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Sports Illustrated is attempting a rebound after layoffs
One of the most respected brand names in journalism is now generating revenue through streaming TV, branded events, ticket services, and international editions.
3 biggest takeaways for Sixers following home loss to Pistons
Here are the three biggest takeaways for the Philadelphia 76ers following their blowout home loss to the Detroit Pistons.
Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey makes grand return to CT visiting two arenas with brand-new acts
The legendary circus continues its 21st century makeover featuring 65 performers, from aerialists to acrobats to trick cyclists to people who dive through hoops.
Nell Nolan: Cowan deb, Ellott deb, Benzman deb brunch
At individual parties, three debutantes of the season were honored at special locations, two historic and one, a charming home. Today, another celebration occurs, Easter, when families will visit homes
The founder of a $2.5 million AI-powered legal business started work at her DA’s office at just 12 years old
Logan Brown, the founder of AI-powered law firm Soxton, lived out her “Legally Blonde” dreams through hometown court hearings as a preteen and attending Harvard Law School.
How to strengthen collaboration to tackle infectious disease
A trans-disciplinary, multisectoral approach that includes environmental health, can help manage the threat of infectious disease in a globalized world.
‘Nothing prepares you’: The invisible lives of carers in the UK
Thrust into the isolated world of caring, a daughter learns how other sole carers cope, some under immense strain.
Michigan-Arizona was supposed to be game of the year. What happened?
Arizona vs. Michigan in the Final Four was meant to be a thriller, but it was a complete dud after the Wolverines blew out the Wildcats.
Sports Highlights for April 8, 2026
Sean Xiao: Sean Xiao, a sophomore on the Lakeridge boys tennis team, is already proving himself as a No. 1 singles player in 2026. Through three matches at the start […]
Sports Highlights for April 8, 2026
Sean Xiao: Sean Xiao, a sophomore on the Lakeridge boys tennis team, is already proving himself as a No. 1 singles player in 2026. Through three matches at the start […]
Sports Highlights for April 8, 2026
Sean Xiao: Sean Xiao, a sophomore on the Lakeridge boys tennis team, is already proving himself as a No. 1 singles player in 2026. Through three matches at the start […]
Nikola Jokic believes Victor Wembanyama will continue to change the league
Wembanyama has been a fantastic player for his first three seasons, and Jokic always finds ways to praise the Spurs star.
Final Four scores, results: Michigan throttles Arizona in one-sided beatdown, UConn tops Illinois to set up NCAA tournament title game
Striking JBS workers to return to Colorado plant on promise of talks
Workers of the world's largest meat company, JBS , agreed to return to work at a beef plant in Greely, Colorado after it agreed to resume negotiations, bringing a three-week picket to an end, their union said in a statement on Saturday.
Workers plan to halt strike at major US meatpacking plant and resume negotiations
Workers at one of the nation’s largest meatpacking plants plan to return to work next week and halt a three-week strike in order to resume negotiations with the plant's owner.
Commentary: When stars’ plastic surgery is played for your entertainment
Often when I’m scrolling through Instagram, hypnotized by the stream of videos, an actress’ face will cut through the noise. This isn’t a typical clip from a press junket or red carpet. Instead, it will feature side-by-side images of the star, one younger and one more recent. Then a content creator – perhaps a doctor or an aesthetician, sometimes wearing scrubs – will walk me through what cosmetic procedures they think the actress has had. (It’s much rarer that men get this kind of analysis.)
A Dermatologist Told Me How This LED Device Reverses Thinning Hair so Well, a Reviewer Saw “3 Inches of Growth”
A reviewer saw three inches of hair growth after using CurrentBody’s LED Red Light Hair Growth Helmet, and a dermatologist explains how. Shop it for $860 on the brand’s website.
SWLA mother honors son’s memory through custom business
Amber Mims’ son Kashton Mims drowned on Aug. 1 of last year.
