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 11 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
Evans: Benedict Evans has no personal or professional task for ChatGPT
“I personally do not have a task where chat GPT is useful. There are other people who do. I don't.”
Evans: a16z Never Passed on Deals Fearing Big Tech Competition
“When I worked at Andreessen Horowitz, we saw three or 4000 companies a year. You know, I don't think we ever said, you know, what if Google does this? Or, you know, you can't invest in that because Microsoft might do that or because Amazon might do that.”
Evans: I only use LLMs for proofreading; they fail intern tasks
“I use it for proofreading sometimes, and that's about it. I, you know, I can't use it for most of the stuff that I have that I would give to an intern, because it won't be able to do it, or it won't get it right.”
Evans: I will not publish writing that ChatGPT could generate
“One of my, the ways I would think about what I'm writing is I've written this. Is this what anybody else would say? Is this just saying what everybody knows or everyone thinks? Well, then I won't publish it. And now I just say, well, is this what ChatGPT would…”
Evans: ChatGPT has not fit into personal workflows after nine months
“Nine months in, I'm an early adopter. I do all sorts of stuff. I've been pushing and pushing and pushing ChatGPT. I haven't really found anything that's useful for me. That's not, it's not useful. That's, I haven't found something that fits into my workflows.”
Evans: NBC spent hundreds of thousands on Second Life with no consumers
“In fact, we did have spent, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars making some second life thing. And, The users were people who worked at NBC, people who worked at ABC's competitors, people who worked for journalists, consultants. Like, no actual consumer…”
White: Condé Nast wasted heavy investment on closed iPad magazine replicas
“I remember when, at Condé Nast, we were, we went heavy on iPad editions of the magazines spent a lot of money A lot of money on trying to do this and then even try to do Kindle versions of the magazines as well, thinking this is where publishing was going, and…”
Evans: Apple Mail and iOS represent roughly 45% of his newsletter audience
“So looking at my stats Apple and Apple mail and iOS are about 45%.”
Evans sends 500,000 monthly emails to his 150,000 newsletter subscribers
“It costs me quite a lot because I've got a 150,000 subscribers. So like, yeah, they charge me for that. I send more than half a million emails a month.”
Cowan-Brown: NationBuilder failed to profit from European political campaigns
“When I was building out NationBuilder in, in Europe. We didn't make any money from campaigns. Presidential campaigns come and go. So you have a great amount of revenue. You've got great RR for a couple of, you know MRR, sorry, not AR. Good monthly revenue for,…”