Once, as a child in an elevator, I encountered the tallest person I had ever seen. Say hello to Mr Mutombo, my mother said. I did. Hello boy, he said, and shook my tiny hand.

Emptying out the metaphor closet for New Year.

Our latest investigation, months in the making & reported from Oakland to Guatemala.

I did a quick thread about a niche but really consequential mass surveillance legal authority that is set to expire in the next few months. When Congress attempts to reauthorize it we need people to *wake up* to the threat this is in the hands of the Trump administration and rein it in.

China has put out draft measures on human-like interactive AI services (chatbots etc.) We'll get a working translation and some analysis soon, but these rules will set the standard of responsibility for inducing user suicidal ideation, dependancy, etc. www.chinalawtranslate.com/chatbot-meas...

For your New Year’s resolution, consider abolishing ICE and its concentration camps.

On the longest night of the year, the days get brighter from here.

On the longest night of the year, the days get brighter from here.

also worse off: freedom of expression, rule of law

MIIT's priority AI techs 2025 "complex reasoning models, embodied intelligence models, edge-side models; large-scale computing center, multi-cluster computing power scheduling and coordination, computing center energy consumption management 1/n

- Gives a new inflection to the flexibly used term “agent“ - Seems like the type of thing one might try to use open-weight (and for now likely Chinese) models for, lest a closed vendor decide to cut off the gestapo‘s API key.

This kind of thing is so deeply disappointing from keepers of scholarship. It may not be my tasted but I can truly understand a lot of businesses experimenting. But the non-profit source-of-authority academic knowledge people? Yikes. Is there a term for societal "AI psychosis"?

I’m often at a loss when people who know better proudly report they ”looked up” some information on ChatGPT. This is in some cases a retreat from former commitments to reliable sources, but in most cases it seems more likely to just reflect how little people cared about accuracy all along.

🚨NEW publication: "Beyond DeepSeek: China's Diverse Open-Weight AI Ecosystem and Its Policy Implications" How can we understand China's open LLM ecosystem one year after DeepSeek? Our Stanford team finds a rich and varied set of actors and policy implications. hai.stanford.edu/policy/beyon... 1/

Have Chinese AI models pulled ahead of their global counterparts? In a new issue brief from @stanfordhai.bsky.social, CISAC research scholar @gwbstr.com and colleagues analyze China’s open-weight model ecosystem and its global policy implications. hai.stanford.edu/policy/beyon...

I'm not sure if people realize the murder strikes are taking place across a large region. It's quite staggering. www.newsweek.com/map-us-strik...

🚨NEW publication: "Beyond DeepSeek: China's Diverse Open-Weight AI Ecosystem and Its Policy Implications" How can we understand China's open LLM ecosystem one year after DeepSeek? Our Stanford team finds a rich and varied set of actors and policy implications. hai.stanford.edu/policy/beyon... 1/

It's true. Not spending time here has been helpful in moving the actual work forward. A year-end offering coming tomorrow!

I'm going to call it for the year on social media. See you back here if and only if I have new work to announce, which is more likely if I'm not here. Here's a picture I liked, in some weather I didn't like, in Beijing recently, on #kodacolor200. #filmphotography

“A.I. is no less a form of intelligence than digital photography is a form of photography.” Lol

the "buy nothing project" has a trademark registration (actually 6) for BUY NOTHING & persuaded facebook to kill some of the 1,000s of community groups all over the country through which people give away stuff they don't need & get local stuff free sf.gazetteer.co/the-fight-to...

hey remember when we were told we needed to be super worried about TikTok data falling into the wrong hands and that surely having Oracle hold onto it would be safer

so very much not about the governor

How has no one interviewed the person who made this apparently resilient sandwich

An even more expected outcome of the meeting--to "consummate" of a TikTok deal, in Bessent's phrasing--also did not occur. Was it torpedoed?

Hard to parse this story. Sounds like the question of selling a decreased-capability version of Nvidia's new generation of AI chips is still open, and only "torpedoed" as to the Korea meeting. www.wsj.com/world/china/...

this is like reporting “over my dead body” and ”I will die on this hill” as genuine promises to sacrifice one’s life

NEW: On Oct. 28, China passed the first amendments to its 2016 Cybersecurity Law, effective Jan. 1, 2026: www.npc.gov.cn/npc/c2/c3083... Bill page with legislative records and past drafts: npcobserver.com/legislation/...

I'm not a fan of the word "hallucinating" for LLMs. It's more apt here, though still a reminder: This system doesn't know anything about reality. It doesn't know what a gun is or isn't. And apparently the humans using it don't look at the pic before initiating a possibly deadly situation with a kid.

Ideal visual aid for my apparently unpopular take: tearing down part of a historic building is not among my top 10 concerns about the president, his party, and the government.

I keep thinking about the Chinese officials on the receiving end of decades of US lectures about the rule of law. Wonder why that is.

“I want to make it clear that if anyone attempts to enter your house or detain you, and they’re not in uniform or they don’t show credentials, please call 911 immediately,” [OPD Asst Chief James] Beere said.

Any conspiracy theories about what's below the White House getting blown up today?

We're in court today to stop the unlawful detention of people who aren't citizens at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. The Trump administration thinks they can evade the law by sending people to an offshore prison, to scare people into giving up their rights. They're wrong.

New usability hack dropped

Information distance… at least it would have been a few decades earlier. By 1881 the telegraph made it across the Atlantic and from London to at least coastal China.

nonexistent citations. maybe they assume we won’t notice. in reality instructors already know most of what is out there BECAUSE WE HAVE BEEN NERDS IN THE AREA FOR YEARS. new cites are exciting for us! or don’t sound right. and so we check them. sometimes by texting the “authors,” whom we know.

“The governor had objected to the plan to fire over the freeway, Interstate 5, and ordered a 17-mile stretch closed — against the guidance of military officials, who had said it was safe for it to remain open.”

On No Kings Eve, it is traditional to apologize to the great kings who will be thrown out with the bathwater for the holiday. Here are a few to start. Add your own. Our apologies, B.B. King. The thrill is gone away. youtu.be/0v4GV5dxOkI?...

Still on the path of US AI governance amounting to let the CEOs and investors decide what’s right.

End qualified immunity. Abolish ICE. Law enforcement officers can either demand accountability in their ranks or acknowledge there's no reason to respect them.

Headlines in Nexis Uni including the phrase "to counter China"

good opportunity for other local billionaires to stand up and show that it’s not all billionaires

Well this sounds like a great idea!

Good thread on an important place to visit when in the Bay. When you think about immigration detention today, it all goes back to the Chinese Exclusion Act and a hilly island off the posh enclave of Tiburon.

I'm so committed to not being sure that I could never write such a confident take-down, but this is a real good one.

There are "artificial intelligence" thinkers who wrestle with the meaning of intelligence, and there are those who don't.

Which country when

WSJ reporters playing the role of pundit here. Is it a tacit admission? Is coverage an offramp? Could US have overplayed its hand with 50% rule? Not within the scope of this particular puting expedition.