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Notes on DeepSeek

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#51

Post by hsuduebc2 »

slaw wrote: post #40
alecco wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're lucky to have China imposing competiton to the western AI megacorps. The second they get a hold of the market, Chinese Big Tech will be as bad or worse than US Big Tech. We're lucky to have DeepSeek.

In every market China dominates, Chinese products are still inexpensive. Solar panels, batteries, EVs, drones,..

Because they are subsidized by the Chinese government. This is literally a tactic to destroy global competition.

It's a smart move to make everyone dependent on them.

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#52

Post by throwaw12 »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #46
swyx wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks. this really isnt that long, might as well paste in full here since OP deleted. Notes on DeepSeek: We visited the company HQ last Tuesday. It was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng and operated out of his hedge fund, High-Flyer, until somewhat recently. The company released their R1 model in January 2025, so it was interesting to see what they’ve been doing The company is located in an unmarked, 12-story buildin…

I don't get the part of "AI models are not regulated directly, the government instead has restrictions on how those models can be used in software, services". Is it not the same thing? When I chat with DeepSeek about any (Chinese) political/social issue, it immediately begins aligning with the party's line or just cut off the conversation abruptly.

It is not, just downlaod the model and ask same questions.

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#53

Post by sinuhe69 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #3

"As a whole, China seems to treat AI as just another technology, rather than as some kind of singularity moment." This is a refreshing perspective.

The CCP is very active in the matter of AI. In fact, the DeepSeek moment was responsible for Xi calling for a private meeting with tech bosses, including the exiled Alibaba founder Ma. Which is practically unheard of in China politics.

I don't have enough information to say whether the Chinese leadership sees AI "just as the next technology" or they are more cautious due to its double-sword nature. But the immense efforts for building their own AI/GPU chips plus government's billions fund pushed for AI build out, a directive for fast pace integration on large scale and a sweeping national education reform for AI, I don't think it can be seen as similar to other ordinary techs.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-prepares-295-billi...

[1] https://www.globalneighbours.org/en/articles/china-unveils-n...

[2] https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202606/10/content_WS6a296017...

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#54

Post by ValentineC »

genewitch wrote: post #25
gbraad wrote: post #12

Not sure what I read, but sounded like a lunch meeting description; felt void of actual information, with the restaurant replaced by the office. I am in China and can tell it is either Kimi, DeepSeek or Claude (proxied or actually deepseek/fake). The bigger push for the general public died down a lot since last year; kids were pushed to use AI for homework, now it is disallowed and frowned upon. In short mixed messag…

> kids were pushed to use AI for homework, now it is disallowed and frowned upon. In short mixed messaging. in the early 2000s in california universities you'd get marked down for citing wikipedia. so the good souls told everyone "see the number in brackets[2] after what you're trying to cite the article for? just click that then click the archive.org or whatever link there, then cite that ." Now? i think wiki is con…

I think Wikipedia's still considered unreliable, but the question that should be asked is whether the author even read the source in "the number in brackets" to ensure that it's even backed properly.

Just like how people should use AI for research, I guess.

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#55

Post by lofaszvanitt »

swyx wrote: post #41
quadruple wrote: post #23

Post appears to have been removed, I caught a copy of it: https://pastebin.com/rcAqEFG1 I assume it will get reposted at some point.

thanks. this really isnt that long, might as well paste in full here since OP deleted. Notes on DeepSeek: We visited the company HQ last Tuesday. It was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng and operated out of his hedge fund, High-Flyer, until somewhat recently. The company released their R1 model in January 2025, so it was interesting to see what they’ve been doing The company is located in an unmarked, 12-story buildin…

[flagged]

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#56

Post by toraway »

surgical_fire wrote: post #30
FergusArgyll wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 2 things worth separating. 1) China distills and is therefore morally bad. As you rightly point out, that's not a great argument. 2) China distills and is therefore possibly not that competent. I think that makes sense. If they only catch up to the frontier through distillation then 1) Their model will never be as good as the model they are distilling from. 2) They will never reach the frontier - they need…

> China distills and is therefore possibly not that competent. I heard that argument more than one year ago, when chain of thought and reasoning cycles started to be hudden to protect against distillation. Meanwhile, models as DeepSeek and MiMo are nothing short of excellent nowadays. Ever since I switched away from OpenAI to DeepSeek I never felt the need to go back.

Deepseek Flash V4 really was a "holy shit" moment and deserves the praise/hype it's been getting from users. I have a multi-tier subscription strategy I've maintained for the last year of: 1. $20-$30 plan from first Claude now Codex for "SOTA" 2. Gemini via the extra $10/mo or so from my Google One plan 3. a cheap fallback plan.

Together it gives me plenty of head room/model performance for $40ish/mo, plus letting me compare the various models over time.

Originally I'd been using the Z.AI plan (that I'm still grandfathered into for insane how much usage I can get for $10/mo.

I did the math on my Flash usage vs. what I'm paying Opencode and I'm typically not even exceeding $10 in API costs! So it's actually sustainable not rugpull pricing at least for me. I can pound it with requests/agentic loops and have it running for 30 min doing whatever the fuck and check back and have spent literal pennies for what would have cost $30+ on my work's Github Copilot plan.

I know enterprise world works under different rules and isn't price sensitive in the same ways as an individual but I truly don't see how this is sustainable for the US AI giants in the long term to maintain like 25x+ markup for 1.25x performance benefit.

IMO it does help explain the recent emphasis on secret, scary "super models" like Mythos to muddy the waters for decision makers with hype and FOMO at at time when companies are beginning to seriously scrutinize their token spending for the first time.

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#57

Post by manishsharan »

hsuduebc2 wrote: post #51
slaw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In every market China dominates, Chinese products are still inexpensive. Solar panels, batteries, EVs, drones,..

Because they are subsidized by the Chinese government. This is literally a tactic to destroy global competition. It's a smart move to make everyone dependent on them.

Any evidence to back that up?

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#58

Post by kaliqt »

sheept wrote: post #36
genewitch wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> kids were pushed to use AI for homework, now it is disallowed and frowned upon. In short mixed messaging. in the early 2000s in california universities you'd get marked down for citing wikipedia. so the good souls told everyone "see the number in brackets[2] after what you're trying to cite the article for? just click that then click the archive.org or whatever link there, then cite that ." Now? i think wiki is con…

It's not that it's unreliable, it's just lazy research. Wikipedia, like all encyclopedias, is a tertiary source, but ideally your essay should be a mix of primary and secondary sources, while Wikipedia discourages original research and prefers only secondary sources. Wikipedia itself recommends against citing it as research[0] for this reason. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia

Laziness should never be the issue.

The issue is that Wikipedia can be wrong and you’d only know that by going to the source (or lack thereof), or checking other sources.

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#60

Post by xyzsparetimexyz »

manishsharan wrote: post #57
hsuduebc2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are subsidized by the Chinese government. This is literally a tactic to destroy global competition. It's a smart move to make everyone dependent on them.

Any evidence to back that up?

Fact 1: that's terror Fact 2: that's terror
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