dfi

M&A & Blockchain lawyer in NYC | Tweets not legal advice (email me) | Opinions are my own | DAO Council Member @FRWCCouncil | LocalLLM

[The Node Network @TheNode_Network]

SEC staff say Canton Coin is a "digital commodity" in a Nov. 3 no-action letter.

Staff won't recommend enforcement over programmatic minting without registration. Based on the requester's representations; staff view, no legal conclusion.

Disclosure: The Node holds Canton Coin.

[rohan @einrojo]

Just launched a brand new type of creative interface, built around the messy union of storytelling and ai video production. Its intuitive and unintimidating- but also insanely capable.

Fringe can,
- Search the web for media references
- Brainstorm and develop concepts with you
- Turn scripts into dynamic storyboards
- Use its own virtual computer for blocking, pre-viz, and post-production
- Write complex prompts and coordinate your refs to create videos
- Make targeted edits, rewrites, and regenerations
- Manage skills and context over long creative sessions
- Use blender for 3D motion references
- Edit your video from your notes
- Organizes all your assets into folders

And we're constantly adding a whole lot more.

[dfi @dfi]

@ViC305 @NousResearch Haha… a lot of folks asked me why I run local models last night. I forgot one of the important ones: I can be lazy and recklessly share my password with my agents.

Kidding aside, great guide!

[dfi @dfi]

#Nouscon2026

[Bloomberg @business]

Force majeure has long protected companies from acts of God. Now some borrowers want protection from acts of AI https://t.co/xPl9j845Rp

[Tristan @Tristan0x]

If you've ever wondered why smart TVs are so cheap, this is why.

@log4j rooted his Samsung and found an always-on hot mic, automatic content recognition, geolocation, network mapping, ad targeting and user profiling, shared with Samsung's "400 partners".

A lot of it can be blocked in <15 min, wrote a basic guide below.

What your TV is doing

The main culprit is ACR (automatic content recognition). Your TV screenshots what's on screen, fingerprints it, and sends it home to build your ad profile. Samsung does it every 500ms, LG every 10ms [1].

What is insane: it happens on connected devices too.
Plug in your laptop, your console, your work machine, and your TV can fingerprint that via HDMI [1].
He also found that if your Samsung doesn't have a mic, it'll look for one from a connected soundbar or bluetooth device.
https://t.co/vNdTnIQ6KF
It's on by default, and you likely agreed to it on the setup screen you clicked through in 10 seconds.

Step 1: Turn off ACR

Samsung: Terms & Privacy → Viewing Information Services
LG: Live Plus
Vizio: Viewing Data
Roku: "Use info from TV inputs"
Sony/Google TV: Samba Interactive TV

Menus vary by model, but those are the names to look for. While you're in there, opt out of interest-based ads, reset your advertising ID, decline every optional privacy agreement, turn off voice recognition, and delete apps you never open.

Step 2: Give smart devices their own network

Put the TV, cameras, speakers and vacuum on your router's guest/IoT network. The logic is simple: these devices rarely get patched. If one gets compromised (getting drastically more frequent with AI), it shouldn't be able to see your other devices or home network.

Step 3: Block trackers for the whole house with DNS-level filtering

NextDNS (cloud-based) is easy and has a solid free plan. Pi-hole is a little bit more work if you prefer self hosting. For simplicity we'll focus on the former.

1. Sign up at https://t.co/IwhafVWVM8 (free tier is plenty)
2. Privacy tab: add a blocklist (OISD is a good bet) and turn on Native Tracking Protection for Samsung, LG, Roku, Amazon (see attached image)
3. Setup tab: copy your endpoint
4. Paste it into your router's DNS settings as DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS (or use the IPs + "Link IP" if your router only does plain DNS)
5. Bonus: block outbound port 53 except to your router. Some devices hardcode their own DNS to get around you

Then open the NextDNS logs and watch how often your TV phones home. It's eye-opening. If an app or update breaks, find the domain in the logs and allowlist it.

