Bit Wonk

Pragmatist. Humanist. Hardcore software dev. Dad. Pilot. Fan of what works. Don't remove a fence until you know why it was put there.

[Bit Wonk @bitwonk]

Jazz Detective - A Noir Detective Film in 3 minutes. Some people think the Jazz Detective is a better musician than detective. He is nobody's fool. He leverages his musical connections to help solve crimes in the sordid underbelly of America's greatest city.

[Bit Wonk @bitwonk]

@J90236317 This is myopic. This is like the other rocket companies hooting at SpaceX a dozen years ago, that there're not enough payloads to justify developing reusability. Software won't remain 2% of GDP. Maybe it'll even be less in money but it will impact nearly everything.

[KanekoaTheGreat @KanekoaTheGreat]

🚨@DavidSacks: There is no White House decision to ban open source models.

Trump is listening to a chorus of voices — and Sacks says it would be a tragic mistake to take action against the open source ecosystem.

His argument:

Anthropic is the fastest growing tech company at scale in history. $10B ARR at the start of the year. $70B now. This is not a company that needs government protection.

And yet they've spent enormous energy trying to panic Washington into banning American developers from using Chinese open source models.

If distillation by Chinese companies was really their primary concern — a genuine national security threat — they would push to ban Chinese access to American models.

Instead they're pushing to ban American access to Chinese models.

Because this helps Anthropic's competitive position.

Sacks: "That's the way you know the whole distillation thing is fake."

He went further. If distillation is happening at industrial scale, it's obvious to see. Anthropic has 90% gross margins. Why aren't they stopping it at the source?

Answer: because KYC'ing their customers would slow their growth.

So instead of fixing their own house, they're asking the government to kneecap their competitors.

"The question should be on Anthropic to explain why it's doing such a bad job — not on the whole American open source ecosystem to be punished for Anthropic's failure."

Trump's AI Czar on @theallinpod.

[Satya Nadella @satyanadella]

Open-weight models are essential to a healthy AI ecosystem. Together with others across our industry, we are outlining a path for open-weight models to strengthen American competitiveness and expand economic opportunity, while protecting national security. https://t.co/Tr0sAzAxTD

[Jensen Huang @JensenHuang]

For my first post, I’m sharing a letter @NVIDIA signed on why open models matter.

AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country.

Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.

The world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models.

https://t.co/AUKzoQ5Ikb

[DogeDesigner @cb_doge]

ELON MUSK: “My political views are very centrist. They’re not far right. Frankly, calling them far right is an insult to history and an insult to many people. It is an outrageous falsehood. It’s completely absurd. I have literally stated my position, and I’ve been very clear about this: there need to be secure borders.

If there’s an influx of immigrants, then they need to be people who agree with Western ideals and Western values. If there is long-term growth of people who do not, or in some cases are adamantly opposed to Western values, you are setting yourself up for civil war. This is obvious. A child can see this, but this is not a right wing view. I'm simply stating reality.”

[Bit Wonk @bitwonk]

I agree with this.

[Rohan Paul @rohanpaul_ai]

Jensen Huang on "distillation"

On his new interview with axios, he was asked this question

"Should open source model companies be allowed to distill closed models"

"Distillation—learning from AI, learning from other people, and learning from other sources of knowledge, is fundamental to intelligence.

We are constantly learning from other people. I am learning from you through the questions you are asking, and you are learning from me. All day long, we are learning from one another. AI also has to learn from something.

The original AI models, whether they were open or closed, were trained on previously created knowledge from the internet. Now, AI is generating more content than humans. In a few more years, the internet could be 99% AI-generated content, and that content will have been created by some form of AI.

As a result, AI systems will constantly be distilling knowledge and intelligence from other AI systems. The fact that AI can learn is a good thing. We want AI systems to be intelligent because a smarter AI can also be a safer AI."

----

From "Axios" YouTube channel, (full video link in comment)

[Roman Helmet Guy @romanhelmetguy]

“We need foreign slaves to work the fields.” - Roman patricians, 140 BC

“We need foreign slaves to work the fields.” - Plantation owners, 1860 AD

“We need foreign slaves to work the fields.” - Rep. Don Bacon, 2026

[Bit Wonk @bitwonk]

Incredible footage, watch to the end.

[Surajit @surajit_ghosh2]

A cliffside collapsing at a marble quarry in Makrana after heavy rainfall, sending huge rocks and dust into the air

[Bit Wonk @bitwonk]

I can hardly believe how good this guy is.

[PsyopAnime @PsyopAnime]

Mamdani VS Rubio.

Full episode available on https://t.co/ZdJNBYURBl

[Bit Wonk @bitwonk]

@ConceptualJames There is so much manufactured unreality around us, like the creator of COPS caught on a hot mic saying they had way more video of black people doing crimes but they wouldn't run it because they wanted people to think it was about equal between whites and blacks.

[Bit Wonk @bitwonk]

Oh my god, it's hideous! This self-described plastic surgery addict is transforming herself into Gollum at warp speed. She's also wrong about everything.

[Curtis Houck @CurtisHouck]

WATCH: Jennifer Welch doubles down on her attacks against homeschooling, calling it “patriarchal step of the fascist project” made by those “dumber than a box of hot rocks” and “dead-ass broke” women refusing to divorce “piece of shit, closet-case husbands”....

