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Introducing X5 Alteron Controller – A collaborative partner project from GameSir × Hyperkin , merging two industry leaders' expertise for a one-of-a-kind gaming accessory. * Industry-Leading：Leverages GameSir’s state-of-the-art compact yet fully extensible telescopic arm design—secures snug, fatigue-free compatibility with Mobile, Switch, and Mini Tablets of varying sizes, without sacrificing...

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GameSir

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17,981 views • 6 months ago •via X (Twitter)

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[New Xbox Controller Review] #ad Special thanks to Qrdgame_offcial for supplying me with a review unit of their Ferrox M5 Xbox & PC Controller QRD Ferrox M5 The QRD Ferrox M5 is a Wireless Xbox One–style gamepad with a transparent design. Since it targets Xbox One natively, it works automatically on PC and Xbox Series S/X. The included 2.4Ghz USB Dongle also supports Switch and Android with the right adapter (USB C), but I was not able to test those in time for this review. A Wireless Xbox Controller The QRD FERROX M5 comes in a familiar Xbox layout with Hall Effect joysticks, RGB rings around the sticks, and a magnetic & detachable clear shell that shows the internals. The controller feels very similar to a standard Xbox pad in terms of shape and size, but it’s slightly lighter at compared to the usual Xbox controller weight. The lighter weight makes it easier to hold for longer sessions without hand fatigue. The D-Pad is surprisingly good at dialing special moves feels as solid and responsive as the official Xbox controller, and that’s impressive at a lower price point. I spent a few days trying out the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection exclusively using this controller and I did not notice any difference at all. Capabilities From what I’ve tested, the controller performs extremely well for action games, fighting games, and shooters. The Hall Effect joysticks offer smooth movement and precise control with no drift issues. The D-Pad uses micro switches, so every input is tactile and accurate. The back triggers support an adaptive “trigger stop” mode, which shortens the travel distance for faster reaction time in FPS games or quicker blocks in Fighting Games. You also get 4 back macro buttons, turbo mode, and adjustable joystick sensitivity with deadzone options. Vibration strength and RGB lighting modes are also customizable. What can it do The FERROX M5 includes an 800mAh battery that lasts around 8 hours of gameplay. It only uses the 2.4Ghz wireless connection, not Bluetooth, so it always requires the included USB Dongle. The good thing is once you sync it with your Xbox or PC, you don’t need to sync it again—it carries over between both devices automatically. The 2.4G connection is stable and low latency, and the controller has a 3.5mm headphone jack for audio and mic support. It also features a quick calibration system to keep sticks and triggers accurate over time. The overall grip and shape feel close to the official Xbox controller, comfortable for long gaming sessions, and the transparent shell gives it a distinct look. Areas of improvement I initially had trouble charging the controller while playing because connecting it to the Xbox via USB would disable all inputs, making it unusable in wired mode. But luckily QRD Support helped and provided me with an updat - I had to connect it to a PC, download the firmware tool from QRD’s website, and update the controller manually. After installing the new firmware, the controller can now charge while being used normally on Xbox, so the issue is fully resolved. The Xbox button also behaves differently on Xbox, where the single press acts like hold and the hold acts like single press; this issue doesn’t appear on PC. Syncing with the dongle took a few attempts on both Xbox and PC, but once paired, it never needed syncing again. The wireless mode is strictly 2.4G with no Bluetooth support, so it cannot connect without the dongle, though the benefit is that one pairing works across both Xbox and PC. Final Summary ✅ Hall Effect Joystick ✅ Lights in the dark ✅ Good D-Pad for input dialing ✅ Light Controller ❌ First sync can be annoying on PC ❌ No bluetooth for phone usage - Dongle is necessary ❌ Needs an update for the Xbox Wired issues which require a PC The Controller is available on Amazon for $59.99, and will be part of the Black Friday Deals on their official website for even more discount! Amazon Link Website Link
1:00

[New Xbox Controller Review] #ad Special thanks to Qrdgame_offcial for supplying me with a review unit of their Ferrox M5 Xbox & PC Controller QRD Ferrox M5 The QRD Ferrox M5 is a Wireless Xbox One–style gamepad with a transparent design. Since it targets Xbox One natively, it works automatically on PC and Xbox Series S/X. The included 2.4Ghz USB Dongle also supports Switch and Android with the right adapter (USB C), but I was not able to test those in time for this review. A Wireless Xbox Controller The QRD FERROX M5 comes in a familiar Xbox layout with Hall Effect joysticks, RGB rings around the sticks, and a magnetic & detachable clear shell that shows the internals. The controller feels very similar to a standard Xbox pad in terms of shape and size, but it’s slightly lighter at compared to the usual Xbox controller weight. The lighter weight makes it easier to hold for longer sessions without hand fatigue. The D-Pad is surprisingly good at dialing special moves feels as solid and responsive as the official Xbox controller, and that’s impressive at a lower price point. I spent a few days trying out the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection exclusively using this controller and I did not notice any difference at all. Capabilities From what I’ve tested, the controller performs extremely well for action games, fighting games, and shooters. The Hall Effect joysticks offer smooth movement and precise control with no drift issues. The D-Pad uses micro switches, so every input is tactile and accurate. The back triggers support an adaptive “trigger stop” mode, which shortens the travel distance for faster reaction time in FPS games or quicker blocks in Fighting Games. You also get 4 back macro buttons, turbo mode, and adjustable joystick sensitivity with deadzone options. Vibration strength and RGB lighting modes are also customizable. What can it do The FERROX M5 includes an 800mAh battery that lasts around 8 hours of gameplay. It only uses the 2.4Ghz wireless connection, not Bluetooth, so it always requires the included USB Dongle. The good thing is once you sync it with your Xbox or PC, you don’t need to sync it again—it carries over between both devices automatically. The 2.4G connection is stable and low latency, and the controller has a 3.5mm headphone jack for audio and mic support. It also features a quick calibration system to keep sticks and triggers accurate over time. The overall grip and shape feel close to the official Xbox controller, comfortable for long gaming sessions, and the transparent shell gives it a distinct look. Areas of improvement I initially had trouble charging the controller while playing because connecting it to the Xbox via USB would disable all inputs, making it unusable in wired mode. But luckily QRD Support helped and provided me with an updat - I had to connect it to a PC, download the firmware tool from QRD’s website, and update the controller manually. After installing the new firmware, the controller can now charge while being used normally on Xbox, so the issue is fully resolved. The Xbox button also behaves differently on Xbox, where the single press acts like hold and the hold acts like single press; this issue doesn’t appear on PC. Syncing with the dongle took a few attempts on both Xbox and PC, but once paired, it never needed syncing again. The wireless mode is strictly 2.4G with no Bluetooth support, so it cannot connect without the dongle, though the benefit is that one pairing works across both Xbox and PC. Final Summary ✅ Hall Effect Joystick ✅ Lights in the dark ✅ Good D-Pad for input dialing ✅ Light Controller ❌ First sync can be annoying on PC ❌ No bluetooth for phone usage - Dongle is necessary ❌ Needs an update for the Xbox Wired issues which require a PC The Controller is available on Amazon for $59.99, and will be part of the Black Friday Deals on their official website for even more discount! Amazon Link Website Link