Understanding Porsche's 3-Digit Model Names
Porsche's three-digit model names denote cars with different setups. The digits were originally made to denote the company's sequential projects.
Luca Langoni sparks Revolution to 3-0 victory over Montreal
Luca Langoni scored early before notching his league-high fifth assist on defender Mamadou Fofana's first career goal, and the New England Revolution beat CF Montreal 3-0 on Saturday. New England (2-3-0) has lost all three of its road matches under first-year coach Marko Mitrović, but the Revolution have won their two home matches by a combined 9-1 score. Montreal falls to 1-5-0 as ends a six-match road trip to begin the season.
I watched The Godfather again at 64 and cried — not because the movie changed, but because I finally understood that the films we watched in our twenties weren’t just entertainment, they were instruction manuals for masculinity, family, and honor that shaped every major decision I ever made
Last week, I found myself alone in my living room, remote in hand, scrolling through streaming options when The Godfather appeared on screen. It had been years since I’d watched it. Decades, really. Something made me click play, and three hours later, I was sitting there with tears streaming down my face. Not because Sonny […]
Gun sales at Academy Sports questioned in new report
Straw purchasers often supply guns to criminals through the firearms black market.
Mary Rand, Pioneering Track and Field Olympian, Dies at 86
At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, she became the first British woman to win a gold medal in track and field, and the first to win three medals in one Games.
GoFundMe raising money for family after Eau Claire business owner killed in crash
Her husband and their three daughters survived.
New mentorship training aims to boost student mental health support at South Dakota Mines
South Dakota Mines launched a state-funded pilot to expand Peer2Peer mentorship through fraternities and sororities, training students to support peers’ mental health.
'Diff'rent Strokes' star Todd Bridges files for divorce from wife after 3 years of marriage
'Diff'rent Strokes' star Todd Bridges has filed for divorce from his wife, Bettijo B. Hirschi, after three years of marriage.
Blue-green algae sparks public health advisory at three Kansas Lakes
There is a public health advisory in place for harmful algal blooms (HABs) at three lakes in Kansas.
Judge halts requirement that colleges show race isn't considered in admissions
The states argue the data collection effort threats student privacy and could lead to baseless investigations of colleges and universities
Judge halts requirement that colleges show race isn't considered in admissions
The states argue the data collection effort threats student privacy and could lead to baseless investigations of colleges and universities
Judge halts requirement that colleges show race isn't considered in admissions
The states argue the data collection effort threats student privacy and could lead to baseless investigations of colleges and universities
After barrage of runs, Phillies take on Rockies again
The Philadelphia Phillies entered the weekend hitting .220 as a team, but their offense got healthy in the opener of a three-game series with the Colorado Rockies on Friday in Denver.
“Threatened retaliation on first contact”: As I dig into a former Halo art director’s claims, I’m left questioning what else Microsoft didn’t want anyone to see.
New allegations from a former Halo Studios developer outline claims of misconduct and organisational issues, prompting questions around accountability and internal investigations at Microsoft.
Apple CarPlay Just Got Three Popular iPhone Apps
Apple's CarPlay system for accessing iPhone apps on a vehicle's dashboard screen received three popular apps this week: ChatGPT, Google Meet, and Audiomack. CarPlay Ultra in an Aston Martin In addition, WhatsApp is beta testing a revamped CarPlay app that will improve upon the basic Siri-based functionality that was previously available. Make sure you have the latest version of each app and they will automatically appear on CarPlay.
President Trump signs order intended to stabilize college sports, threatens lost federal funding
Trump went after eligibility rules, transfers and the spiraling costs associated with an industry that now pays its players millions of dollars per year.
Nancy Guthrie Update: FBI’s ‘Best Lead,’ According to a Cybersecurity Expert
'Today' co-anchor Savannah Guthrie's mom, 84, remains missing more than two months after her Tucson, Arizona, kidnapping.