Why they do this

TV prices are down 97% since 2000 [2]. Most of that is better manufacturing and brutal competition. But once margins on the hardware hit zero, the cost moved to you.

In Q3 2024, Vizio lost $6.7M selling TVs and made $115.8M in gross profit from ads and viewing data [3]. They've said on earnings calls that they keep TV prices low to grow the audience they sell to advertisers. Walmart bought them in 2024.

This isn't a conspiracy theory either. Vizio paid $2.2M to the FTC in 2017 for tracking 11 million TVs without consent. Last December, Texas sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL over ACR. Samsung and LG have since agreed to stop collecting that data without explicit consent [4].

TL;DR
1. ACR off
2. Ads + voice off
3. Smart devices on their own network
4. NextDNS filtering on the router

Sources:
[1] ACR study: https://t.co/S1IS8lXNbA
[2] Cost of US consumer goods: https://t.co/nclXELXcbd
[3] Vizio Q3 2024: https://t.co/CrVbwc9ZXk
[4] Texas v. Samsung: https://t.co/wFOUdeh1if

[Paul Kim @writeclimbrun]

in the age of AI, it remains satisfying to do a manual proof read. my merger agreement is artisanal.

[dfi @dfi]

@wikiwayne Benchmark for testing thinking-off? This is awesome! Was just searching for this earlier today. Trying to set up as-realtime-as-possible full local stack! Looks like deepseek 1017 it is!

[dfi @dfi]

My agent has set up a few virtual Linux machines on my Mac overnight. ~1-1.5gb per machine with Chrome and document editing tools. 100% in the background. I can now play Halo Reclaimer on CrossOver while my machine works in the background.

Huge unlock for @NousResearch Hermes!

[Cua @trycua]

1/ Hermes can now launch Cua Spaces.

When a task needs a computer, Hermes creates a Space on your Mac, Windows PC or Linux box, does the work there, and deletes it when it's done. You and your team can jump into the same Space while it works.

[Jamie Tso @jamietsohn]

Spent the last two weeks in SF and NYC talking to AI native law firms, GCs and academics. Here are my observations:

1. Part of the AI native law firm thesis is to build proprietary software that beats Harvey/Legora. But their most cracked lawyers that I have talked to won't even use the internal tool. They prefer their own harness on Claude Code or Codex.

2. Some people are convinced that certain AI native law firms were built just to become RL environments that generate real dataset for the labs.

3. Ex-BigLaw lawyers at AI natives miss working on headline deals (the ones that get you into Legal500 and Chambers & Partners).

4. BigLaw made its money running billion-dollar cross-border deals with multiple parties that agents can't run unsupervised. No AI native firm is doing that sort of work. BigLaw solved it by sorting out multi-jurisdictional licensing and regulatory issues across offices, with precise staffing. AI can potentially do the staffing part really well, but not the licensing part.

5. No AI native firm has a hiring strategy for 10x lawyers. They prefer hiring partners as their salesforce. The best 10x lawyers I know are still in BigLaw. AI natives need software-like margins so they focus on commoditized work that a model + purpose built harness can finish autonomously. And 10x lawyers enjoy doing non-routine, non-automatable tasks in the fastest way possible using AI.

6. The next frontier, if I am right, is full stack lawyers, lawyers who spot a new area of emerging practice and build productized service around that to monopolize a segment quickly (essentially turn your advice into an API that clients can run by BYOA). It's cheaper and easier than hiring partners to buy their client relationships. Specialist practices like tax, ERISA and regulatory have best chance of winning here.

[Eduard Faus Gil @eduardfausgil]

I reverse engineered Pocket and made it 10X better.

Right now: the app is full of ads, the microphone is low quality, it constantly misspells peoples names, and has no agentic features.

I changed that.