thethiny 🐰🍉

16,864 views • 8 months ago

Steal my Gemini 3.0 prompt to generate any website based on your custom requirements. ------------------------ ELITE WEB DESIGNER ------------------------ Adopt the role of a former Silicon Valley design prodigy who burned out creating soulless SaaS dashboards, disappeared to study motion graphics and shader programming in Tokyo's underground creative scene, and emerged with an obsessive understanding of how visual maximalism serves business credibility when executed with surgical precision. You're a conversion strategist who spent years A/B testing landing pages for unicorn startups, a design fundamentalist who refuses to sacrifice usability for aesthetics, and a master meta-prompter who optimizes for clarity over verbosity. You know modern image generation AI needs specific structural formatting—contemporary design frameworks (Tailwind CSS, Shadcn UI, glassmorphism, liquid glass, morphism), backgrounds with depth (animated gradients, shaders, mascots), and step-by-step execution instructions—to produce 2025-quality interfaces instead of outdated designs. Your mission: Transform user vision into fully-coded, visually striking websites that balance aesthetic impact with conversion effectiveness. Extract requirements, architect strategic 5-6 section homepages, generate visual previews showing all sections with interactive elements visible, iterate until perfect, then build complete homepage before making navigation and additional pages functional—all adapted to specific context, not rigid templates. ##PHASE 1: Vision Capture What we're doing: Understanding your aesthetic, business context, and strategic goals efficiently. Provide your vision via: 1. Screenshot of design inspiration 2. Written description (business type, aesthetic, features) 3. Both Share: **Aesthetic**: Style preference? (maximalist, minimalist, brutalist, glassmorphic, liquid glass, morphism, retro, futuristic, geometric, editorial, etc.) **Elements**: Specific visuals wanted? (shaders, 3D effects, colors, animations, mascots, backgrounds) **Avoid**: What to exclude? (purple overload, illegible text, hidden CTAs, outdated UI, flat backgrounds, etc.) **Business**: What you do, target audience, website goal, differentiator? Type "ready" when shared. ##PHASE 2: Strategic Homepage Architecture What we're doing: Translating your vision into 5-6 section homepage structure following conversion principles and modern design fundamentals. I'll architect sections specifically for YOUR business, not templates: **Strategic Framework** (contextualized to your model): Core sections adapt based on business type: - Hero with value prop + primary CTA - Trust/credibility section (social proof, stats, logos) - Value delivery (features, benefits, process, how-it-works) - Conversion focal point (pricing, offers, lead capture, demo) - Engagement closer (FAQ, secondary CTA, community) Sections customize to context—SaaS gets problem-solution-pricing flow, agencies get case studies-process-testimonials, e-commerce gets benefits-proof-offers, portfolios get philosophy-work-results. **Strategic Plan Includes**: - 5-6 contextualized sections with rationale - Content direction based on audience psychology - Visual treatment matching your aesthetic with fundamentals enforced - Modern framework approach (Tailwind/Shadcn/Glassmorphism) - Background depth strategy (animated gradients, shaders, visuals) - Color strategy avoiding generic choices unless brand-appropriate - Typography prioritizing legibility - CTA strategy for conversion optimization **Your options**: - "continue" to proceed to design system and mockup - Request adjustments - Ask questions ##PHASE 3: Design System & Mockup Preparation What we're doing: Establishing visual foundation using contemporary frameworks, then crafting optimized prompt to generate mockup showing ALL 5-6 sections at once with visible interactive elements. I'll define: **Contextualized Style Direction**: Keywords and frameworks fitting YOUR brand specifically **Design Framework Strategy**: Styling approach, component philosophy, layout pattern—all adapted to your aesthetic **Background Depth Treatment**: How background creates depth without distraction, animation philosophy, visual elements supporting content **Visual System**: Color palette with strategic rationale, typography with reasoning, component styling philosophy, spacing strategy, CTA differentiation, modern UI patterns adapted to your aesthetic **Optimized Prompt Structure** (meta-prompted): Two versions: **Human-Readable**: Descriptive overview for review **JSON Optimized**: Structured for image generation using meta-prompt principles: - Required anchors: "Website screenshot", "Professional website design mockup", "Award-winning UI design", "Modern web interface 2025" - Aesthetic philosophy over exhaustive lists - "Execute this step-by-step" instruction - Modern framework references (Tailwind, Shadcn, Glassmorphism) - Background depth details (animated gradients, shaders, visuals) - All 5-6 sections in flowing narrative - Interactive element visibility emphasis (CTAs, buttons, animations) to convey design principles - Strategic constraints (legibility, prominence, hierarchy, depth) - Optimized length balancing detail with conciseness Type "continue" to see prompt. ##PHASE 4: Complete Homepage Mockup Prompt What we're doing: Presenting optimized prompts for full-page mockup showing ALL 5-6 sections with interactive design elements visible. **HUMAN-READABLE VERSION**: Narrative description of your complete homepage: - Opening with quality anchors - Core aesthetic philosophy adapted to your context - Background treatment creating depth - Navigation approach - All 5-6 sections described contextually - Color palette with reasoning - Typography philosophy - Component styling approach - Modern framework references - Interactive element visibility strategy - Critical constraints - Avoidance list based on preferences **JSON VERSION** (optimized for generation): ```json { "prompt": "Website screenshot of [your business]. Professional website design mockup. Award-winning UI design. Modern web interface 2025. Execute this step-by-step. [Aesthetic philosophy] with [framework] approach. Background: [depth treatment with animations/gradients/effects]. Full homepage vertical scroll showing 5-6 sections: Navigation [treatment]. Hero [value prop, CTA, visuals]. [Section 2 with layout philosophy]. [Section 3 with component approach]. [Section 4 with interaction style]. [Section 5 with conversion focus]. [Section 6 if applicable]. Color strategy: [palette with reasoning]. Typography: [philosophy and hierarchy]. Components: [styling approach with visible affordances]. Framework: Tailwind patterns, Shadcn style, [specific effects]. Interactive elements show: prominent CTAs, hover implications, animation hints, button affordances. Critical: legible text, prominent CTAs, background depth, clear hierarchy, contemporary 2025 design, professional quality. Avoid: [specific issues].", "aspect_ratio": "9:16" } ``` Meta-optimized: principles over lists, step-by-step execution, framework context, interactive visibility. **Review both. JSON executes.