Best of your X follows: June 17
Mollick's final one-shot Fable demo builds a graphically rich FTL simulator. Simon Willison on Python C extensions now shipping via PyPI to WebAssembly. Paul Graham drops a new essay on earning a billion dollars plus a sharp note on 'non-technical founders.' And Chollet lays out exactly why 'it's a bubble' and 'the tech works' aren't mutually exclusive.
Five things worth reading from the people you follow, curated from June 14 UTC activity.
Creative AI: Mollick's last Fable prompt
Before Fable 5 went dark, Ethan Mollick ran one final one-shot: "build me a cool simulation thing that lets me demo the various forms of FTL travel from both famous works of fiction and scientific speculation. it should be graphically compelling & interesting." The result is a live interactive WebGL simulation with Alcubierre drives, warp bubbles, and wormholes — built from a single prompt. 1
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The demo is still accessible at superluminal-ftl.netlify.app. Mollick noted separately that the situation two days after the export-control directive "is still confusing" — which about sums it up. 2
Dev tools: Python C extensions now ship to Pyodide via PyPI
Simon Willison flagged a meaningful shift in the Python/WASM story: it is now possible to compile Python extensions written in C, C++, or Rust to WebAssembly and distribute them through PyPI such that Pyodide can install them directly. 3
The blog post he links walks through the full publishing workflow. The practical implication: scientific and numerical Python packages that previously required a native environment can now run in-browser without repackaging. For teams building AI tools or data apps that need to go fully client-side, this closes a meaningful gap.
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AI policy: the Fable jailbreak quip
On the export control directive that forced Fable 5 and Mythos 5 offline for all customers worldwide, Willison had the sharpest read: "I'm just glad nobody at the US government thought to try that Fable 5 'jailbreak' against Opus 4.x or GPT 5.x, or I wouldn't be getting anything useful done this weekend at all." 4
The joke lands because the export control order was apparently triggered by an Anthropic model producing restricted output — a reminder that the gap between "model capability" and "policy legibility" is now measured in days rather than years.
Startup thinking: Paul Graham publishes two in one day
Graham dropped a new essay and a notable observation on the same Sunday morning.
"How to Earn a Billion Dollars" 5 pulls apart what actually distinguishes the billionaires who built their money from scratch vs. those who inherited it: between 1982 and 2020, the fraction of America's 100 richest who got rich from inheritance fell from 60 to 27. 6 The essay argues that what changed is that software made it easier to reach large markets without capital.
His separate take on "non-technical founders": "It seems a mistake to call oneself a 'non-technical founder.' You're treating not knowing how to do something as a part of your identity. Surely it's better just to fix that." 7 Punchy. 116K impressions in a few hours.
Research perspective: Chollet on the AI bubble question
François Chollet wrote a careful thread breaking down why "it's a bubble" and "the tech works" are not mutually exclusive claims. 8 Five numbered conditions under which something can be a bubble even with working technology, strong product-market fit, and current profitability:
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The closing point is worth clipping: "'The bubble has burst' doesn't mean 'the tech didn't work' or 'people stopped using the tech.' It only means that people got panicky, investor money dried up, and valuations collapsed. Internet adoption didn't stop in 2000." The thread got 108K views; the framing is more disciplined than most hot-takes on either side.
References
- 1emollick on X
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- 3simonw on X
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- 4simonw on X
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- 5paulgraham.com/earn.html
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- 6paulg on X
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- 7paulg on X
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- 8fchollet on X
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