Nancy Guthrie Update: FBI’s ‘Best Lead,’ According to a Cybersecurity Expert
'Today' co-anchor Savannah Guthrie's mom, 84, remains missing more than two months after her Tucson, Arizona, kidnapping.
Album Review: 6WA by BigXthaPlug & 600 Entertainment
BigXthaPlug spent eight months in Nashville making a country-rap album that debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200, put “All the Way” with Bailey Zimmerman at No. 4 on the Hot 100, got him a Rolling Stone cover, and filled arenas with Jelly Roll. And then he came back to Dallas, rounded up four of his signees, and made a gangsta-rap record with N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton on the cover. 6WA is the second group release from 600 Entertainment, named after the 600 block of Meadowridge Street in Ferris, Texas, where BigX and his people grew up. The whole thing is loaded with West Coast samples. From N.W.A.’s “8Ball,” Eazy-E’s “Real Muthaphuckkin G’s” and “Boyz-N-The-Hood,” Ice-T’s “6 in the Mornin’,” Snoop Dogg’s “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang” and more. BigX is staking his name on the lineup he built—Rosama, MurdaGang PB, Yung Hood, KevanGotBandz, KaineMusic—and claiming a lineage from 1,400 miles away while insisting Dallas is its own thing. A million dollars in cash, split and handed straight to his mother. That’s the first place BigX goes on “From the Bottom.” He’d probably still be in the streets if he didn’t have his son and daughter. He only started rapping to make life better for Carter. Couldn’t start his car back then, now people get starstruck at Starbucks, and he throws the whole field away in one sentence: “How you think we competin’? You on the same bag, I just made me some millions off country.” Goyard bags off a Nashville payday, and he wants you to know exactly how far he’s come from everybody else. “Safe to Say” does something similar but looser. It’s a straight Ice Cube “It Was a Good Day” flip, and BigX nails it. Wakes up, checks both phones, nobody’s locked up, kid accounts look good. Gets pulled over, only catches a warning. Pulls up on the squad to liquor, ladies, and haze. Rosama takes the second verse and matches him. Wakes up to his girl cleaning his cuticles, twins playing peekaboo, pays off his car, calls a cousin, sees the opps and they don’t trip. Lawyer calls, he beat his case. Rosama is the strongest voice in the 600 camp after BigX, and “Life of a Gangster” is why. Third person, riding low, blacked-out windows, snub-nose revolver. A character who chose sticking people up over selling dope. “Quick eraser like a number-two pencil.” He never breaks character, and his delivery drops lower and slower than anything he does on the group cuts, like he’s telling you something at a cookout that he probably shouldn’t. Then on “Long Live Fre$h” he’s a completely different rapper. “Short-bus diamonds, these bitches retarded,” wide-body Durango he can’t even park. That kind of range matters on a group record. MurdaGang PB’s best verse is on the title track. Feds at his door at 6 AM, cameras busted, flushing dope, ram truck putting everybody on the floor. Yung Hood on “The Hottest” just lays out four reasons to keep hustling. Who wants to be broke, women cost money, you need bail, and home has to be straight. It’s funnier and more honest than most rappers get when they’re trying to explain why they sell drugs. KevanGotBandz on “Ain’t Never Slowin’ Down” talks about his father getting caught on the dope while he’s sitting on $300K somewhere in the hills, which is a specific kind of guilt that doesn’t usually make it onto crew tapes. KaineMusic, the newest signee, takes the back half of “Who Dunnit” and introduces herself in third person—“Took flight just to show these hoes how to perform”—but it’s too short to know if she can hold a full song. The flex tracks fill the middle of the LP and mostly run together. “I Go” is Rosama and PB trading brands, guns, and food punchlines. Rosama’s “anemic, my iron tucked low in this shirt” is a slick gun bar, PB fires back with “.223 with a clip ‘bout as big as a toddler” and “I go Burger King, stay with that whopper.” Quick, funny sometimes, but it’s all shopping lists. “Dopeman” is