Chop Wood, Carry Water 🇵🇱 → 🇦🇺 → 🇺🇸 Co-founder at @veryfi_inc (YC W17)
Silicon Valley
Joined September 2008
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Ernest retweeted
🙌 That’s a wrap on @money2020 Vegas. Three days, a lot of good conversations, and one topic that kept coming up at our booth: document fraud is getting smarter, and most teams are still catching it by hand.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by to see how Veryfi flags tampered receipts, checks, or any document types in seconds.
#money2020 #recap #frauddetection #ai
🤯
this California wealth tax thing is just incredible.
so in October 2025, a California healthcare union proposed a "one time" 5% tax on any billionaire's wealth. the ballot measure will be voted on next month. In early December 2025, California announced that it would be a retroactive tax if passed, applying to anyone with CA residency as of Jan 1, 2026. The objective is to pay for Medi-Cal, California's incredibly dysfunctional healthcare system. (which also functions as a glorified welfare apparatus, but that's a discussion for another time).
polls reveal that the CA electorate is split around 50/50 on the tax, but prediction markets only give Prop 40 a ~23% chance of passing (there are competing measures on the ballet that would nullify it).
there are 200 billionaires in CA, worth collectively somewhere between $2.3 and $2.6 trillion. 5% of that is around $100b, accounting for a small amount of attrition. proponents of the tax forecasted a significant windfall, assuming only a 10% departure rate.
supporters thought they were being clever with the retroactive concept. no billionares would leave CA in the few short months between the tax being proposed and the residency cutoff date, without the tax even having passed yet, right?
well as it turns out, they did.
a new paper [1] from two academics at Stanford called "The Net Present Value of the California Billionaire Tax Act", argues that not only did more billionaires leave due to the proposed tax than its proponents expected, but that the value of the tax, if it does pass, is actually negative.
proponents of the tax only assumed 10% avoidance, that is, only 10% of the taxable base of targeted billionaires would leave CA within the very short Oct-Dec 2025 window. Jaros and Rauh, the Stanford academics, find that a lower bound of 28.6% of the taxable base managed to leave.
just based on known departures, those departures total $577b in net worth, or $28.8b in potential tax lost. this of course does not capture everyone (many left without announcing their departure), so the authors normalize to departure rates estimated from other wealth tax events, and apply other discounts for litigation, arriving arrive at a figure of only $28-$36b in forecasted tax revenues.
but this isn't all! all of the income taxes paid by the departed billionaires are also forsaken. the authors estimate that CA billionaires pay $3.3- 5.8b in annual income taxes. they assume a midpoint of $2b lost in annual collections from departed billionaires. the net present value of that lost income stream is -$68.9 billion.
so when you add it all up you get:
+ $30b one-time tax windfall (estimated)
- $69b in present value of lost future income taxes
= - 38.9b overall net present value of the tax
of course, this analysis is highly estimate driven. the authors simulate the parameters 100k times and find a negative NPV of the implemented tax 85 percent of the time.
and if the tax doesn't pass, which it's not looking like it will, California still ended up losing at least $577b in departed net worth, and they have permanently poisoned the well with entrepreneurs who will now worry about future wealth taxes.
[1]: nber.org/system/files/workin…
🤯
Tesla VP of Hardware Engineering Lars Moravy explains to Hagerty how the Roadster borrows SpaceX cold gas thrusters to make 0 to 60 possible in 0.55 seconds.
Truly insane:
▫️ 200L carbon-over wrapped pressure vessel
behind seat holds nitrogen at 10,000 PSI
▫️cold gas thrusters push out 80 kN of thrust (equivalent to a single fighter jet engine)
▫️Tesla went with nitrogen because “it just seemed wrong to put fuel into a car” (air is ~80% nitrogen, fair enough)
▫️thrusters same system satellites use to move in space (eg. the “psh psh psh" from Apollo 13 film)
▫️currently takes 6 to 7 hours to refill all nitrogen but Tesla working for it to be 30 minutes
▫️uses leg actuators from Optimus robot to manage downforce on wing
***
Full 25-min episode with Henry Catchpole here: youtu.be/22rvpUecLts?si=jtwK…
Ernest retweeted
7 days left until #money2020 #ai #frauddetection
Watch our latest update and meet us at booth #20195.
See you at @money2020 ! Come visit @Veryfi at booth #20195
#money2020 #fintech #ai #lasvegas #startups #siliconvalley
@ATT @ATTHelp before I go nuclear, who do I report this to?
Your contractors or employees were on my property without permission tonight at dusk, apparently trying to run fiber across our land to reach an address on a different street. I have names, communications, photos, and video.
6 unmarked people trespassed and sprayed our driveway, moving around at dusk like they didn't want to be seen. It frightened my wife and two kids.
I confronted them and told them to leave. The police were called and a report filed with @sanmateoco Sheriff's Office (Report #SH26-80828).
We're a @Starlink 🛰️ customer and have NO INTEREST in AT&T services.
Please respond and tell me who to contact at ATT to report the manager running this operation.
You snooze, you lose! Business 101.
After 2 years of putting up with @ATT outages everyday (yes I live remote), lame customer support and slow DSL internet I moved to @Starlink 💪 and it was a game changer!
Now it's comical watching @ATT act lawlessly committing crimes by laying fiber on private land "without permission" to try to catchup to their years of not giving a s**t about customers. A @YouTube video of this @ATT lawlessness has been documented and will be released soon.
cc: @elonmusk Congrats on the amazing progress! 🎉I'm a rural customer of Starlink for 3 years now and couldn't be more happier!
SpaceX has just officially announced two major milestones for @Starlink Mobile, bringing it one step closer to becoming a full-fledged mobile carrier in the U.S.
