Mastering the art of influence | Insights, strategies, and trends that actually work
Joined June 2020
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Virality Engine retweeted
If you sell anything online, you need to check this out.
Fastlane finds winning ads from your website’s niche, creates better ads, launches them, and tracks the results.
All on autopilot.
🤝 Paid partnership
Virality Engine retweeted
Dario Amodei explains how an AI lab can lose $8 billion a year when, in his words, "Every model is profitable but the company is unprofitable every year."
On Big Technology, Alex Kantrowitz put Anthropic's loss that year at about $3 billion and asked when it turns profitable. Dario answered with made-up numbers.
"There's the cost of running the model, right? So for every dollar the model makes it costs a certain amount. That is actually already fairly profitable... The big cost is the cost of training the next model."
"I think this idea of the companies losing money and not being profitable is a little bit misleading... So, as a thought exercise, these numbers are not exact or even close for Anthropic. Let's imagine that in 2023 you train a model that costs $100 million."
"And then in 2024, you deploy the 2023 model and it makes $200 million in revenue, but you spend a billion dollars to train a new model in 2024. And then in 2025, the billion dollar model makes two billion in revenue and you spend 10 billion to train the next model. So the company every year is unprofitable."
"This looks like a hugely unprofitable enterprise, but if instead I think in terms of is each model profitable, right? Think of each model as a venture. I invested 100 million in the model and then I got 200 million out of the model the next year. So that model had 50% margins... Every model is profitable but the company is unprofitable every year."
"If a company stopped investing in the next model... you would have probably a viable business with the existing models... This fact that we're spending more to invest in the next model suggests that the scale of the business is going to be larger the next year than it was the year before."
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Virality Engine retweeted
Palantir CEO Alex Karp says the people calling for an AI pause are out of touch with reality, and are effectively arguing for letting America's enemies win:
"If we didn't have adversaries, I would be very in favor of pausing this technology completely, but we do."
Interested in AI?
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Virality Engine retweeted
A Tesla owner discovered he had been wasting money on his car for 2 years.
The worst part?
He thought he was doing everything right.
He charged every night. He used navigation. He drove on Autopilot on the highway. He took it in for service on schedule.
He had done everything the salesman told him to do.
What the salesman never told him was what was inside the settings menu.
His coworker sent him a single screenshot last month.
It was the Scheduled Charging screen inside the Tesla app.
“Are you using this?”
He had never seen it before.
He opened the Tesla app that night.
Then he opened the touchscreen settings.
Then he spent 90 minutes going through every menu he had never touched in 2 years of ownership.
He found 11 settings that had been costing him money, degrading his battery, and leaving safety features completely dormant since the day he drove off the lot.
All of them built in.
All of them free to activate.
All of them sitting there for 2 years waiting.
Here is every setting he found and exactly what each one does: 🧵
Virality Engine retweeted
A couple sold their apartment, bought a van, and spent $2,400 on a Starlink kit so they could work remotely from anywhere. For 8 months they paid about $120 a month and fought with it constantly. Calls dropped at the worst moments, uploads crawled, and they were sure the hype had been oversold. They told their friends it wasn’t as good as everyone said.
Then a friend of theirs, a network engineer who has installed Starlink on boats, farms, and construction sites, pulled up next to their van at a campsite and watched the dish through a gap in the trees.
“Your dish can’t see enough sky. Even a few branches in the way will cut your speed in half, and you’ve been parked under them for 8 months. Did you ever run the obstruction check in the app before you picked a spot? Did you know your router is sitting on the floor behind the seat, where the Wi-Fi signal gets blocked by the metal? And did you know you can pause your service on the months you’re not using it, so you stop paying $120 for a dish that’s sitting in the garage? Starlink isn’t hard to use, but the setup decides everything, and nobody explains it. People get bad speeds, blame the satellites, and quit, when the problem is a tree and a bad router spot.”
He walked them through 9 changes in under an hour. He moved the dish to a clear spot, fixed the router placement, adjusted the settings, switched them to a plan that fit how they really worked, and showed them which features to turn on and which to ignore.
Their speeds went from 30 Mbps to over 180. Video calls stopped freezing, and they stopped paying for months they weren’t using. One of them closed a client deal on a call from a mountain pass that same week.
“Starlink isn’t fast or slow. It’s fast if you set it up right, and slow if you don’t, and most people never find out which one they have.”
Here are the 9 Starlink changes his friend made that tripled their speed 🧵
Virality Engine retweeted
A guy bought a Model 3 two years ago.
$39,990.
Drove it home. Plugged it in.
Felt like he had finally beaten the system.
No more gas stations.
No more oil changes.
No more surprise repair bills.
He told everyone at work the car would pay for itself.
His neighbor, a former Tesla service advisor who had gone through thousands of owner bills, walked over one evening.
The guy was washing the car in the driveway.
The neighbor asked to see his Tesla app.
He scrolled the charging history.
Opened the energy screen.
Checked the tire pressure.
Looked at the subscriptions.
Then he handed the phone back.
"You're overpaying in at least 6 places."
"You use public fast chargers when your home outlet would do the job for much less."
"You charge during the most expensive hours because you never set a schedule."
"Your tires are wearing faster than they should."
"You've never compared your insurance since the day you bought the car."
"You're paying for add-ons you barely use."
"And you've never checked what your car does when you lift your foot off the accelerator."
The guy stared at him.
"I thought the car was just cheap to run."
"It can be. But only if you set it up that way."
"Most owners save money on gas, then quietly give half of it back through habits they never question."
