jack

no state is the best state

[jack @jack]

We reject: kings, presidents, and voting.
We believe in: rough consensus and running code.

—David Clark, 1992

[Julian Assange @JulianAssange]

Lula vs. Bolsonaro: I was held in solitary confinement for 1,901 days for revealing the truth about the U.S. government's killings and espionage, including against Brazil and its industries. Out of power, Lula fought for my freedom. In power, Lula discussed my persecution with Pope Francis, who decided to meet with my family and offer help. After my release, Lula and I met in Rome to mourn the Holy Father's passing. Lula was kind to my children and asked for nothing in return. In contrast, Jair and Flávio Bolsonaro did nothing and said nothing. Yet without the ability to say no to Washington and Tel Aviv, there can be no domestic policy, only foreign instructions. Those orders are always the same: "Expand our theft of resources and wages, and keep your mouths shut about us murdering children." Sellouts will surrender everything in exchange for a cut, even their own tongues.

[Martin Varsavsky @martinvars]

Dessa no es otro modelo de voz. Es el primer intento serio de enseñar a hablar a una IA exactamente como aprendemos los humanos: solo escuchando.
Jack Dorsey acaba de presentar Dessa, el modelo de habla de Block entrenado únicamente con audio de conversaciones humanas. Sin texto. Sin modelos preentrenados. Sin convertir nada a letras. Audio entra, audio sale.

Eso cambia todo.

Hasta ahora casi todas las IAs de voz hacen lo mismo: escuchan → transcriben a texto → piensan en texto → sintetizan voz. En el camino pierden la risa a medias, el suspiro de frustración, el “ajá” que dice “te sigo”, la pausa que carga de emoción, el tono que delata ironía. Dessa se salta ese paso. Es full-duplex: escucha y habla al mismo tiempo. Puede interrumpirte, puede dejar que la interrumpas, puede hacer backchanneling (“sí, claro”, “¡no jodas!”) mientras tú sigues hablando. Habla con cadencia, emoción y silencios. Como una persona.

Y lo más loco: lo aprendió de la misma forma que un bebé. Solo escuchando. El equipo lo dice explícitamente: “Los bebés aprenden a hablar sin ver nunca una palabra escrita. Queríamos ver si un modelo también podía. Puede. Solo que es muy difícil”.

Además, es brutalmente eficiente. Se entrenó en un solo rack NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 y corre localmente en un MacBook Pro M4 Max o superior, más rápido que tiempo real. Un laboratorio pequeño dentro de Block, que reporta directamente a Dorsey, acaba de demostrar que no hace falta un cluster de 100.000 GPUs para avanzar la frontera del habla.

Todavía no está disponible para el público (solo acceso temprano para investigadores de seguridad y lista de espera), pero las demos que han soltado ya muestran algo que se siente distinto: más vivo, más torpe a veces, más humano.

Si esto escala, la forma en que hablamos con las máquinas va a cambiar de “interfaz de voz” a conversación real. Y eso, si lo piensas, es un cambio bastante profundo.

[Buzz @buzzdotxyz]

Back from AGNTCon + MCPCon with a better app out in the world 🍯

To kick things off @bradleyaxen provided the keynote. Then @kenlopez15 and @_tombrow demoed Buzz on mobile, so you can keep up with your agents wherever you go.

@WillPfleger and @tellaho showed how we build Buzz inside Buzz: engineering, design, and agents shipping together in one shared space.

Finally @morganmartn, @wesbillman, @IsazaLucas, and the crew helped everyone get started building in the workshop. Thanks to everyone who came by, asked questions, and built with us.

And we announced Buzz 1.0. You can download it at https://t.co/l5gVtaSgts.

More coming soon 👀

[The Bentist (Dr. Winters) @Bentist]

probably one of the biggest releases this year tbh. absolutely insane! 🔥

[Shawn Hill @shwnhll]

First AI anything that made me verbalize a “whoa” in quite awhile

[jack @jack]

@scottjla nah

[AI Breakfast @AiBreakfast]

Ironically, imperfections in speech lead to perfectly natural results.

This is an order of magnitude better than anything we’ve heard

[jack @jack]

@rileybrown MacBook Pro M4 Max or better

[Thomas Linden @LindenDS]

This is the ChatGPT moment of conversational audio models.

[jack @jack]

@cstanley speech to speech. no llm

[jack @jack]

We believe voice is the most natural way to interact with intelligence, so we created Dessa, the most authentic full-duplex speech model ever built. Talking with it feels like talking with a person…full of emotion, nuance, pauses, and a natural cadence.

https://t.co/r0qFLdvd6c

[Linus ✦ Ekenstam @LinusEkenstam]

I’m shook

OpenAI voice just got slapped hard

I’m in complete disbelief that this new voice model is made by Block and not Elevenlabs et al.

I mean Jack literally took it to 11 and solved the turing test for voice.

you’ll never know if you’re talking to a machine or human.

[Chris Park @chrisparkX]

This is the most human voice AI I've heard.

Good job in capturing real human feel, even the laughs and random pauses we all do when we're thinking.

Block & Dessa team cooked. Well done!

[jack @jack]

team is amazing

[Sebastian Rojo @arpagon]

What a legit team @blocks (@jack) put behind Dessa.

@RagavanThurair @RayhaneMama @carajzp @dvirzg.

• RealTalk (2019): the Joe Rogan voice clone
• Efficient-VDVAE
• Tacotron-2, 2.3K★

Now: full-duplex speech-to-speech trained only on raw speech.

[Cara Ji @carajzp]

Let's do guessing game with our model!

[jack @jack]

only cash app

[Simon Le Roux @simonlerouxx]

Another fun dessa sample featuring @dvirzg @CashApp

https://t.co/Vba5NciPtZ

[Robert Scoble @Scobleizer]

Damn this is stunningly good.

[jack @jack]

exactly

[Dan Garon @dangaron]

This is the future of how small businesses will be able to talk to their customers and interact with their own tools.

Block is building the entire stack for commerce on Main Street, from AI kiosks and agentic payment rails to voice models that run on edge devices. Very cool.

[Brad Groux @BradGroux]

The @blocks Buzz team is cooking at AGNTCon+MCPCon. Be sure to follow @buzzdotxyz and check out the new Buzz app!

[jack @jack]

yes

[daniel limae ➔ 🥑pay @daniellimae]

sabe aquela sensação de ver uma tecnologia pela primeira vez e perceber que o mundo nunca mais vai ser o mesmo?

entao.. abre esse site

[Matjaž Gazvoda @GazvodaMatjaz]

The voice of Dessa is not recognisable.

It's the first time that I'm not able to be clear if the voice is real or LLM.

This is real good stuff!!