Overview
Today’s feed split across two tracks. On the tech side, we saw concrete paths to stronger AI reasoning and a wobble at Apple’s silicon helm. On policy and money, “Trump Accounts” drew fresh attention from Capitol Hill and a high-profile gift, while a watchdog claimed new savings on federal contracts. Around that, human stories cut through, from craft and pressure in acting to ethics in fundraising and a call for peace.
The big picture
Turning weak LLMs into maths-and-reasoning models
Akshay breaks down how to take a base model that struggles with maths and teach it to reason using GRPO, a 2025 reinforcement learning method that skips manual labelling. It scores outputs with deterministic checks, like exact answer matching, and updates policy by comparing sampled groups rather than using a value network. The tutorial uses Qwen2.5-3B with Unsloth and TRL on datasets such as Open R1 Math, showing sharp gains, including step-by-step solutions and 90%+ accuracy on verifiable problems.
A 424-page playbook for agentic systems
Aadit highlights Antonio Gulli’s free “Agentic Design Patterns” - a code-backed guide to prompts, routing, memory, MCP, multi-agent coordination, guardrails, reasoning, and planning. It reads like a practical course for engineers, with proceeds going to Save the Children.
Apple’s chip boss weighs exit
Mark Gurman reports Johny Srouji has told Tim Cook he is considering leaving Apple. Srouji drove Apple’s silicon push from iPhones to the M-series for Macs, a pillar of its performance edge since moving away from Intel. Apple is said to be offering a rich retention package and a possible CTO role.
“Trump Accounts” move from pitch to cheques
unusual_whales shares Ted Cruz’s case for newborn “Trump Accounts”, seeded with $1,000 and open to $5,000 in yearly contributions with S&P 500 exposure. The back-of-the-envelope maths to about $170,000 by age 18 at 7% checks out, though replies question how many families and employers can fund that level of saving.
Michael Dell adds fuel with a $6.25 billion pledge to put $250 into 25 million children’s Invest America accounts in zip codes under a $150,000 median income. The aim is to boost wealth-building for education, homes, and small business.
Government waste watch: 43 contracts cut
@DOGE says agencies terminated or trimmed 43 contracts over five days, with a $3.5 billion ceiling value and claimed savings of $222 million. The examples include a $4.3 million Treasury “strategic narrative” effort and a $29 million Commerce management support deal. The account continues weekly updates despite reports of disbandment.
Craft, care, and conscience
Emir Han shares Margot Robbie’s account of losing herself in I, Tonya, including a moment she believed she had a broken hand while filming. It shows the mental and physical strain behind a widely praised performance.
MrBanks posts a reminder to build a life that does not rely on applause, echoing research that ties intrinsic motivation to higher life satisfaction.
Sir Dickson thanks donors after raising over ₦30m for a cancer patient, then pauses disbursement when the patient declines a blood transfusion on religious grounds. Replies debate donor intent, patient autonomy, and how to honour both.
Pope Leo XIV urges people to build peace from the heart, renouncing pride and weaponised words, a theme rooted in Catholic social teaching and pitched against present conflicts.
Why it matters
AI that can check its own work changes the curve
GRPO’s use of clear reward signals and group comparisons points to a cheaper way to train reasoning without armies of annotators. That lowers the bar for teams to lift base models in maths and logic, and the resource on agentic patterns helps engineers build safer, more capable systems around them.
Apple’s talent question is strategic, not just personal
Srouji’s possible exit would hit the unit that underpins Apple’s performance gains and battery life. Retention or replacement will tell us how Apple balances hardware leadership with the push into on-device and cloud AI.
Wealth policy meets real household budgets
Compound returns are powerful, but they demand contributions that many families cannot make. Dell’s pledge could widen access, yet the long-term success of “Trump Accounts” will hinge on participation rates, employer uptake, fee levels, and protections across market cycles.
Cutting “fuzzy” contracts is the easy part
Axing vague projects saves money now, but the harder work is building procurement that funds clear outcomes, measures impact, and avoids bloat returning under new names. Transparency and follow-up audits will decide whether savings stick.
Values under pressure
From an actor’s immersion to a fundraiser navigating faith and consent, and a papal note on language and peace, today’s posts point to the same thing, what we choose under stress reveals what we prize. That shapes culture as much as policy does.
