#067: DeepSeek R1 Breakthrough, Viral App Playbook, The Illusion of Pepper's Ghost

Hi All!

We are pleased to welcome you to this week's edition of Undiscovered, a newsletter with exclusive resources and insights expanding from the material found on our main site - becketu.com.

This week we will take a look at an open-source AI model breakthrough out of China, a viral app playbook by one of Cal AI's cofounders, two of the best sites for design & pitch deck inspiration, and more.

Let's dive in:

DeepSeek-R1 Breakthrough

An unbelievable achievement has occurred out of China, as DeepSeek, an AI startup, recently released its R1 model, rivaling OpenAI's o1 in overall performance. For context, o1 is OpenAI's best model, ranking in the 89th percentile on competitive programming questions and placing in the top 500 students in the national USA Mathematical Olympiad. And instead of the $200/month cost of o1 from OpenAI, DeepSeek's R1 is open-source and released under the MIT license, allowing for free distillation and commercial use.

Why else is R1 from DeepSeek so significant? The model comes from a company that isn't even considered among the top 7 AI labs, yet is delivering results comparable to industry leaders. The model's technical breakthroughs have led to cost reductions in AI model inference scaling. Being able to download the model off of Hugging Face is incredible and will democratize access to the most advanced AI models available.

Viral App Playbook

​Blake Anderson is one of the co-founders of recent breakout success Cal AI, an app that lets you track your calories and macros by simply taking a picture. He understands how to build these consumer apps, and recently, just shared a very short "Viral App Playbook" containing every lesson he's learned.

This doc will surely be updated, as it currently is a little brief on content. However, it does have some useful bullet points surrounding ideation, design, development, marketing, team-building, and general thoughts on life. His YouTube channel has a few videos covering these topics if you're interested in learning more.

Best Design + Pitch Deck Inspiration Sites

"One day I'll make an app, I just don't know where to start." What about with a design? You can take a look at the Steven Cravotta approach, arguably one of the best and most widely applicable places to start. It goes as follows:

But how do you find good design? Enter mobbin. Heavily endorsed by Friend AI founder Avi Schiffman, this site will provide you with endless design and UI/UX inspiration for your app. Using preexisting templates like these will cut down the overall development time needed when coding the app yourself, or hiring someone to assist.

And in a funny twist of fate, someone was recently asking "is there a mobbin for pitch decks", and it just so happens that there is: deck.gallery. Thank you @jiggyboyjre.

The Most Controversial Child-Raising Book in Recent Times

For those interested in child education, and just child-raising philosophies in general, perhaps no book in recent memory has sparked as much debate as The Sovereign Child by Aaron Stupple. Last week, we featured it in our list of books to read when it comes to child education, and since then, fascinating developments have occurred.

The book recently passed 18,000 sales, and can be found on Amazon or for free via PDF on thesovereignchild.com. On its surface, it's a book that goes against almost all conventional parenting wisdom, but is deeply grounded in the Taking Children Seriously movement and philosophies of Karl Popper and David Deutsch.

Tim Ferriss recently had Stupple and fan favorite recurring guest Naval Ravikant on his podcast to discuss. Naval and Stupple go back and forth debating certain aspects of the philosophy, and it interestingly comes back to reinforcing Stupple's points. Tim is one of the best in the world at hosting these types of discussions, so I highly recommend checking out the full podcast.

If you happen to be strapped for time, I found this thread from Matt Bateman and this thread from @melissa to be comprehensive in their reviews and critiques of the approach. It's a wild ride, so be sure to strap in tight.

How "Pepper's Ghost" Illusion Works

I found myself fascinated by this video demonstrating the "Pepper's Ghost" illusion technique. For those unable to see it, the video shows a cemetery diorama where miniature spirits circle around tombstones in a spooky manor. Originally popularized by John Henry Pepper in 1862, this famous effect has been used in countless theater, cinema, amusement parks, museums, concert, and entertainment productions since. But how does it work?

Pepper's Ghost illusion uses a large piece of glass or transparent film angled at 45 degrees between a visible area and a hidden room. When the hidden room is illuminated and the visible area is dimmed, light from the hidden objects reflects off the glass, creating the appearance of semi-transparent, ghostly images superimposed on the visible scene. This diagram and this other diagram do a great job visually showing the physics behind the illusion.

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