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A collection of 56 posts

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Technology is Mother Nature’s Only Hope

Technology is Mother Nature's only hope against the extinction of life on Earth. Be it our sun burning out, an asteroid impact, a supervolcanic eruption, a gamma-ray burst–the natural course is death. Whether it’s hardening Earth, terraforming other planets, or building megastructures in space–all will

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Crypto- I'm Not Leaving

There have been absolutely zero negative revelations around cryptocurrency and blockchain tech, or the teams building them, yet here we are, peak crypto FUD. FTX, as I’ve discussed, is not crypto. SBF and his band of low lifes were running a centralized and unregulated exchange. They were not on

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What Have You Built?

Your ethnicity, where you came from, your religion, and who your ancestors are don’t matter. Your gender, your sex, who you like to have sex with, and whether you’re vegetarian don't matter. Your taste in music, your favorite restaurants, how you dress, whether you have tattoos,

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Trump Will Return to Twitter

Trump will be making an announcement later tonight and it's expected he's going to officially announce his return to Twitter- jk he's probably running for president. This is on the heels of a poor performance from both election deniers and Trump backed nominees in

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China Will Invade Taiwan

China is a decaying nation with an increasingly boiling populace and a government with nothing to lose- war, as it turns out for China, will in fact be the answer. A little history- in 1949 Chiang Kai-shek fled China after losing a civil war against Mao Zedong and his communist

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A Failed Exchange is not a Failure of Crypto

Large crypto exchange FTX has shit the bed so people are asking if crypto is dead. An exchange is not crypto. An exchange is how you trade crypto and convert your fiat money to crypto, but it’s not crypto. Bitcoin is crypto. Ethereum is crypto. Uniswap, a decentralized exchange

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Binance and Tether will go to Zero

Given the solvency crisis crypto exchange FTX is facing (you can read statements from FTX CEO here and Binance's CEO here, and here is good rundown too), I'd like to say a few words. I've never trusted FTX or their CEO. An exchange that

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Santa Monica Voter Guide 2022: City Council, Measures, and Everything in Between

In this guide I’m going to give you explanations for how I’m voting on the issues facing Santa Monica residents. For what’s on the ballot for all California and Los Angeles County residents- as well as why to vote, how to vote, and my general worldview on

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Is the internet fast enough?

1Gbps internet is here- where are the applications utilizing it?

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Long Live Crypto

The answer to these three questions matters far more than short term market behavior. Have fundamental technical assumptions of blockchain changed? Have builders stopped entering the space? Has the market value decreased over the last decade? The answer to all three is no. As long as that is the case

2020: say covid again

As Howard Marks said: this year gave us one of the greatest pandemics of all time, the greatest economic contraction since the depression, the greatest oil price decline, and the greatest central bank intervention of all time. With almost 8 billion humans all bouncing off each other- every year is

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The Lowest Hanging Fruit: Getting Rich Slowly

Post updated January 2024. The single greatest point of leverage for reaching your financial goals is simply understanding how to do it. I’m not asking you to learn new skills, build relationships, or start a business. Though all worthy endeavors, I’m asking you to do something much, much

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predictions scorecard

no gradient makes falsifiable predictions because it forces this publication to take a stand rather than hide behind vagueness or platitudes. Not only do predictions make it easy to track how accurate a worldview is over time. It also gives an extremely potent dose of what the worldview actually is.

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welcome to no gradient

no gradient publishes articles, predictions, and a podcast. The articles focus on issues where there is the biggest disconnect between public perception and reality. Predictions focus on trends shaping our world and serve to track the accuracy of this publication’s worldview. The podcast publishes authentic conversations with people worth

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no gradient tracks

Public discourse is filled with forward looking statements that are seldom checked for accuracy. no gradient tracks will do just this as it has long held that tracking forward looking statements is beneficial for public discourse. This publication holds itself accountable with the predictions scorecard, it will now do the

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no gradient retracks

no gradient holds itself accountable with the predictions scorecard and holds others accountable with no gradient tracks. To further accountability, no gradient retracks will track its articles that no longer represent the beliefs of this publication or have not stood the test of time. Any article linked below will have

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no gradient endorses joe biden for the democratic party primary

no gradient endorses Joe Biden for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary because he is most likely to defeat the incumbent and 45th president of the United States Donald J Trump- who is a bad president. On June 26, 2018 this publication made the prediction that Donald Trump would be

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no gradient in 2019

no gradient was established on 2017 September 26. Here’s the publication in 2019. viewership • 3,710 website views • 1,941 website visitors • 1,401 podcast downloads • 103 newsletter subscribers • 44 YouTube subscribers supporters Clark Burnap, Chris Derr, and Matt Buckley supported no gradient in 2019. no gradient costs ~$500

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the titan m chip is the most underrated pixel feature

Absent from reviews of the Pixel 4 is any mention of its most underrated feature- the Titan M chip. Introduced in the Pixel 3, the chip boasts security improvements across the board to the bootloader, lock screen, disk, third party apps, and firmware. Google offers a $1 million bounty reward

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oneplus and the elephant in the room

OnePlus is by all accounts making the most compelling Android phone on the market. It’s well deserved. OnePlus charges far less for a comparable or better experience than the competition. But something that has been completely absent from coverage of OnePlus is security. OnePlus is owned by Oppo, a

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41 predictions for the 2020s

A compilation of all no gradient predictions which will be resolved before the next decade. Unlike most publications, no gradient actually tracks the accuracy of every prediction it publishes. Check in on the prediction scorecard or subscribe to the newsletter to follow along on the accuracy of these predictions as

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What Dick’s Missed Since He Left

As no gradient interim editors, we would like to apologize for letting down the no gradient community, as well as Dick Lucas himself (aka Richard, aka Lakkis, aka Buzzy), who left us in charge of his legacy while he was away. It’s inexcusable, and we vow to make Dick

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Sawyer and Pat have arrived, Dick shall return

For Immediate Release: Los Angeles, California — no gradient today announced that Sawyer Billings will be joining as Managing Editor and Pat Daly as Assistant to the Managing Editor. A fortunate addition given founder Dick Lucas will be on leave until 2020. My plan for no gradient is simple: keep it

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Apple will be Called to Account

Before 2030 Apple will be called to account by the United States government for their willingness to cooperate with the Chinese government. – Twitter Readers of no gradient will know that I’ve discussed this in my In 2018 and Facebook’s Feasible Future is Apple’s Fictitious Present posts. I

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Coinbase and the Future

Editor’s note: A business plan I wrote for Coinbase in late 2018. Publishing here for posterity. Today Coinbase has positioned itself as the most trusted cryptocurrency exchange with its perfect track record of security and its constant rollout of new products and features. More importantly though, it has established