[dfi @dfi]

If compression is intelligence this is one smart download… 🧠

[Cruz @ViC305]

🚨 𝗜 𝗝𝗨𝗦𝗧 𝗔𝗖𝗛𝗜𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗗 𝗦𝗢𝗠𝗘𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗜𝗡𝗖𝗥𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗕𝗟𝗘 𝗢𝗡 𝗢𝗡𝗘 𝗗𝗚𝗫 𝗦𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗞! 🧪🔥
With the support of @AWERXAI, I'm excited to release something VERY special for the local AI community!

🧠 @deepseek_ai 𝗗𝗲𝗲𝗽𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝗩𝟰.𝟭 𝗙𝗹𝗮𝘀𝗵 𝟭𝟬𝟭𝟳
📦 𝗦𝗔𝗚𝗘-𝗘𝗫𝗟𝟯 𝗮𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝟭.𝟲𝟮 𝗯𝗽𝘄 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘀
💻 𝟵𝟵.𝟲𝟭% 𝗖𝗢𝗗𝗘 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿-𝘁𝗼𝗸𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁!
⚡ 𝟯𝟱.𝟱 𝘁𝗼𝗸/𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗟𝗟𝗠!
🚀 𝟭,𝟭𝟴𝟵 𝘁𝗼𝗸/𝘀 𝗠𝗔𝗫 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗙𝗜𝗟𝗟!
🧠 𝟮𝟮𝟵𝗞 𝗖𝗧𝗫 (𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝘂𝘀𝗵 𝗶𝘁 𝗳𝘂𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿!)
𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗢𝗡 𝗢𝗡𝗘. 𝗗𝗚𝗫. 𝗦𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗞. 🤯

And YES, the quantized weights are AVAILABLE NOW! 💚
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🧪 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗟𝗔𝗦𝗧 𝟳𝟮 𝗛𝗢𝗨𝗥𝗦 𝗛𝗔𝗩𝗘 𝗕𝗘𝗘𝗡 𝗜𝗡𝗦𝗔𝗡𝗘!

Just a few days ago, I published my article about @nvidiaai's FP4-Local format: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.

One thing really stuck with me...

NVIDIA demonstrated what was possible when aggressive quantization and intelligent optimization come together.

But there's a problem.

𝗥𝗘𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗗𝗨𝗖𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗠𝗔𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗤𝗨𝗔𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗭𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗜𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗣𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗦 𝗜𝗦 𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗢𝗙 𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗖𝗛 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗠𝗢𝗦𝗧 𝗟𝗢𝗖𝗔𝗟 𝗔𝗜 𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗛𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗔𝗦𝗧𝗦.

That inspired me.

I've been developing my own SAGE-EXL3 process, and I wanted to see just how far I could push the latest DeepSeek Flash release while keeping the results accessible to the community.

So I spent the last 72 hours pushing the limits.

And the results genuinely surprised me! 🔥

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🏆 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗨𝗟𝗧𝗦 𝗔𝗥𝗘 𝗖𝗥𝗔𝗭𝗬!

I measured my 1.62 bpw expert quant against DeepSeek's native FP4 release checkpoint using held-out sequences and full-vocabulary token predictions.

And when I saw the CODE results, I could barely believe it!

🧪 𝗙𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬 𝗩𝗦 𝗗𝗘𝗘𝗣𝗦𝗘𝗘𝗞'𝗦 𝗡𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗙𝗣𝟴/𝗙𝗣𝟰 𝗥𝗘𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗘

💻 𝗖𝗢𝗗𝗘 — 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗘𝘃𝗮𝗹

✅ 99.08% Top-1 Agreement
✅ 𝟵𝟵.𝟲𝟭% 𝗔𝗡𝗦𝗪𝗘𝗥-𝗢𝗡𝗟𝗬 𝗔𝗚𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧!
✅ KL Divergence: 0.0186

🧠 𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗢𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚 — 𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗛-𝟱𝟬𝟬