1) SpaceX has reached an agreement to acquire nationwide 800 MHz spectrum, which will allow Starlink Mobile to provide better indoor coverage, including signals that can penetrate walls and other obstacles.
2) The FCC has approved SpaceX's next-generation Starlink Mobile constellation of 15,000 satellites, which will deliver over 100x more bandwidth than its current satellites, enabling high-speed internet directly to regular smartphones worldwide.
Once approved by the FCC, SpaceX plans to combine its satellite network with terrestrial infrastructure to create a seamless mobile network that works indoors, outdoors, and in cellular dead zones.
Scientists are losing their minds over this paper.
They proved every mitochondria in your body is a tiny quantum device running at 71 THz.
And it responds to light.
Researchers detected a mysterious 71.0-terahertz vibration signal. this frequency is only present in healthy, living cells and tissues.
exact moment the cell dies or the mitochondrial structures are broken apart, the signal vanishes completely.
How does this happen?
Classical physics has always struggled to explain the high energy-efficiency of life.
So the team built a quantum model of light-matter coupling and discovered something called a "mito-polariton".
It is a literal quantum superposition state that forms when light couples with lipid ch2 bonds inside functional mitochondria.
This quantum resonance splits the intrinsic vibration mode into two levels, creating that bizarre 71 thz frequency that you only see in living things.
Why does this matter?
Because this quantum state actually acts as a highly efficient channel to modulate atp production in living cells.
our bodies literally use quantum mechanics to generate the energy that keeps us alive.
Ernest retweeted
This new creatine study is insane.
People who never trained took 10g of creatine a day and gained more lean tissue (2.43 lbs) than people who were lifting 3x a week with no creatine (0.31 lbs).
Here's the breakdown: (1/18)
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The lean tissue gains in the no-exercise creatine group were measured by DXA body scans which creatine affects by increasing intracellular water that registers as lean mass. The decision to exercise or not was self-selected by participants not randomized.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13…
medicalnewstoday.com/articles/creat…
Ernest retweeted
Shawn has to do it asap! @PeterSantenello has been doing that for a few years and it’s fukin eye opening!
youtube.com/@petersantenello…
.@sendcutsend is f**kin amazing!
If you're sick of modern shitty manufactured products (like me) and want to take matters into your own hands, this is a no-brainer.
Use AI to CAD the hell out of your idea (or a product you want reengineered), then send it to these folks to turn the digital world into physical stuff.
It couldn't be easier!
youtu.be/G8oufrrXaig?is=azNr…
Ernest retweeted
Car racing is cognitive enhancement:
> 12 hrs on a driving video game, and 60-85 yr olds were cognitively overtaking 20 yr olds
> race car drivers do in one brain region what a novice does in 15
> six months later, the seniors kept the gains with zero practice
What Tobi is about to do today is one of the most insane things I’ve seen in athletic performance.
He will be racing for 2.5 hours straight. Before immersing myself in this sport for the past few days, I would have thought “oh that’s cool, he’ll be driving a fast car around a track.”
That is not what this is.
And why I have so much respect for him.
Tobi will be driving a car over 180 mph, experiencing up to 4.2 g of force. That will throw his body forward with 715 lbs of force and his head by 67 lbs.
Braking action requires up to 200 lbs of leg force.
The cockpit will average 104-122°F (40 to 50°C). His multi-layer suit barely allows for evaporation. This will cause his core body temperature to reach 102°F. I achieved this same body temp after 200°F of dry sauna for 34 min. It’s overwhelming. His heart rate will beat between 140-170 bpm.
He will sweat up to 170 fl oz (5 kg), losing 11 lbs of body weight. Some classes run driver cooling systems. His LMP2 doesn't.
Under these conditions, he will need to maintain perfect concentration for the entire 2.5 hours. He’s fighting for tenths of a second on every turn and every stretch.
One small slip up and trouble awaits.
Today it’s even more intense… it’s raining. The track is wet, scrambling everything.
He has to maintain spatial memory of every other car on the track, the complicated rules to avoid penalty, and constantly strategize overtaking other drivers, communicate with his team on the radio, watch for debris, be aware of slightest nuances of his car, and anticipate other drivers.
He did a practice run on Thursday and then a qualifying race yesterday, when he emerged from the car, he was a different human. Unrecognizable from the person who entered the car. Beaming with something like an omnipresence of reality.
We celebrate those who are especially good at kicking balls, shooting balls into baskets, and running with balls. What Tobi will do today is alien to those. I struggle to think of a sport equally as demanding.
Tobi and I have a lot in common. We’ve both built companies. We both spend a lot of time at the keyboard trying to organize the world in ways that we find beautiful. We both love data, method, and analysis. We both have a love for continuous improvement and will endure any pain required to achieve that next goal.
What I’ve not experienced is the unmatched flow state Tobi tells me he drops into when under these racing conditions.
I deeply understand what it means to achieve a 102°F core body temperature after 34 min in a 200°F dry sauna. I also know what 3 g’s feels like from being a pilot. These are extremely intense psychological states.
I know what it means to apply 200 lbs of pressure with my legs.
What I’ve never experienced is all these things, at the same time, for 2.5 hours straight, while maintaining perfect focus.
He is new to car racing. Late by racing standards. DHH got him into it a few years ago. During this first year of racing, he endured to overcome the extreme motion sickness that accompanies the physical and mental violence of the sport.
The race starts at noon eastern. Tobi will be driving for the first 2.5 hours and then @dhh will drop in, followed by Mathias Beche. The race will conclude at 10 pm.
I’ll be in the pit watching as all the data streams in from his car and body and imagining what it’s like to be in that car.
