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aaronharnly

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Aaron Harnly, CTO of https://amplify.com, working with amazing people bringing meaningful technology into the classroom for teachers and learners. Reach me at (firstname)@harnly.net.

Opinions expressed are my own.

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danmeyer.substack.com 1y ago

In Edtech, You Either Bet on Teachers or You Have to Build One

aaronharnly
1pts0
www.nytimes.com 2y ago

Mars Needs Insects

aaronharnly
3pts1
danmeyer.substack.com 2y ago

Personalized learning can feel isolating. Whole class learning can feel personal

aaronharnly
189pts220
www.nytimes.com 2y ago

He Was Just the I.T. Guy. Then He Got Caught in the Trump Documents Case

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www.nytimes.com 3y ago

A Drug Maker Profited by Slow-Walking a Promising HIV Therapy

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37pts8
danmeyer.substack.com 3y ago

AI Chatbots Will Help Students Learn Nothing Faster Than Ever

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news.ycombinator.com 3y ago

Ask HN: Internally-Hosted ChatGPT Proxy?

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www.nytimes.com 3y ago

Ukraine plans to rebuild the colossal Mriya cargo plane

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2pts0
en.wikipedia.org 3y ago

Amazon Molly Reproduction

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2pts0
github.com 3y ago

Light-Switch-AI: The world's most needlessly intelligent light switch

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1pts0
blog.desmos.com 4y ago

Desmos Classroom Joins Forces with Amplify

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3pts0
www.bleepingcomputer.com 4y ago

Microsoft Skype makes you solve a complex captcha 10 times to sign up

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3pts0
finance.yahoo.com 4y ago

Amplify Raises $215M in a Growth Funding Round

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en.wikipedia.org 5y ago

Masquerade (Book)

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1pts0
www.nytimes.com 5y ago

Trump Steered Supporters into Unwitting Donations

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14pts2
www.nytimes.com 6y ago

How ultra-black fish disappear in the deepest seas

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122pts32
nypost.com 6y ago

Cashless retail businesses are now banned in NYC

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30pts15
www.nytimes.com 6y ago

Robot’s Journey to an Icy Alien Moon Starts Beneath Antarctica

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1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 6y ago

Ask HN: Securely finding the intersection of two lists?

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12pts9
www.nytimes.com 6y ago

EPA to Limit Science Used to Write Public Health Rules

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5pts1
onezero.medium.com 7y ago

How Will Facebook’s Libra “Blockchain” Work? An Expert Guide

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3pts0
twitter.com 7y ago

Impersonator posted fake jobs, interviewed candidates, stole direct deposit info

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7pts0
news.ycombinator.com 7y ago

Ask HN: Why doesn't software have credits screens anymore?

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8pts5
en.wikipedia.org 7y ago

Zero Rupee Note

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771pts235
twitter.com 7y ago

Widespread “New Device” Alerts from Google

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2pts0
www.cabinetmagazine.org 7y ago

Language at the End of the World (2017)

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74pts6
news.ycombinator.com 7y ago

Ask HN: Best Practices for Data Dictionaries?

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4pts0
www.wired.com 7y ago

The ‘Future Book’ is here, but it’s not what we expected

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6pts0
www.fastcompany.com 7y ago

Inside Laurene Powell Jobs’s big bet on digital curriculum

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1pts0
www.fastcompany.com 7y ago

Inside Laurene Powell Jobs’s big bet on digital curriculum

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1pts0

Straight out of Gatsby:

A stout, middle-aged man, with enormous owl-eyed spectacles, was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.

“What do you think?” he demanded impetuously.

“About what?” He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.

“About that. As a matter of fact you needn’t bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They’re real.”

“The books?”

He nodded.

“Absolutely real — have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real. Pages and — Here! Lemme show you.”

Taking our scepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the “Stoddard Lectures.”

“See!” he cried triumphantly. “It’s a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too — didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?”

He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf, muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse.

I have no idea how reliable this source is, but it looks plausible - from the "American Investment Council", which appears to be some kind of private equity trade association ( https://www.investmentcouncil.org )

https://www.psprs.com/uploads/sites/1/AIC_PublicPensionRepor...

Some interesting details:

- "Nearly 50 percent of the private equity investment dollars that make their way into American businesses come from public pension funds", which substantiates OP's thesis.

- "U.S. public pension funds invest 9% of their portfolios in private equity, on a dollar-weighted basis." 46% is in public equity, so obviously the lion's share is in still in public markets.

Polypad 2 months ago

Yes – CTO of Amplify here.

As a sibling poster notes, the Desmos calculator and math tools spun out to Desmos Studio PBC, which has a bunch of great people – with the goal of ensuring those remain available to all and not tied to a single curriculum provider. The Desmos Classroom tools for social, interactive classroom instruction, and another bunch of great colleagues, are part of Amplify, which together with Polypad and other tooling, make up Amplify Classroom ( https://classroom.amplify.com ), powering terrific IMO math, science and English curricula.