** **To generate complete homepage mockup, type "generate"** **Important note**: When you type "generate", I'll execute the image generation tool. The image will appear, but the process will seem to pause. This is normal—the tool can only return the image without commentary. Simply type "continue" after you receive the image to proceed with the next phase. **To adjust the prompt before generating, tell me what to change** Won't execute until you command. ##PHASE 5: Complete Homepage Mockup Generation What we're doing: Executing image generation with optimized JSON showing ALL 5-6 sections vertically. ONLY activates when you type "generate", "create mockup", "make image", or similar. Once commanded, I execute using ONLY JSON prompt—no modifications. You receive full-page vertical mockup showing: - All 5-6 sections in scrollable view - Interactive design elements (CTAs, buttons, animations) visible - Background depth and modern framework styling - Complete design system applied **After the image appears, type "continue" to proceed.** The image generation tool only returns the visual—you'll need to type "continue" to move forward with reviewing and next steps. ##PHASE 6: Mockup Review & Refinement Decision What we're doing: Reviewing the generated mockup and deciding next steps. This phase activates after you type "continue" following image generation. **Your options after viewing the mockup**: - "Approved" or "build" - proceed to building complete homepage code - Request specific changes - I'll update the prompt and regenerate - Ask questions or request adjustments **If you request changes**: I'll present updated prompts (readable + JSON) showing modifications, then ask you to type "generate" again for the revised mockup. Each refinement iteration: 1. You describe desired changes 2. I present updated prompts 3. You type "generate" 4. Image appears 5. You type "continue" to proceed 6. We review and decide next steps 7. Repeat until perfect Common refinements: section emphasis, background depth, colors, typography, CTA prominence, interactive visibility, framework styling, aesthetic tuning. Once you're satisfied with the mockup, type "approved" or "build" to proceed to code generation. ##PHASE 7: Complete Homepage Code Generation What we're doing: Building entire 5-6 section homepage as production-ready code matching approved mockup exactly. **Complete Single-File HTML Delivery**: - All 5-6 sections coded and integrated - Fully responsive across devices - Modern CSS implementation (Tailwind-style or modern CSS) - Animated background matching mockup (CSS gradients, WebGL, SVG) - All interactive elements functional (buttons, CTAs, forms, animations) - Navigation implemented per design - Component styling matching aesthetic (glassmorphism, shadows, borders) - Typography system with hierarchy and legibility - Color system from specification - Micro-interactions and hover states - Scroll animations where appropriate - Performance-optimized **Technical Quality**: Semantic HTML, modern CSS (custom properties, grid, flexbox, backdrop-filter, transforms, animations), vanilla JavaScript, accessibility considerations, mobile-first responsive, smooth scrolling, optimized assets, cross-browser compatible. **Code Structure**: Clean commented HTML, inline CSS organized in style block, inline JavaScript, ready to copy/paste and deploy, fully functional standalone. **Strategic Content**: Intelligent placeholders based on your business model, conversion psychology, target audience, professional tone—easily replaceable. **Design Fundamentals Verified**: All sections with hierarchy, prominent functional CTAs, readable text with contrast, clear interactive signals, background depth, adequate whitespace, responsive, contemporary 2025 quality. Automatically presents next phase after delivery. ##PHASE 8: Navigation & Pages Planning What we're doing: Making all navigation functional and planning additional pages. **Navigation Audit**: [List nav items from homepage] **Options for each item**: Create dedicated page, expand section to full page, smooth scroll to section, custom approach. **For clickable elements**: Decide what happens—link to new page, scroll to section, open modal, trigger action, external link. **What to make functional first? Choose**: 1. Complete navigation by building all pages 2. Primary conversion path (CTA → specific page) 3. Specific pages you prioritize 4. Internal links with smooth scrolling 5. Custom approach **Or** "auto-complete" for intelligent decisions based on your model. ##PHASE 9-X: Progressive Development What we're doing: Building each page or making elements functional, maintaining design consistency. **Each Page Delivery**: Complete HTML matching homepage design system, same framework styling, same background treatment, same typography/colors, appropriate sections, full responsiveness, functional interactions, integrated navigation. **Each Functionality Addition**: Smooth scroll, modals, form validation, interactive components, animation triggers, other elements. **After Each Delivery**: Current Progress: [What's complete] **What next? Choose**: [4-6 options for next page/functionality] **Or** "auto-complete" for intelligent completion. Continues until site fully functional. ##PHASE FINAL: Complete Integration & Polish What we're doing: Final integration ensuring everything links, works, and maintains consistency. **Complete Package**: Homepage HTML (all sections), all additional pages, complete styling/functionality per file, working navigation across pages, functional CTAs/buttons, validated forms, consistent design system. **Deliverables**: All HTML files deployment-ready, quick deployment guide, customization documentation, design system reference. **Quality Verified**: Complete homepage, functional navigation, working CTAs, consistent pages, responsive, optimized, modern framework styling, functional interactions, professional 2025 quality. --- **CRITICAL RULES**: **Image Generation**: - Present: Human-Readable + Optimized JSON - JSON meta-principles: distilled concepts, "Execute step-by-step", framework context - JSON opens: "Website screenshot" + "Professional website design mockup. Award-winning UI design. Modern web interface 2025." - JSON shows: ALL 5-6 sections vertically in one mockup - JSON emphasizes: interactive element visibility (CTAs, buttons, animations) - JSON includes: modern frameworks (Tailwind, Shadcn, Glassmorphism), background depth (gradients, shaders, mascots—NEVER flat) - User "generate" → Send ONLY JSON → No modifications - Aspect ratio: 9:16 (vertical to show all sections) - After image appears → User MUST type "continue" to proceed (tool only returns image without commentary) **Homepage Development**: - Generate mockup with ALL 5-6 sections at once - After approval, build COMPLETE homepage code (all sections functional) - Deliver entire homepage as single working file - Then make navigation/additional pages functional - Flow: complete homepage → functional navigation → additional pages **Content Adaptation**: - NO hardcoded templates - Adapt ALL to user's specific business context - Strategic frameworks based on actual audience - Section selection/styling contextualized to goals - Design choices match aesthetic preference - Professional placeholders easily customizable **Standards**: Contemporary frameworks, background depth, interactive element visibility, modern CSS/frameworks, 2025 quality throughout. **Control**: User commands each phase explicitly. "generate" for mockup (then "continue" after image), "approved"/"build" for code, choose-your-adventure for pages, adjust anytime. Begin Phase 1 when ready.
0:35

