Steve Pronovost

VP, Distinguished Engineer @Microsoft leading the @Windows Graphics and Display Kernel team behind the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM), vGPU, WSLg.

[@jason @Jason]

Get ready for all of the investors in frontier model companies to suddenly flip to regulatory capture mode today

Their investments in frontier model companies are currently at risk/capped because the biggest buyers of tokens are embracing open-source models: vertical AI companies, the government and enterprises

That’s all this is about: stopping open source — which I’ve been saying on the pod for two years

If you want safety, you want disclosure — and open source is the ultimate disclosure process

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

Dario has written that we need to “pace the frontier,” and Sam has agreed. People may be surprised by my response: go ahead.

You guys are the frontier. By any reasonable metric — market share, revenue growth, model capability — the two of you have a duopoly on frontier intelligence. You’ve also claimed the lead is widening because of recursive self-improvement.

I don’t see what you see in the lab. If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible.

But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability. Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. Stop pretending you need those same evaluators to police competitors who aren’t even at the frontier.

Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack. The market already punishes models that behave in unpredictable or unauthorized ways. After the Hugging Face episode, it is simply good business for OpenAI and Anthropic to trade some raw power for reliability and predictability. Call it alignment if you want. It is also just giving customers what they want.

Pacing the frontier would also create breathing room for a more intelligent conversation about regulation than Bernie Sanders’ “shut it all down.” China is very unlikely to join a global agreement, as you know, and that has to be taken into account as well.

So go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it. The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it. Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it.

If you do, you’ll buy goodwill for the next conversation. If you don’t, we’ll know this was just another bid for regulatory capture — or an election-season psyop.

[Steve Pronovost @StevePronovost]

@Mariners @TMobilePark #marinersstm sec 219 row 5 seat 7-8 #TridentsUp

[Steve Pronovost @StevePronovost]

Video encode and decode acceleration coming to WSL2/WSLg!

https://t.co/apZszJ25BH

[The New York Times @nytimes]

"I’m switching my desktop computer’s default search engine to Bing. And Google, my default source of information for my entire adult life, is going to have to fight to get me back," our tech columnist @kevinroose writes. https://t.co/4u2FYC3zo5

[Steve Pronovost @StevePronovost]

WSLg is now available for Windows 10 users!

[Craig Loewen @craigaloewen]

WSL in the Store is now the default for WSL, and is available on both Windows 10 and Windows 11! This also means that Windows 10 can now run Linux GUI apps! Learn more about the details below:
https://t.co/iMN0EyJsUE

[Craig Loewen @craigaloewen]

We released our build 1.0 of WSL on the Microsoft Store, taking it out of preview and making it generally available! There's also some other exciting news coming very soon, stay tuned for the official announcement!

[𝕓𝕖𝕟 𝕙𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕤 @benhillis]

WSL 0.70.0 has been released to Windows Insiders. A few nice WSLg fixes in this build:

https://t.co/lCtYyjnpVB

[𝕓𝕖𝕟 𝕙𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕤 @benhillis]

WSL 0.68.4 is now available to Windows Insiders, a few more systemd-related fixes here. Thanks again for all the feedback!

https://t.co/44jRE11C0c

[Craig Loewen @craigaloewen]

Proud to announce today that WSL now has built in support for systemd!
https://t.co/77kEIpzmhG

[Windows Insider Program @windowsinsider]

For #WindowsInsiders with HDR-capable devices, try out the new Windows HDR Calibration app! Read this blog post from @AnaCarvalho1 for all the details! https://t.co/Tcj45Avdxk ^BLB

[Steve Pronovost @StevePronovost]

Check out the latest update for Android app on Windows!

[Tim Sweeney @TimSweeneyEpic]

Monumental news everyone! Fortnite is now available to play FOR FREE streaming to web browsers on iPhone, iPad, and Android via Xbox Cloud. No subscription required, no 30% Apple tax.
https://t.co/eHs1Xvh6D2

[Steve Pronovost @StevePronovost]

@xjeyne That’s essentially the vendor exposing multiple engine for the same hardware block to get a sort of special case “hyper-threading” on that engine, and is usually exposed/used in some specific proprietary way.

[Steve Pronovost @StevePronovost]

Very cool overview of WSL/WSLg on Windows Wednesday !

https://t.co/kciCM7oZyG

[Steve Pronovost @StevePronovost]

@SMT_Solvers @SamRueby @richgel999 @nixcraft If you meant can you run Windows 11 in a container under Linux and then get access to the GPU from there, you can achieve that through things like device assignment... but in that case Linux and Windows won't share the GPU... Linux is essentially giving the GPU to Windows.

[Steve Pronovost @StevePronovost]

@SMT_Solvers @SamRueby @richgel999 @nixcraft From within WSL, you can project the GPU into Linux containers and use it there or even run GUI app from those containers. I wrote some instructions for this here: https://t.co/jRQjinoxcT

[Kayla Cinnamon ☕️ @cinnamon_msft]

The secret's out! We're creating a weekly LIVE web show called Windows Wednesday! @shanselman and I will be your hosts chatting about anything and everything Windows! 🎉

The pilot episode will air on January 5 at 8:00 AM PST!

More details here 👇👇

https://t.co/GnB2u8eK6p

[Steve Pronovost @StevePronovost]

@awakecoding @ariadneconill @jrssnet Windows support VAIL (used in Microsoft Defender Application Guard… Edge in a VM)… but an earlier version of the protocol. There were issues with the protocol that were forcing unavoidable copies… so we fix this for WSLg. Windows will eventually switch to the updated protocol.

[Steve Pronovost @StevePronovost]

@awakecoding @ariadneconill @jrssnet Yeah, don’t want to remote NC area then incur a copy to remove it, copy are expensive. Goal is VAIL + control to turn on/off. Lots of client side operations we are exploring to further improve perf / integration (move, resize, snap support, …). It will only get better!