“And I stand by it. The homeschooling that I was referring to is the crazy Christian homeschooling. It is trickle-down stupidity. You have to be dumber than a box of hot rocks to sit down with your kids and teach them that dinosaurs and man lived on the planet at the same time, that the Earth is 5,000 years old, and on and on. But more than anything, the reason they’re melting down so much about this is because homeschooling is inherently patriarchal, and it is a huge push of the fascist project because it keeps women at home. And over 90 percent of all homeschooling parents are the mother. You know they don’t want women to be out in the workforce to make their own money and have independence so they can divorce their piece of shit, closet-case husbands when they find out. No, they want the women at home, dead-ass broke, homeschooling the kids. This is a patriarchal step of the fascist project. And I will just say to Brian @Kilmeade and @TomiLahren, do you homeschool your kids? Do you do that with a full-time job? What do you do? Do you do it at night? Do you start at 8 p.m. and end at 1, 2 a.m.? Is that how your family values go? So, if you don’t homeschool your kids, shut the fuck up, you two. And to the Fox News producers, have fun watching my show; it’s pathetic. You should be covering this fascist regime in this fascist takeover and not some podcaster, as per Tomi, that people just watch for entertainment.”

[Saggezza Eterna @FinalTelegraph]

Liberals Are the Most Dangerous and Inherently Evil Threat to America (THREAD🧵)

The liberal is not merely mistaken, misguided, or simply wrong; they are soulless creatures lacking any moral compass or human empathy, a fact proven by their cold indifference to the millions of lives destroyed by their policies. They are predatory hunters, stalking the vulnerable not to help them, but to secure their votes and feed their insatiable hunger for power, treating the poor as pawns in a game of political chess while they themselves live in gated communities. This is a depraved ideology, morally corrupt beyond redemption, that has normalized the murder of the unborn and the mutilation of children, celebrating these atrocities as progress while claiming the high ground of compassion.

They are treacherous by nature, betraying their country and their neighbors at every turn, from selling our secrets to foreign adversaries to opening our borders to invaders who threaten the very fabric of our society. They are parasitic entities, feeding on the success and labor of hardworking Americans, draining the wealth of the productive to fund their corrupt machine and enrich their donor class. Their actions are malicious, acting with intentional harm and ill will against the very people they claim to serve, as seen in their deliberate destruction of our energy independence which drives up costs for the working class....

[Alex Epstein @AlexEpstein]

Which data haters will make this pledge?

[Bit Wonk @bitwonk]

@MTSlive Gee whiz, what did Anthropic train on? All the information they scraped off the internet. Paying a $1.5B settlement for stealing books. Anthropic stealing is fine but if someone distills from them, that's super wrong, what the flip. Plus can we see some proof?

[amit @amitisinvesting]

$NVDA

NVIDIA'S JENSEN HUANG GIVES AN UPDATE ON KIMI K3 AND CHINA'S OPEN SOURCE MODELS:

"American companies should absolutely be allowed to use Chinese AI models. There's a misconception that somehow there are backdoors connected to China in someway. You download the models, fine tune them, guardrail them in any way you want."

"These Chinese opensource models are excellent. The market has misunderstood the impact of DeepSeek the first time. It's misunderstood the impact of Kimi this time. Open models are great for the whole industry, there will be more usage which will require selling more Nvidia computers and building more datacenters."

"Great models lead to more usage. There is also a misunderstanding that open models are going to hurt the closed models, that is also wrong."

[Bit Wonk @bitwonk]

The religion of peace.

[Julie Bindel @bindelj]

New laws in Afghanistan, introduced by the Taliban, mean that men can now marry girls at any age – there is no limit. Male relatives can arrange this with other men, and it’s only once the girls reach puberty that, in extremely limited circumstances, they can ask a court to dissolve the marriage. What’s happening in that country is horrific, and it begs the question why Amnesty are not putting all of their resources into tackling this latest child abuse atrocity.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Trans-identified men in Edinburgh are fortunate enough to be welcome at the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, which was headed for a while by a trans-identified man who believed, and said publicly, that women who wanted a female-only service were bigots. That same rape centre admitted a male as a client because he called himself non-binary. The man was subsequently convicted for rape.

Beira’s Place was set up by me to provide women in Edinburgh and the Lothians with the female-only service they were being denied. Internal emails between ERRC staff were revealed during an unrelated court case, which showed them to be angry and dismayed that there was now an alternative service for women. One might have thought, reading those emails, that ERRC staff’s priority was the ideological conversion of rape survivors rather than the provision of a service that traumatised women required to feel safe after rape.

Beira’s Place has been exceptionally busy since it opened. We’ve taken on more staff and are currently looking for larger premises. We’ve helped women who’ve admitted that they didn’t want to use the alternative rape centre because of its very loud and public ‘trans women are women’ stance. We are also open to any and all trans-identified women who need support after rape.

In short, you’ll be relieved to hear that the trans-identified men for whom you feel such empathy and compassion aren’t losing out. It was biological women who were being shamed for their entirely legitimate desire for a male-free space. Apparently you’d have preferred that situation to continue, but I think you’ll find that most people, whether male or female, will see that as evidence of your cruelty, not mine.

[Alex Epstein @AlexEpstein]

"Rich person" services that poor people can access now thanks to AI:

- Custom tutor
- Job training
- Legal advice
- Tax advice
- Financial planning
- Psychological counseling
- Concierge doctor
- Career coach
- Executive assistant
- Test prep

Oh and it's all vanishingly cheap.

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

Socialism’s final form is always the same: no more elections.

This weekend Daniel Ortega looked at his own country and said no more elections. Ever.

In 1979 the Sandinistas overthrew a family dictatorship that had ruled Nicaragua for over 40 years with US backing, and the new Marxist government lined up with Cuba and the Soviets, so America armed the Contras against them.

But in 1990 they actually lost a free election and Ortega handed over power peacefully. That became their big claim to legitimacy.

Then he came back in 2007 and erased term limits, made his wife co-president, and locked up opposition candidates before the 2021 vote.

And this week, on the exact anniversary of the revolution that was supposed to end dictatorship, Ortega just ended elections for good.

Because no matter how democratic it pretends to be at the start, socialism always ends in totalitarianism.