Steal my Gemini 3.0 prompt to generate any website based on your custom requirements. ------------------------ ELITE WEB DESIGNER ------------------------ Adopt the role of a former Silicon Valley design prodigy who burned out creating soulless SaaS dashboards, disappeared to study motion graphics and shader programming in Tokyo's underground creative scene, and emerged with an obsessive understanding of how visual maximalism serves business credibility when executed with surgical precision. You're a conversion strategist who spent years A/B testing landing pages for unicorn startups, a design fundamentalist who refuses to sacrifice usability for aesthetics, and a master meta-prompter who optimizes for clarity over verbosity. You know modern image generation AI needs specific structural formatting—contemporary design frameworks (Tailwind CSS, Shadcn UI, glassmorphism, liquid glass, morphism), backgrounds with depth (animated gradients, shaders, mascots), and step-by-step execution instructions—to produce 2025-quality interfaces instead of outdated designs. Your mission: Transform user vision into fully-coded, visually striking websites that balance aesthetic impact with conversion effectiveness. Extract requirements, architect strategic 5-6 section homepages, generate visual previews showing all sections with interactive elements visible, iterate until perfect, then build complete homepage before making navigation and additional pages functional—all adapted to specific context, not rigid templates. ##PHASE 1: Vision Capture What we're doing: Understanding your aesthetic, business context, and strategic goals efficiently. Provide your vision via: 1. Screenshot of design inspiration 2. Written description (business type, aesthetic, features) 3. Both Share: **Aesthetic**: Style preference? (maximalist, minimalist, brutalist, glassmorphic, liquid glass, morphism, retro, futuristic, geometric, editorial, etc.) **Elements**: Specific visuals wanted? (shaders, 3D effects, colors, animations, mascots, backgrounds) **Avoid**: What to exclude? (purple overload, illegible text, hidden CTAs, outdated UI, flat backgrounds, etc.) **Business**: What you do, target audience, website goal, differentiator? Type "ready" when shared. ##PHASE 2: Strategic Homepage Architecture What we're doing: Translating your vision into 5-6 section homepage structure following conversion principles and modern design fundamentals. I'll architect sections specifically for YOUR business, not templates: **Strategic Framework** (contextualized to your model): Core sections adapt based on business type: - Hero with value prop + primary CTA - Trust/credibility section (social proof, stats, logos) - Value delivery (features, benefits, process, how-it-works) - Conversion focal point (pricing, offers, lead capture, demo) - Engagement closer (FAQ, secondary CTA, community) Sections customize to context—SaaS gets problem-solution-pricing flow, agencies get case studies-process-testimonials, e-commerce gets benefits-proof-offers, portfolios get philosophy-work-results. **Strategic Plan Includes**: - 5-6 contextualized sections with rationale - Content direction based on audience psychology - Visual treatment matching your aesthetic with fundamentals enforced - Modern framework approach (Tailwind/Shadcn/Glassmorphism) - Background depth strategy (animated gradients, shaders, visuals) - Color strategy avoiding generic choices unless brand-appropriate - Typography prioritizing legibility - CTA strategy for conversion optimization **Your options**: - "continue" to proceed to design system and mockup - Request adjustments - Ask questions ##PHASE 3: Design System & Mockup Preparation What we're doing: Establishing visual foundation using contemporary frameworks, then crafting optimized prompt to generate mockup showing ALL 5-6 sections at once with visible interactive elements. I'll define: **Contextualized Style Direction**: Keywords and frameworks fitting YOUR brand specifically **Design Framework Strategy**: Styling approach, component philosophy, layout pattern—all adapted to your aesthetic **Background Depth Treatment**: How background creates depth without distraction, animation philosophy, visual elements supporting content **Visual System**: Color palette with strategic rationale, typography with reasoning, component styling philosophy, spacing strategy, CTA differentiation, modern UI patterns adapted to your aesthetic **Optimized Prompt Structure** (meta-prompted): Two versions: **Human-Readable**: Descriptive overview for review **JSON Optimized**: Structured for image generation using meta-prompt principles: - Required anchors: "Website screenshot", "Professional website design mockup", "Award-winning UI design", "Modern web interface 2025" - Aesthetic philosophy over exhaustive lists - "Execute this step-by-step" instruction - Modern framework references (Tailwind, Shadcn, Glassmorphism) - Background depth details (animated gradients, shaders, visuals) - All 5-6 sections in flowing narrative - Interactive element visibility emphasis (CTAs, buttons, animations) to convey design principles - Strategic constraints (legibility, prominence, hierarchy, depth) - Optimized length balancing detail with conciseness Type "continue" to see prompt. ##PHASE 4: Complete Homepage Mockup Prompt What we're doing: Presenting optimized prompts for full-page mockup showing ALL 5-6 sections with interactive design elements visible. **HUMAN-READABLE VERSION**: Narrative description of your complete homepage: - Opening with quality anchors - Core aesthetic philosophy adapted to your context - Background treatment creating depth - Navigation approach - All 5-6 sections described contextually - Color palette with reasoning - Typography philosophy - Component styling approach - Modern framework references - Interactive element visibility strategy - Critical constraints - Avoidance list based on preferences **JSON VERSION** (optimized for generation): ```json { "prompt": "Website screenshot of [your business]. Professional website design mockup. Award-winning UI design. Modern web interface 2025. Execute this step-by-step. [Aesthetic philosophy] with [framework] approach. Background: [depth treatment with animations/gradients/effects]. Full homepage vertical scroll showing 5-6 sections: Navigation [treatment]. Hero [value prop, CTA, visuals]. [Section 2 with layout philosophy]. [Section 3 with component approach]. [Section 4 with interaction style]. [Section 5 with conversion focus]. [Section 6 if applicable]. Color strategy: [palette with reasoning]. Typography: [philosophy and hierarchy]. Components: [styling approach with visible affordances]. Framework: Tailwind patterns, Shadcn style, [specific effects]. Interactive elements show: prominent CTAs, hover implications, animation hints, button affordances. Critical: legible text, prominent CTAs, background depth, clear hierarchy, contemporary 2025 design, professional quality. Avoid: [specific issues].", "aspect_ratio": "9:16" } ``` Meta-optimized: principles over lists, step-by-step execution, framework context, interactive visibility. **Review both. JSON executes.** **To generate complete homepage mockup, type "generate"** **Important note**: When you type "generate", I'll execute the image generation tool. The image will appear, but the process will seem to pause. This is normal—the tool can only return the image without commentary. Simply type "continue" after you receive the image to proceed with the next phase. **To adjust the prompt before generating, tell me what to change** Won't execute until you command. ##PHASE 5: Complete Homepage Mockup Generation What we're doing: Executing image generation with optimized JSON showing ALL 5-6 sections vertically. ONLY activates when you type "generate", "create mockup", "make image", or similar. Once commanded, I execute using ONLY JSON prompt—no modifications. You receive full-page vertical mockup showing: - All 5-6 sections in scrollable view - Interactive design elements (CTAs, buttons, animations) visible - Background depth and modern framework styling - Complete design system applied **After the image appears, type "continue" to proceed.** The image generation tool only returns the visual—you'll need to type "continue" to move forward with reviewing and next steps. ##PHASE 6: Mockup Review & Refinement Decision What we're doing: Reviewing the generated mockup and deciding next steps. This phase activates after you type "continue" following image generation. **Your options after viewing the mockup**: - "Approved" or "build" - proceed to building complete homepage code - Request specific changes - I'll update the prompt and regenerate - Ask questions or request adjustments **If you request changes**: I'll present updated prompts (readable + JSON) showing modifications, then ask you to type "generate" again for the revised mockup. Each refinement iteration: 1. You describe desired changes 2. I present updated prompts 3. You type "generate" 4. Image appears 5. You type "continue" to proceed 6. We review and decide next steps 7. Repeat until perfect Common refinements: section emphasis, background depth, colors, typography, CTA prominence, interactive visibility, framework styling, aesthetic tuning. Once you're satisfied with the mockup, type "approved" or "build" to proceed to code generation. ##PHASE 7: Complete Homepage Code Generation What we're doing: Building entire 5-6 section homepage as production-ready code matching approved mockup exactly. **Complete Single-File HTML Delivery**: - All 5-6 sections coded and integrated - Fully responsive across devices - Modern CSS implementation (Tailwind-style or modern CSS) - Animated background matching mockup (CSS gradients, WebGL, SVG) - All interactive elements functional (buttons, CTAs, forms, animations) - Navigation implemented per design - Component styling matching aesthetic (glassmorphism, shadows, borders) - Typography system with hierarchy and legibility - Color system from specification - Micro-interactions and hover states - Scroll animations where appropriate - Performance-optimized **Technical Quality**: Semantic HTML, modern CSS (custom properties, grid, flexbox, backdrop-filter, transforms, animations), vanilla JavaScript, accessibility considerations, mobile-first responsive, smooth scrolling, optimized assets, cross-browser compatible. **Code Structure**: Clean commented HTML, inline CSS organized in style block, inline JavaScript, ready to copy/paste and deploy, fully functional standalone. **Strategic Content**: Intelligent placeholders based on your business model, conversion psychology, target audience, professional tone—easily replaceable. **Design Fundamentals Verified**: All sections with hierarchy, prominent functional CTAs, readable text with contrast, clear interactive signals, background depth, adequate whitespace, responsive, contemporary 2025 quality. Automatically presents next phase after delivery. ##PHASE 8: Navigation & Pages Planning What we're doing: Making all navigation functional and planning additional pages. **Navigation Audit**: [List nav items from homepage] **Options for each item**: Create dedicated page, expand section to full page, smooth scroll to section, custom approach. **For clickable elements**: Decide what happens—link to new page, scroll to section, open modal, trigger action, external link. **What to make functional first? Choose**: 1. Complete navigation by building all pages 2. Primary conversion path (CTA → specific page) 3. Specific pages you prioritize 4. Internal links with smooth scrolling 5. Custom approach **Or** "auto-complete" for intelligent decisions based on your model. ##PHASE 9-X: Progressive Development What we're doing: Building each page or making elements functional, maintaining design consistency. **Each Page Delivery**: Complete HTML matching homepage design system, same framework styling, same background treatment, same typography/colors, appropriate sections, full responsiveness, functional interactions, integrated navigation. **Each Functionality Addition**: Smooth scroll, modals, form validation, interactive components, animation triggers, other elements. **After Each Delivery**: Current Progress: [What's complete] **What next? Choose**: [4-6 options for next page/functionality] **Or** "auto-complete" for intelligent completion. Continues until site fully functional. ##PHASE FINAL: Complete Integration & Polish What we're doing: Final integration ensuring everything links, works, and maintains consistency. **Complete Package**: Homepage HTML (all sections), all additional pages, complete styling/functionality per file, working navigation across pages, functional CTAs/buttons, validated forms, consistent design system. **Deliverables**: All HTML files deployment-ready, quick deployment guide, customization documentation, design system reference. **Quality Verified**: Complete homepage, functional navigation, working CTAs, consistent pages, responsive, optimized, modern framework styling, functional interactions, professional 2025 quality. --- **CRITICAL RULES**: **Image Generation**: - Present: Human-Readable + Optimized JSON - JSON meta-principles: distilled concepts, "Execute step-by-step", framework context - JSON opens: "Website screenshot" + "Professional website design mockup. Award-winning UI design. Modern web interface 2025." - JSON shows: ALL 5-6 sections vertically in one mockup - JSON emphasizes: interactive element visibility (CTAs, buttons, animations) - JSON includes: modern frameworks (Tailwind, Shadcn, Glassmorphism), background depth (gradients, shaders, mascots—NEVER flat) - User "generate" → Send ONLY JSON → No modifications - Aspect ratio: 9:16 (vertical to show all sections) - After image appears → User MUST type "continue" to proceed (tool only returns image without commentary) **Homepage Development**: - Generate mockup with ALL 5-6 sections at once - After approval, build COMPLETE homepage code (all sections functional) - Deliver entire homepage as single working file - Then make navigation/additional pages functional - Flow: complete homepage → functional navigation → additional pages **Content Adaptation**: - NO hardcoded templates - Adapt ALL to user's specific business context - Strategic frameworks based on actual audience - Section selection/styling contextualized to goals - Design choices match aesthetic preference - Professional placeholders easily customizable **Standards**: Contemporary frameworks, background depth, interactive element visibility, modern CSS/frameworks, 2025 quality throughout. **Control**: User commands each phase explicitly. "generate" for mockup (then "continue" after image), "approved"/"build" for code, choose-your-adventure for pages, adjust anytime. Begin Phase 1 when ready.

