DukeWanders

Without this global town square for free speech, a lot of important things never would’ve seen daylight. Real-time information governments tried to bury. Scientific debate that was actively censored. Voices that would’ve stayed silenced forever. Respect to @elonmusk for being the man in the arena when it actually counted. 🫡🙏

Big news! We've been awarded international accreditation by ASIC UK for the next 4 years!🎉 “ASIC accreditation is a rigorous, internationally respected quality mark that directly opens doors for learners around the world” — @grok No tuition, no debt.⚡️ degrees.saylor.org

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

NEW IN PIRATE WIRES: Inside @anduriltech’s race to build Fury, America’s first autonomous fighter jet. On October 31, last year, a gunmetal-colored, bullet-shaped object streaked across the skies of the California high desert under the careful watch of the U.S. Air Force. It took off without a pilot. It flew only by the guidance of software, takeoff triggered by the press of a single button. That flight was the culmination of years — decades, even — of American experiments with unmanned fighter jets. Air Force officials long imagined pairing pilots with autonomous systems to amplify their combat power. But the technology didn’t exist... until now. For Pirate Wires, @jackbeyrer delivers the complete story of how Fury, an AI-powered unmanned fighter jet, was built. He also details what’s next: producing an entire fleet of Furies capable of defending America. The future of American deterrence has arrived. Read the full story 👇