Field Notes · 11 Jul 2026
Best explained
MicroStrategy's Bitcoin sales fall into an uncapped 'cover the preferreds' bucket, meaning there is no ceiling on how much BTC they may sell to meet preferred share obligations.
By the numbers
Analyst Michael Nato assigns a 65% probability that Bitcoin has not bottomed and will reach lower lows, with only 45% odds the bottom is already in.
New today — Evidence added
Anthropic's J-Space training method pauses a model mid-task, applies supervised training on approved reflective responses, and the resulting concepts then appear in the model's global working memory even in non-reflective…
Nathan LabenzInstagram is restructuring from teams of roughly 13 people to pods of 4 to 6 engineers plus a product staff generalist, a shift initiated in 2026.
Adam MosseriNew today — Sharp calls
GPUs typically run at only 10 to 20 percent of peak bandwidth and memory resources. SambaNova's architecture targets 70 to 80 percent utilization.
Kunle OlukotunApproximately 95% of the increase in gold's share of foreign exchange reserves is attributable to price appreciation, not active central bank buying.
Josh BrownA team of 10 people can produce a full 10-minute feature movie in 3 weeks using Higgsfield's AI platform.
Alex MashrabovNew today — Useful context
Data center water consumption in the US is approximately 0.017% of total US water consumption.
Benedict EvansTool watch
Conductor introduced a pattern where a user-submitted prompt triggers an AI agent to implement a feature request directly, a workflow likely to spread to other products.
Worth quoting
“All of our money is made with the uncoachable ones.”Chamath Palihapitiya
“The implementation is actually not the expensive part anymore. It's dare I say taste.”Andrew Ambrosino
“The transformers can't plan but they can do a very good job of pretending essentially that is in a sense.”François Chollet
“Cocoa is to cocaine what potatoes are to vodka.”Andrew Weil
“I personally favor a soft lean and done approach to Ethereum once the straw map is completed.”Vitalik Buterin
“Something like 46% of the emperors of Constantinople are overthrown through violence. 46%. And that's almost half.”Anthony Kaldellis