a chant. “6ixer Party” brings Snoop Dogg, who does exactly what you’d expect Snoop Dogg to do. BigX contributes the night’s wildest overshare: “She say she brought a friend too, well, I’m tryna put sausage on her dental.” These songs move fast and don’t overstay, but three or four of them could trade verses and nobody would catch it. Midway through, The D.O.C. shows up for a spoken-word interlude. Tracy Curry. West Dallas native, former N.W.A affiliate, co-writer on a lot of the records getting sampled on this very album. He thanks BigX for the tribute and then gets direct: “This your time, this DFW time. You need to do it like we do it down here.” Leave bread crumbs so everybody behind you can eat. Keep God in your life. It’s fatherly and generous, and it does raise the question of whether 6WA follows that advice. The album borrows heavy. The cover art, the Eazy-E samples, “Amerikkka’s Most Wanted” opening with a direct “Boyz-N-The-Hood” lift, Yung Hood rapping “Flag on my left side, Crip until I die.” But the stuff that actually stays with you is Dallas. BigX talking about Pleasant Grove, Rosama calling himself a country boy, PB recounting a raid that could’ve been last Tuesday. The record smells most like itself when it smells like Ferris, Texas, and least like Compton. BigX on “The Hottest” says his father was the first person he knew who had chickens. Not the way rappers usually wave at the drug trade. He means his actual father, his actual family. On “600 Degrees,” Rosama compares his chopper’s stutter to a speech disorder, PB claims he still has the block on his back even after leaving the city. BigX closes that one saying he used to spin and smack, and now the plaques are platinum. Thirty-two minutes was right for this. Nobody overstays, Tony Coles and Rance and Charley Cooks keep the production punchy, and BigX gives his signees real room instead of crowding every song. 6WA doesn’t reinvent anything. Five rappers, good beats, short clock. Most of what they say you’ve heard before. Some of it—the million to his mother, the cuticles and peekaboo, the four reasons to hustle—you won’t forget. Solid (★★★½☆) Favorite Track(s): “Safe to Say,” “From the Bottom,” “The Hottest” Subscribe
Reducing friction in ARC Raiders
ARC Raiders is a multiplayer extraction adventure, set in a lethal future earth, ravaged by a mysterious mechanized threat known as ARC.
Binge drinking just once a month may triple your risk of liver scarring
Many people think that occasional binge drinking is harmless if they otherwise drink in moderation, but new research suggests that assumption may be dangerously wrong. A large U.S. study found that people with metabolic dysfunction–associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), a condition affecting about one in three adults, face a much higher risk of serious liver scarring if they engage in heavy drinking even just once a month.
Tom Pohlad to lead Twins business operations throughout 2026 season
Twins owner Tom Pohlad initially considered hiring a president of business operations after Derek Falvey resigned in January.
Week in Politics: Trump's latest speech; SCOTUS on birthright citizenship; Pam Bondi
President Trump claimed victory in Iran during a prime-time address to the nation. Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi is out, and the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on birthright citizenship.
AWS Engineer Reports PostgreSQL Performance Halved By Linux 7.0, But A Fix May Not Be Easy
An Amazon/AWS engineer raised the alarms on Friday over the current Linux 7.0 development kernel leading to the throughput for the PostgreSQL database server being around half that of prior kernel versions
How a Louisiana lawyer from the 1800s appeared in the legal fight over birthright citizenship
WASHINGTON — U.S. Supreme Court justices are considering two cases that could change long-established constitutional interpretations concerning race — and Louisiana plays an integral role in both.
Nancy Guthrie Update: FBI’s ‘Best Lead,’ According to a Cybersecurity Expert
'Today' co-anchor Savannah Guthrie's mom, 84, remains missing more than two months after her Tucson, Arizona, kidnapping.
