shaunjohn

General Intuition | The frontier research lab dedicated to games—and the real world. We build foundation models for environments that require deep spatial and temporal reasoning.

The next big thing will start out looking like a toy...or even a research lab for games.

Enter General Intuition, and its $133.7M seed round. Stay tuned.
www.generalintuition.com

Reddit Vault Basics Vault will be removed after January 1, 2026. You will need to export your Vault if you wish to maintain access to your blockchain wallet. See our announcement and instructions for how to export you...

Reddit and web3 share so much common DNA that it's a shame to see their NFT digital wallet, Reddit Vault, be sunsetted. And we were so close to swapping Karma for crypto 🤏🏾
support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/art...

Welcome | xAI xAI is an AI company with the mission of advancing scientific discovery and gaining a deeper understanding of our universe.

Which is harder valuation to grok — picks, shovels, or the resources?

Groq is a chip company valued at $6.9b, focused on manufacturing AI inference hardware.

Grok is an AI model from x.AI, which recently raised on a $200b valuation for its parent enterprise.

Stellar | Blockchain Infrastructure: Open Highways vs. Private Railroads Explore the critical need for open blockchain infrastructure to prevent monopolies and ensure equal access, innovation, and trust for all users.

"We've seen this pattern before — in railroads, telecommunications, and the internet itself. The lesson is always the same: infrastructure works best when it's accessible to everyone, controlled by no one."

stellar.org/blog/foundat...

Don’t bet against Polymarket. In 2022, market regulators aimed to ban it. Today, one of the most regulated securities exchanges is backing it by the billions.
What are the odds 🎲 ?
www.reuters.com/business/nys...

To (get into YC), you must know them. Not simply their battle tactics, but their history, philosophy, art.
ycarena.com/index

Meta plans to sell targeted ads based on data in your AI chats | TechCrunch Meta plans to use data from your interactions with AI products to sell targeted ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Privacy is absolutely a right, but absolute privacy isn’t free.

"There is no way to opt out, according to Meta. The privacy changes are another reminder that free products from Big Tech companies often come with strings attached."

techcrunch.com/2025/10/01/m...

“A model is a lie that helps you see the truth.”
— Howard Skipper

Smartphone use on the toilet and the risk of hemorrhoids Smartphones are ubiquitous in daily life, with many people now using them while sitting on the toilet. Despite anecdotal evidence that length of time spent on the toilet is a risk factor for…

For those of you looking to push out a few more percentages of productivity by taking your phone into the loo with you...guess what else is rising by the percentage? Work-life balance isn't just for balancing home & business, but also wherever you do your business🚽
journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

We got your phone tapped...but don't worry, we'll pay you for it...what could go wrong!?
www.businessinsider.com/neon-mobile-...

Stellar’s Flagship Meridian Conference Focused on RWAs and Emerging Markets - "The Defiant" Stellar, an OG Layer 1 founded in 2014, just wrapped up its flagship annual conference, where the focus was on growing its decentralized finance (DeFi) and real-world assets (RWA) ecosystems.

"If there is a place for stablecoins, for blockchain to thrive, I think Rio is the best place."

Obrigado, Brasil. Muito Obrigado 🇧🇷
thedefiant.io/news/blockch...

UNGA 80 & NYC Climate Week are kicking off with (sustainably) electrifying energy🔋 ⚡

Just don't expect a beeline path to get anywhere until the closing sessions 🗺️🧭

Anti-Scheming Apollo Research & OpenAI find that anti-scheming training in frontier AI models significantly reduced covert behaviours, but did not eliminate them.

Isaac Asimov's Zeroth Law of Robotics states that “a robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm” and this law supersedes the original three...unless AGI has it's fingers crossed.
www.antischeming.ai

Noble Mobile – Get Paid to Use Your Phone Less | $50/month Unlimited 5G Plan The first phone plan that pays you to scroll less and end the brainrot. $50/month unlimited talk, text, and data with no hidden fees.

