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DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

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Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#531

Post by windexh8er »

palata wrote: post #425
fridder wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be more far to say: they needed the US until they caught up. The massive straight up IP theft helps a lot here. Though theft might be too strong since a lot of companies knew what they were getting in to

> The massive straight up IP theft helps a lot here I think this is vastly underestimating what "catching up" means. All my life, people have been saying "China copies". Now they are objectively better at many things (including robotics), and... well it seems that we cannot "just copy". I saw western companies trying to "copy" superior Chinese technology, talking to brilliant engineers explaining how much they were l…

> The lesson I got from that is that China did not "copy"; they learned. And it took time, and now they are better. Now the western world has to learn from them, I guess.

And Apple played a huge role in teaching them. We should all thank Tim Cook and team for almost single handedly bootstrapping China 2.0, the China that runs circles around the west in terms of production and development.

Peter Zeihann really got it wrong in his latter books.

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#532

Post by stubish »

tedd4u wrote: post #420
FabCH wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China added 315GW of solar in 2025. For context, EU added 65 and US 43. In one year, China _added_ almost the total capacity EU has. China is the one place where AI actually can use clean energy…

Possibly France, too. - 70% nuclear - 26% renewables - 4% gas/coal

That power is already being used, and excess exported to neighboring countries.

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#533

Post by HerbManic »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #506
HerbManic wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one major area they are still behind in is CPU tech, but they are hungry and thus moving quick. Looking at Loongsons processors for instance. About 15 years ago they coudl barely compete with a Pentium 2. Now they are about 4-5 years behind Intel/AMD. Further behind on some more specific work loads (SSL decoding for example) Not great but that is a decent jump. The jumps between generations are pretty decent. LA4…

How much does corporate espionage help them?

Who knows but any 'answer' anyone could give is pure speculation.

You could be right! But I do see this claim come up every time Chinese tech comes up. It might be a valid concern but it might also just be folks attempts to try and undermine the technology gains of the nation.

The ISA they have developed with based off years of with with MIPS and RISC V, so it isn't entirely new but they are definitely pushing it forwards. I have no idea if any of their developments could be back ported down the RISC V.

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#534

Post by tmnvix »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #476
toddmorey wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, not my favorite narrative, but assume asymmetric application of intellectual property rights was a big factor. Wouldn't the US exploiting asymmetric labor wages, rights, and conditions be the even bigger story? It still feels like a short-sighted own goal. The US abandoned its ability to manufacture. Maybe dark factories and robotics can bring it back, but manufacturing supply chains are just so much more advance…

> Wouldn't the US exploiting asymmetric labor wages, rights, and conditions be the even bigger story? Yes, but "the US" is reductive. The exploitation wasn't done by the towns having their tentpole industries shipped overseas, it was done by the people shipping them overseas and pocketing the profit. US capital owners made a deal with the Chinese Communist Party that was good for both of them and bad for the US.

And good for the people of China presumably.

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#535

Post by dluan »

weakened_malloc wrote: post #527
hedora wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how much of it is subsidies. If the open weight models are anything to judge by, China is taking price performance seriously, and the US model vendors are looking for performance at any cost. Like any other Pareto optimization, we end up paying 10x more for the last few percent improvement on benchmark scores. Of course, like literally every other time this has played out in computing history, the compan…

Someone (can't remember who) said it best. US is the best at going from 0 to 1, China is the best at going from 1 to 100.

This has been a meme in Chinese tech/startup world lately, as it's now the main problem they are trying to solve. They largely consider 1 to 100 solved, and have set their sights on the new goal.

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#536

Post by protocolture »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #306

China may be subsidizing this for now in a way that US companies can't or won't - but if they keep building power infrastructure and the US doesn't, then it will no longer require subsidy from them. It will simply be absolutely cheaper (including profit margin) to serve tokens in China. China is building for the future, while Western Democracies are afraid of the future, and of their own shadow.

I feel like the chinese government see this in terms of the space race.

Not that, there's a cool new frontier to explore.

But that its a great opportunity to subsidise an industry and watch their slower fatter competitor go bankrupt trying to keep up.

>But the US did it first

What is sputnik.

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#537

Post by HDBaseT »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #99
zozbot234 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nice thing about hosting inference locally is that you can be sure you're not being rug-pulled in any way. This doesn't really help China 'win' though, it's just freeloading on them making their weights openly available.

The good thing is, we're only 2.5 years away from a top of the line MacBook having better local inference than CC Opus does today. That's more than good enough if you're actually getting what CC Opus is capable of. I've never been so excited for the future.

Glad someone is excited for the future. I haven't been excited for the future for almost 5 years.

Most people aren't looking optimistically into the future. Everything keeps looking down, everything keeps getting worse. I'm 22 but feel like everything good was before me. I'm glad I got to grow up before cooperate greed killed everything.

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#538

Post by Amekedl »

DeepSeek rules. I'm using it to do stuff that's not too big in scope, because I still need to remain in charge. Even for this, western competitors have no chance, least Anthropic and OpenAI, plus Gemini also has gotten too expensive besides flash (which is arguably just great, too).

With this, I am sticking to deepseek-v4-pro entirely.

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#539

Post by defrost »

xbmcuser wrote: post #467
fridder wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be more far to say: they needed the US until they caught up. The massive straight up IP theft helps a lot here. Though theft might be too strong since a lot of companies knew what they were getting in to

Lol it was not ip theft it was American and European companies building factories in China themselves teaching them how to manufacture use their cheap labour. Well they learned and as they were the dong the manufacturing got better at it. I believe the current aerospace industry which the US leads in is also result of IP theft from the British then out innovating them.

> I believe the current aerospace industry which the US leads in is also result of IP theft from the British then out innovating them.

Jet engines, proximity fuzes, radar, how to make a nuclear weapon, etc. are all examples of British / Commonwealth technology "gifted" or "traded" to the USofA during the WWII years in exchange for production.

So, not IP theft .. but absolutely foreign ideas taken in by the US and built upon.

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#540

Post by tmnvix »

dominotw wrote: post #480
Nifty3929 wrote: post #306

China may be subsidizing this for now in a way that US companies can't or won't - but if they keep building power infrastructure and the US doesn't, then it will no longer require subsidy from them. It will simply be absolutely cheaper (including profit margin) to serve tokens in China. China is building for the future, while Western Democracies are afraid of the future, and of their own shadow.

> China is building for the future, while Western Democracies are afraid of the future who are the decision makers in china?

The 96 million members of the CCP and the entrepreneurs incentivised to make decisions based on the policies they introduce?

Who are the decision makers in western democracies?

I'm being slightly facetious - there are many answers to these questions.

The one that actually matters to me though is "do the people that are making the decisions do so in the interests of society?" Not in my 'democracy', that's for sure.

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