The latest Rex preview release includes a very important subsystem I've been working on for weeks to enable full forwards+backwards API compatibility with clients and servers. This was gating the Linux test program and massively opening up the Mac test program. We just invited another 1,000 (to Mac) and if it goes well this will step up considerably this week. The Linux test program will likely start this week (separate invite waves amongst existing testers). The API compatibility system is super cool. At a high level: Every API change is a rule on a JSON pointer (RFC 6901). For each message, we compile all the rules between your version and ours into a trie keyed by JSON path tokens. This happens lazily since we don't want a full quadratic explosion (a message with N revisions has N possible chains of length 1 to N). We don't want to build N^2/2 trie nodes when most WON'T be visited. Next, we wrote a custom recursive descent streaming JSON editor (forward-pass only). If a key doesn't match any subtree in the trie, we fast-path copy the full value onto the wire (nothing in it can possibly matter for compatibility). Equal chains of changes are interned to the same pointer, so when we broadcast an event to many old clients, we translate it once per distinct chain, not once per client. The result of all this plus some other work is that we simulated various shapes of 10,000 long revision chains (note: we're on revision 4 at the moment...) with pathological changes of various shapes and an upgrade costs about 35 _microseconds_ on a 20KB JSON body.

The Black Panther Warriors黑豹天下 [1993] Directed By: Clarence Fok (Credited as Clarence Ford) Very fun era in Hong Kong Cinema where the creativity by directors such as Yuen Woo-Ping, Ching Siu Tung & Clarence Fok was pushing genre of action to new heights from a visual and choreography approach. With elements usually seen in the Wuxia genre with the wire work. Some of these directors started using that approach for hand to hand combat and combining it at times with gunplay. Giving us action fans a dynamic visual experience that is very reminiscent of what we saw in comic and manga panels.

The Japan Rugby League One 2025–26 runners-up: Kubota Spears 🥈 What a season for the Spears and the Orange Army 👏🍊🦄 After a final that went right down to the wire, congratulations to @Kubota_Spears on an incredible campaign filled with unforgettable moments, relentless rugby, and a fight worthy of the biggest stage #NTTLeagueOne#

“The world needs Africa more than Africa needs the world.” You might know Idris Elba from ‘The Wire,’ ‘Luther’ or being named People's ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ — but alongside his wife, Sabrina Dhowre Elba, he’s also been doing impactful work beyond the screen. Through their nonprofit the Elba Hope Foundation, the couple has focused on some of today’s most pressing issues, including food security, support for smallholder farmers, sustainability, and youth advocacy. Much of the organization's work happens in Sierra Leone, his father's homeland, as well as in the U.K., where Idris was born. “I feel like an underdog, and Elba Hope not just fights for the underdog, but helps give a voice to the underdog, the underserved, the unheard,” Idris told TIME. For using their platform to advocate and educate, the Elbas are on the TIME100 Philanthropy list. Read about the work that got them there here:

🇹🇼🇺🇸 The “English Teachers” Beijing Never Wanted You to Meet: Taiwan Just Lifted the Curtain Defense Minister Wellington Koo confirms what the CCP has spent years trying to deny. U.S. troops are already on the island, and more are coming. For years they moved through Taiwan’s bases without name tags, logged as “American English teachers.” Their real curriculum was combat. On Friday, Taipei stopped pretending. In a rare on-record briefing, Defense Minister Wellington Koo told a small group of reporters that U.S.-Taiwan military cooperation “is far closer than you might imagine.” The timing was deliberate. Taiwan’s largest annual war games, Han Kuang 42, kicked off Wednesday and run through August 14. The Wall Street Journal first exposed the quiet American training presence in 2021. Koo has now confirmed it and previewed a scale-up. “A lot more ‘American English teachers’ will be showing up where they need to be,” he said. “But you won’t be able to spot them everywhere they operate.” Two senior officers reinforced the message on the record. Maj. Gen. Sun Li-fang, the Ministry of National Defense spokesman, said the Americans “share a lot of real combat experience with us.” Lt. Gen. Huang Wen-chi, who leads the Department of Strategic Planning, confirmed Taiwanese units have been reshaped by realistic combat training with U.S. personnel. The message is aimed squarely at Zhongnanhai. Taiwanese authorities logged 85 Chinese coast guard sightings in May and June alone, a nearly 90 percent jump against the same period last year, with two vessels probing waters east of Taiwan on Friday, far from the mainland. The People’s Republic no longer bothers to disguise that its coast guard operates as a naval auxiliary rehearsing blockade. Taipei’s response is transparency as deterrence. The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), Washington’s de facto embassy in Taipei, released a photograph of U.S. and Taiwanese coast guard cutters sailing in tandem, a public handshake the two sides once buried. Koo added a clarifying line that Beijing should study carefully. Taiwan’s war plan does not assume American intervention. That is not resignation. That is a democracy telling the CCP it will fight, and the trainers teaching it how are already inside the wire. ACI — Aric Chen | Insights

the big @TheFIREorg "Soapbox" conference is getting underway in Philly this morning with inspiring keynotes from @glukianoff & @NicoPerrino. A celebration of freedom of speech.