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Live 'What a week, huh?' #

What a week, huh?

via Hacker News

A truly incredible project which includes variants for the day, week, month, and year. In terms of the technical details, not using JavaScript is an interesting design goal, though it doesn’t seem too necessary for such a small website which relies on client-side info.

iPhone SE in a Windows Phone Body #

The LumiPhone 1020 SE

via Slashdot

I’ve never really liked the design of the Nokia Windows Phones, but this mod honestly looks great. I think a large part of why it looks so good is because of the symmetrical bezel created by the removal of the hardware navigation buttons, which was required to fit the larger iPhone SE display into the Lumia body. I especially love putting the fingerprint sensor on the huge camera bump, in a position reminiscent of phones like the Pixel 5.

Apple Partners with Alibaba for AI #

Apple partners with Alibaba for AI features in China

via Daring Fireball

This is an interesting partnership, since Alibaba’s relatively open model weights are much more akin to Meta compared to OpenAI, Apple’s main AI partner. I think the partnership is mainly for Alibaba’s cloud server infrastructure, since the Chinese giant’s Qwen models are a lot less consequential to Apple Intelligence compared to OpenAI’s previously industry-leading GPT models. However, if Apple did see a specific use for the Qwen suite of models, this would likely be the best way to integrate them, since companies with more than 100 million MAUs are subject to an additional clause in the Qwen License which requires requesting a special license from Alibaba. It’ll be interesting to see the comparisons between Apple Intelligence globally and in China, and I’m curious if a sudden innovation by Alibaba will propel the service to being better specifically in the country.

Superb Owl Sunday IX #

Superb Owl Sunday IX

The Super Bowl was today, meaning that there’s a new collection of owl photos from The Atlantic! All of the photos are great, but I especially like the close-ups of specific owls.

OpenAI Has Been on the Wrong Side of History #

Reddit comment from u/samaltman

via Simon Willison

Sam Altman, in response to a request to release model weights:

yes, we are discussing. i personally think we have been on the wrong side of history here and need to figure out a different open source strategy; not everyone at openai shares this view, and it’s also not our current highest priority.

I saw this comment on Slashdot yesterday, but didn’t realize that it came from Altman’s personal Reddit account. I previously assumed that Altman said this in a conversation with some politician, where absolutely nothing could be taken literally without considering OpenAI’s motives.

I still don’t think that this Reddit comment can be really considered as OpenAI going back to open source, especially since Altman has so much leverage in terms of the company’s plans and could have previously attempted to pivot to a more open company. This discrepancy is especially obvious even when comparing OpenAI to Anthropic, who doesn’t publish open model weights but at least attempts to make parts of their technology more accessible for usage without a $200/month subscription.

This comment is obviously catered towards the audience who thinks that OpenAI is going to implode because of DeepSeek, but there’s not really any advantage for OpenAI to open source their stack since the company is well established compared to the Chinese AI lab. I would guess that the main reasoning for this comment is just to give investors something to work with when considering OpenAI’s status compared to other AI companies (of course, primarily DeepSeek), so I wouldn’t derive any real meaning out of it.