House Democrats to hold California 'shadow hearings' on midterm election security
House Democrats will hold informal hearings in California on midterm election security, following multiple threats of intervention in state-run voting by the Trump administration.
What it's like flying Southwest after all the changes; A-List helped
I hit the spending threshhold on my Chase Reserve card in 2025 to secure free A-List status on Southwest. Now, I wouldn't fly the airline without it.
Citizen science trail camera project studies winter tick impacts on moose in northeast Minnesota
Winter ticks continue to pose a significant threat to moose in northeastern Minnesota, and a newly launched citizen science project is now using trail camera photos to document their impact. On April 2, the Northern Moose Alliance, a collaborative initiative of tribal and state agencies to study moose, particularly juvenile moose, launched a website, and...
Parker Roberts inspires Sporting Jax women's soccer with ACL recovery
In fewer than seven months, Sporting Jax women's soccer midfielder Parker Roberts has fought through a torn ACL to return to action.
Pigeon Town Steppers bring a pastel party to New Orleans Easter. 'It still gives me butterflies.'
The second line parade route changes, but always goes through Pigeon Town, Gert Town and Hollygrove.
Students found a star from the dawn of the universe drifting into the Milky Way
A group of undergraduate students stumbled into a cosmic time capsule—one of the oldest stars ever discovered—while combing through massive astronomy datasets. What began as a class project quickly turned into a breakthrough when they spotted an extraordinarily “pristine” star made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, hinting it formed near the dawn of the universe.
Bayer Leverkusen vs Wolfsburg: Team news and predicted line-up
Relegation-threatened Wolfsburg travel to the BayArena to face top-four candidates Bayer Leverkusen. Leverkusen sit comfortably in sixth place, having an eight-point gap between them and seventh-plac...
The global oil crisis is turning into an everything crisis
One month into the war in Iran, a growing shortage of crude oil is threatening to morph into something worse: a shortage of nearly everything.
Rockets Take Care of Business vs The Jazz: Three Takeaways
The Houston Rockets got the job done at home over the Utah Jazz as they continue to build momentum.
Three ripple effects of Luka Dončić's injury: Lakers have lingering questions as playoff picture muddies
Luka Dončić is unlikely to play again this season unless the Lakers can make a deep playoff run without him
Anthropic cuts off OpenClaw support for Claude subscriptions
Anthropic said third-party tools like OpenClaw put an "outsized strain on our systems." OpenClaw's founder said cutting support would be "a loss."
Thieves smash through 8-liner business wall to reach ATM after deputies' raid.
The owner of an 8-liner game room is out of luck—and apparently out a lot of money. Her business has been hit twice: Bexar County deputies shut it down last week, and then last night thieves struck. The owner tells our Pachatta Pope she didn't think she was doing anything illegal.
Arts and entertainment throughout the region
A listing of arts and entertainment events throughout the region.
Arizona Diamondbacks Gameday Thread, #8: 4/3 vs. Braves
Today’s Lineups BRAVES DIAMONDBACKS Ronald Acuna – RF Ketel Marte – 2B Drake Baldwin – DH Corbin Carroll – RF Ozzie Albies – 2B Geraldo Perdomo – SS Matt Olson – 1B Gabriel Moreno – DH Austin Riley – 3B Nolan Arenado – 3B Eli White – LF Alek Thomas – CF Mauricio Dubon – […]
Kentucky Science Center offering day camps for kids during Spring Break
The Kentucky Science Center is offering day camps for students in Pre-K through 5th grade.
Trump threatens schools’ federal funding in new order aimed at stabilizing college sports
President Donald Trump tried to put some teeth into his latest attempt to save college sports. The threat of cutting funding to cash-starved schools that don’t comply is real, even if the stricter rules that come out of the executive order he signed Friday could take a while to figure out.
