On Wednesday, February 14, 17 students and faculty at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were gunned down on the campus where I also attend school. Their names were Alyssa Alhadeff, Scott Beigel, Martin Duque, Nicholas Dworet, Aaron Feis, Jaime Guttenberg, Chris Hixon, Luke Hoyer, Cara Loughran, Gina Montalto, Joaquin Oliver, Alaina Petty, Meadow Pollack, Helena Ramsay, Carmen Schentrup, Alex Schachter, and Peter Wang. Our lives and our community are forever changed due to this senseless tragedy — one we know could have been prevented.

Since that day, many fellow survivors and I have not kept quiet. We have taken the media by storm through appearances and interviews, met with state and federal lawmakers to beg them to enact much stricter gun control laws, and been joined in protest by students around the nation and the world who’ve held school walkouts and demonstrations that exhibit the energy and power of young people in full force.

In just a few weeks’ time, we, the youth of the United States, have built a new movement to denounce gun violence and call for safety in all of our communities.

Interviews with more than a dozen delegates and convention guests this week show that as much as the attempt on Trump’s life has rattled the GOP, it has not shaken its core belief that that the best response to mass shootings is increased mental health resources and physical security measures, including metal detectors, police officers and armed teachers in schools.

The Republican Party has long aligned itself with the National Rifle Association and regards guns as an integral part of its platform and culture. The NRA is an official sponsor of the convention and is co-hosting several events around Milwaukee this week, organization spokesperson Nick Perrine confirmed.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry’s trade group, estimated that in 2020 there were 433.9 million firearms in civilian possession, about 100 million more than there are people living in the U.S.

Will decentralized training break compute thresholds for good?

I’ve been skeptical of regulation based on “compute thresholds” since the idea first entered mainstream policy discussion. The threshold-based approach taken by the Biden Administration in its Executive Order on AI struck me as a plausible first draft, particularly given that the basic intention behind it was “make sure OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic, and Meta talk to the federal government about their AI development and safety plans.” Compute thresholds are fine for that contingent and transitory need. But for anything more robust, and especially for any regulation that imposes actual or potential costs on model developers, I concluded long ago that compute thresholds would probably be ineffective.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that OpenAI’s new o1 models challenge compute thresholds with the inference-based scaling paradigm (if you don’t understand this, I’ll explain more below). But there’s yet another new paradigm in AI development that could complicate compute thresholds as a governance mechanism: decentralized training. Let’s take a look.

Markets Hit Record Highs, CNBC
The Dow surged 431 points to a record 42,512, while the S&P 500 hit an all-time high of 5,792 as tech stocks rallied, overcoming geopolitical concerns and Fed rate cut support.

Milton Moves Across Florida, The Weather Channel
Hurricane Milton is headed toward the Atlantic Thursday after leaving 3 million without power and as record-breaking rain, major flooding, deadly tornadoes, and winds hitting over 100 mph continue to pummel Florida.

Biden and Netanyahu Finally Speak, Al Jazeera
President Biden reaffirmed “ironclad” support for Israel in a 30-minute call with PM Netanyahu, condemning Iran’s missile attacks and backing Israel’s offensive in Lebanon.

Dems Hitting Panic Button, The Hill
Democrats are nervous about Harris’s stagnant swing state polls, inconsistent messaging on the economy, and struggles to connect with minority voters weeks before Election Day.

Former Govs Warn on Election Rules, Smerconish.com
Former governors Jim Blanchard and Tom Corbett issue a bipartisan warning to state leaders: uphold new election certification laws or risk disenfranchising millions of voters.

Biden Calls Trump Un-American, Associated Press
Biden condemned Trump and allies for spreading “un-American” lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene as Milton nears Florida, assuring resources and rescue teams are ready.

Introducing the Margin of Inefficiency. The Super Model
Harry Crane explains that prediction market price gaps stem from structural inefficiencies, introducing the concept of a “margin of inefficiency” to understand these disparities.

Harris Is Glocked and Loaded, NBC News
VP Harris faced backlash for owning a Glock in California, with critics calling her hypocritical given her support for strict gun control measures, including assault weapons bans.

Well, I have changed my mind. I now believe debate season is — sad sigh — over.

This all came to a head on Wednesday when Fox News proposed a Pennsylvania debate later this month between Harris and Trump — an offer, you might think, that was too good for Trump to refuse.