Elon Musk, DeepSeek, Tulu 3, Motion Design, and Groundhog Day
Weekly Review of News in Technology, UX and AI
Here’s the latest news, resources, and use cases from the world of product, UX, AI and technology. Let’s go:
🖼️ Digital Landscape
👺 Elon Musk
🕴️ DeepSeek
🔎 Tulu 3
*️ Star Gate
⏯️ Motion Design
🦫 Groundhog Day
🇳🇱 ExPat Life
Podcast
Redefining the Digital Landscape: JB Benjamin on Privacy, Blockchain, and the Future of Technology
In this episode of Product by Design, host Kyle sits down with JB Benjamin, the CEO and founder of multiple tech companies under the Akuma Engineering umbrella. JB shares his innovative journey in building products designed for a more equitable, decentralized, and privacy-focused digital future. From post-quantum encrypted messaging tools to Vox Alive's ad-free social media platform, JB dives deep into the philosophies and technologies driving his work. We discuss everything from post-quantum encryption to blockchain to Universal Basic Income. You won't want to miss this one.
News and Useful Reads
Elon Musk’s Friends Have Infiltrated Another Government Agency
It’s difficult to tell who is running the government now, but every day shows us that the next few years are going to be a bigger and bigger mess than most of us could have expected.
Elon Musk’s minions—from trusted sidekicks to random college students and former Musk company interns—have taken over the General Services Administration, a critical government agency that manages federal offices and technology. Already, the team is attempting to use White House security credentials to gain unusual access to GSA tech, deploying a suite of new AI software, and recreating the office in X’s image, according to leaked documents obtained by WIRED.
DeepSeek’s Safety Guardrails Failed Every Test Researchers Threw at Its AI Chatbot
DeepSeek has made waves, surpassing the capabilities of ChatGPT, as we mentioned last week. But apparently it has done so by neglecting security (as AI companies are wont to do).
Ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT at the end of 2022, hackers and security researchers have tried to find holes in large language models (LLMs) to get around their guardrails and trick them into spewing out hate speech, bomb-making instructions, propaganda, and other harmful content. In response, OpenAI and other generative AI developers have refined their system defenses to make it more difficult to carry out these attacks. But as the Chinese AI platform DeepSeek rockets to prominence with its new, cheaper R1 reasoning model, its safety protections appear to be far behind those of its established competitors.
Tulu 3 Surpasses DeepSeek V3
And speaking of the latest and greatest AI models, Tulu 3 405B is now on part with ChatGPT and DeepSeek based on a number of benchmarks.
Tülu 3 405B achieves competitive or superior performance to both Deepseek v3 and GPT-4o, while surpassing prior open-weight post-trained models of the same size including Llama 3.1 405B Instruct and Nous Hermes 3 405B on many standard benchmarks.
Sam Altman’s Stargate is science fiction
It’s no surprise that the future of AI requires massive amounts of power and infrastructure. I’ve been hoping that would mean a shift to nuclear power or other, more sustainable alternatives. But Stargate is something else entirely.
If it materializes, Stargate could effectively be the largest private computing infrastructure project in history. It would mean a network of massive computing complexes — each spanning hundreds of acres and consuming as much power as a small city. Each facility would draw enough electricity to power tens of thousands of homes, requiring its own electrical substations and transmission lines. It’s a bid not just for computing dominance, but for control of a significant chunk of America’s energy infrastructure.
How designers and brands are morphing the next era of motion design
Design is no longer just about colors and fonts, but is moving into movement. I think this is fascinating, not just for brands but for all products and experiences.
Motion allows for so much more visual expression – you can push the boundaries so much more and really nothing is out of reach.
Other Interesting Finds
A Short History of Groundhog Day
To end things on a lighter note, let’s not forget the strange holiday (and excellent movie) that is Groundhog Day.
While modern meteorologists may put more faith in weather satellites and statistical data than whether or not a big rodent saw its shadow, Groundhog Day wasn’t always a silly tradition: it's actually rooted in the movements of the sun and dates back thousands of years.
I Moved Abroad For A Better Life. Here’s What I Found Disturbing During My First Trip Back To America
I have seriously contemplated moving to the Netherlands after my wife and I visited a few years ago. It seems like a better and better idea all the time.
Living abroad hadn’t just changed my zip code — it had fundamentally altered how I viewed success, relationships and the American Dream itself. In the Netherlands, I’d learned that a society could prioritize collective well-being over individual achievement. That “enough” could be a destination, not just a pit stop on the way to “more.”