Tim Fernholz

man I spent so much time trying to get Maxar to give me these shots

I hate the idea that the inherently queer stance is anti-AI that some people seem to think is the default. I've had people question if I'm even a woman, and call me a tech bro, and it's like they're in active psychosis lmao. If you can't respect me as a woman you're a bigot, AI or not.

An internal model at OpenAI has produced a claimed refutation of ETH! Russell Impagliazzo, Mohan Paturi, and I have been asked to help organize an open and independent examination of this claim. 1/4

I've spent deeply happy hours here building tables. Thousands of kids have learned craft here. One of the world's great concentrations of wealth, and the Bay Area can't keep a community gem like this going? The second biggest cultural institution in Oakland? www.sfchronicle.com/entertainmen...

A tough thing in explaining to people why having children is enjoyable is that all the bad stuff is very easy to explain (lost sleep, lost time, more sickness, less sex, etc. etc.) whereas most of the really good stuff whispers.

News: Rest of World, the nonprofit newsroom focused on the impact of technology outside the West founded by Sophie Schmidt, tells donors in an email it will “cease publishing as a standalone entity” at the end of January.

So, in a new NYT essay about May 13, 1986 (the day she was born), Lena Dunham suggests that, back then, nobody in Canada or the US knew or cared much about acid rain. I hate to get in the way of a good generational shaming, but she’s just…er, totally wrong?

“It’s not only unlawful, but it’s not in the U.S. interest to have Russian technology controlling the commercialization of Arctic gas in the North Slope,” Mr. Riddle said in a brief interview. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/u...

can't wait for the election results from Starbase, Texas

both Anthropic and OpenAI are training models without internet access for safety reasons, and I can't telll you how many different people told me that was a crazy and infeasible idea in August openai.com/index/securi...

Space Force recently tried to book rides for three future satellite missions, but #SpaceX declined to offer its services, as it doesn't want to sell the Falcon rockets anymore. No other rocket companies offered to take them either. #EverythingIsFine

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: What really happened when AI beat mathematicians to solve the Navier-Stokes problem? The full tale—of trillion-dollar companies, inscrutable agent swarms, and all-too-human foibles—is a troubling portent of math’s future. This is the inside story of “The Blowup”.

I also think this is a very powerful graph. Most people don't know it, but the US is a *very* low-tax country. We tax below average and we spend below average, among rich nations. Fixing our fiscal situation entirely through taxes would still leave us *very* low tax. bsky.app/profile/bren...

My deep dive on the "A.I.-driven" Alpha School, revealing their internal learning and enrollment data for the first time, just as the network expands into public education. There is a big gap between the marketing and reality. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/u...

Reminded of how tv news looped the images of the military equipment the Biden administration deliberately left behind in Afghanistan for weeks after the withdrawal as if they represented a huge scandal

SK Hynix says its SSD subsidiary Solidigm has halted a review of a potential US IPO to fund a new US chip fab, citing "market conditions and share price trends" (P.R. Venkat/Wall Street Journal) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

As blockchain investing falls out of vogue, a16z Crypto rebrands as a16z Frontier

SpaceX appears to disclose that Anthropic makes up about 35% of its revenue last quarter, unless you can think of another plausible customer that spent $5 billion on SpaceX AI...

Ooooooof what an insane way to send 4 people and some gear to the moon

Last quarter Tesla published a chart that showed “Cumulative Paid Robotaxi Miles,” which actually showed a quarter-on-quarter decline. Yesterday the company completely changed the chart. It only shows raw miles now: techcrunch.com/2026/10/22/t...

Another astonishing victory in the ongoing War Against Metaphor. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Have a new story out in NYT today about the mind-boggling amount of math calculations that it takes to train AI. Here's a paywall free link:

Musk says it could be challenging to get Tesla shareholders to agree to a SpaceX deal. But it’s the latter’s regular investors who should object - not that their opinion is of any consequence @opinion.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Just because Tesla’s Optimus is in production doesn’t mean it’s actually ready www.theverge.com/tech/1016492...

let 👏 journalists 👏 interview 👏 officials 👏 not 👏 fellow 👏 ideologues

i have crossed some sort of irony thermocline in how i view this stuff, i find the deranged replies here nourishing

In August, Trump announced the “BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!” But is it? The text of the accord — which grants the U.S. sweeping access to Venezuela’s oil reserves — has been one of DC’s most sought-after secrets. ProPublica got to see a copy. 🧵

Breaking: Elon Musk ordered the Starlink slowdown that blindsided Ukraine on.wsj.com/4sgcxkt

watching SpaceX earns and I remember when this company mocked rivals who made a lot of CGI renderings of stuff they haven't done yet

Eric Schmidt reportedly owns about half as much of Anthropic as CEO Dario Amodei

‘If the only way to 2% inflation is to drain the lake of liquidity sustaining AI, the Fed has the means and, very likely, the will to do it.’ www.wsj.com/finance/inve...

Plants are trying to talk, if only we'd listen. Now, one startup says it has decoded their language. “We’re listening more than we’re speaking, but listening’s the first step,” Electric Plant CEO Justin Mast told me. techcrunch.com/2026/10/20/p...

So, an Atlantic writer says 2 months ago that reading is dead and a New Yorker writer now argues the opposite. How to decide which is more likely to be true? If I had to investigate, the 1st person I'd call would be Robert Darnton, a historian who has spent ~50 yrs researching books, publishing...

Researchers have set out to test whether preventing & aggressively combatting wildfires could counteract soaring Arctic-boreal emissions, preserving the vast stores of carbon in the forests, tundra & permafrost of the far north. Please read + share my latest deep dive.

sometimes it's a "dirty chai" day

a scoop from me this morning on Eka's new $150M Series A, and more importantly, the first time I've found that roboticists from the pre-generative AI era are really excited about a physical AI model... techcrunch.com/2026/10/20/e...

Eka Robotics, which is developing a "vision-force-action" architecture for its physical AI models, raised a $150M Series A at a $1.45B post-money valuation (Tim Fernholz/TechCrunch) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Here's an update on my story in August about scientists using AI to make viruses. Now a startup has put AI viruses in a patient, to test them as a treatment called phage therapy. Gift link: nyti.ms/47pOLJv

This is a heist. cen.acs.org/policy/resea...

Introducing Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard: Longform Listening. Worldwide. 24/7. aquariumdrunkard.com/2026/10/18/i... A new old way to listen. An always on AD radio app. Free ~~~~

#rarebev

Microsoft says AI agents are like insider threats as ‘frontier models can’t be trusted’

Via @newyorker.com $META

the challenge of executing the populism/corporatism two step

PAXTON: hey we're catching a lot of shit for holding our final rally at the alamo, the site of an infamous Texas doomed last stand TRUMP:

35 years ago today, the Tunnel, or Oakland Hills, fire began. Per Cal Fire, it remains the 5th most-destructive in California's recorded history. All the others in the top 20 have happened since then. 34c031f8-c9fd-4018-8c5a-4159cdff6b0d-cdn-endpoint.azureedge.net/-/media/calf...