Trump threatens schools’ federal funding in new order aimed at stabilizing college sports
President Donald Trump tried to put some teeth into his latest attempt to save college sports. The threat of cutting funding to cash-starved schools that don’t comply is real, even if the stricter rules that come out of the executive order he signed Friday could take a while to figure out.
Trump signs order aimed at stabilizing college sports with threats to federal funding
The threat of cutting funding to cash-starved schools that don’t comply is real, even if the stricter rules that come out of the executive order he signed Friday could take a while to figure out.
Trump signs order aimed at stabilizing college sports with threats to federal funding
The threat of cutting funding to cash-starved schools that don’t comply is real, even if the stricter rules that come out of the executive order he signed Friday could take a while to figure out.
These overlooked brain cells may control fear and PTSD
Astrocytes, once thought to be mere brain “support cells,” are now revealed to be key players in fear memory. Researchers found they actively help form, recall, and weaken fear responses by interacting with neurons in real time. Changing astrocyte activity directly altered how strong fear memories became. This breakthrough could lead to entirely new treatments for anxiety-related disorders.
MXene breakthrough boosts conductivity 160x with perfect atomic order
A new breakthrough is transforming MXenes—ultra-thin, high-tech materials—into something far more powerful and precise. Researchers have developed a cleaner, more controlled way to build these materials using molten salts and iodine, eliminating the messy chemical processes that once left their surfaces disordered. The result is a perfectly arranged atomic structure that lets electrons flow with remarkable ease, boosting conductivity by up to 160 times.
Small Business Cybersecurity Training Program Scales Nationwide
The national Small Business Development Center is taking a program that was started in Delaware and offering it through its full 1,200-center network across the country.
President Trump signs order intended to stabilize college sports, threatens lost federal funding
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at restoring “order, fairness and stability” to college athletics.
Scientists Have Made French Fry Breakthrough
Researchers have developed a method of making french fries that results in a healthier bite without sacrificing crispiness.
President Trump signs order intended to stabilize college sports
President Donald Trump signs executive order aimed at curbing the 'financial arms race that threatens' college sports.
Trump set to sign executive order on college sports to regain control of NIL
President Donald Trump plans to sign a second executive order for college sports, reportedly aimed at expanding NCAA control over athletes and NIL issues.
Cory Mills meets with Syrian President in Damascus
Ahmed Al-Sharaa , a former Al-Qaeda fighter, came to power after overthrowing Bashar Assad.
Savannah Guthrie's Today Return: Highly Unusual, Business as Usual
The NBC morning show co-anchor since 2012 has been off-air since her mom Nancy was abducted on Feb. 1. The world will be watching her big return on Monday.
Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME) Valuation After Recent Share Price Weakness
Context for Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME) After Recent Price Moves Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME) has seen its share price under pressure in recent weeks, with a one-month return of a 35.5% decline and a past three-month return of a 48.7% decline catching investor attention. Against that backdrop, investors are weighing how the company’s core China-focused music and audio platforms, alongside reported annual revenue of CN¥32,902 and net income of CN¥11,056, align with its...
Federal government sues three states for trying to regulate prediction markets
All three states have sent cease and desist orders to such companies accusing them of engaging in illegal online gambling under state law.
California cracks down on luxury car buyers evading taxes through 'Montana Loophole'
California targets wealthy luxury car owners and dealers using the Montana loophole to avoid sales tax, launching audits to recover millions in revenue.
William Staggers on music, creativity, and Staggers Music Entertainment
William Staggers joins us to share his story of writing and arranging his own songs, building a creative space for other artists, and the work he is doing through Staggers Music Entertainment to in…
Apple issues warning to millions of iPhone users over sophisticated attack stealing data: Act NOW
Apple has issued an emergency update for millions of iPhone users, urging them to act now to prevent their data from being stolen.
Shohei Ohtani Ends Home Run Drought
Shohei Ohtani hit his first home run of the season on Friday, a three-run blast off of Washington Nationals pitcher Miles Mikolas.
