on it.

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From the 2024 Republican National Convention. They knew what they were voting for.

Woman at the 2024 Republican National Convention smiling while holding a sign that says "Mass Deportation Now."

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There's more redevelopment going on in Union City near its BART station. Part of the parking lot at the Fremont BART station is about to be turned into housing.

In terms of infill, I could go on and on. I ride BART regularly, so I see a lot of what going on in the East Bay too. There's a lot of redevelopment that's happening in Milpitas around the Great Mall. There has been and continues to be a huge amount of development around Warm Springs in Fremont.

Opposition from Marc Andreessen and other Atherton notables killed the town's plan to allow multifamily housing for the first time - San Francisco Business Times

I would also note that one of the main backers of California Forever is Marc "It's time to build" Andreessen, who with his fellow well-heeled Atherton residents pushed the town's council to block a multifamily affordable housing developments there. They succeeded:

bizjournals.com

Opposition from @pmarca and other #SiliconValley noteable helps kills Atherton townhome plan. #ResidentialRealEstate #housingcrisis #NIMBY

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And to the extent that infill projects are getting stalled, in many cases, the reason is interest rates, not local NIMBYs. That's certainly the case for the numerous redevelopments projects targeted for downtown San Jose.

None of these are on the scale of California Forever, of course. But it's just not true that it's *impossible* to do infill developments in the Bay Area.

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Google's Downtown West was kind of the crown jewel of those infill projects. That, again, took a while to approve. But the reason it hasn't gone forward has a lot more to do with Google changing its priorities and interest rates than local NIMBY-ism.

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There have been plenty of other significant infill projects in the South Bay. Sunnyvale's downtown has been completely remade in the last 10-15 years (again, largely replacing an old mall). San Carlos Street just west of downtown San Jose and Santana Row are other examples.

Construction of buildings starts next year in Cupertino mall revamp

I can't speak to Mountain View, but there actually *is* a big new infill/redevelopment project underway in Cupertino — the Rise, on the site of the old Valco Mall. Took way too long to get approved, but it will bring some 2,700 new homes, plus offices in a mixed-use project:

mercurynews.com

An odyssey to transform an old South Bay shopping center into a new neighborhood is nearing a key stage.

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Reposted by Troy Wolverton

Kevin Riggle @kevinr.free-dissociation.com · 28/07/2026

Got hit up by @troywolv.bsky.social last week and he graciously let me vent on the record about the OpenAI-HuggingFace incident. www.sfexaminer.com/news/technol...

sfexaminer.com

OpenAI hacking incident highlights AI cyberrisks

Experts take company to task for safety efforts

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Reposted by Troy Wolverton

Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 02/07/2026

The White House is openly saying they want to eliminate a minority group and people still want to say this is about sports.

Supreme Court Bolsters President Trump’s Push to Eliminate Transgender Insanity
The White House
June 30, 2026

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Troy Wolverton @troywolv.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

I'm sure you know this Tom, but you might want to mention in your piece that the Spurs kick off their summer-league schedule in San Francisco on July 3 with a three-day slate at Chase Center in the California Classic: www.chasecenter.com/california-c...

chasecenter.com

California Classic presented by CarMax

The Golden State Warriors will host the eighth annual California Classic Summer League, presented by CarMax, at Chase Center on July 3, 5 and 6, featuring three days of game play between the Warriors,...

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Troy Wolverton @troywolv.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

To be fair, similar gross false charges were lobbed at McCain during the 2000 primary campaign in South Carolina concerning his adopted daughter, Bridget, and his wife. but they obviously didn’t come from Obama.

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Troy Wolverton @troywolv.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Mine are mostly correct also, although none lists my current outlet, which I’ve been at for more than two years, nor my prior one, and one (Grok) incorrectly reports I’ve worked for the WSJ and Bloomberg.

Troy Wolverton @troywolv.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

This is a great take, and very much in line with my thinking. The Spurs went into these playoffs young, talented and inexperienced. Next year they’ll still be young and talented — but they’ll be experienced and Wemby‘s going to be on a mission. That’s going to make them scary as hell.

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Troy Wolverton @troywolv.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

I don’t want to jump on the Blame Fox train, but he was terrible in crunch time of the final two games. That’s supposedly when Mr. Clutch is supposed to be the guy to steady the team.

And on top of that — and what is least studied — is Scope 3 water use: the water used in the supply chain for the data centers. Think water consumed in making the CPUs and GPUs and other computer parts or that used in making the building itself.

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But the story and blog likely vastly understate Amazon’s true water use. I’ve written about this before, but research indicates that the vast majority of data-center related water use is Scope 2; i.e., water evaporated to cool the power plants that supply the electricity powering the data centers

Neither the post nor the story say where exactly this water use is occurring. Water use is much more significant if it’s taking place in already water-stressed areas.

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