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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

#451

Post by FpUser »

infecto wrote: post #396
jdcasale wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's both. The US has generally resorted to propaganda rather than addressing the self-inflicted structural conditions responsible for the erosion of our dominance. China also conducted a broad, sustained, large-scale campaign of IP theft across almost every industry. Obviously there is no natural law preventing China from innovating (We have treated political liberalism as a prerequisite to innovation in a way that…

I like this take a lot and agree with it. The US for too long has been asleep at the wheel on many areas, power generation one of them. China with no doubt has conducted very deep and sustained espionage campaigns and even with LLMs there is enough evidence that most of the initial gains was training off of western models. Again no complaints here but I think it’s important to acknowledge both which can be true at th…

>"Again no complaints here but I think it’s important to acknowledge both which can be true at the same time."

and this acknowledgement will pay your bills

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#452

Post by aucisson_masque »

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…

It's ip theft when the Chinese do it but when it's the American copying on Chinese it's called learning.

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#453

Post by DennisP »

FabCH wrote: post #388
seviu wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheap power at what cost for our planet? Not long ago we were crying death to bitcoin, it’s going to destroy the planet. Come AI, with unlimited power demand. Everybody screaming we need more power. We need infrastructure, clean energy, even nuclear. We are doing all in the wrong order.

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…

China also has 1,271 GW of coal capacity, and is planning 500GW more.

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#454

Post by DaSHacka »

roncesvalles wrote: post #402
toddmorey wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like the US for years has operated under the assumption that homeostasis for the global economy would always be “designed in California, assembled in China.” Like there was something in the American DNA that was lacking in China and innovation would always need to happen here. But China it seems doesn’t need the US to produce great cars, devices, robotics, or AI. We absolutely need China to help us build all…

>Like there was something in the American DNA that was lacking in China and innovation would always need to happen here. There is (was): attracting the best minds around the world to a free and stable society. Trump voters threw it all away because they couldn't stand non-whites coming to America and doing better than old stock Americans.

> attracting the best minds around the world to a free and stable society.

China is comprised of ~91.5% ethnically Chinese citizens. [0]

> Tump voters threw it all away because they couldn't stand non-whites coming to America and doing better than old stock Americans.

The U.S. is more diverse than it's ever been [1], and under Trump we're still below the deportations of Obama's terms.

Sounds like open-borders immigration was never necessary in the first place, given that we're being beat by a country with a similar demographic skew that we had like 80 years ago. Coincidentally, when we arguably had our best economic opportunities for citizens. Who'da thunk.

Clearly, the only solution to our fading relevance is opening the border again and importing 500 million more ""doctors and engineers"" all the while China is investing in their *actual* doctors and engineers, and has extremely strict immigration policies [2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_China

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China#Population_policies

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#455

Post by roncesvalles »

DaSHacka wrote: post #454
roncesvalles wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Like there was something in the American DNA that was lacking in China and innovation would always need to happen here. There is (was): attracting the best minds around the world to a free and stable society. Trump voters threw it all away because they couldn't stand non-whites coming to America and doing better than old stock Americans.

> attracting the best minds around the world to a free and stable society. China is comprised of ~91.5% ethnically Chinese citizens. [0] > Tump voters threw it all away because they couldn't stand non-whites coming to America and doing better than old stock Americans. The U.S. is more diverse than it's ever been [1], and under Trump we're still below the deportations of Obama's terms. Sounds like open-borders immigra…

You're conflating Mexican border hoppers with skilled immigrants.

I'm absolutely opposed to illegal immigration and have a more extreme position on how to deal with it than most Americans.

What I'm irked by are Trump's attacks on legal immigration and the general worsening of the environment. ICE's kidnappings, the 100k H-1B fee, and the recent Green Card thing have deeply eroded America's attractiveness to legal immigrants.

I think when MAGA came after H-1Bs, it became pretty clear that it's not about law and order, it's just a race thing.

And if you want to go gloves off, I'll just say it: the main problem in America is that its 3 major ethnic groups are infected by anti-intellectualism and slothfulness, whereas the Chinese and various other cultures are not. The direct benefit from skilled immigration is so that we can increase the ratio of people who actually value education and hard work vs the failing old stock Americans whose broccoli-headed kids dream of becoming YouTube influencers instead of astronauts.

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#456

Post by DennisP »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #349
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, " Meanwhile, the USA is paying for its past excesses, with interest on its debt being the number two most expensive line item in the budget. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

If you look at total debt instead of just national government debt, then China is even worse off than the US.

Article in Fortune: https://archive.is/53Vu0

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#457

Post by usrnm »

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

France cannot really add more of it. Not fast and cheap enough, anyway

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#458

Post by TurdF3rguson »

encrypted_bird wrote: post #440
toddmorey wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like the US for years has operated under the assumption that homeostasis for the global economy would always be “designed in California, assembled in China.” Like there was something in the American DNA that was lacking in China and innovation would always need to happen here. But China it seems doesn’t need the US to produce great cars, devices, robotics, or AI. We absolutely need China to help us build all…

> Like there was something in the American DNA that was lacking in China In most Americans' eyes, unfortunately, there was. It was just known by the name "American Exceptionalism". Yes, it's nonsense, but unfortunately it is nonsense that has historically been used by most empires throughout history, and believed just as fervently by said empires' populi since it's one of the central elements of imperialism as a whol…

The US models are still better though, let's not get carried away. Ours are better, theirs are cheaper. That's how it's always been.

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#459

Post by bryanlarsen »

DennisP wrote: post #453
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…

China also has 1,271 GW of coal capacity, and is planning 500GW more.

And their coal capacity factor (ie the percentage of time they use their coal) is dropping at about the same rate.

Re: DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent

#460

Post by jubilanti »

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…

Growing up moving around both conservative and liberal parts of the US, from middle school to college, I distinctly remember several US history classes where I was taught the exact same narrative about Samuel Slater. About how he was an American hero and the Father of the American Industrial Revolution because he memorized a bunch of industrial patent blueprints and brought them over to the US.

It got told as: the evil English made it illegal to even import blueprints for factory machinery, to keep the colonies in resource-extractive poverty, so they'd have to send raw materials overseas to get processed, then import the finished goods. (My other history teacher, the Anno / Dawn of Discovery video game series, also cemented this bit about resource extraction in my head at a young age.) But then thanks to heroic ingenuity and cunning, I was told, the US was able to outwit the colonizers and process its own raw materials, eventually gaining full economic, military, and political supremacy.

Sounds familiar.

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