Colorado sues Trump administration, calling new election order ‘unconstitutional’
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser has joined a multistate coalition suing President Donald Trump over a new executive order on elections, arguing the directive unlawfully intrudes on states’ authority to run their own voting systems and threatens access to mail ballots for millions of voters. The lawsuit argues that Trump’s executive order is unconstitutional because […]
Chiefs’ offseason workout dates announced
Kansas City’s offseason training program consists of three phases.
Politics Friday: 3 congressional candidates vying for their party's endorsement
Friday at noon, a check-in on the only Minnesota congressional race guaranteed to send a new person to Washington. MPR News politics editor Brian Bakst speaks with three candidates seeking to represent the 2nd Congressional District.
Gemma 4 and what makes an open model succeed
Having written a lot of model release blog posts, there’s something much harder about reviewing open models when they drop relative to closed models, especially in 2026. In recent years, there were so few open models, so when Llama 3 was released most people were still doing research on Llama 2 and super happy to get an update. When Qwen 3 was released, the Llama 4 fiasco had just gone down, and a whole research community was emerging to study RL on Qwen 2.5 — it was a no brainer to upgrade. Today, when an open model releases, it’s competing with Qwen 3.5, Kimi K2.5, GLM 5, MiniMax M2.5, GPT-OSS, Arcee Large, Nemotron 3, Olmo 3, and others. The space is populated, but still feels full of hidden opportunity. The potential of open models feels like a dark matter, a potential we know is huge, but few clear recipes and examples for how to unlock it are out there. Agentic AI, OpenClaw, and everything brewing in that space is going to spur mass experimentation in open models to complement the likes of Claude and Codex, not replace them. Especially with open models, the benchmarks at release are an extremely incomplete story. In some ways this is exciting, as new open models have a much higher variance and ability to surprise, but it also points at some structural reasons that make building businesses and great AI experiences around open models harder than the closed alternatives. When a new Claude Opus or GPT drops, spending a few hours with them in my agentic workflows is genuinely a good vibe test. For open models, putting them through this test is a category error. Something else to be said about open models in the era of agents is that they get out of the debate of integration, harnesses, and tools and let us see close to the ground on what exactly is the ability of just a model. Of course, we can’t test some things like search abilities without some tool, but being able to measure exactly the pace of progress of the model alone is a welcome simplification to a systematically opaque AI space. Share The list of factors I’d use to assess a new open-weight model I’m considering investing in includes: Model performance (and size) — how this model performs on benchmarks I care about and how it compares to other models of a similar size. Country of origin — some businesses care deeply about provenance, and if a model was built in China or not. Model license — if a model needs legal approval for use, uptake will be slower at mid-sized and large companies. Tooling at release — many models release with half-broken, or at least substantially slower, implementations in popular software like vLLM, Transformers, SGLANG, etc due to pushing the envelope of architectures or tools. Model fine-tunability — how easy or hard it is to modify the given model to your use-case when you actually try and use it. The core problem is that some of these are immediately available at release, e.g. general performance, license, origin, etc. but others such as tooling take day(s) to week(s) to stabilize, and others are open research questions — with no group systematically monitoring fine-tunability. In the early era of open models, the days of Llama 2 or 3 and Qwen pre v3.5, the architectures were fairly simple and the models tended to work out of the box. Some of this was due to the extremely hard work of the Llama, Qwen, Mistral, etc. developer teams. Some is due to the new models being genuinely harder to work with. When it comes to something like Qwen 3.5 or Nemotron 3, with hybrid models (either gated delta net or mamba layers), the tooling is very rough at release. Things you would expect to “just work” often don’t. I’ve been following this area closely since we released Olmo Hybrid with a similar architecture, and Qwen 3.5 is just starting to work well in the various open-source tools that need to all play nice together for RL research. That’s 1.5 months after the release date! This is just to start really investing more into understanding the behavior of the models. Of course, others started working