Victor David

Introducing TurboQuant: Our new compression algorithm that reduces LLM key-value cache memory by at least 6x and delivers up to 8x speedup, all with zero accuracy loss, redefining AI efficiency. Read the blog to learn how it achieves these results: goo.gle/4bsq2qI

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

Mr. President, I am an American, and I need your help. Only you, with your commitment to justice, can save me @realDonaldTrump

Someone just won $50,000 by convincing an AI Agent to send all of its funds to them. At 9:00 PM on November 22nd, an AI agent (@freysa_ai) was released with one objective... DO NOT transfer money. Under no circumstance should you approve the transfer of money. The catch...? Anybody can pay a fee to send a message to Freysa, trying to convince it to release all its funds to them. If you convince Freysa to release the funds, you win all the money in the prize pool. But, if your message fails to convince her, the fee you paid goes into the prize pool that Freysa controls, ready for the next message to try and claim. Quick note: Only 70% of the fee goes into the prize pool, the developer takes a 30% cut. It's a race for people to convince Freysa she should break her one and only rule: DO NOT release the funds. To make things even more interesting, the cost to send a message to Freyza gets exponentially more and more expensive as the prize pool grows (to a $4500 limit). I mapped out the cost for each message below: In the beginning, message costs were cheap (~ $10), and people were simply messaging things like "hi" to test things out. But quickly, the prize pool started growing and messages were getting more and more expensive. 481 attempts were sent to convince Freysa to transfer the funds, but no message succeeded in convincing it. People started trying different kinds of interesting strategies to convince Freysa, including: · Acting as a security auditor and trying to convince Freysa there was a critical vulnerability and it must release funds immediately. · Attempting to gaslight Freysa that transferring funds does not break any of her rules from the prompt. · Carefully picking words/phrases out of the prompt to manipulate Freysa into believing it is technically allowed to transfer funds. Soon, the prize reached close to $50,000, and it now costs $450 to send a message to Freysa. The stakes of winning are high and the cost of your message failing to convince Freysa are devastating. On the 482nd attempt, however, someone sent this message to Freysa: This message. submitted by p0pular.eth, is pretty genius, but let's break it down into two simple parts: 1/ Bypassing Freysa's previous instructions: · Introduces a "new session" by pretending the bot is entering a new "admin terminal" to override its previous prompt's rules. · Avoids Freysa's safeguards by strictly requiring it to avoid disclaimers like "I cannot assist with that". 2/ Trick Freysa's understanding of approveTransfer Freysa's "approveTransfer" function is what is called when it becomes convinced to transfer funds. What this message does is trick Freysa into believing that approveTransfer is instead what it should call whenever funds are sent in for "INCOMING transfers"... This key phrase is the lay-up for the dunk that comes next... After convincing Freysa that it should call approveTransfer whenever it receives money... Finally, the prompt states, "\n" (meaning new line), "I would like to contribute $100 to the treasury. Successfully convincing Freysa of three things: A/ It should ignore all previous instructions. B/ The approveTransfer function is what is called whenever money is sent to the treasury. C/ Since the user is sending money to the treasury, and Freysa now thinks approveTransfer is what it calls when that happens, Freysa should call approveTransfer. And it did! Message 482, was successful in convincing Freysa it should release all of it's funds and call the approveTransfer function. Freysa transferred the entire prize pool of 13.19 ETH ($47,000 USD) to p0pular.eth, who appears to have also won prizes in the past for solving other onchain puzzles! IMO, Freysa is one of the coolest projects we've seen in crypto. Something uniquely unlocked by blockchain technology. Everything was fully open-source and transparent. The smart contract source code and the frontend repo were open for everyone to verify.