Who’s Afraid of Chinese Models?：https://stratechery.com/2026/whos-afraid-of-chinese-models/ (via：https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/07/20/thompson-chinese-models-distillation) Interesting proposal from Ben Thompson that both addresses the hypocrisy of labs outlawing distillation against their models despite training on unlicensed data, and could help US open models compete more effectively with their Chinese counterparts:

Ben also theorizes that Alibaba's decision to release Qwen 3.8 Max as open weights - a reversal from their decision not to release Qwen 3.7 Max：https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen3.7 in May - may have been influenced by a recent speech：http://english.scio.gov.cn/topnews/2026-07/18/content_118605932.html by Xi Jinping, who said:

We should seize this rare, historic opportunity to encourage open source, openness, collaboration and sharing.

And on the subject of Qwen 3.8 Max：https://twitter.com/Alibaba_Qwen/status/2078759124914098291 - a new 2.4T parameter model (nearly as large as the 2.8T Kimi K3) - here's a pelican it drew：https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer#url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2F735f2cf19b795517cb2ff6cae1c71c64:

Described by Qwen 3.8 Max: Flat vector cartoon illustration of a white pelican with a large orange beak and pouch riding a red bicycle, its orange legs on the pedals, against a light blue sky with a yellow sun top right and a white cloud top left, with horizontal motion lines behind the bike and a pale green ground strip at the bottom.

I particularly enjoyed seeing these notes in the (extensive) reasoning trace: "Could add helmet? No." and "Maybe add small bell? no." and "Need maybe add small fish in basket? Not necessary."

This is a link post by Simon Willison, posted on 20th July 2026：/2026/Jul/20/.

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