Is this a local run of one of the smaller models and/or other-models-distilled-with-r1, or are you using their Chat interface?

I've also compared o1 and (online-hosted) r1 on Qt/C++ code, being a KDE Plasma dev, and my impression so far was that the output is roughly on par. I've given both models some tricky tasks about dark corners of the meta-object system in crafting classes etc. and they came up with generally the same sort of suggestions and implementations.

I do appreciate that "asking about gotchas with few definitive solutions, even if they require some perspective" and "rote day-to-day coding ops" are very different benchmarks due to how things are represented in the training data corpus, though.

R1 is trained for a context length of 128K. Where are you getting 8K/32K? The model doesn't distinguish "thinking" tokens and "output" tokens, so this must be some specific API limitations.

There are R1 providers on openrouter with bigger input/output token limitations than what DeepSeek's API access currently offers.

For instance Fireworks offers R1 with 164K/164K. They are far more expensive than DeepSeek though

It's not great at super-complex tasks due to limited context, but it's quite a good "junior intern that has memorized the Internet." Local deepseek-r1 on my laptop (M1 w/64GiB RAM) can answer about any question I can throw at it... as long as it's not something on China's censored list. :)

Thanks for saying this, I thought I was insane, DeepSeek is kinda bad. I guess it’s impressive all things considered but in absolute terms it’s not great.

> it just runs out of context before it can really do anything

I mean, couldn't that be because they're just overwhelmed by users at the moment?

> And the output is very bad - it mashes together the header and cpp file

That sounds way worse, and like, not something caused by being hugged to death though.

Aider recently stated DeepSeek is placed a the top of their benchmark though[1] so I'm inclined to believe it isn't all hype.

[1] https://aider.chat/docs/llms/deepseek.html

There are illegal numbers in the USA land of the "free".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number

> An AACS encryption key (09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0) that came to prominence in May 2007 is an example of a number claimed to be a secret, and whose publication or inappropriate possession is claimed to be illegal in the United States.

It's not open source. The provide the model and the weights, but not the source code and, crucially, the training data. As long as LLM makers don't provide the training data (and they never will, because then they will be admitting to stealing), LLMs are never going to be open source.

There was an executive order passed by the previous administration that make using anything with more than 10 billion parameters illegal and punishable by government force if done without authorization. Of course like most government regulations (even though this is not a regulation, it is an executive action) the point is not to stop the behavior but instead to create a system where everyone breaks the regulation constantly so that if anyone rocks the boat they can be indicted/charged and dealt with.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/11/01/2023-24...

>(k) The term “dual-use foundation model” means an AI model that is trained on broad data; generally uses self-supervision; contains at least tens of billions of parameters; is applicable across a wide range of contexts; and that exhibits, or could be easily modified to exhibit, high levels of performance at tasks that pose a serious risk to security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters, such as by: ...

If I'm no wrong wasn't PGP encryption once illegal to export ? Not quite the same but the government has a nice habit of feeling like they can bad the export of research.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...

Make commercial hosting illegal, and make the hardware to run it locally cost $6000+

They banned certain branches of math during the cold war, it can be done.

I think one good thing to come out of all this tech elite flip flopping is that I now see these tech leaders for exactly who they are. It makes me kind of sad, because as someone who came of age early in the Web era I really wanted to believe that there was a bigger moral good to all we were doing.

I now view any moralistic statement by any of these big tech companies as complete and total bullshit, which is probably for the best, because that is what it is. These companies now exist solely to amass power and wealth. They will still use moralistic language to try to motivate their employees, but I hope folks still see it for the complete nonsense that it is.

>There's a difference in how the data collected will be used.

Not that we could ever see what the NSA, CISA, ASIS, GCHQ, and other 3/4-letter agencies are actually doing with the collected data.

But they pinky promised to use it properly (or something), so, yay.

It’s also important to recognize that the Chinese government is known to walk into internet service companies and demand they censor, alter data, delete things. No court order or search warrant required.

China considers industry to be completely subservient to government. Checks and balances are secondary to ideas like harmony and collective well being.

>There's a difference between democracies like the United States or European countries, no matter how IMPERFECT they are, and a dictatorship that does not allow dissenting opinions.

