The Audemars Piguet 2003 movement had a volume of 0.56 cubic centimeters, which falls between one penny (0.43 cubic centimeters) and five cents (0.69 cubic centimeters).

Regardless of whether the next president is a Republican or a Democrat, can we please elect someone with a little more class next time? Because what we're doing now is just too embarrassing.

Being unaffected by fashion trends is extremely important. In almost everything people do, from choosing a problem to solve to buying art, there are always some unfashionable options that are not only better than fashionable ones but also cheaper because they're unfashionable. When buying goods, cheapness is a tangible price. When choosing a problem to solve, cheapness means they have higher expected value, mainly due to less competition. Now, whenever I enter a new field, my first thought is, "What are some undervalued options because they're unfashionable?" The result is always a multitude of such options. This is a great way to quickly get to know a field.

I just received a very serious email asking if I would like to book a trip to the moon. While the future has largely not turned out the way I imagined it to be when I was a child in the 1970s, this one is exactly what I expected.

Now, before replying to anyone, I have to check if I've been misled by an account that uses AI to automatically reply to spam messages. @nikitabier, could you write software for me to do this check?

Artificial intelligence tends to answer questions in list format, which tells us an important yet frustrating truth: people aren't good at reading. This is no coincidence. What you're seeing is a true reflection of the average user.

We've just reopened the Bay Light Show! San Francisco's lights are even more dazzling now. It truly is the best city on Earth. Happy Bay Light Show!

When Copernicus proposed the heliocentric model in 1543, its accuracy was actually inferior to Ptolemy's geocentric model—which, after more than 1400 years of refinement, had its epicycle precisely calibrated and perfectly matched the observed planetary positions. Seventy years later, Kepler, based on Tycho Brahe's unprecedentedly precise observations, replaced Copernicus's circle with an ellipse, ultimately making the heliocentric model empirically superior. Terence Tao's view is that science needs a high-temperature environment. If we only fund and follow the most advanced technologies of today, we will stifle ideas that may require decades to overcome their limitations.

Reading is a superpower, and in a world where "nobody" reads, this ability becomes especially important. (Inspired by a conversation I had with some university students.)

We spent $15,000 on billboards targeting one man: the head of all chemical spending at a Texas seawater treatment company. We mapped out his commute and bought every billboard between his home and the oil field. When we finally reached him, he said, “I see your billboards everywhere.” That won us our first oil field contract. Back then, our entire production process was a $10,000 reactor, built with PVC pipes from Home Depot, converting corn sugar into industrial chemicals. People kept trying to throw it away, but it still worked. This leaky reactor spawned a multi-billion dollar company. @ycombinator visited our Houston plant. The original PVC reactor still sits next to BioForge.