JUST IN | A member of the Bend, Oregon community pursued and shot the person suspected of the tragic school shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School. Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz described the scene and response in a press briefing. Latest updates ->

*whispers* I did not plan all of this happening in the same week but tmrw’s @pablofindsout is as wild as any we’ve done

Ben Affleck reveals he writes Python, understands convolutional neural networks, worked extensively with GPUs, and used his celebrity status to get private looks at Google and OpenAI’s video models “I’ve always been kind of into computers since I was young. Then, when film started to move from analog film to digital, I became more interested in that aspect of it. The visual-effects workflow for many years has included machine learning, so I can write pretty shitty Python scripts and stuff like that. “With convolutional neural networks, which were the precursors to what the transformer can do, which is much more computation simultaneously, you would do things like look at what’s called a tensor. That’s the numerical translation of a visual image in numbers, like the batch number, the frame number and the red, green and blue values of each pixel in each frame. It’s just that simple. That numeric is called a tensor. “You’d use a convolutional neural network to identify patterns that reveal what’s called edge detection or feature extraction, which is identifying patterns well enough to know, this is where the window ledge is, so we can more easily take the green-screen image out and replace it with something. “That was familiar to me early on because, prior to Artists Equity, I had a small visual-effects company. I’ve worked with GPUs a lot too. The visual-effects guys said, ‘Hey, you should see. There are a couple: Google and this other company, OpenAI, are doing really interesting stuff with transformers in video.’ “I’ve learned that I can actually just call up and go, ‘Hey, it’s Ben Affleck. Can I come see what you’re doing?’ Sometimes people say yes, to my astonishment.”

You can’t buy this publicity

We'll be spending a lot more time trying to understand the outputs of language models. A few thoughts, tips & tricks: Writing. Something I've had success with: Ask your LLM to explain something in ASD-STE100, it's a controlled language specification originally developed for aerospace maintenance documentation. LLMs well-versed in this language and it comes with heavy constraints on clean writing style that I often find a lot more readable. Sometimes I've tried to soften it a bit e.g. ask for "80% of the way to ASD-STE100" because the spec is quite stringent. But even better: Diagrams / images. Instead of writing, ask your LLM to create a diagram. These can be a lot easier to process, parse, and understand. But even better: Web pages. Ask for output "in HTML" to get a beautiful, interactive webpage. LLMs are getting really good at frontend and can create beautiful experiences, animations, etc. But even better: Explainer videos. The output format I am most bullish on is fully custom / bespoke explainer videos generated on any arbitrary topic. Experiment with things like "Create a 3b1b style video explainer on X. Use my ElevenLabs API key for audio narration". (you'd need an API key for the latter or you can ask your LLM to find you decent free alternatives that use your local compute). This is actually starting to work! In summary: - As LLMs get better, they will do more and more of the legwork autonomously, and a lot more of our work will rise up the abstractions into oversight and understanding. - Luckily, LLMs can help here too because as intelligence and code are increasingly abundant, you can ask for large, custom, discardable software artifacts (e.g. web apps, video explainers) that would have never made sense to create before. Push the boundaries here and you'll be surprised.

Tom Dundon’s Trail Blazers have become exhausting. nytimes.com/athletic/7653499…

Victor Wembanyama was asked if he would ever sign a deal with a sports betting company: “Absolutely not. Honestly, I think it’s very sad to see some players promote it.”

The Trail Blazers will name Braiden Bell as new television play-by-play announcer. The 29-year-old had been calling games for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and the G League’s Valley Suns: oregonlive.com/blazers/2026/…

Tonight. 8 p.m. My Minecraft City. Subscribe now: youtube.com/@miket757

First day observation at Blazers practice: *Singled out play of center Brandon Carlson, whose offensive rebounding and energy were noteworthy. *favorite moment was Rob Williams making free throws to win game. *Noted Toumani Camara’s perimeter D *Scoot’s pace/Ja’s creating

Business side updates are that the season ticket renewal rate is at 94%, post Ja trade his jersey accounted for over 60% of jersey sales.

Shoutout to @BostonGlobe and @AdamHimmelsbach for following up on our Life Surge reporting with this news about Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla:

Damian Lillard says he just “doesn’t see a world where the Trail Blazers aren’t in Portland. … I would hate to see that happen let alone be a possibility.”