>There's a difference in how the data collected will be used.

>Freedom of speech, even when it is relative, is better than totalitarianism.

I don't disagree with "democracy is better than totalitarianism", but what does that have to do with collecting device information and IP addresses? Is that excuse a cudgel you can use against any behavior that would otherwise be innocuous? It's fine to be against deepseek because you're concerned about them getting sensitive data via queries, or even that their models be a backdoor to project chinese soft power, but hand wringing about device information and IP addresses is absurd. It makes as much sense as being concerned that the CCP/deepseek does meetings, because even though every other companies does meetings, CCP/deepseek meetings could be used for totalitarianism.

Amusing Bruno seems to think in terms of labels when the reality is that the USA imprisons far more people per capita, and blatantly disregards its so-called "core freedoms" (ie, Bill of Rights) for its citizens very often.

This kind of person has a lot of cognitive dissonance going on.

Yes, but in science you reference your work and credit those who came before you.

Edit: I am not defending OpenAI and we are all enjoying the irony here. But it puts into perspective some of the wilder claims circulating that DeekSeek was able to somehow complete with OpenAI for only $5M, as if on a level playing field.

Is that really true? If anything OpenAI was dependent on the transformers paper from Google from Ashish Vaswani and others. LeCun has been criticizing LLM architectures for a long time and has been wrong about them for a long time.

Also without the "attention is all you need" paper from google

Standing on the shoulders and it's turtles all the way

> They get very cheap electricity and are bragging about their cheap cost

The cost of $5.5 million was quoted at $2/GPU-hour which is a reasonable price for on-demand H100s that anyone in the US could access, and likely on the high side given bulk pricing and that they are using nerfed versions. OpenAI might be all pr and lies but everything I've seen so far says that deepseek's claims about cost are legit.

Yes they would. But it would pointless. And clear hypocrisy as well.

Not that poster, but I think both are equally fine.

It's funny if OpenAI were to complain about this, but at least on Twitter I don't see that much whining about it from OpenAI employees. Sam publicly praised DeepSeek.

I do see some of them spreading the "they're hiding GPUs they got through sanction evasion" theory, which is disappointing, though.

> Doesn’t Sam Altman keep parroting they’re developing AI “for the good of humanity”?

“I don't want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do”

- Gavin Belson

I am not saying OpenAI did good by using publicly available data. I meant these are separate activities. None is good. But DeepSeek is slightly better by making theirs opensource.

Once again you abuse your moderator powers to enforce your personal vendetta against people who dare to speak ill of tech CEOs.

I find your behavior repulsive and fervently wish you would quit.

> don't aspire to be like Altman

And don’t aspire to be like those who saw what he is but made peace with it in exchange for silver.

> don't aspire to be like Altman

Aspire to be like Aaron Schwartz.

I don’t think your links are evidence of a flip flop.

The first link is from mid-2016. The second link is from January 2025.

It is entirely reasonable for someone to genuinely change his or her views of a person over the course of 8.5 years. That is a substantial length of time in a person’s life.

To me a “flip-flop” is when one changes views on something in a very short amount of time.

I especially like how he quoted Napoleon or something framing himself as the heart of revolution and Deep Seek as a child of the revolution only to get a response from some random guy "It's not that deep bro. Just release a better model."

https://x.com/hibakod/status/1883189126553596234

"Donald Trump represents an unprecedented threat to America, and voting for Hillary is the best way to defend our country against it"

                    - Sam Altman - 2016

"If you elect a reality TV star as President, you can't be surprised when you get a reality TV show"

                    - Sam Altman - 2017

"When the future of the republic is at risk, the duty to the country and our values transcends the duty to your particular company and your stock price."

                     - Sam Altman - 2017

"I think I started that a little bit earlier than other people, but at this point I am in really good company"

                      - Sam Altman - 2017 ( On his criticism of Trump )

"Very few people realize just how much @reidhoffman did and spent to stop Trump from getting re-elected -- it seems reasonably likely to me that Trump would still be in office without his efforts. Thank you, Reid!"

                      - Sam Altman - 2020

As a society we might talk about virtue, but the reason we put it as a goal in stories is that in the real world, we don't reward it. It's not just that corruption wins sometimes, but we directly punish those that fight it. The mood of the times, if anything, comes from people realizing that what we called moral behavior leads to worse outcomes for the virtuous.