He spent 20 minutes fixing it that night.
Charging schedule. Tire pressure. Electricity plan. Three insurance quotes the next day.
The next month he looked at his statements.
It was the first time the car felt like the deal he thought he'd bought.
Here are 8 ways Tesla owners waste money without noticing: 🧵
Virality Engine retweeted
A guy has been a Costco Executive member for 7 years and spends about $900 a month there between groceries, gas, household supplies, and the occasional TV.
He pays $130 a year for the membership because he heard it pays for itself, and he never checked whether it actually does. He thought a 2% reward check every February meant he was getting the most out of the card.
Then his brother-in-law, a former Costco warehouse manager who spent 8 years running a department floor, rode along with him on a Saturday run and stopped him in the electronics aisle before he put a $1,199 TV in the cart.
“Wait. Check the price on your phone in the Costco app first. If it goes on sale within 30 days of buying it, you can bring your receipt to the member services desk and get the difference back in cash. Most people never do it because nobody tells them. And did you know that TV already comes with a free extended warranty and tech support that Costco adds on top of the manufacturer’s coverage? You were about to pay another $200 for a protection plan you already have. The whole store works this way, and most members are only using half of what the membership gives them.”
He walked him through the rest of the warehouse that day, and none of it was hidden, just never announced. The Kirkland products made by the same factories as name brands, the tire center that includes free rotation and balancing for life, the pharmacy that fills prescriptions for non-members, the travel desk with packages priced below what you’ll find online, the gas station that is cheaper than every other pump in town, and the return policy that takes back almost anything with no questions asked. Then he showed him how to read the price tags: the asterisk that means an item is leaving for good, and the .97 ending that means a manager has marked it down to clear it out.
“Costco doesn’t hide these things, but it doesn’t advertise them either. The store is designed so you walk in for paper towels and walk out with $300 of stuff, and nobody ever sits you down and shows you how to make the membership work for you. You’ve been shopping here for 7 years like a tourist.”
He changed 10 habits that month. His spending dropped by $210 on the same shopping list, he got $85 back on a price adjustment he would have missed, and the membership fee finally looked like a bargain instead of a habit.
Here are the 10 Costco secrets his brother-in-law showed him 🧵
Virality Engine retweeted
A guy asked one question in a tech forum last year.
"Should I get a mesh WiFi system or a better single router?"
He got 47 different answers.
Half said mesh. Half said single router.
Nobody explained when each one was the right answer.
His friend, a former network infrastructure engineer who had designed WiFi systems for hotels, hospitals, and office buildings, read the thread and called him.
"Everyone in that thread is arguing about products. Nobody is talking about your house. The right answer has nothing to do with which brand is better. It has everything to do with 4 specific things about where you live. Tell me those 4 things and I will tell you the right answer in 60 seconds."
He told him the 4 things.
His friend answered in 30 seconds.
"Single router. Premium one. Positioned correctly. You are wasting money if you buy mesh for your situation."
He had been about to spend $379 on a mesh system.
He spent $129 on a correctly positioned single router instead.
Full coverage. Zero dead zones. $250 saved.
"What were the 4 things you asked me?"
"Square footage. Number of floors. Wall construction material. And where your modem is located relative to where you actually use the internet. Those 4 things determine everything. The brand debate is completely irrelevant until you answer them."
Here is exactly how to use those 4 things to make the right decision for your home: 🧵
Virality Engine retweeted
Hackers don't pick targets. They look for weak spots.
You probably have at least one on your phone right now, and you don't know it.
Here are 8 security gaps to check tonight. #4 is the one most people miss. 👇
Bookmark this first. Each gap has a 3-step fix.
Virality Engine retweeted
WHEN YOU LEAVE A TOXIC JOB, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY IN YOUR EXIT INTERVIEW.
HR may tell you they want “honest feedback” to improve the workplace.
But here's what you need to understand:
An exit interview is not automatically a confidential conversation.
HR represents the company, not you.
Your feedback may be documented, shared internally, or used to assess workplace risks.
And if you criticize your manager, team, or working conditions, there may be consequences you didn't anticipate.
Here are 5 things to remember before your final day:
Virality Engine retweeted
A mom paid for Disney+ for 3 years.
Her family used it for one thing: pressing play on Frozen. Again.
For 3 years she had no idea that Frozen has a built-in Sing Along version with color-coded, timed karaoke lyrics on screen. That Moana has one too. And Encanto. And The Little Mermaid. And The Lion King. And Aladdin. And every Disney musical ever made.
She didn’t know the Extras tab exists with deleted scenes from Marvel movies, bloopers from Pixar films, director commentary on Star Wars, making-of documentaries, concept art galleries, and behind-the-scenes featurettes on hundreds of titles.
She didn’t know about IMAX Enhanced mode that adds 26% more picture on 15+ Marvel films. Or the Jungle Cruise Expedition Mode that shows fun facts during the movie. Or the multiple audio tracks that let her kids watch Moana in Spanish for language practice. Or the curated short film collections with Oscar-winning Pixar and Disney animation most subscribers have never scrolled to.
Her sister a Disney parks superfan who treats Disney+ like a treasure vault came over for movie night and said:
“You’ve been paying for Disney+ for 3 years and you’ve never tapped the Extras tab. You’ve never tried Sing Along mode. You’ve never watched a deleted scene. You’ve never seen the IMAX ratio on Avengers. You’re paying for the biggest content vault in streaming history and you’re using it as a Frozen delivery service.”
Here are 9 Disney+ features most subscribers have never tapped behind the same Play button they press every Friday night 🧵