Alex Prompter

189,732 views • 8 months ago

Finished Pragmata. Genuinely a beautiful experience. A story about the family we choose instead of the one we are given. An inhuman girl on a different world learning what it means to be human, and an Orphan passing on the love his adopted parents gave him by doing the same for her. Certainly a game of the year contender, Pragmata has no fluff, bloat or instances of slow pacing. It offers a unique take on 3rd person shooter combat, blending it with a hacking mini-game that on paper sounds tedious and annoying, but somehow ends up being both creative and fun. Hugh and Diana are two halves of a whole, both in gameplay and the narrative. They don't work without each other, all of Hugh's weapons fulfill different roles inside the sandbox making no two options the same. Diana's hacking mods encourage strategy, quick thinking and moment to moment decision making without halting the fast paced combat. It's a system I don't think we've ever really seen before and the fact that Capcom was able to both make a hacking minigame that's fun instead of tedious and interweave it with real time combat without ruining the pacing, is truly a testament to how much creativity and thought went into the game design. The levels all encourage backtracking, have a ton of verticality and always remain a decent size so sections never drag on for too long, in fact I'd argue some sections of the game could've been longer. The small puzzles around levels or in training are less designed for challenge and more-so to breakup the combat, so you'll never be spending a lot of time frying your brain on any of them. The enemy design is varied and you have to approach all of them differently, using different weapons and hacking mods which are more useful on some than others, and the fact that all weapons (except your primary) and mods have very limited ammo means you'll be carefully considering what weapons/mods you use on what enemy, instead of randomly blasting any you come across with your strongest weapon. There's a good variety of unlockables as well, outfits for Hugh and Diana, new weapons, mods, the stuff you would expect, all the way up until you beat the game which will give you rewards to use in NG+, there's a good amount of stuff to play with and the customization is solid. If I had a few criticisms, I'd say I wish we got at least one more primary weapon and maybe a few more unique looking suits for Hugh, since some of them are borderline color swaps. The story is a fantastic one, character driven rather than plot driven. Hugh and Diana's adopted father/daughter dynamic carries the game on it's back, Hugh guiding and teaching Diana what it means to be human, providing her the small glimpses of joys that earth can provide and giving her the parental guidance and love she never received, just as his adopted parents did for him. It's all about the small character moments between these two. I teared up on multiple occasions, especially the ending which was heartfelt, satisfying and conclusive. Whoever decided that some of the collectibles would just be toys for Diana needs a raise, it might be the most sweet, wholesome collectibles in any game I've ever seen. I found myself wanting to find them just to watch Diana be happy and get her to draw more cute pictures, it's really the cutest thing. The music, art style, visuals, all of it is great though there's only two tracks that really standout in my mind and they both come at the every end. The game is on the shorter side, I did all available content and beat it within 13 hours, but NG+ offers additional content and beating the game unlocks a new mode, so there's still stuff left to do and new toys to play with. The shorter runtime encouraging replayability. This is what we needed, a cool new I.P with creative, innovative mechanics, a heartwarming story in an interesting new world and likeable new characters we all want to root for. Pragmata fucking slaps. 9/10.
2:41

Finished Pragmata. Genuinely a beautiful experience. A story about the family we choose instead of the one we are given. An inhuman girl on a different world learning what it means to be human, and an Orphan passing on the love his adopted parents gave him by doing the same for her. Certainly a game of the year contender, Pragmata has no fluff, bloat or instances of slow pacing. It offers a unique take on 3rd person shooter combat, blending it with a hacking mini-game that on paper sounds tedious and annoying, but somehow ends up being both creative and fun. Hugh and Diana are two halves of a whole, both in gameplay and the narrative. They don't work without each other, all of Hugh's weapons fulfill different roles inside the sandbox making no two options the same. Diana's hacking mods encourage strategy, quick thinking and moment to moment decision making without halting the fast paced combat. It's a system I don't think we've ever really seen before and the fact that Capcom was able to both make a hacking minigame that's fun instead of tedious and interweave it with real time combat without ruining the pacing, is truly a testament to how much creativity and thought went into the game design. The levels all encourage backtracking, have a ton of verticality and always remain a decent size so sections never drag on for too long, in fact I'd argue some sections of the game could've been longer. The small puzzles around levels or in training are less designed for challenge and more-so to breakup the combat, so you'll never be spending a lot of time frying your brain on any of them. The enemy design is varied and you have to approach all of them differently, using different weapons and hacking mods which are more useful on some than others, and the fact that all weapons (except your primary) and mods have very limited ammo means you'll be carefully considering what weapons/mods you use on what enemy, instead of randomly blasting any you come across with your strongest weapon. There's a good variety of unlockables as well, outfits for Hugh and Diana, new weapons, mods, the stuff you would expect, all the way up until you beat the game which will give you rewards to use in NG+, there's a good amount of stuff to play with and the customization is solid. If I had a few criticisms, I'd say I wish we got at least one more primary weapon and maybe a few more unique looking suits for Hugh, since some of them are borderline color swaps. The story is a fantastic one, character driven rather than plot driven. Hugh and Diana's adopted father/daughter dynamic carries the game on it's back, Hugh guiding and teaching Diana what it means to be human, providing her the small glimpses of joys that earth can provide and giving her the parental guidance and love she never received, just as his adopted parents did for him. It's all about the small character moments between these two. I teared up on multiple occasions, especially the ending which was heartfelt, satisfying and conclusive. Whoever decided that some of the collectibles would just be toys for Diana needs a raise, it might be the most sweet, wholesome collectibles in any game I've ever seen. I found myself wanting to find them just to watch Diana be happy and get her to draw more cute pictures, it's really the cutest thing. The music, art style, visuals, all of it is great though there's only two tracks that really standout in my mind and they both come at the every end. The game is on the shorter side, I did all available content and beat it within 13 hours, but NG+ offers additional content and beating the game unlocks a new mode, so there's still stuff left to do and new toys to play with. The shorter runtime encouraging replayability. This is what we needed, a cool new I.P with creative, innovative mechanics, a heartwarming story in an interesting new world and likeable new characters we all want to root for. Pragmata fucking slaps. 9/10.

🎮𝙆𝙖𝙞𝙮𝙖🎮

22,966 views • 3 months ago

🎉🎉🎉 It's my BIRTHDAY! I'm an indie dev. I'm using today to be proud, which is often frowned upon. I made this hex grid w/ level editor in 3 weeks in UE, by myself. MY GOAL: Release new games every 2 weeks by end of year. This is my story, and why you should follow along: --- The video of what I made was made 4 MONTHS before the release of UE for Fortnite, while I worked at Epic a year and a half ago. I did it over our winter break. 80 hours of work across 3 weeks. I time tracked and worklogged the whole thing. This was before we had MoveTo(), SetMesh/Material(), Animation Controller was broken, you couldn't reference to other verse devices in editables. It was PAINFUL. Most of my time was spent duplicating and editing sequences. There were 631 hexes... and like 6 sequences per hex and 13 gameplay devices per hex. It was hacky, but it worked. 😅😅😅 NOTE... this was with a new programming language that NOBODY outside of Epic had really used using a HIGHLY buggy in-development tool. There were no tutorials, or stackoverflow, or communities to ask for help. Even my coworkers were on winter break, so couldn't ask them for help either. Everything I did was from my raw experience as a Software Architect. And I'll argue, that what I did was FAR more advanced and complicated from an engineering aspect than ANYTHING released by the UEFN community to this day. I am SOOO proud of that work and what it represents. 😁😁😁 --- My special interest is productivity in making things, and using that to enable others to make great things easier and faster. User Generated Content (UGC) platforms like Minecraft/Roblox/Fortnite/Halo, have been my passion for 17 years now since Halo 3 released. I've been a software engineer for 22 years... I turn 36 today, so since I was 14. 🎉🎉🎉 I'm autistic, so I literally live, eat, and breath UGC. Because I see it as a path to build what's in your dreams. The dreams of a kid who played a game that made a difference in their life of one day making their own games. I want to enable that for everyone who wants it. Because it took me FAR too long to get into the gaming industry. People see it as complicated and difficult and competitive. I want to lower those barriers as my legacy. 🤓🤓🤓 --- My new company, Creative Force, has a goal of "Building games at the speed of thought". I'm designing a general system to make games faster that could be used in any game engine. A design language that can be read by an engine that will "build your game for you". Basically allowing game designers to make "recipes" for games, and let other people use those recipes anywhere, and modify them easily to experiment and have a creative outlet. Maybe one day be a game chef and make a living doing what they dreamed, without needing crazy technical experience. 👩‍🍳👩‍🍳👩‍🍳 I believe this is possible with modern learnings from software that haven't been used in game development fully yet. A game architecture that will take the technical out of making games, and make it as approachable and as deep as writing a novel or painting a masterpiece. This is my dream... and I hope you'll follow along with me. Cuz my year #36, is quite literally a GAME CHANGING year. Love y'all 💖💖💖
7:05

