Michele Zilli

[Michele Zilli @ZilliMichele]

@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN Lewis Coates!!!

[Talesworth Game Studio @Talesworth]

"What a privilege to be tired from work you once begged the universe for."
This quote sums up the gratitude I've been feeling to be working on Weepstone. I've honestly never worked harder in my life and I've had many days I'm stretching the stamina bar to 150%, but I truly believe that it doesn't get better than this. I decided I wanted to make games at age 8, banging out a BBS door in BASIC on my Commodore 64C. To be doing it now full time is a dream come true.
(Quote credit: I believe Aryan Sachdeva said this)

[Roberto @RobertSoluciona]

Este señor cumplió a cabalidad su objetivo, visibilizar la historia de abuso, sometimiento y revolución del Congo a través de un simple homenaje a héroe africano anticolonialista Patrice Emery Lumumba🙋🏿‍♂️, tanto así que EEUU le prohibió cobardemente su ingreso al país.

[Katharina Gurgel @Kathgurgel]

— Não concordo com a homossexualidade.
— Mas você é gay???
— Não.
— Então o que você tem a ver com a sexualidade dos outros???
— É que não é natural!!!
— Hum... Você é Biólogo???
— Não.
— Então você é Antropólogo???
— Também não!!!
— Astrólogo???
— Não!!!
— Então o que você tem a ver com a sexualidade dos outros???
— É que Jesus disse que é uma aberração!!!
— Na verdade, não disse não, nem uma única palavra a respeito!!!
— Não. Mas tá escrito na Bíblia.
— Tá sim, principalmente lá no Velho Testamento, que também proíbe comer porco e camarão, sentar em uma cadeira que foi usada por uma mulher menstruada, acender a luz no sábado. Você evita tudo isso???
— Não.
— Então o que você tem a ver com a sexualidade dos outros???
— EU NÃO GOSTO!!!
— Ah, então o problema não é a natureza das coisas, nem os astros, nem a descendência, nem a suposta "opinião" de Jesus... O problema é que você não gosta, certo???
— É!!! Não gosto!!!
— MAS ENTÃO, MEU ANJO, O QUE VOCÊ TEM A VER COM A SEXUALIDADE DOS OUTROS???

Autor desconhecido

(Já publiquei esse diálogo outras vezes aqui, mas quis publicá-lo novamente hoje).

[Luca Caputa 🖤💙 @luca_caputa]

Io vorrei sapere perché ogni cazzo di anno lo spot per il #pridemonth di https://t.co/lQ4PClJ9sb riesce sempre ad emozionare.
Sempre. 🌈

#pride #lgbt

[signüll @signulll]

cold open: google campus. a conference room named “moonshot serenity 4b.” twelve people are in a meeting titled: pre-sync for sync alignment on ai velocity.

sundar sits calmly at the head of the table.

a pm clicks to slide 1 of 187.

“the agenda today is simple,” she says. “how do we move faster while preserving our culture of not doing that?”

everyone nods.

then the door opens.

noam shazeer walks in.

the room goes silent.

noam: “i’m leaving.”

a vp of gemini reliability, brand, trust, latency, policy, and vibe raises a hand.

“leaving… this meeting?”

noam: “google.”

someone gasps. someone else opens a doc titled retention narrative draft final final noam v7.

sundar blinks once.

“noam, we brought you back.”

“for two point seven billion dollars.”

“technically you licensed some technology and reacquired talent.”

“that sentence is why we need legal in the room.”

legal is already there.

cut to: openai.

sam altman stands beside a whiteboard that just says ship.

an engineer walks by carrying a server rack and what appears to be the future.

sam: “we can offer speed, compute, and one meeting.”

noam: “one meeting per week?”

sam: “no. one meeting. total.”

back at google, the emergency retention committee forms instantly. it has 31 members.

a director says, “what if we give him a new title?”

“he already co-leads gemini.”

“distinguished super co-lead?”

“google fellow?”

“he already left google, founded a company, got brought back for billions, then left again. he’s folklore.”

meanwhile, a gemini launch review begins.

pm: “we’re ready to announce the model.”

policy: “can it answer questions?”

eng: “yes.”

policy: “too risky.”

marketing: “can we call it experimental?”

research: “the model is better than the last one.”

brand: “better is aggressive.”

trust & safety: “what about ‘more contextually adjacent to usefulness’?”

a staff engineer whispers, “openai just shipped a model while we were discussing the adjective.”

cut to noam’s exit interview.

hr: “what could google have done better?”

flashback montage:

a chatbot blocked because it might be too good.
a launch delayed because a button was the wrong shade of responsible blue.
a spreadsheet comparing twelve ai product names.
a meeting where someone says “we need a single coherent ai strategy” and three new strategies are created before lunch.

noam: “nothing comes to mind.”

hr: “great. we’ll mark that as positive attrition.”

later, sundar calls him privately.

