el_nahual (u/el_nahual)

el_nahual commented on Anthropic raises $30B in Series G funding at $380B post-money valuation anthropic.com/news/anthro... · Posted by u/ryanhn

ramshanker · 2 hours ago

At least xAI now has a revenue generation backer. SpaceX.

Others must pull up their revenue number.

el_nahual · 2 hours ago

SpaceX makes 16B in revenue per year, with 7B in ebitda (which doesn't account for the cost of rockets)... so assume what, 3B in free cash flow per year? And that's being generous.

That's about what Google creates in free cash every 2 weeks.

el_nahual commented on Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard? quantamagazine.org/is-par... · Posted by u/mellosouls

jasonwatkinspdx · 3 days ago

The most simple answer here is the "fields are real, particles are excitation patterns of fields." And that's generally the practical way most physicists think of it today as I understand it.

If I make the equivalent of a double slit experiment in a swimming pool, then generate a vortex that propagates towards my plywood slits or whatever, it's not really surprising that the extended volume of the vortex interacts with both slots even though it looks like a singular "particle."

el_nahual · 3 days ago

And yet if you place a detector at the slits to know which slit the single photon goes through, you get no interference pattern at the end.

el_nahual commented on xAI joins SpaceX spacex.com/updates#xai-jo... · Posted by u/g-mork

stingraycharles · 10 days ago

It’s not SpaceX’s fault. It’s still a company to admire, it’s just that nobody appears to be able to stop Musk.

I wonder why SpaceX investors aren’t revolting.

el_nahual · 10 days ago

> I wonder why SpaceX investors aren’t revolting.

Because if SpaceX were valued like a normal company, they would lose their money.

SpaceX, as technologically awesome as it is, simply cannot be that big of a company because the market for space launches is relatively small.

SpaceX is targeting an IPO at a valuation 500x earnings. They need to jump on the "AI" / datacenter bandwagon to even hope to sell that kind of valuation.

The whole "datacenters in space" thing is an answer to the question "what could require 1000x the satellite launches that we have now?"

It has nothing to do with what makes sense economically for datacenters!

el_nahual commented on xAI joins SpaceX spacex.com/updates#xai-jo... · Posted by u/g-mork

dahinds · 10 days ago

This isn't really true, though? The ISS does it with radiators that are ~1/2 the area of its solar panels, and both should scale linearly with power?

el_nahual · 10 days ago

Radiator size scales linearly with power but, crucially, coolant power, pumps, etc do not.

Imagine the capillary/friction losses, the force required, and the energy use(!) required to pump ammonia through a football-field sized radiator panel.

el_nahual commented on Tesla is committing automotive suicide electrek.co/2026/01/29/te... · Posted by u/jethronethro

NetMageSCW · 14 days ago

> Estimates have SpaceX doing about $3B in annual earnings

Ummm that information seems terribly out of date or is just uninformed- Starlink alone is estimated around $8 billion for 2024 and projected around $12 billion for 2025, with continued growth.

el_nahual · 14 days ago

That's revenue. Earnings (profit) is what's relevant, because as you can imagine putting stuff in space is pretty expensive!

el_nahual commented on Tesla ending Models S and X production cnbc.com/2026/01/28/tesla... · Posted by u/keyboardJones

thelastgallon · 15 days ago

Coming up next: Tesla to end production of all cars and sell only NFT/Crypto with pictures of Cybertruck going to the moon/mars. This is the only company which provides Speculation as a Service. With a complete monopoly on SPaaS, the market cap will skyrocket to $20 Trillion. Elon will be given Nobel peace prize for saving mankind from itself as well as physics.

el_nahual · 15 days ago

There is in fact one person who has won both the Nobel Peace prize and a hard-science one:

Linus Pauling. Chemistry 1954, peace 1962.

el_nahual commented on Amazon cuts 16k jobs reuters.com/legal/litigat... · Posted by u/DGAP

jimbokun · 16 days ago

What's the real reason for the layoffs?

el_nahual · 16 days ago

Amazon stock is flat over the past year. The rest of the "magnificent seven":

- Google: +70%

- Nvidia: +49% - Apple: +7%

- Meta: Flat

- SHOP (closest comp): +19.41%

- Mercado Libre (international comp): +20.73%

So basically, the "tech world" is dividing itself, in the eyes of investors, into two camps: companies that will benefit from AI tailwinds and companies that will not. And all the money is going to the companies that will.

Amazon is more and more considered to be part of the latter group.

This is especially concerning of Amazon because it seems like AWS--the cash cow--has somehow missed becoming the cloud provider for AI compute needs.

As such, Amazon needs to give investors some reason to hold amazon stock. If you're not part of a rising tide, the only reason left is "we are very profitable."

So yeah, Amazon will have to cut costs to show more profitability and become further investable.

So yes, the layoffs have to do with AI...but not the way they are spinning it.

el_nahual commented on Amazon cuts 16k jobs reuters.com/legal/litigat... · Posted by u/DGAP

tchalla · 16 days ago

Interesting perspective of an L7 who was laid off at Amazon

https://xcancel.com/PlumbNick/status/2016500347053773198

el_nahual · 16 days ago

Inconsistent jingoistic nationalism.

On one hand, he claims that he "fixed problems that had been sitting untouched because no one else could untangle them." And on the other hand he claims his layoff on "a global labor market with almost no guardrails."

So which is it: did he really work on problems no one else could solve, or was he replaced by cheap foreign labor?

Probably neither. The most likely scenario here is one of two things:

a) Amazon made a mistake by firing him. They laid off someone truly valuable.

b) He wasn't as valuable as he thinks he was. Those problems were not worth paying him a meaningful fraction of a million dollars a year (what an L7 makes at amazon).

What I can guarantee is that he wasn't replaced by a cheap, foreign, plug-and-play replacement.

It all makes sense when you realize the point of his tweet is that he's plugging his run for congress: so yeah, of course he's tapping in to the absolute worst nationalistic sentiment. Shame on him.

el_nahual commented on What “The Best” Looks Like kuril.in/blog/what-the-be... · Posted by u/akurilin

el_nahual · 17 days ago

Lesson it took me far too long to learn about what "the best" is. Bona fides: I'm no titan of industry but I've worked with many, across many industries.

I've seen "the best." I've had what could be considered "life changing" success by most metrics (but irrelevant by SV-billionaire standards).

The lesson:

There are, in general, two groups of people you can work with. People that do what they say they are going to do, and people who don't.

People who don't do what they say they are going to do outnumber those that do by 20-1.

If you surround yourself with the first group, you're going to be ok. If you don't, most of your time and your organization's time will be spent not-doing, not-measuring, and not-advancing.

"The best" really is that simple, and the bar really is that low.

Of course, if you do what you say you're going to do, and you're incredibly smart, and you have vision, and (insert whatever you care for here) then yeah, you'll be the "best of the best"...but those things are legitimately not necessary for success.

el_nahual commented on Design and Implementation of Sprites fly.io/blog/design-and-im... · Posted by u/sethev

tptacek · a month ago

Naming? We got naming wrong?

el_nahual · a month ago

Could not have illustrated the point better if I tried.