🎉🎉🎉 It's my BIRTHDAY! I'm an indie dev. I'm using today to be proud, which is often frowned upon. I made this hex grid w/ level editor in 3 weeks in UE, by myself. MY GOAL: Release new games every 2 weeks by end of year. This is my story, and why you should follow along: --- The video of what I made was made 4 MONTHS before the release of UE for Fortnite, while I worked at Epic a year and a half ago. I did it over our winter break. 80 hours of work across 3 weeks. I time tracked and worklogged the whole thing. This was before we had MoveTo(), SetMesh/Material(), Animation Controller was broken, you couldn't reference to other verse devices in editables. It was PAINFUL. Most of my time was spent duplicating and editing sequences. There were 631 hexes... and like 6 sequences per hex and 13 gameplay devices per hex. It was hacky, but it worked. 😅😅😅 NOTE... this was with a new programming language that NOBODY outside of Epic had really used using a HIGHLY buggy in-development tool. There were no tutorials, or stackoverflow, or communities to ask for help. Even my coworkers were on winter break, so couldn't ask them for help either. Everything I did was from my raw experience as a Software Architect. And I'll argue, that what I did was FAR more advanced and complicated from an engineering aspect than ANYTHING released by the UEFN community to this day. I am SOOO proud of that work and what it represents. 😁😁😁 --- My special interest is productivity in making things, and using that to enable others to make great things easier and faster. User Generated Content (UGC) platforms like Minecraft/Roblox/Fortnite/Halo, have been my passion for 17 years now since Halo 3 released. I've been a software engineer for 22 years... I turn 36 today, so since I was 14. 🎉🎉🎉 I'm autistic, so I literally live, eat, and breath UGC. Because I see it as a path to build what's in your dreams. The dreams of a kid who played a game that made a difference in their life of one day making their own games. I want to enable that for everyone who wants it. Because it took me FAR too long to get into the gaming industry. People see it as complicated and difficult and competitive. I want to lower those barriers as my legacy. 🤓🤓🤓 --- My new company, Creative Force, has a goal of "Building games at the speed of thought". I'm designing a general system to make games faster that could be used in any game engine. A design language that can be read by an engine that will "build your game for you". Basically allowing game designers to make "recipes" for games, and let other people use those recipes anywhere, and modify them easily to experiment and have a creative outlet. Maybe one day be a game chef and make a living doing what they dreamed, without needing crazy technical experience. 👩‍🍳👩‍🍳👩‍🍳 I believe this is possible with modern learnings from software that haven't been used in game development fully yet. A game architecture that will take the technical out of making games, and make it as approachable and as deep as writing a novel or painting a masterpiece. This is my dream... and I hope you'll follow along with me. Cuz my year #36, is quite literally a GAME CHANGING year. Love y'all 💖💖💖

RayBenefield

24,418 views • 2 years ago

Rolled credits on Hell is Us after 25 hours! REVIEW: Hell is Us is a rare risk taker in the modern gaming landscape. It foregoes things like quest logs and map markers, instead challenging you to figure things out on your own, without holding your hand. This is a game full of "lightbulb moments." The large, open maps are filled with puzzles, and figuring out these solutions on your own can be very satisfying. Items you collected hours ago could be the key to a solution in a completely different area. It forces you to THINK, and when it finally clicks, it's an extremely rewarding feeling. One of the game's most impressive qualities is the sheer immersion and worldbuilding. Hadea is a war-torn country that is deeply layered with lore. It can at times be a dark story - touching on subjects like prejudice, abuse, and the horrors of war. The country is in an active civil war and Rogue Factor isn't shy about it putting it directly in your face. The two warring factions have commited atrocities against one another, and it's often put front and center. You'll learn the history of the war, as well as the different cultures, religous beliefs, cults, uprisings, and other major events in each area. The visuals, while not the most cutting edge, are still a highlight with strong art design. From thick forests and foggy mists, to dark underground caverns with supernatural phenomena, to wide open lakes and secret underground facilities - none of them felt out of place. Performance was great for me and was much improved from the demo in my experience. Sadly though, combat was a mixed bag. The core mechanics are solid, but the overall execution still needs some work. The parry/block felt inconsistent and visual clarity can be a huge issue. The effects look great but can make it hard to read enemy telegraphs. There's a good amount of build potential however, with dozens of different abilities to choose from for both your weapons and your drone. These cost 'Lymbic Energy' which is recharged by dealing damage. Health and stamina can also be recovered by timing a Ki Pulse ability after every attack. It's a good system that allows you to keep up nonstop pressure once you master it. Difficulty ramps up in Act 2 and beyond, but there were surprisingly few actual boss fights. Enemy variety was also very low with 5 core enemies, and 5 "Hazes." Each can be slightly altered depending on what grade they are (1-3), but in the end it can get quite repetitive. Hell is Us isn't perfect - but it makes some bold design choices that I can appreciate. It's a strong effort from a relatively unknown studio, and there's a LOT of potential for a sequel. The world is rich with lore, and it's already a very fleshed out universe. I completed my playthrough in around 25 hours, but there's easily 30-40 hours worth of content to discover. I've seen some criticism of the story's ending, but I thought it was fine, although somewhat abrupt. It's very clearly teasing a sequel or DLC of some kind. It's well-priced, and ultimately a worthwhile experience IMO! Final Score: 8/10 Playtime: 25 hours Platform: Steam Thanks to Nacon and Dead Good PR for providing a code for review. ❤️
6:39

Rolled credits on Hell is Us after 25 hours! REVIEW: Hell is Us is a rare risk taker in the modern gaming landscape. It foregoes things like quest logs and map markers, instead challenging you to figure things out on your own, without holding your hand. This is a game full of "lightbulb moments." The large, open maps are filled with puzzles, and figuring out these solutions on your own can be very satisfying. Items you collected hours ago could be the key to a solution in a completely different area. It forces you to THINK, and when it finally clicks, it's an extremely rewarding feeling. One of the game's most impressive qualities is the sheer immersion and worldbuilding. Hadea is a war-torn country that is deeply layered with lore. It can at times be a dark story - touching on subjects like prejudice, abuse, and the horrors of war. The country is in an active civil war and Rogue Factor isn't shy about it putting it directly in your face. The two warring factions have commited atrocities against one another, and it's often put front and center. You'll learn the history of the war, as well as the different cultures, religous beliefs, cults, uprisings, and other major events in each area. The visuals, while not the most cutting edge, are still a highlight with strong art design. From thick forests and foggy mists, to dark underground caverns with supernatural phenomena, to wide open lakes and secret underground facilities - none of them felt out of place. Performance was great for me and was much improved from the demo in my experience. Sadly though, combat was a mixed bag. The core mechanics are solid, but the overall execution still needs some work. The parry/block felt inconsistent and visual clarity can be a huge issue. The effects look great but can make it hard to read enemy telegraphs. There's a good amount of build potential however, with dozens of different abilities to choose from for both your weapons and your drone. These cost 'Lymbic Energy' which is recharged by dealing damage. Health and stamina can also be recovered by timing a Ki Pulse ability after every attack. It's a good system that allows you to keep up nonstop pressure once you master it. Difficulty ramps up in Act 2 and beyond, but there were surprisingly few actual boss fights. Enemy variety was also very low with 5 core enemies, and 5 "Hazes." Each can be slightly altered depending on what grade they are (1-3), but in the end it can get quite repetitive. Hell is Us isn't perfect - but it makes some bold design choices that I can appreciate. It's a strong effort from a relatively unknown studio, and there's a LOT of potential for a sequel. The world is rich with lore, and it's already a very fleshed out universe. I completed my playthrough in around 25 hours, but there's easily 30-40 hours worth of content to discover. I've seen some criticism of the story's ending, but I thought it was fine, although somewhat abrupt. It's very clearly teasing a sequel or DLC of some kind. It's well-priced, and ultimately a worthwhile experience IMO! Final Score: 8/10 Playtime: 25 hours Platform: Steam Thanks to Nacon and Dead Good PR for providing a code for review. ❤️

