ALR retweeted
Come work with me! We're looking for a Sr Technical Program Manager at the Agentic AI Foundation
careers.linuxfoundation.org/…
ALR retweeted
Responsible disclosure should be the norm. Important for everyone to understand why that is an established best practice. We shouldn't be celebrating premature public disclosure.
If you are pointing frontier models at FOSS code bases - cool. Let's ensure the ecosystem is safe, the more eyes the better.
But don't recklessly tweet out to try to spread panic or chase clout.
People are on edge from Coldcard. Responsibly disclose with the team that can actually verify your claims, respond the right way, and then most importantly, safely fix the issue (if it's real).
We've been getting lots of engagement from people across the ecosystem. That's great. But, like with anything AI, even the cyber models can produce slop.
I am not dismissing Floppy's claim here. I acknowledged it and we are looking into it within 30 mins of his posting. Any bug or vulnerability is urgent to us, and we are on it.
But this should be done over email, and not in public where unverified claims can lead to false narratives and unnecessary panic.
ALR retweeted
Lot of good points but also fair bit of confusion on what shared compute gets you so let’s clarify
1. Shared compute does NOT mean model gets smarter over time. Weights are frozen at inference time. You’d need something like shared memory layer or plan to post train on data
🧵
I think the most interesting thing about Jack Dorsey's "Slack killer" is the idea around shared compute.
I haven't seen people talk about it so here are my thoughts FWIW:
Open models got good, close enough to the paid frontier stuff to run for real. But the strongest ones need expensive hardware most people probably won't buy alone, and it's kinda a pain to set up if you aren't technical.
Shared compute solves exactly that. In Buzz, one person runs the machine, loads up an open model like Google Gemma, and everyone in the community plugs into that same model.
Basically, a whole group has real AI they own and control together, running on their own hardware, learning from their own data.
Once you see it, a bunch of things click into place.
1. A community can now run a top open model together, on a machine they own, instead of renting from a lab.
2. It learns from the group's private data and gets sharper over time, and all of that stays inside the community.
3. A narrow, private model can quietly get better than ChatGPT for the one world your group lives in.
4. It's impossible to copy, because the edge is the private data on your machine, not the model itself.
5. The moat stops being how smart your AI is and becomes whose data it learned from.
6. Compute becomes something you share like a building shares a gym. 10 people split one machine instead of 10 people each renting forever.
7. Idle compute becomes income!!! Your machine sits dead half the day, so it earns money renting that time to someone who needs it.
8. Communities become the unit of intelligence instead of companies. The group with the smartest shared brain wins, and being a member means owning a piece of it.
9. A shared brain becomes an asset you build equity in. You put in money and data, it appreciates, and your slice is worth something the day you leave.
10. The whole thing runs on open protocols, so the group keeps full control and nobody outside can throttle it or shut it off.
You know me, obviously, my head went to what startup ideas come to mind here. Adding them to @ideabrowser soon.
Well…
1. The vertical brain. Pick one profession, tax lawyers or real estate agents or indie game devs, and build the shared machine trained on everything that group knows between them. A year in it's the smartest AI in that field, impossible to copy, and you own the club it lives in.
2. The rental marketplace for collective brains. Once these private models exist, outsiders will pay to use them. You build the layer where a group lists its brain, an outsider pays per task, and the money flows back to the members while you take a cut. A marketplace for expertise, not compute.
3. The idle-compute exchange. Every shared machine sits unused half the day. You build the market that rents that dead time to whoever needs the power right then, so owners earn money off a machine that was just sitting there.
Idk where Buzz goes, but it's cool to see Jack putting it out. Right now the way it works in AI is you rent your intelligence from a few giant labs that own the machine, set the price, and hold the off switch.
Shared compute flips that, because a community can run the model together, feed it their own private data, and keep full control of the whole thing.
It's one of those things that might look tiny today, but Jack does has a habit of being early.
ALR retweeted
Chat-first work tools are not the answer. The flaws are baked into the system, you can't undo them. It would be like asking a kangaroo to fly. It can get off the ground, and look like flight for a moment, but it comes crashing right down.
Here's why:
37signals.com/group-chat-pro…
I wish Slack was:
- Agent-first
- Beautiful to use
- Integrated with agents natively so your Hermes or OpenClaw lives inside it
- Huddles worked seamlessly and were fun
- Built for teams of 1-3, not just teams of 300
- Truly a second brain similar to Obsidian
- Searchable without wanting to throw your laptop
- Designed around async, not constant interruption
- Voice first for mobile
- A place where I could see who's working on what right now without asking anyone
- Smart enough to know the difference between "I need you right now" and "whenever you get to this"
- A workspace where my agent could tap someone else's agent on the shoulder and coordinate without involving either human
- Designed so the new hire on day 1 has the same context as the person who's been there 3 years
-Something that felt like walking into a room of people building, not walking into a room of people typing
- A place where decisions are first-class objects
- Able to auto generate SOPs, skills, agents etc from conversation history
- Something that rewards deep work instead of punishing it with 47 unread notifications
ALR retweeted
OVERRATED: running tons of agents in parallel; working on too many things at once; perpetual context-switching; opening lots of low-quality PRs that may never land.