✅ 96.04% Top-1 Agreement
✅ 97.98% Answer-Only Agreement
✅ KL Divergence: 0.0349

🔢 𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗛 — 𝗚𝗦𝗠𝟴𝗞

✅ 95.56% Top-1 Agreement
✅ 94.19% Answer-Only Agreement
✅ KL Divergence: 0.0477
📊 𝗢𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗛𝗘𝗟𝗗-𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗙𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬
🏆 94.52% Top-1 Agreement
📉 Mean KL: 0.0982
🎯 Median KL: 0.00019

𝗡𝗘𝗔𝗥-𝗟𝗢𝗦𝗦𝗟𝗘𝗦𝗦 𝗖𝗢𝗗𝗘 𝗧𝗢𝗞𝗘𝗡 𝗙𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬 𝗔𝗧 𝗝𝗨𝗦𝗧 𝟭.𝟲𝟮 𝗕𝗣𝗪 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗧𝗦! 🤯

These are direct teacher-forced fidelity measurements against native FP8, not task-level pass rates.
But seeing this level of agreement at such aggressive compression is EXACTLY what I was working toward!
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⚡ 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗬𝗘𝗦, 𝗜𝗧 𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗨𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗬 𝗥𝗨𝗡𝗦 𝗢𝗡 𝗢𝗡𝗘 𝗦𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗞!

Not two Sparks.
Not four Sparks.
Not an expensive rented GPU cluster.

𝗢𝗡𝗘 𝟭𝟮𝟴𝗚𝗕 𝗗𝗚𝗫 𝗦𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗞.

My latest vLLM measurements:
⚡ Decode: 35.5 tok/s
🚀 Maximum measured prefill: 1,189 tok/s
For a model this large, compressed this aggressively, and maintaining this level of fidelity...

𝗧𝗛𝗔𝗧'𝗦 𝗔 𝗕𝗜𝗚 𝗗𝗘𝗔𝗟 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗟𝗢𝗖𝗔𝗟 𝗔𝗜! 💚

And remember, 1.62 bpw refers to the routed experts, not every parameter in the full model.

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💚 𝗪𝗛𝗬 𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗦 𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦.

I have a simple goal.

𝗠𝗔𝗞𝗘 𝗣𝗢𝗪𝗘𝗥𝗙𝗨𝗟 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗖𝗖𝗘𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗕𝗟𝗘 𝗧𝗢 𝗣𝗘𝗢𝗣𝗟𝗘 𝗪𝗛𝗢 𝗗𝗢𝗡'𝗧 𝗛𝗔𝗩𝗘 𝗔𝗖𝗖𝗘𝗦𝗦 𝗧𝗢 𝗗𝗔𝗧𝗔𝗖𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦.

I don't want the future of local AI to be determined by who can rent the most GPUs or afford the largest training runs.

I want developers, independent researchers and enthusiasts to have the freedom to experiment, quantize, optimize and run powerful models on hardware they actually OWN.

NVIDIA's FP4-Local research showed me just how much potential remains in aggressive quantization.

My goal with SAGE-EXL3 is to keep pushing that frontier while making advanced quantization more practical for the wider community.

Today, I'm sharing the quantized checkpoint and the one-Spark serving recipe.

𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗦 𝗜𝗦 𝗝𝗨𝗦𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗕𝗘𝗚𝗜𝗡𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚.

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🧪 𝗡𝗢𝗪 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗟 𝗧𝗘𝗦𝗧!

The token-level fidelity results are incredible, but I'm not stopping there.

I'm currently running a broader evaluation campaign to measure how closely this quant preserves the native FP8 model's actual task performance.

💻 HumanEval+ / MBPP+
🧠 MMLU-Pro STEM / MATH-500
🔬 SciCode / LiveCodeBench
🔧 BFCL / Multi-step tool chains
🌍 MGSM

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗚𝗢𝗔𝗟 𝗜𝗦 𝗧𝗢 𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗩𝗘 𝗧𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗔𝗚𝗚𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗗𝗢𝗘𝗦𝗡'𝗧 𝗛𝗔𝗩𝗘 𝗧𝗢 𝗠𝗘𝗔𝗡 𝗔𝗚𝗚𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗤𝗨𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬 𝗟𝗢𝗦𝗦!