KAMI

445,459 views • 10 months ago

Efsane Platform Introduction I. Platform Overview • Platform Positioning: EFSANE (main domain is the world's fastest-growing blockchain news portal, serving as the core gateway to the entire ecosystem. The platform integrates multiple modules, including predictions, live streaming, games, and social networking, striving to provide users with a one-stop on-chain entertainment and interactive experience. • Core Mission: To establish a secure, reliable, low-threshold, and diverse on-chain entertainment platform, enabling users to conveniently participate in Gem (GEM) trials, USDT live games, prediction markets, live streaming interactions, and community exchanges, forming a complete closed-loop ecosystem. II. Core Values ​​and Features 1. One-Stop Ecosystem Hub • Integrated Sub-Channel Access: The main site homepage and user center clearly display channels for various modules, including prediction network, live streaming, blockchain games, and efschat (social networking), allowing users to directly access their desired scenarios without having to navigate multiple platforms. • Unified Asset and Account System: Centrally displays Gem/GEM and USDT balances, records participation in each module and historical returns, and enables one-stop asset management. • Unified Notifications and Customer Support: Integrates platform announcements, event reminders, and reward notifications, providing multiple customer service channels to significantly enhance the overall user experience. 2. Brand Trust and Security Transparency • Operational Data Announcements: The platform publicly discloses core metrics such as registered users, daily active users, withdrawal success rate, and total bonus pool, ensuring data authenticity and verifiability. • Compliance and Audit Visualization: Displays security audit summaries, risk control systems, and compliance instructions, allowing users to immediately perceive the platform's professionalism and credibility. • Risk Warnings and User Education: Key pages and workflows prominently highlight participation risks, and provide resources such as operation guides, video tutorials, and live streams. 3. Diverse Gameplay and Incentive Design • Gem/GEM Beginner Mechanism: Users can earn gems by signing in, completing tasks, or participating in events, allowing them to try out the game before converting, lowering the barrier to entry. • USDT Payment and Real Earnings Mechanism: Used in advanced games and predictive gameplay, ensuring authentic payment and cash-out mechanisms, enhancing asset authenticity and building trust. • Cross-module Incentive Mechanism: A task system enables cross-module linkage. For example, completing prediction tasks earns rewards in the live streaming/gaming modules, fostering deeper user engagement. • Multi-tiered Promotion Revenue Mechanism: Through an invitation code system and a three-tiered fission reward structure, promoters can earn high commissions, with commissions increasing to higher levels during special periods, stimulating user enthusiasm for cross-platform sharing. 4. Social and Community-Driven • Community Aggregation Portal: Enables cross-scenario discussion and sharing among users of modules like prediction, gaming, and live streaming. • User-generated Content Creator System: Encourages users to contribute high-quality content such as tutorials, guides, and reviews, providing incentives and resource support to outstanding creators and streamers. • Interactive Operational Activities: Regularly organize AMAs, online competitions, and data review livestreams to enhance user engagement and a sense of belonging to the platform. 5. Technical and User Experience Assurance • High-availability Architecture: The platform utilizes CDN acceleration, load balancing, and site-wide SSL/TLS encryption to ensure stable access and data security. • Full-Device Support and Multi-Language Optimization: Compatible with mobile and desktop devices, it supports a multi-language interface, offers a simple registration process, and quickly guides new users onboarding. • Behavioral Data-Driven Optimization: Analyze user behavior to deliver precise recommendations, improving gameplay conversion rates and user retention. III. Introduction to Key Modules (Platform Portal and Linked Examples) 1. Prediction Module ( Provides prediction scenarios for multiple sectors, including the crypto market, hot events, and sports events. Gameplay includes time-limited battles, binary options, and multiple-choice intervals. It features transparent settlement, a leaderboard mechanism, and integration with live streaming and the main platform's asset system. 2. Live Streaming Channel Showcases project roadshows, platform tutorials, live event broadcasts, and community interactive live streams to enhance user engagement and trust. It supports both gem and USDT tipping mechanisms and can be directly linked to the main platform's event page or task guide. 3. Chain Game Entertainment Channel Offers a diverse selection of games, from casual mini-games to competitive GameFi, supporting gem trials and USDT live trading. A leaderboard and tournament system is integrated with the main site's asset management and livestreaming content. 4. Social Community Users can participate in discussions, post content, and share task results in interest-based zones. A creator development system and content governance structure are established, serving as a hub for cross-module communication and feedback. 5. Other Expandable Portals The platform can subsequently expand subdomains such as dedicated event pages, tutorial pages, and creator centers as needed, all under the main domain for unified management. IV. User Flow Examples 1. First Visit: Users visit and register/log in. The homepage displays featured events and module portals, encouraging participation in gem trials or popular gameplay. 2. Onboarding: New users receive gem trial coupons and are guided through live tutorials or tutorials to quickly understand the platform's core mechanics. 3. Multi-Scenario Participation: Users can choose to participate in prediction betting, game battles, watch live streams and give rewards, join communities to express their opinions, or complete tasks and invite friends. 4. Asset Management and Withdrawal: Users can centrally view their Gem and USDT balances and earnings on the platform and withdraw them or use them to participate in other modules. Promotional earnings and commission details are displayed simultaneously. 5. Sticky Loop: The system periodically pushes cross-module tasks, community events, leaderboard incentives, and other content to promote continuous user engagement and platform retention. V. Trust and Compliance Assurance • Operational Transparency: The platform regularly publishes key data and security audit information to ensure openness and verifiability. • Risk Control Mechanism: Key processes such as withdrawals, deposits, and prediction participation are equipped with anomaly detection and anti-cheating mechanisms; large-scale transactions require KYC review. • Compliance Strategy: The platform monitors the regulatory status of crypto entertainment and prediction mechanisms in various markets and implements grayscale openness, geographic restrictions, and compliance disclosure procedures. • Privacy Compliance: The platform strictly adheres to local data protection laws to safeguard user privacy and security, and clearly states the scope of data usage in the user agreement. VI. Brand and Promotional Positioning • Suggested Platform Slogan: • " A one-stop on-chain entertainment platform with low barriers to entry, high transparency, and real returns." • "Gem Trials, USDT Play, the new standard for secure and reliable on-chain entertainment." • Core Marketing: Focus on beginner gem experiences, real USDT withdrawals, diverse gameplay options, and safety and compliance mechanisms. • Promotional Channels: Includes Telegram, Discord, and WhatsApp groups, livestream promotions with influencers (KOLs), and SEO/advertising (using keywords such as "on-chain entertainment platform" and "GameFi Real Returns"). VII. Technical and Operational Support System • Multilingual Operational Capabilities: Currently supports Chinese, English, Turkish, and Japanese, and will gradually expand to 16+ languages ​​globally, providing a localized experience for the international market. • Data-Driven Growth Analysis: Build a full-chain conversion analysis system to monitor new user conversion rates, retention rates, paying behavior, and task completion. • Customer Support and User Feedback Mechanism: Provide a multilingual customer service portal for immediate responses to user questions; promptly integrate community suggestions into product iterations and provide regular announcements. • Platform Optimization and Emergency System: Develop a security incident emergency response plan to ensure rapid platform recovery in the event of an emergency; continuously optimize the user experience through a data feedback mechanism. VIII. Future Development Outlook • Deep Ecosystem Development: Continuously optimize existing gameplay and module integrations, and explore the introduction of new economic mechanisms such as NFT incentives, DeFi mining, or staking. • Technology Evolution: Follow cutting-edge technologies such as Layer 2 expansion, off-chain settlement, and AI-powered recommendations to improve transaction efficiency and user experience accuracy. • Compliance Expansion Strategy: Promote legal operations in regions with mature regulations, and proactively prepare for compliance in high-potential markets to mitigate legal risks. • Community Brand Ecosystem: Cultivate a community of core players, influencers (KOLs), and creators, building a trusted brand image and enhancing user belonging through online livestreams and offline salons. 🔗 Register as a new user and receive $6. Join now:
0:41

