Flixx

Building with AI.
Turning ideas into attention, systems & income.
Documenting the journey.

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

Musk spent 4 years and billions of dollars teaching his robot to walk without falling, and a guy from Shenzhen just unboxed a robot at an expo that the entire hall mistook for a dead person

His name is Liang Wei, he is 29.

Two years ago he left Huawei, took four engineers with him and rented a basement in an industrial zone on the outskirts of Shenzhen. Three monitors, a server against the wall, and 4 terabytes of human face scans on a hard drive.

For the first six months they trained a neural network on micro-expressions. How an eyebrow moves when a person hesitates. How a pupil contracts in light. How the skin on a cheekbone creases into tiny folds when someone smiles. 400,000 parameters for a single face.

In the seventh month Liang dropped a photo in a private group chat. His colleagues asked who it was. He said nobody, it’s a render. They didn’t believe him.

Tesla spends billions so a metal skeleton can move its legs. Liang spent $140,000 and built something that made expo security call an ambulance because they thought there was a real person in the box.

Now six countries are reaching out to him. He answers from the same phone he used to film his first failed tests in that basement.

Are you sure you know whether the person next to you on the subway is still human or not

[dayan @dayanxm]

A 5 by 5 inch box is killing the custom PC market

Dan spent 6 years building desktops to order. $1,800 per machine, 3
days of work, 14 parts. Two-week backlog. $11,000 a month net.

Last quarter he lost 7 clients. All for the same reason.

M6 Mac Mini. $899. The size of a sandwich.

Cracked one open out of curiosity. No fans inside. Wall power draw — same as a desk lamp. Performance — matches the machine he sells for $1,800.

Sat down with a calculator. A desktop client brings $400 profit over 3 days. A Mac Mini client — $150 in 40 minutes. Per hour, 4x more profitable.

Now he sells Mac Minis too. Lower margin per unit. But $14,000 a month instead of $11,000. Because turnover is faster.

And a crate of RGB fans sits in storage. Worth $6,000.

When an $899 box in your palm does what an $1,800 tower does — who’s still buying towers

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

Musk spent 4 years and billions of dollars teaching his robot to walk without falling, and a guy from Shenzhen just unboxed a robot at an expo that the entire hall mistook for a dead person

His name is Liang Wei, he is 29.

Two years ago he left Huawei, took four engineers with him and rented a basement in an industrial zone on the outskirts of Shenzhen. Three monitors, a server against the wall, and 4 terabytes of human face scans on a hard drive.

For the first six months they trained a neural network on micro-expressions. How an eyebrow moves when a person hesitates. How a pupil contracts in light. How the skin on a cheekbone creases into tiny folds when someone smiles. 400,000 parameters for a single face.

In the seventh month Liang dropped a photo in a private group chat. His colleagues asked who it was. He said nobody, it’s a render. They didn’t believe him.

Tesla spends billions so a metal skeleton can move its legs. Liang spent $140,000 and built something that made expo security call an ambulance because they thought there was a real person in the box.

Now six countries are reaching out to him. He answers from the same phone he used to film his first failed tests in that basement.

Are you sure you know whether the person next to you on the subway is still human or not

[DN_DEGEN @DN_degen]

How to make money on robots https://t.co/1IQv3LpIz8

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

Tesla just revealed their new $3 billion robot and it’s so realistic that people at the expo walk up trying to introduce themselves thinking it’s a real person

She was built by Liang Wei, 34. Former engineer at a government lab in Guangzhou. Left three years ago, took two colleagues. One sold patent. $820,000. Every cent into the project.

First year they digitized facial movement. 147 motion points on the face. First 22 prototypes Liang destroyed himself. His rule: if it makes you want to look away, it’s not ready.

On the twenty-third iteration the robot turned its head and an engineer nearby stepped back. Liang said: ready.

Musk is spending $3 billion. A thousand engineers. A lab the size of an airport. Liang did it with two people for $820,000 in a warehouse with no sign. Both Musk and Jensen Huang have already seen this video

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

@henriper correct

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

A 26-year-old ex-Tesla engineer did for $200K what Musk spent billions on, and his version is better

At Tesla, Liang Wei worked on Optimus. His job: teach the robot to walk. Liang kept telling management the future wasn’t in legs, it was in the face. That people don’t care how a robot walks. They care how it looks at you. Nobody listened.

He quit. 9 friends. Shenzhen. A neural net that spent two years eating thousands of hours of human facial footage. Every squint, every head turn toward a voice, every micro-smile. One day the robot looked at one of the engineers and smiled so naturally he flinched away from his desk.

At the expo, the line at his booth was longer than Tesla’s. The company is valued at $400 million. Meanwhile Optimus is still learning not to trip.

What matters more: teaching a robot to walk or teaching it to fee

[DN_DEGEN @DN_degen]

How to make money on robots https://t.co/1IQv3LpIz8

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

Tesla just revealed their new $3 billion robot and it’s so realistic that people at the expo walk up trying to introduce themselves thinking it’s a real person

She was built by Liang Wei, 34. Former engineer at a government lab in Guangzhou. Left three years ago, took two colleagues. One sold patent. $820,000. Every cent into the project.