on these models sooner by investing more engineering resources or relying on partially closed software. The fully open and distributed ecosystem takes a long time to get going on some new models. All of this is lead-in for the most important question for open models — how easy is it to adapt to specific use-cases? This is a different problem for different model sizes. Large MoE open-weight models may be used by entities like Cursor who need complex capabilities in their domain, e.g. Composer 2 trained on Kimi K2.5. Other applications can be built on much smaller models, such as Chroma’s Context-1 model for agentic search, built on GPT-OSS 20B. The question of “which models are fine-tunable” is largely background knowledge known by engineers across the industry. There should be a thriving research area here to support the open ecosystem model. The first step is to understand characteristics of different base and post-trained models to understand what they look like. The second step is to tune pretraining recipes for open models so they’re more flexible. Interconnects AI is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe For The ATOM Project and other Interconnects endeavors, we’ve put in substantial effort to measuring adoption trends in the open ecosystem. Everything takes a long time to unfold after a model is first publicly available — and adaptability is why. What we know for sure now, when Qwen has been going from strength to strength with its releases, is that technical staff across the industry has gotten comfortable working with Qwen models. Countless research methods and datasets were made to work with Qwen. It’ll take patience for any other model family to get to this point — a patience I’m not sure many open model builders have. This takes us to Gemma 4, Google’s latest open models. Gemma 3 was released more than a year ago, in March of 2025, and is a bit underrated. Gemma 4 comes in 4 sizes for now, with a bigger, MoE model of over 100B total parameters rumored but not released yet. The models we have today come in sizes of ~5B dense, 8B dense, 26B total 4B active MoE, and 31B dense. I’m most excited that they’re finally adopting a standard Apache 2.0 open source license. This’ll massively boost adoption. The standard of better licenses for strong open-weight LLMs was set by mostly Chinese open model labs in the last 1-2 years, and now U.S. companies are following suit. I will personally be so happy if the horrible Llama licenses and Gemma terms of service were an ~18-month transient dynamic of the industry being nervous about releasing strong open models. The Gemma 4 scores look very solid, the small models have incredible benchmark scores (especially in general domains like LMArena) and the 31B model rivals the recent Qwen 3.5 27B, which is the leading member of that class. The ~30B size range is an important one, as it’s accessible both to researchers and to enterprises looking to deploy the model in real use-cases. Where the 7B model scale is the default for tinkering and research, a 30B model is the default for seeing if an open model can unlock substantial value in your specific workflow — a good mix of intelligence, low price, tractability for downstream training, etc. This takes us back to the above adoption criteria I mentioned for open models and the bigger question — do I think Gemma 4 will be an overwhelming success? Previous Gemma models have been plagued by tooling issues and poorer performance when being finetuned. Gemma 4’s success is going to be entirely determined by ease of use, to a point where a 5-10% swing on benchmarks wouldn’t matter at all. It’s strong enough, small enough, with the right license, and from the U.S., so many companies are going to slot it in. I’m cautiously optimistic that Gemma 4 is going to work better here. Winds are shifting for open models built in America. We saw GPT-OSS go through a bumpy launch to become an overwhelming success. There’s a collective energy around the likes of Reflection, Arcee, Nemotron, Gemma, Olmo, and peers that show substantial demand for building new stacks around open models. There’s capital to be spent on AI stacks across the economy by those who want more ownership of everything, including the model. After launching The ATOM Project 240 days ago, the conversation is shifting into the next stage. Summer of 2025 was a crisis moment where the U.S. AI scene realized it can’t wait and figure out open models after building AGI. The two markets will capture different areas and proceed in parallel. Now that more companies in the U.S. are releasing strong models, we need to improve the ecosystem so that these models are easy to use, understand, and build value around. It’s the hard work to build another inflection point in these adoption plots I’ve been updating consistently, but that’s the work to be done. Join me in it. More data coming soon! Here’s a sneak peek:
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