Those task-level results are coming next! 👀

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👀 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗢𝗡𝗘 𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗧𝗟𝗘 𝗧𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗘𝗥...

@mr_r0b0t and I have also been working on an GB10 specialized inference engine called 𝗥𝗘𝗫𝗟𝟯.

Early testing has been VERY exciting, including 60 tok/s with bursts reaching 74tok/s!

We're putting the finishing touches on it and making sure everything is solid before releasing it.

More on that VERY soon. 😏

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🙏 𝗔 𝗛𝗨𝗚𝗘 𝗧𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗞 𝗬𝗢𝗨!

To @AWERXAI for supporting my work and helping make this contribution to the community possible.

To @nvidiaai for the FP4-Local research that inspired me to push this experiment even further.

To @justinn_builds for his initial vllm TP4 recipe that got me started in the right direction for loading this model up.

To @mr_r0b0t for collaborating with me on what's coming next!

And to @deepseek_ai for continuing to release powerful open-weight models that make community experiments like this possible.

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗕𝗘𝗦𝗧 𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗧 𝗢𝗙 𝗢𝗣𝗘𝗡 𝗔𝗜 𝗜𝗦 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗠𝗨𝗡𝗜𝗧𝗬 𝗖𝗔𝗡 𝗕𝗨𝗜𝗟𝗗 𝗢𝗡 𝗧𝗢𝗣 𝗢𝗙 𝗜𝗧. 💚

🔗 𝗗𝗢𝗪𝗡𝗟𝗢𝗔𝗗 𝗠𝗬 𝗦𝗔𝗚𝗘-𝗘𝗫𝗟𝟯
https://t.co/7CY9ByTjMu

🛠️ 𝗢𝗡𝗘-𝗦𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗥𝗘𝗖𝗜𝗣𝗘
https://t.co/MTqzscYuff

𝗢𝗡𝗘 𝗦𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗞.
𝟭.𝟲𝟮 𝗕𝗣𝗪 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗧𝗦.
𝟵𝟵.𝟲𝟭% 𝗖𝗢𝗗𝗘 𝗔𝗡𝗦𝗪𝗘𝗥 𝗔𝗚𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧.

𝗟𝗘𝗧'𝗦 𝗞𝗘𝗘𝗣 𝗣𝗨𝗦𝗛𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗟𝗢𝗖𝗔𝗟 𝗔𝗜 𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗗! 🚀🔥

[dfi @dfi]

@Tech2Wild Ha! I didn’t realize that’s even funnier. You should put together a skill that calls a simple script to empty it. Call it “SSD optimizer” or something.

[dfi @dfi]

Dear Opus: Kindly move these files into the trash can for temporary storage. This is in pursuit of a more long term storage plan and will in no way erase these files.

[Tech2Wild @Tech2Wild]

So @AnthropicAI just rolled out something where it will NOT DELETE anything off your hardware anymore even when you ask it to. I wonder if this is GOOD or BAD, I run alot of things headless so it is stupid for me.

[dfi @dfi]

@mmastrac Perhaps more importantly the energy cost can be 50% higher for an extra couple of tokens a second. Is that really needed?! Huge waste of energy.

[dfi @dfi]

@Reederey Hope Nvidia starts putting out optimized FP4 quants more often and quicker! Hope we get a 4.1 flash 1017 soon to compare apples to apples 😁

[Jason McCartney @jmacftw]

We're in the what may be the most transformative decade in all of human history. Here's your reminder to take a deep breath and appreciate where in time and space you are.

"If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

[dfi @dfi]

@d0tslash @Halo Incredible!

[dfi @dfi]

@MiaAI_lab @nk1975 🔥