The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 37 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Gas app's exclusive Today Show segment generated only 1,000 downloads
“Prior to the acquisition, Nikita, the founder went on the today show and had this big exclusive segment, which in the past would have been like, Huge for an application or a company. And he said he thinks it generated a thousand downloads.”
Steph Smith: AI vibe coding tools are currently significantly underpriced
“I think these different products are so underpriced given the products that people are able to create in terms of, you know, they literally could not create something in the past, and now they can create something of immense value in their life.”
Smith: An AI-written book will top NYT bestseller list in her lifetime
“I wouldn't be surprised if that happens within my lifetime, certainly”
Steph Smith: People Spend More Time Organizing Second Brains Than Using Them
“Some people spend more time organizing their second brain than actually using it.”
a16z Offers Employees Q-Bio Health Scans and Five-Week Firm Shutdowns
“I just wanted to share that this episode was actually inspired by some of the unique perks that I had never seen before until I joined A-Suite C. That includes a full body health scan that we get from Q-Bio or five weeks of full firm shutdown. Yes, that's righ…”
Anduril's Palmer Luckey Funds Employee Side Projects to Attract Ambitious Talent
“One that I like is Andrew Palmer Luckey says that he offers his employees, tools and technology for all of their side projects, not just their work projects, because he thinks that'll attract ambitious people.”
Steph Smith: Podcasts Are Uniquely Intimate Compared to Written Media
“The listener is with you for an hour every week, maybe more than that. And so it's very different than reading a newsletter for five minutes or stumbling upon a blog post randomly online and spending a couple of minutes where you don't even know who wrote it. …”
Smith: Generative AI value must ladder into practical commercial use cases
“It's fun to play around in these tools, but ultimately there, while there is a market for just interesting art in the world, a lot of this will need to ladder back into, you know, whether it's blog post sharing images, whether it's creating, you know, the next…”
Smith: Highly refined AI art does not guarantee audience resonance
“And so your point just reminded me of this idea where art especially Is subjective and what people like and resonate with is not necessarily the most refined or extravagant, precise type of imagery, which you can generate in some of these text to image tools, …”
Web-based AI avatar tools preceded Lensa using identical underlying APIs
“So there were at least, I'm aware of two or three different web-based applications, ProfilePicture.ai and then Avatar.ai as well, which had come out first with this idea of creating personalized avatars. I believe all, all of these products are based off of th…”
Steph Smith: Social Media Shifted From Social Graphs to Interest Graphs
“Social media is not really social anymore in a way. It's kind of gone from the social graph where you followed your friends and your family, and then now it's an interest graph where you follow just things that this algorithm is serving you.”
Smith: First new US nuclear reactor in 30 years opened in 2023
“In 2023, we saw America's first newly built reactor come online in over three decades.”
Steph Smith: US government announced intent to triple nuclear power by 2050
“The US government itself recently announcing its intent to triple nuclear power production by 20 50.”
Steph Smith: Knowledge workers spend 2.5 hours daily searching for information
“Knowledge workers apparently spend 2.5 hours a day, which is around 30% of their time in a workday searching for information.”
Smith: Fee-for-Service Model Has Driven US Healthcare Since the 1960s
“Unfortunately, the American healthcare system has instead been grounded in fee-for-service models since the 19 sixties, incentivizing providers to focus on quantity rather than quality of care.”
Smith: Value-Based Care Investment Quadrupled During the Pandemic
“Investment in value-based care quadrupled during the pandemic, while new hospital construction remained unchanged.”
Smith: None of 1989's top 20 companies remain in top 20 today
“I saw this infographic that basically showed the largest companies in 1989. The top 10 or top 20, none of them are in the top 20 today.”
Masad: A 13-year-old built a crypto mining operation on Replit
“One is recently shared a thirteen-year-old kid that set up a sizable crypto mining operation via Replit.”
Smith: A headline claimed airplanes were a million years away in 1903
“I think I read another headline that said it would take over a million years for the airplane to be successful, only to which I believe the Wright brothers took flight two months later.”
Karen X Cheng Created the First AI-Generated Cosmopolitan Magazine Cover
“Her AI-generated Cosmo magazine cover, the first ever.”
Steph Smith: Andre Karpathy coined the term 'vibe coding'
“The term actually comes from Andre Karpathy, right, who is, like, extremely technical, like, is behind the LLMs that are actually helping people vibe code.”
Steph Smith: Nuclear energy accounts for 20% of US electricity
“Nuclear energy accounts for 20% of the electricity in the United States.”
Smith: Salary transparency laws cover over 25% of the US workforce
“And now at least 10 states require it, with over a quarter of the US labor force covered by salary transparency legislation.”
Host: Duolingo grew from 3M to 300M users with no paid budget
“First off, we have Gina Gotthelf, now leading Latitude, but perhaps most well-known for her impressive reign as the VP of Growth at Duolingo. Growing them from three to three hundred million users with no paid budget.”
Electric cars made up one-third of all vehicles in 1900
“Flash forward to 1900, and astonishingly, electric cars make up about a third of the cars on the road.”
Fifth Avenue shifted from horses to cars in 13 years
“If you don't think this will happen quickly enough, I'd like to point you towards two pictures taken on Fifth Avenue on Easter morning. These pictures were taken 13 years apart. The first in 1900, and it looks like a Waldo puzzle, where you're actually trying …”
Smith: Instagram had 13 employees when acquired for $1 billion in 2012
“Instagram, for example, had 13 employees when it was sold for a billion dollars, and that was in 2012.”
a16z 2023 Marketplace 100 features nearly three dozen newcomers
“And this year's list features nearly three dozen newcomers, including marketplaces for refurbished electronics, precious metals, and sustainably reused meat.”
Smith: Chess AI revealed superior moves humans never considered over centuries
“When we finally built the bots that were better than humans in chess, not only were we surprised by the fact that that could happen, but we were also surprised by all of the different openings or moves that humans in their thousands of years playing chess had …”
Steph Smith: Sandbox VR uses in-game software for player onboarding
“Once you were in the experience, the game itself onboarded you.”
Steph Smith: Sandbox VR simulates vertical motion using virtual elevators
“One fascinating aspect of this experience was they're bringing you up these elevators and it really does feel like you're moving up, which of course you're not.”
Smith: Florence's Uffizi Gallery was the predecessor to the modern office
“In fifteen-sixty, we saw the predecessor to the office, which was Florence's Euphysi Gallery.”
Steph Smith Predicts AI-Generated ASMR Content Will Emerge Soon
“I mean, people are already playing around with, like, audio AI, and so, obviously, I haven't seen the ASMR stuff, but I feel like that, that's coming soon.”