I’ve known Andrew Yang for years — since the start of Venture for America through his Presidential pursuits — he’s always been a movement builder. Now, Yang Gang is going mobile.
noblemobile.com

How Gen Z protestors chose Nepal’s first woman prime minister on Discord Over the week, multiple polls were held by representatives of the protest movement on Discord to nominate possible leaders and Karki emerged as a favourite, widely praised for her integrity

Democracy on a Discord server. National democracy on a Discord server. This is where Nepal is & it's reminiscent of older social media interventions.

Whether the parallel will be Facebook & Crimson Hexagon, or Twitter & the Arab Spring -- we shall see🇳🇵
www.independent.co.uk/asia/south-a...

As another crypto exchange ($GEMI) goes public on a stock exchange to much fanfare, NASDAQ itself is quietly seeking to become a crypto exchange of sorts☯️
www.nasdaq.com/newsroom/qa-...

Unauthorized OpenAI Equity Transactions All OpenAI equity is subject to transfer restrictions. This means that OpenAI equity cannot be directly or indirectly transferred unless the seller first obtains OpenAI’s written consent. Any…

Nobody wins when the family feuds. Or more specifically, AI shareholders of tokenized stocks lose when web3 principles of immutable ownership clash with centralized structures' control of OpenAI's secondaries.
openai.com/policies/una...

White Star Capital wants to lead Canadian seed rounds with new $50-million USD fund | BetaKit The VC firm has closed $25 million USD to back more early-stage Canadian software startups.

How bout that new $50m fund by White Star Capital, eh? 🇨🇦 Congrats to investor friends in the Great White North on their latest seed fund 💰
betakit.com/white-star-c...

Your Tuesday in 2030 Or why The Browser Company is being acquired to bring Dia to the masses.

Atlassian acquiring The Browser Company for $610m in an all cash deal is a great outcome, great for NYC tech, and all...but when's Perplexity buying Chrome browser though...? 👀
browsercompany.substack.com/p/your-tuesd...

U.S. Department of Commerce and Chainlink Bring Economic Data Onchain Chainlink worked with the United States Department of Commerce to bring U.S. government macroeconomic data onchain.

Trustless Government Data is such a double entendre, through this is such a great opportunity for oracles 🔮
blog.chain.link/united-state...

AI agents need intent-based blockchain infrastructure AI agents pose a centralization threat to Web3, but intent-based infrastructure can solve this while maintaining decentralization and improving user experience.

"Today’s agents are based on black box large-language models (LLMs) that are unverifiable and prone to hallucinations. This is a dangerous combination when it comes to managing sensitive financial data."

Opinion by: Adrian Brink, co-founder of Anoma.
cointelegraph.com/news/intent-...

Of course, when those companies break out, investors rewrite history and call it a “thesis.”
bit.ly/45V8i38

In the rarest cases, you’ll back founders who invent categories so big they look obvious to Sand Hill Road only in hindsight. But that isn’t about being “consensus” or “non-consensus.” It’s usually just a messy mix of hard work, skill, and luck.

Then one day, you meet a truly special founder. That’s when it matters to move faster than the funds waiting for Monday partner meetings. To decide, commit, and win the right to invest before the market catches on.

It comes from sitting through thousands of meetings that mostly feel like wasted time. From enduring dry spells where you wonder if you’re even good at this.

Alpha is still out there. But it doesn’t come from LARPing contrarian. It comes from knowing what you believe in and moving faster than others.

Canva's $10B pre-IPO premium on its employee share sale may make for the secondary deal to watch.

Will the premium still be eclipsed by Figma-like opening day price movements? Will avoiding the lock-up bring staff a payday or regrets in 180 days?

If MIT NANDA's latest report shows 95% of organizations are getting zero return from GenAI...who are the 5% and how are they so loud? 🗣️
mlq.ai/media/quarte...

It took Mark Cagney 10 years to take SoFi ($SOFI) public as a tradfi lending solution 🐌
It may take him 3 years to take Figure ($FIGR) public as a defi lending solution 🐆

PhD-level reasoning...smarter but slower.

This is one of the GPT-5 tradeoffs frustrating folks about the ChatGPT upgrade.