A community only espouses good values when it punishes bad behavior. How do we do this when those misbehaving are very rich, and attempting to punish the misbehavior has negative consequences on you? There just aren't many available tools that don't require significant sacrifices.

That is particularly gross, but that really feels like the norm among all the tech elite these days - Zuckerberg, Bezos, etc. all doing the most laughable flip flops.

The reason the flip flops are so laughable to me is because they attempt to couch them in some noble, moralistic viewpoint, instead of the obvious reason "We own big companies, the government has extreme power to make or break these companies, and everyone knows kissing up to Trump is what is required to be on his good side."

Profiles in Cowardice, every last one of them.

Although I dislike him now glazing Trump, I understand why he's doing it. Trump runs a racket and this is part of the game.

One of my most contrarian positions is I still like and support Altman, despite most of the internet now hating him almost as much as they (justifiably) hate Elon. Was a fan of Sam pre-YC presidency and still am now.

(I also am a big fan of DeepSeek and its CEO.)

If you didn't sexually assault your sister you're already off to a good start.

> I bet they took out big short positions on Nvidia before their announcements

Good for them! I hope this teaches Wall Street to not freak out about an unverified announcement.

Wall Street lost billions, and I hope they learned their lesson and next time will not crash the market when unverified news comes out.

DeepSeek v3 (where the training cost claims come from) was announced a month ago and it had no impact outside of a small circle

> Models from American companies at least aren’t surprising us with government driven misinformation, and even though safety can also be censorship

Being a citizen of a western nation, I'm inclined to agree with the general sentiment here, but how can you definitively say this? You, or I, don't know with any certainty what interference the US government has played with domestic LLMs, or what lies they have fabricated and cultivated, that are now part of those LLMs' collective knowledge. We can see the perceived censorship with deepseek more clearly, but that isn't evidence that we're in any safer territory.

> Models from American companies at least aren’t surprising us with government driven misinformation

There are loads of examples on the internet of LLMs pushing (foreign) government narratives e.g. on Israel-Palestine.

Just because you might agree with the propaganda doesn't make it any less problematic.

> I don’t care for Sam Altman and his general untrustworthy behavior. But DeepSeek is perhaps more untrustworthy. Models from American companies at least aren’t surprising us with government driven misinformation, and even though safety can also be censorship, the companies that make these models at least openly talk about their safety programs. DeepSeek is implementing a censorship and propaganda program without admitting it at all, and once they become good at doing it in less obvious ways, it can become very damaging and corrupt the political process of other societies, because users will trust the tools they use are neutral.

These arguments always remind me of the arguments against Huawei because they _might_ be spying on western countries. On the other hand we had the US government working hand in hand with US corporations in proven spying operations against western allies for political and economic gain. So why should we choose an American supplier over a Chinese one?

> I think DeepSeek’s strategy to announce a misleading low cost (just the final training run that optimizes a base model that in turn is possibly based on OpenAI) is also purposeful. After all, High Flyer, the parent company of DeepSeek, is a hedge fund - and I bet they took out big short positions on Nvidia before their recent announcements. The Chinese government, of course, benefits from a misleading number being announced broadly, causing doubt among investors who would otherwise continue to prop up American technology startups. Not to mention the big fall in American markets as a result.

Why should I care about the stock value of US corporations?

> I do think there’s also a big difference between scraping the Internet for training data, which might just be fair use, and training off other LLMs or obtaining their assets in some other way.

So if training of copyrighted work scrapped of the Internet is fair use, how would the training of the LLMs not be fair use as well? You can't have it both ways.

> Models from American companies at least aren’t surprising us with government driven misinformation

Is corporate misinformation so much better? Recall about Tienanmen Square might be more honest but if LLMs had been available over the past 50 years, I would expect many popular models would have cheerfully told us company towns are a great place to live, cigarettes are healthy, industrial pollution has no impact on your health, and anthropogenic climate change isn't real.

Especially after the recent behaviour of Meta, Twitter, and Amazon in open support of Trump and Republican interests, I'll be shocked if we don't start seeing that reflected in their LLMs over the next few years.