For years, the AI frontier has been dominated by a handful of players: OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Meta. Armed with seemingly infinite resources, these companies have dictated the pace of innovation, releasing model after model while driving the narrative that only colossal budgets and exclusive datasets can produce cutting-edge AI. But the release of DeepSeek R1 has shattered this illusion—and it’s putting the old guard on notice.
Let’s break this down. DeepSeek R1, developed by the relatively unknown Chinese startup DeepSeek, cost just $5.58 million to train. This figure is peanuts compared to the estimated hundreds of millions poured into training GPT-4, Claude 3.5, and other flagship models. Yet, in terms of performance, DeepSeek R1 is standing toe-to-toe with OpenAI’s o1 and beating Google’s offerings (including the new 2.0 and experimental models) in areas like advanced reasoning, math, and code generation.
AI tools are incredibly useful. They assist with debugging, problem-solving, and even serve as a high-tech rubber duck for discussing problems. However, there’s a growing trend that I’ve noticed both in myself and within the developer community.
The Comfort Zone Trap It’s easy to fall into the trap. You encounter a roadblock, and instead of working through it or consulting the documentation, you ask ChatGPT or Claude. Problem solved instantly. While it feels efficient, it raises a question: are we compromising our long-term development skills
Well, things are starting to make sense to me. Have you ever had a revelation that was confronting but then made complete sense? That’s where I am at.
I’ve been a programmer for 15 years and counting. I love what I do. Even after all this time, I still wake up excited and enthusiastic about my job and the industry. But over the last couple of years, coinciding with a big move and losing my usual support network, moving away from family; something shifted.
Like many, my wife and I fell for the Koh Cleaner advertisements on Facebook. While their surface cleaner works, you’ve probably heard (or maybe not) that Koh is mostly water. In fact, the active ingredient, potassium hydroxide (KOH), comprises about 0.5% of the total solution, with the rest being purified (distilled) water.
Below is a safe and accurate way to make a roughly 0.5% KOH solution at home for a fraction of the cost, what’s often referred to as a homemade Koh cleaner.
My family and I live in a rural area that gets warm and wet when it rains. And because we have a lot of plants, grass and vegetation, it’s a free-for-all with mozzies.
During the wet season of 2022, we had a serious mozzie infestation. We didn’t think to look for a spray product then, opting for singular mozzie sprays, patches and mosquito coils instead.
And after a few wet days recently, it happened again. We’ve added to our garden since, and the mosquitoes have been even worse recently.
Guzman y Gomez is an Australian Mexican chain that prides itself on more traditional Mexican cuisine and is very popular. Over the years, I’ve probably spent more money than I would ever care to admit eating here.
A lot of their food is quite simple, the ingredients are visible, and they don’t seem to use any additives (that I could see). Which means a lot of their food can be replicated at home. One of the items they have is the pico de Gallo, a traditional Mexican salsa.
I am an avid reader of Medium, and it’s no secret that the quality of Medium articles has gone downhill over the last couple of years. Clickbait articles are intentionally titled and written to garner a response but lack substance. Amongst the shining gems, is a pile of faeces.
One recently caught my eye. An article titled. It’s 2022, Please Don’t Just Use “console.log” Anymore.
You are probably already rolling your eyes at the title without even reading the article.
Can someone explain this one? A cheeseburger happy meal at McDonald’s here in Australia is $4.95 (currently). A small cheeseburger meal is $6.95. They are the same thing.
A cheeseburger happy meal comes with a cheeseburger, fries (or apple slices), a toy and a small drink. It’s a small cheeseburger meal with an included toy and the option of apple slices over fries. A small cheeseburger meal comes with all of the above (minus the toy). You don’t get the option of Apple slices, but that’s it.
No matter how big you are, how many resources your company has, Microsoft has once again shown that you’re never too big to fail. The latest Windows 10 KB5001330 update (which many get automatically) has broken gaming.
While gamers will be mostly affected, if you work with video or stream, you’ll notice the framerate drops and stuttering. The latest update actually makes streaming games through Streamlabs OBS a painful exercise.
I have a lot of ideas, in notebooks, in the form of half-completed side projects on GitHub and my computer. Shipping has always been a problem for me and I rarely share ideas or insights into anything, but today that is all changing.
I am launching The Ideas Digest, a newsletter which will send an occasional newsletter about a particular idea or topic. It’ll provide research and insights for how someone might build a product or offering around the idea or problem.