“google is still google. best researchers. best infrastructure. billions of users.”

“yes.”

“so why leave?”

noam looks out the window.

“because you have everything except permission.”

silence.

sundar, softly: “we can create a permission working group.”

cut to all-hands.

sundar addresses the company.

“noam is leaving. this is not a loss. it is an opportunity to reflect on our operating model.”

chat explodes:

“is this recorded?”
“which gemini?”
“can we ask gemini why people keep leaving?”
“it said ‘insufficient context.’”

a vp steps up.

“to honor noam’s legacy, we’re launching project attention.”

applause.

“it will study whether attention is, in fact, all we need.”

a researcher raises a hand. “didn’t we answer that in 2017?”

“yes. but now we need enterprise readiness.”

final scene: noam arrives at openai. badge works instantly.

receptionist: “yeah, we just made one.”

no pre-read. no doc. just a whiteboard, five people, and a model running somewhere hot enough to toast bread.

sam: “ready?”

noam smiles.

cut back to google. a calendar invite appears:

meeting: reduce meetings task force kickoff
duration: 90 minutes
required attendees: 214

sundar sighs, opens gemini, and types:

“how do we move faster?”

gemini responds:

“have you considered leaving google?”

smash cut to credits.

[LayoffHedge @LayoffAI]

META IS AN ABSOLUTE MESS INSIDE RIGHT NOW

Wired just dropped an exclusive, and the details are wild.

This week someone interrupted a livestreamed Meta meeting, open to thousands of employees, with an expletive-filled rant about "being the company's bitch." They told the presenters to find a specific Meta AI executive and "tell him that he's a piece of shit."

A presenter covered their face with their hands. Employees in the chat called the start "spicy."

Here is what's behind it.

Meta's AI restructuring cut 8,000 jobs last month, 10% of the company. The same restructuring feeds a unit called Applied AI, where 6,500 engineers and product managers have been drafted in waves since April. There is no application process. You get selected, and your options are join or leave the company. Members call themselves "draftees."

The new job: writing puzzles and coding problems to train Meta's AI models, two tasks a week. People hired to build apps for billions of users now assemble training data for hundreds of AI scientists.

"It's literally the gulag," one employee told WIRED. "You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden, you barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week."

Another: "Most people find the work soul-crushing."

At the same time, Meta started recording US employees' clicks and keystrokes to generate more AI training data. Over 1,600 employees signed a petition demanding it stop. The concession: employees can pause the tracking for up to 30 minutes.

Zuckerberg's response came in an internal memo Friday: "We've made mistakes and will almost certainly make more." He repeated his promise of no more mass layoffs this year. His fixes: limits on the manager ratios Meta had deliberately pushed to 50-to-1 on some teams, bigger budgets for team events, a hackathon next month, and assigned desks by the end of the year.

That same memo says Meta's north star is "to be the best place for the most talented people in the world to make an impact."

The most talented people in the world are writing puzzles for a model and asking permission to pause the keystroke logger.

META declined to comment.

[Coalition for App Fairness @appfairness]

What happens when Apple is asked to play by the rules? They take their ball and go home. Apple is refusing to release Siri AI in the EU, punishing consumers and trying to pressure regulators who are enforcing the #DMA and holding Apple accountable.  https://t.co/Rh3futs6JZ

[Tim Sweeney @TimSweeneyEpic]

@ariange1o Apple monopolization of digital markets is a massive global problem that is just as heavy here in the United States, Apple's home, as evidenced by court rulings against them and the US DOJ v Apple. For example, see: https://t.co/OAYvq2b48Y

[Tim Sweeney @TimSweeneyEpic]

@palmidev @EU_Commission That’s Apple’s blatantly dishonest PR spin. They want to enrage EU citizens against their government, and stoke corporate nationalism here in the US, in hopes that they get away with their unlawful scheme to monopolize AI, stores, payments, and much more. Won’t work.

[Michele Zilli @ZilliMichele]

@FDavidsonT Great! Can't wait to see it!

[⭕ AI & Design (Marco) @AIandDesign]

I'm not gonna lie, the @Meta layoffs are some of the most dystopian I've ever seen. They got told to work from home, they were sent the emails at 4AM in the morning. Those who weren't impacted have software on their computer that tracks their every move, preparing AI to take their job as well. They're literally training the AI that will eliminate their position as well.

Meanwhile, Meta is raking in RECORD PROFITS.

I am a massive, unapologetic AI enthusiast. Yet, this is NOT the future I had in mind.

