Venkat

Perennially lost in curiosity. Almost always on coffee. Owner of a two year old sourdough starter.

[Venkat @Vencuts]

Apex bully this one. #spanishgrandprix

[F1 To Rule Them All @F1RulesMedia]

Max Verstappen post-race interview

#SpanishGP #F1

[Venkat @Vencuts]

@TheCinesthetic Old Joy

[Balaji @balajis]

AI OVERPRODUCTION

China seeks to commoditize their complements. So, over the following months, I expect a complete blitz of Chinese open-source AI models for everything from computer vision to robotics to image generation.

Why? I’m just inferring this from public statements, but their apparent goal is to take the profit out of AI software since they make money on AI-enabled hardware. Basically, they want to do to US tech (the last stronghold) what they already did to US manufacturing. Namely: copy it, optimize it, scale it, then wreck the Western original with low prices.

I don’t know if they’ll succeed.
But here’s the logic:

(1) First, China noticed that DeepSeek’s release temporarily knocked ~$1T off US tech market caps.

(2) Second, China’s core competency is exporting physical widgets, more than it is software.

(3) Third, China’s other core competency is exporting things at such massive scale that all foreign producers are bankrupted and they win the market. See what they’re doing to German and Japanese cars, for example.

(4) Fourth, China is well aware that it lacks global prestige as it’s historically been a copycat. With DeepSeek, becoming #1 in AI is now something they actually consider possibly achievable, and a matter of national pride.

(5) Fifth, DeepSeek has gone viral in China and its open source nature means that everyone can rapidly integrate it, down to the level of local officials and obscure companies. And they are doing so, and posting the results for praise on WeChat.

(6) Finally, while DeepSeek was obscure before recent events, it’s now a household name, and the founder (Liang Wengfeng) has met both with Xi but also the #2 in China, Li Qiang. They likely have unlimited resources now.

So, if you put all that together, China thinks it has an opportunity to hit US tech companies, boost its prestige, help its internal economy, and take the margins out of AI software globally (at least at the model level).

They will instead make their money by selling inexpensive AI-enabled hardware of increasing quality, from smart homes and self-driving cars to consumer drones and robot dogs.

Basically, China is trying to do to AI what they always do: study, copy, optimize, and then bankrupt everyone with low prices and enormous scale.

I don’t know if they’ll succeed at the app layer. But it could be hard for closed-source AI model developers to recoup the high fixed costs associated with training state-of-the-art models when great open source models are available.

Last, I agree it’s surprising that the country of the Great Firewall is suddenly the country of open source AI. But it is consistent in a different way, which is that China is just focused on doing whatever it takes to win — even to the point of copying partially-abandoned Western values like open source, which seemed like the hardest thing to adopt.

On that point: they did build censorship into the released DeepSeek AI models, but in a manner that’s easily circumvented outside China. So, you might conclude they don’t really care what non-Chinese people are saying outside China in other languages, so long as this doesn’t “interfere with China’s internal affairs.”

Anyway —this is an area I’ve been watching, and my reluctant conclusion is that China is getting better at software faster than the West is getting better at hardware.

[Venkat @Vencuts]

@TheCinesthetic The young Pope

[Venkat @Vencuts]

CCTV cameras.

[Nemo @thecaptain_nemo]

the rise and decline of serial killers is understudied

[Deedy @deedydas]

Indian startup Dotpe, that raised ~$100M to build point of sale systems for restaurants left their entire API fully public.

A clever hacker found out the most ordered thing at every Social in India.

And did a prank to order what he wanted for a person next to him!

Zero auth.

[Venkat @Vencuts]

Airbnb feature where you can ask guests who stayed at a property questions about the place.

[Rob Myers @RobLMyers]

This is an incredible watch. Hamilton vs Norris vs Verstappen at the #BritishGP.

Cool calm and collected from Merc and RBR on the tyre call. Seemingly blind panic from McLaren.

And the way LH resisted the pressure and controlled these last laps… 👌🏻 #F1
https://t.co/9WwAFnd21C

[tobi lutke @tobi]

https://t.co/5P9qCy2QAM is the craziest, most magical thing on the internet right now. How is not everyone talking about this

[Joe Pompliano @JoePompliano]

This video is incredible. A Chinese speed skater takes off at the beginning of a longer race. Her teammate then sprints to the front, confusing everyone on the “final lap” and easily securing Gold and Silver medals for the team. Watch until the end. Great teamwork.

[John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch]

NEW: an ideological divide is emerging between young men and women in many countries around the world.

I think this one of the most important social trends unfolding today, and provides the answer to several puzzles.

[Venkat @Vencuts]

@sama (Language) translation capabilities

[Venkat @Vencuts]

@davidcinema

[Gabriel Garrett @GabGarrett]

Update: GPT-4 Vision can absolutely convert figma designs into working React components.

On the left, the design. On the right: the output.

I specifically asked it to write the component in React using MUI components, and gave it little other direction.

It even correctly identified everything in the component that would likely be a data prop and structured the components prop arguments accordingly.

I think this will be close enough for any developer to get almost exactly what they need from it in minutes.

[kepano @kepano]

Amazon's coup against Flexport in the battle for logistics, in 12 months:

1. Dave Clark, 20+ year Amazon vet joins as CEO of Flexport
2. Amazon works out a deal with Shopify to partner on logistics, on the condition that Shopify exits logistics, i.e. sells Deliverr, a notoriously overpriced acquisition and unprofitable division
3. Dave buys Deliverr from Shopify, installs bureaucracyOS at Flexport
4. Dave leaves Flexport, same day Amazon announces its deal with Shopify

Amazon removes Shopify as a fulfillment competitor and severely hobbles Flexport

Haven't seen anything like this since Microsoft's Stephen Elop took the reigns at Nokia only to sell it to Microsoft for pennies on the dollar

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

There was a small dispute in my comments over how one can dress to a business causal office (FWIW, in the photo shown, i would swap the tan sport coat for navy and tuck in collar if i were going to an office). But it reminded me of a social experiment done in the late 1990s 🧵

[Venkat @Vencuts]

@haniaranimusic Welcome back, Hania!

[Venkat @Vencuts]

@Vaishnavioffl Can't recommend Urbanaut enough - https://t.co/D2AOcaL0JU

[Venkat @Vencuts]

@WilliamAEden The Young Pope!