First year they digitized facial movement. 147 motion points on the face. First 22 prototypes Liang destroyed himself. His rule: if it makes you want to look away, it’s not ready.

On the twenty-third iteration the robot turned its head and an engineer nearby stepped back. Liang said: ready.

Musk is spending $3 billion. A thousand engineers. A lab the size of an airport. Liang did it with two people for $820,000 in a warehouse with no sign. Both Musk and Jensen Huang have already seen this video

[DN_DEGEN @DN_degen]

How to make money on robots https://t.co/1IQv3LpIz8

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

A 26-year-old ex-Tesla engineer did for $200K what Musk spent billions on, and his version is better

At Tesla, Liang Wei worked on Optimus. His job: teach the robot to walk. Liang kept telling management the future wasn’t in legs, it was in the face. That people don’t care how a robot walks. They care how it looks at you. Nobody listened.

He quit. 9 friends. Shenzhen. A neural net that spent two years eating thousands of hours of human facial footage. Every squint, every head turn toward a voice, every micro-smile. One day the robot looked at one of the engineers and smiled so naturally he flinched away from his desk.

At the expo, the line at his booth was longer than Tesla’s. The company is valued at $400 million. Meanwhile Optimus is still learning not to trip.

What matters more: teaching a robot to walk or teaching it to fee

[dayan @dayanxm]

Leo rented a spot in a coworking space. $420 a month for a large desk. Monitor, Mac Mini, hub, three cables, a power strip. Half the desk taken up by hardware.

Every month he looked at the people on small desks at $190 and thought: that would be enough if it weren’t for this box sitting next to my monitor.

Four screws. One $34 mount. The Mac Mini went behind the screen.

The desk had nothing left but the display. Cables tucked behind the panel. No hub, no box, no clutter.

A week later Leo moved to a small desk. Same monitor. Same power. Half the space.

$230 difference every month. $2,760 a year. Because the computer moved four screws backward

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

This guy is 26 years old, he built a humanoid robot in a rented office in 11 months and has already made $2.3 million from it

Chen Hao dropped out of grad school in Shanghai when he realized his advisor publishes papers, not builds robots. Took two classmates with him, rented a floor in a business center, set up desks from IKEA and started from scratch.

They burned the first version. Literally. The controller couldn’t handle the load, the board melted. The second version walked, but only straight and only for three seconds. The third started turning. The fourth, after 900-something falls, learned to get back up on its own.

After one video on Twitter the emails started pouring in. First a grant, then a contract, then another. Right now Tesla spends more on a single Optimus iteration than Chen Hao’s entire annual budget. Meanwhile the robot from Shenzhen is already strolling around the office between employees like an intern on his first day

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

This guy is 26 years old, he built a humanoid robot in a rented office in 11 months and has already made $2.3 million from it

Chen Hao dropped out of grad school in Shanghai when he realized his advisor publishes papers, not builds robots. Took two classmates with him, rented a floor in a business center, set up desks from IKEA and started from scratch.

They burned the first version. Literally. The controller couldn’t handle the load, the board melted. The second version walked, but only straight and only for three seconds. The third started turning. The fourth, after 900-something falls, learned to get back up on its own.

After one video on Twitter the emails started pouring in. First a grant, then a contract, then another. Right now Tesla spends more on a single Optimus iteration than Chen Hao’s entire annual budget. Meanwhile the robot from Shenzhen is already strolling around the office between employees like an intern on his first day

[Shredder @Shred_0x]

https://t.co/ClxVWcTSnm

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

A robot gets paid $5,000 for slicing a vegetable

Elon Musk poured billions into Optimus. It walks, sorts, waves at cameras during presentations. Looks great. Impressive. But hand it a knife and a cucumber, and that's where it ends.

A team from Shanghai didn't build a robot for the stage. They spent two years teaching titanium fingers to feel the difference between skin and flesh. To stop the blade a millisecond before the board. To not crush what they're holding.

Because a kitchen isn't a warehouse. Every ingredient is a different density, every knife dulls differently, and no single motion can be repeated the same way twice.

They brought it to an expo. Set down a board. Handed it a knife.

The footage earned $340,000 in contracts in a single quarter.

Musk shows a robot folding a shirt. These guys showed a robot replacing a chef.

Which one would you trust with your kitchen

[Shredder @Shred_0x]

https://t.co/DYkh71pKPf

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

Tesla just revealed a robot whose only job is to clean your apartment

Not for a factory. Not for a warehouse. For your two-bedroom in the suburbs.

Right now it squats and wobbles, looks like it's about to tip over. But every movement is data. Every wobble teaches it to step around chairs, clear the table, avoid cables on the floor.

Tesla is pricing it around $20,000. Cheaper than a used car. Except the car sits in traffic while this thing mops your floors when you're not home.

When washing machines came out, people said "hand wash is still cleaner." When dishwashers appeared, they said "why bother, I can do it myself."

Right now you're watching this video thinking "this can't be serious."

Remind yourself of that thought in three years.