I wish for Meta to crash and burn. This is not the way. Literally nobody benefits from this.

[Michele Zilli @ZilliMichele]

@SkarredGhost Congrats!!!! Well Deserved!

[TonyVT SkarredGhost @SkarredGhost]

I am very humble of having been chosen as "XR influencer of the year" at the VR AR Expo #China! I know that many other people would have deserved this more than me, but I'm happy to see recognition in such a distant country for these many years of work reporting the most important news of #AR and #VR... and especially my contribution to make the world of immersive realities feel a bit closer by telling you what is happening on the other side of the world.

Thank you, everyone, for your continuous support! I wouldn't be able to obtain these accolades without the many people of the community who, every day, help me and support me in any possible way. This award is ours!

#VirtualReality

[Play For Dream @Play_for_dream]

https://t.co/qbIwttw3SG

[Zeno @ZenoInMotion]

We're opening our Global Robotics Research HQ on Bahnhofstrasse in Zürich, and I'm so glad to announce that I'll be heading our expansion to this beautiful city!

Since I joined @microagi 4 months ago, I've experienced one of the most intense, insane and meaningful times of my life. We've grown from a few people in our Munich-based HackerPenthouse to operating in 15+ countries, opening multiple offices, and now making Zürich the heart of our global research programs. As anyone who has visited one of our offices would say: 'intense', 'insane' and 'meaningful' are the correct adjectives to use here.

The decision between Zürich and SF was not an easy one, but one we're taking with full conviction.

microagi's mission is clear: Accelerate Embodied AGI for all. We want our societies to move towards a future of abundance, where fleets of robots build nuclear power plants, construct housing, and source the necessary raw materials autonomously from Earth and space. We want to take responsibility and transition with the right values and humility.

Our research center in Zürich is focused on one singular research question: how do we bridge the data gap to real, meaningful deployment?

We're not doing this alone. We're partnering with the best frontier labs and hardware manufacturers worldwide to make this a reality.

If you haven't realised it yet: SaaS is dead, software is cheap, and tomorrow's trillion-dollar companies are being built on real physical value.

Don't waste your time, you only have one life.

It's time to Deploy Robots, guys.

Let's do it together.

[Lukas Ziegler @lukas_m_ziegler]

JUST IN: microagi is opening its Global Robotics Research HQ on Bahnhofstrasse in Zürich, and choosing it over San Francisco.

Eight months ago @microagi was five people in a Munich hacker house. Today they operate in 15+ countries.

The reasoning behind Zürich is compelling:
→ Highest density of robotics talent in the world, ETH Zürich, EPFL, University of Zürich, IBM Research, Google, NVIDIA, Meta, Apple and Microsoft all run serious ML and robotics teams here

→ ABB, one of the most important industrial automation companies on earth, is headquartered in the city itself

→ Within a 6-hour radius: German automotive, Italian manufacturing, French aerospace, Benelux logistics and Swiss machine tools

But the line that stuck with me most:

"Europe was late to consumer internet. Europe was late to cloud. Europe was late to the foundation-model wave. But Europe is not late to robotics."

That is exactly right. The industrial base that physical AI sits on top of has been in Europe for 150 years. Precision mechanics. Machine-tool culture. Safety-critical engineering. Automation-grade manufacturing.

The next decade of AI value will be created where bits meet atoms. And Europe is finally in the right position at the right moment.

microagi gets it. And they're planting their flag right in the heart of it. 🇨🇭🇪🇺

@bercankilic, @YoanIlievX, @ZenoInMotion, @notgiannei LFG! 🔥

~~

♻️ Join the weekly robotics newsletter, and never miss any news → https://t.co/GoA3ZuwWF9

[Peec AI @peec_ai]

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Available to all accounts now.

[Angie 🦀🍉 @whoisangie68]

Buon #25Aprile a tutti.

[Ukr Embassy to Italy @UKRinIT]

Gli episodi di aggressione e discriminazione contro persone con bandiere ucraine durante le celebrazioni odierne sono assolutamente inaccettabili.

La bandiera ucraina è oggi simbolo della lotta per la libertà, l’indipendenza, la democrazia e la vita umana — contro la brutale guerra della Russia, la più grande guerra dalla Seconda guerra mondiale.

Siamo sinceramente grati al Governo italiano e a tutti gli italiani che sostengono l’Ucraina e il popolo ucraino nella lotta per la vita e il futuro.

La violenza contro chi si oppone alle uccisioni quotidiane di persone innocenti, alla deportazione dei bambini e ai tentativi della Russia di distruggere uno Stato indipendente e il suo popolo suscita profonda indignazione e totale incomprensione. Questo non deve ripetersi.