UNDERRATED: using one or two agents at a time; focusing on the task in front of you; thinking deeply; finishing stuff; making your code works in prod.
ALR retweeted
We were surprised by this finding. In the 20 yrs since the study, the numbers of apps & density of notifications has grown. Time for a follow-on study.
This research from @iqbal_st & @erichorvitz says getting interrupted by Slack costs 11-12 minutes on average.
How many DMs do you get a day that pull you out of focus?
erichorvitz.com/CHI_2007_Iqb…
ALR retweeted
I interviewed with Andrew back in 2023 for TBD. Andrew is simply one of the most skilled, knowledgeable, wonderful leaders I’ve ever encountered. ❤️
Post-@blocks, I’m still ride or die for economic empowerment and open source and standards.
Now it’s time to return to the play of building, of exploring - and connecting with y’all doing the same.
ALR retweeted
I have built one of the strongest DevRel teams in the game! We are often praised by other companies for how we're educating the software engineering industry as they are incorporating AI into their workflows.
My team is at the bleeding edge of agentic engineering. They have been on the front line learning, building, and teaching AI.
Unfortunately, with the latest Block RIF, the majority of them are on the market. If you're looking for a Developer Relations Engineer, Technical Community Manager, or Tech Writer who is well versed in AI and creating impactful content, I have an entire roster available.
Please reach out to me for your next hire 🙏🏽
ALR retweeted
ahhh man - fire my friends and coworkers and blame it on AI. expect an AI built response
a better payments company:
withflintpay.com
- built by ex-square employees
we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company.
####
today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone.
first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay.
we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly.
i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures.
a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers.
we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold.
to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward.
to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow.
jack
ALR retweeted
laid off at block and want to start a company?
I'd love to hear from you.
I'm a solo-GP focused on fintech (broadly defined) and love backing teams w/ deep domain expertise + a chip on their shoulder.
ALR retweeted
we've been exploring UCP at Block, pretty neat stuff when mixed with MCP Apps in goose opensource.block.xyz/blog/ag…
ALR retweeted
"Don't build a fence; build a bridge." 🌉 We believe the future of commerce should be open and collaborative. That’s why we teamed up with Shopify, Etsy, and Wayfair to create the Universal Commerce Protocol. It’s a bridge for any agent to connect with any business, safely and simply. ucp.dev/
ALR retweeted
Google just opensourced Universal Commerce Protocol.
AI Agents can now discover products, fill carts, and complete purchases autonomously.
Works with Agent2Agent (A2A), Agents Payment Protocol (AP2) and MCP.
100% Opensource.
ALR retweeted
We’re looking for a director/executive level design leader to run #bitcoin design and creative across all of @blocks
₿ x Square/CashApp/Proto/Bitkey/Tidal and beyond
DMs open for questions/leads
block.xyz/careers/jobs/49805…
ALR retweeted
"There hasn't been a new debit network in the United States in the last 50 years, and what you just saw there is us moving dollars on the bitcoin network to dollars on the other side. This is a complete paradigm shift." - @owenbjennings
ALR retweeted
I'm hiring a Staff Developer Relations Engineer who will help engineers be successful with using AI.
Fully remote from anywhere Block is legally able to hire from.
If you're a good fit, apply (please no DMs).
Pls share for reach 🙏🏽
block.xyz/careers/jobs/49828…
ALR retweeted
$XYZ
Dear small business owner,
If I look grumpy, it’s because of the 3% fees that credit card companies take from every sale. They stink.
3% for a swipe, dip, or tap is too much, especially when it equals half or more of your profits.
There’s a way to opt-out: by accepting bitcoin at your business, you can decline credit card fees.
Together, we can beat ’em.
Yours (literally),
A Bitcoin
ALR retweeted
Frustrating day but we have unwavering conviction in the path forward. We are focused on delivering products to our customers and we’re focused on investing in serving every customer that wants to work with us. That’s it.
ALR retweeted
We’ve been busy building.
November 13, come see what's next for @CashApp
→ cash.app/new
#cashappreleases


























