⚡️BREAKING: Zhang Yiming says ByteDance will not use distillation as a shortcut to catch up in AI, even if that means its LLMs temporarily fall behind Chinese rivals. According to The Information, Zhang made the remarks at a Seed team all-hands last month, telling the team to sacrifice short-term gains for longer-term goals. Distillation allows a new model to learn from the outputs of a stronger model, saving training time and compute. But ByteDance is choosing a harder path: building its own frontier models more independently. The bigger concern may be political risk. ByteDance has spent years under U.S. scrutiny over TikTok. If the company were accused of extracting capabilities from leading American AI models at scale, it could give Washington another reason to pressure TikTok. Anthropic has previously accused several Chinese AI firms of extracting capabilities from Claude, including DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, MiniMax, Zhipu and Alibaba, but not ByteDance. #ByteDance# #distillation# #seedance# #LLMs# #TikTok#

The 2026 China (Yixing) Tea Industry Expo kicks off June 13-15. Beyond traditional tea brands, new-style tea drink brands like Chagee and Mixue are joining in. Tea beer, tea ice cream, matcha creations — unlock endless ways to enjoy tea in Yixing this weekend!

Recently, in Yining, NW #China#'s #Xinjiang# Uygur Autonomous Region, two teenagers came across an injured "desert Mickey Mouse" while out playing. It looked like a mouse but seemed unusual. They took photos and searched online, confirming it was a long‑eared jerboa—a first‑class nationally protected animal in China. Mindful of wildlife protection laws, the boys did not catch or touch it, and immediately called the police. Officers arrived at the scene, rescued the injured jerboa with proper care, and nursed it until it recovered. It was then released back into its natural Gobi habitat.