[dayan @dayanxm]

This farm makes $1,000 a week and it fits inside a 10-by-13-foot garage

Tomasz, 24, outskirts of Kraków. Warehouse worker pulling 3,200 złoty a month. Saved for a year. Ordered his first batch of hardware secondhand, half arrived dead. Taught himself to resolder boards from forum videos. Burned his hands twice.

Month one the farm consumed more than it earned. The electric bill was bigger than his warehouse salary. His father said he was wasting his life. Friends tapped their temples.

He didn't shut it down.

Negotiated a night-rate power deal. Learned to swap thermal paste faster than most people swap phone cases. Four months to break even. Six months to start saving.

Now he runs 18 units across three racks. Wakes up, checks the dashboard, drives to the warehouse. Except now the warehouse job is a habit, not a necessity.

No magic. Blown power supplies, sleepless nights with a screwdriver, three moments where he almost sold everything.

Could you survive month one at a loss with zero guarantee it would ever pay off

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

Tesla just revealed a robot whose only job is to clean your apartment

Not for a factory. Not for a warehouse. For your two-bedroom in the suburbs.

Right now it squats and wobbles, looks like it's about to tip over. But every movement is data. Every wobble teaches it to step around chairs, clear the table, avoid cables on the floor.

Tesla is pricing it around $20,000. Cheaper than a used car. Except the car sits in traffic while this thing mops your floors when you're not home.

When washing machines came out, people said "hand wash is still cleaner." When dishwashers appeared, they said "why bother, I can do it myself."

Right now you're watching this video thinking "this can't be serious."

Remind yourself of that thought in three years.

[Shredder @Shred_0x]

https://t.co/ClxVWcTSnm

[dayan @dayanxm]

This Mac Mini wasn't built by engineers
it was designed by neurobiologists

Marcus Lee, 34, Zurich. Former prosthetics engineer. Quit the clinic when he realized he'd been building arms for people when he could've been building bodies for machines.

First 11 months he modeled muscle fibers in 3D. Not for anatomy. For mechanics. Every strand calculated through structural stress formulas. 400 iterations of a single elbow bend.

The brain on top of the chassis isn't a joke. It's real neural network architecture collapsed into physical form. 6 layers. 23 nodes. Each tentacle-arm runs on its own cluster.

When the robot lifted off, Marcus didn't film it. He cried. Three years of work. Two fried power units. One divorce.

The model was never purchased. No manufacturer is ready for a computer that decides what it wants to be.

Do you need a computer or a creature

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

China just launched a new combat sport where fighters get paid $20,000 per bout and not a single one has ever bled

Chen spent four years soldering boards on a factory line in Shenzhen. Fixed shifts, fixed pay, zero upside. Every night in a rented garage he did what would've gotten him fired at the plant: tore apart decommissioned industrial bots and built a fighter from the scraps.

Taught it to stand. Then to fall correctly. Then to strike.

14 months before the machine stayed upright after taking a hit. When a tournament popped up online with a real cage and a real prize pool, Chen showed up with his fighter in an equipment case. First bout, knockout. Made more that evening than six months at the factory.

Now he's got three engineers on his team and a season contract. Total earnings: $138,000.

While you're reading headlines about robots taking jobs, someone's already putting them in the ring and selling out arenas

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

China just launched a new combat sport where fighters get paid $20,000 per bout and not a single one has ever bled

Chen spent four years soldering boards on a factory line in Shenzhen. Fixed shifts, fixed pay, zero upside. Every night in a rented garage he did what would've gotten him fired at the plant: tore apart decommissioned industrial bots and built a fighter from the scraps.

Taught it to stand. Then to fall correctly. Then to strike.

14 months before the machine stayed upright after taking a hit. When a tournament popped up online with a real cage and a real prize pool, Chen showed up with his fighter in an equipment case. First bout, knockout. Made more that evening than six months at the factory.

Now he's got three engineers on his team and a season contract. Total earnings: $138,000.

While you're reading headlines about robots taking jobs, someone's already putting them in the ring and selling out arenas

[kyrox @kyroxxxq]

https://t.co/oxTKiXRneB

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

This running style can’t be replicated by a single human on Earth

Usain Bolt runs the 100m in 9.58. These four run it in 25. Except Bolt trained for 20 years, and these were built in 11 months in a lab the size of a garage.

Full stadium. Referees in position, timers running, stands packed. One of the four lay down mid-race, decided that was enough for today. The others didn’t even look back.

A year ago they couldn’t stand. Today they’re racing in front of a live audience. In three years they’ll be running faster than you

[Flixx @Flixx9an]

This running style can’t be replicated by a single human on Earth

Usain Bolt runs the 100m in 9.58. These four run it in 25. Except Bolt trained for 20 years, and these were built in 11 months in a lab the size of a garage.

Full stadium. Referees in position, timers running, stands packed. One of the four lay down mid-race, decided that was enough for today. The others didn’t even look back.

A year ago they couldn’t stand. Today they’re racing in front of a live audience. In three years they’ll be running faster than you

[Shredder @Shred_0x]

https://t.co/DYkh71pKPf