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Time to Take a Stand
It is time for tech companies to start speaking up about some of the actions taken by President Trump’s administration. There are many actions from his first week that are objectionable. In...
Sam Altman
- Popular posts
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Visit blog.samaltman.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Mar 2013 – Apr 2026
Tech Industry & Business 79Startups 36Society, Policy & Culture 27Life, Learning & Writing 16Career & Management 14AI & Machine Learning 7
2
Keep the Internet Open
The FCC has announced plans to roll back policies on net neutrality, and its new head has indicated he has no plan to stop soon. The internet is a public good, and I believe access should be a...
3
Affordable Care
The Affordable Care Act is far from perfect–for one thing, I think health insurance should be entirely separate from employment–but I hate the thought of losing it without a replacement for people...
4
E Pur Si Muove
Earlier this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco. I didn’t feel...
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American Equity
I’d like feedback on the following idea. I think that every adult US citizen should get an annual share of the US GDP. I believe that owning something like a share in America would align all of...
6
Net neutrality
When there is a structural reason consumers don’t have freedom of choice, and the free market can’t work, consumers need minimal protection from the government so that they don’t get abused. We...
7
The 2016 Election
I am endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. I've never endorsed a presidential candidate before, but I'm making an exception this year, because this election is exceptional. Donald Trump...
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What I Heard from Trump Supporters
After the election, I decided to talk to 100 Trump voters from around the country. I went to the middle of the country, the middle of the state, and talked to many online. This was a...
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Housing in the Bay Area
Jerry Brown has proposed legislation that would allow a lot more housing to be built in the Bay Area, and hopefully significantly reduce the cost of housing here. More supply should lead to lower...
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The Software Revolution
In human history, there have been three great technological revolutions and many smaller ones. The three great ones are the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and the one we are...
11
H5N1
Most of the time, we worry far too much about tail risk. We worry about terrorist attacks and necrotizing fasciitis, but not much about heart disease or car crashes. But in 2011, 17 US citizens...
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Funding for Covid-19 Projects
I’m trying to fund startups/projects helping with COVID-19, because it’s basically the one thing I know how to do that can help. I think we will soon have enough testing capacity, so now I’d like...
13
Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident
Here is a photo of my family. I love them more than anything. Images have power, I hope. Normally we try to be pretty private, but in this case I am sharing a photo in the...
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The US digital service
A lot of us complain about how the government is not very good at technology. The U.S. Digital Service is actually trying to do something about it, by applying the way startups build products to...
15
Energy
I think a lot about how important cheap, safe, and abundant energy is to our future. A lot of problems—economic, environmental, war, poverty, food and water availability, bad side effects of...
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The Founder Visa (again)
Nearly 5 years ago, Paul Graham first proposed the founder visa. There has been a lot of discussion since, but nothing has happened. Maybe he was too ambitious in asking for 10,000 startup...
17
Trump
I'm going to say something very unpopular in my world: Trump is right about some big things. He's right that many Americans are getting screwed by the system. He’s right that the economy is not...
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Don't Read the Comments
I sent this email to the current YC batch this morning: I've talked to some of you who are really bummed about negative press coverage or online comments about your company. Often this takes...
19
China
The most important story of 2014 that most people ignored was the Chinese economy overtaking the US economy. (This is using the purchasing power parity metric, which incorporates differences in...
20
The Gentle Singularity
We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence, and at least so far it’s much less weird than it seems like it should be. Robots...
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The Economy
I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago in which I said macroeconomic collapse “may happen” and a few friends asked me why. To be clear, I don’t think it’s the likely outcome—I think we’ll find a way...
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What I've Learned From Female Founders So Far
On the whole, I got a great response to my request for feedback about how YC could encourage female founders. It's clear there are two separate problems: 1) Some women already starting startups...
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What happened to innovation?
There’s a lot of debate about whether or not the pace of innovation has slowed, and if so, what that means. After some particularly brutal pitches that felt like Saturday Night Live parodies of...
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Tech Workers' Values
For good and bad, technology has become a central force in all our lives. As members of the community, we're interested in ways in which tech companies can use their collective power to protect...
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A Question
I have a question for all the people that use their iPhone or Android to complain on Twitter, Facebook, or reddit about the lack of innovation… Or message their friends on WhatsApp or Snapchat...
26
$1M VotePlz Sweepstakes
The 2016 US Presidential election feels like the most important one so far in my lifetime. No one able to vote in the US should be sitting this one out—we have a major choice to make. With some...
27
Airbnb and San Francisco
Airbnb has recently been attacked by San Francisco politicians for driving up the price of housing in the city. San Francisco has tried, and will continue to try, to ban Airbnb in various ways....