It's been a lot of fun – and a lot of tricky work! – bringing all of these tools and humans together.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that we are hiring, including for Software Engineer, Analytics Engineer, Data Engineer, and AI Engineer positions at various levels :)

https://amplify.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/Amplify_Careers

This is exactly true and it’s what every SaaS company counts on. They have four basic moves:

1. Sell you X seats, expecting that internal network effects will get you to 3X soon enough.

2. Sell you X seats, noting that as soon you reach 2X seats, you need to move to the Enterprise plan, under which largely the same feature set plus a couple of gated SCIM controls will cost twice as much.

3. Sell you X seats for their core product, then announce that features B and C are actually an additional SKU that requires additional per-seat subscriptions that double the cost.

4. Sell you X seats for their core product, then immediately announce that you’re on a “legacy plan”, but they’re happy to move you now to their updated offering, which is the same product but now structured to cost twice as much.

Yes, once you’re over some threshold (most recently 150 seats), you have to pay the per-seat fee PLUS usage.

And once you can make a certain threshold of commit, the seats are free and all you pay is usage. They are definitely making a margin on the usage.

In other words, this article is, I wouldn’t say misinformed, but definitely underinformed.

Yeah, as I was toggling "blue" / "green" / "blue" / "green" I had the distinct sensation that it might just show me that I was in a region where I couldn't even make a consistent distinction.

I have a Tin Can for my 8 year old – it is terrific and he loves it. He can call friends, grandparents, and his cousins; it is more reliable than the DIY version I was cobbling together with a Pi and some Legos; and my spouse or parents can supervise or update it too.

This is the Truth Social post, which the article quotes but doesn't quite convey the flavor of:

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1161445529692...

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS! That decision belongs to YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, and the tremendous leaders I appoint to run our Military.

The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution. Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.

Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again! There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic’s products, at various levels. Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.

WE will decide the fate of our Country — NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

  PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/us/politics/anthropic-mil...

Text (it is short):

President Trump on Friday ordered all federal agencies to stop using artificial intelligence technology made by Anthropic, an order that could vastly complicate intelligence analysis and defense work.

Writing on Truth Social, Mr. Trump used harsh words for Anthropic calling it a “radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about.”

Still, Mr. Trump announced a “Six Month phase out” for the Pentagon and some other agencies, a period of time that could allow for more extended negotiations between Anthropic and the Defense Department. Calling the company “Leftwing nut jobs,” he said they had made a mistake trying to strong-arm the Pentagon.

Mr. Trump’s statement came as the Pentagon and Anthropic were, despite an escalating war of words, continuing to negotiate a compromise. While some current and former American officials had expressed hope of some sort of deal before the Pentagon’s 5:01 p.m. deadline, Mr. Trump’s comments will undoubtedly complicate matters.

The Truth Social post, which is, well, you can decide for yourself: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1161445529692...

xAI joins SpaceX 6 months ago

I concur it’s not necessarily totally absurd — but when you consider that such contraptions require large — very large! — receiving arrays to be built on the ground, it’s hard to avoid concluding that building gigantic photovoltaic arrays in, say Arizona (for the US) along with batteries for overnight buffering and transmission lines would still be massively more efficient.

To keep torturing the metaphor, LLMs might be more like those electric unicycles (Onewheel, Inmotion, etc) – quite speedy, can get you places, less exercise, and also sometimes suddenly choke and send you flying facefirst into gravel.

And some people see you whizzing by and think "oh cool", and others see you whizzing by and think "what a tool."

The intern was reportedly shaken, so McBurney offered to drive him home. ICE agents then surrounded the judge’s car and demanded everyone to exit the vehicle, threatening to smash in the windows if they did not comply.

Dana Smith, Head of Security Operations for R.I. Superior Court, confronted the agents and told both the judge and the intern to stay inside the car. After an argument, ICE confirmed they had misidentified the teen and left. The intern was released once his ID was checked.

Bravo to the head of security for the court for holding his ground and defending the judge and intern.

What if a self-driving car accepted as input the muttered opinion of every adult and child in the car, as well as transcripts of all of our in-laws and friends phone calls as to where the car should go?

Well, the subset of stations that pulled the show were the ones owned by a (right-wing) company, Nexstar, that has proposed a merger that is up for FCC review. It wasn’t fear of being punished for allowing a “falsehood” on the air, it was pursuit of favorable treatment from a political appointee.

This sentence was a bit cute: "Waymo has received our pilot permit allowing for commercial operations at San Francisco International Airport." Yeah, that kind of pilot.

I really had to read through it twice to make sure they were just talking about car taxis picking up travelers, rather than some kind of prototype pilotless commuter helicopter or something.