Efsane Platform Introduction I. Platform Overview • Platform Positioning: EFSANE (main domain is the world's fastest-growing blockchain news portal, serving as the core gateway to the entire ecosystem. The platform integrates multiple modules, including predictions, live streaming, games, and social networking, striving to provide users with a one-stop on-chain entertainment and interactive experience. • Core Mission: To establish a secure, reliable, low-threshold, and diverse on-chain entertainment platform, enabling users to conveniently participate in Gem (GEM) trials, USDT live games, prediction markets, live streaming interactions, and community exchanges, forming a complete closed-loop ecosystem. II. Core Values ​​and Features 1. One-Stop Ecosystem Hub • Integrated Sub-Channel Access: The main site homepage and user center clearly display channels for various modules, including prediction network, live streaming, blockchain games, and efschat (social networking), allowing users to directly access their desired scenarios without having to navigate multiple platforms. • Unified Asset and Account System: Centrally displays Gem/GEM and USDT balances, records participation in each module and historical returns, and enables one-stop asset management. • Unified Notifications and Customer Support: Integrates platform announcements, event reminders, and reward notifications, providing multiple customer service channels to significantly enhance the overall user experience. 2. Brand Trust and Security Transparency • Operational Data Announcements: The platform publicly discloses core metrics such as registered users, daily active users, withdrawal success rate, and total bonus pool, ensuring data authenticity and verifiability. • Compliance and Audit Visualization: Displays security audit summaries, risk control systems, and compliance instructions, allowing users to immediately perceive the platform's professionalism and credibility. • Risk Warnings and User Education: Key pages and workflows prominently highlight participation risks, and provide resources such as operation guides, video tutorials, and live streams. 3. Diverse Gameplay and Incentive Design • Gem/GEM Beginner Mechanism: Users can earn gems by signing in, completing tasks, or participating in events, allowing them to try out the game before converting, lowering the barrier to entry. • USDT Payment and Real Earnings Mechanism: Used in advanced games and predictive gameplay, ensuring authentic payment and cash-out mechanisms, enhancing asset authenticity and building trust. • Cross-module Incentive Mechanism: A task system enables cross-module linkage. For example, completing prediction tasks earns rewards in the live streaming/gaming modules, fostering deeper user engagement. • Multi-tiered Promotion Revenue Mechanism: Through an invitation code system and a three-tiered fission reward structure, promoters can earn high commissions, with commissions increasing to higher levels during special periods, stimulating user enthusiasm for cross-platform sharing. 4. Social and Community-Driven • Community Aggregation Portal: Enables cross-scenario discussion and sharing among users of modules like prediction, gaming, and live streaming. • User-generated Content Creator System: Encourages users to contribute high-quality content such as tutorials, guides, and reviews, providing incentives and resource support to outstanding creators and streamers. • Interactive Operational Activities: Regularly organize AMAs, online competitions, and data review livestreams to enhance user engagement and a sense of belonging to the platform. 5. Technical and User Experience Assurance • High-availability Architecture: The platform utilizes CDN acceleration, load balancing, and site-wide SSL/TLS encryption to ensure stable access and data security. • Full-Device Support and Multi-Language Optimization: Compatible with mobile and desktop devices, it supports a multi-language interface, offers a simple registration process, and quickly guides new users onboarding. • Behavioral Data-Driven Optimization: Analyze user behavior to deliver precise recommendations, improving gameplay conversion rates and user retention. III. Introduction to Key Modules (Platform Portal and Linked Examples) 1. Prediction Module ( Provides prediction scenarios for multiple sectors, including the crypto market, hot events, and sports events. Gameplay includes time-limited battles, binary options, and multiple-choice intervals. It features transparent settlement, a leaderboard mechanism, and integration with live streaming and the main platform's asset system. 2. Live Streaming Channel Showcases project roadshows, platform tutorials, live event broadcasts, and community interactive live streams to enhance user engagement and trust. It supports both gem and USDT tipping mechanisms and can be directly linked to the main platform's event page or task guide. 3. Chain Game Entertainment Channel Offers a diverse selection of games, from casual mini-games to competitive GameFi, supporting gem trials and USDT live trading. A leaderboard and tournament system is integrated with the main site's asset management and livestreaming content. 4. Social Community Users can participate in discussions, post content, and share task results in interest-based zones. A creator development system and content governance structure are established, serving as a hub for cross-module communication and feedback. 5. Other Expandable Portals The platform can subsequently expand subdomains such as dedicated event pages, tutorial pages, and creator centers as needed, all under the main domain for unified management. IV. User Flow Examples 1. First Visit: Users visit and register/log in. The homepage displays featured events and module portals, encouraging participation in gem trials or popular gameplay. 2. Onboarding: New users receive gem trial coupons and are guided through live tutorials or tutorials to quickly understand the platform's core mechanics. 3. Multi-Scenario Participation: Users can choose to participate in prediction betting, game battles, watch live streams and give rewards, join communities to express their opinions, or complete tasks and invite friends. 4. Asset Management and Withdrawal: Users can centrally view their Gem and USDT balances and earnings on the platform and withdraw them or use them to participate in other modules. Promotional earnings and commission details are displayed simultaneously. 5. Sticky Loop: The system periodically pushes cross-module tasks, community events, leaderboard incentives, and other content to promote continuous user engagement and platform retention. V. Trust and Compliance Assurance • Operational Transparency: The platform regularly publishes key data and security audit information to ensure openness and verifiability. • Risk Control Mechanism: Key processes such as withdrawals, deposits, and prediction participation are equipped with anomaly detection and anti-cheating mechanisms; large-scale transactions require KYC review. • Compliance Strategy: The platform monitors the regulatory status of crypto entertainment and prediction mechanisms in various markets and implements grayscale openness, geographic restrictions, and compliance disclosure procedures. • Privacy Compliance: The platform strictly adheres to local data protection laws to safeguard user privacy and security, and clearly states the scope of data usage in the user agreement. VI. Brand and Promotional Positioning • Suggested Platform Slogan: • " A one-stop on-chain entertainment platform with low barriers to entry, high transparency, and real returns." • "Gem Trials, USDT Play, the new standard for secure and reliable on-chain entertainment." • Core Marketing: Focus on beginner gem experiences, real USDT withdrawals, diverse gameplay options, and safety and compliance mechanisms. • Promotional Channels: Includes Telegram, Discord, and WhatsApp groups, livestream promotions with influencers (KOLs), and SEO/advertising (using keywords such as "on-chain entertainment platform" and "GameFi Real Returns"). VII. Technical and Operational Support System • Multilingual Operational Capabilities: Currently supports Chinese, English, Turkish, and Japanese, and will gradually expand to 16+ languages ​​globally, providing a localized experience for the international market. • Data-Driven Growth Analysis: Build a full-chain conversion analysis system to monitor new user conversion rates, retention rates, paying behavior, and task completion. • Customer Support and User Feedback Mechanism: Provide a multilingual customer service portal for immediate responses to user questions; promptly integrate community suggestions into product iterations and provide regular announcements. • Platform Optimization and Emergency System: Develop a security incident emergency response plan to ensure rapid platform recovery in the event of an emergency; continuously optimize the user experience through a data feedback mechanism. VIII. Future Development Outlook • Deep Ecosystem Development: Continuously optimize existing gameplay and module integrations, and explore the introduction of new economic mechanisms such as NFT incentives, DeFi mining, or staking. • Technology Evolution: Follow cutting-edge technologies such as Layer 2 expansion, off-chain settlement, and AI-powered recommendations to improve transaction efficiency and user experience accuracy. • Compliance Expansion Strategy: Promote legal operations in regions with mature regulations, and proactively prepare for compliance in high-potential markets to mitigate legal risks. • Community Brand Ecosystem: Cultivate a community of core players, influencers (KOLs), and creators, building a trusted brand image and enhancing user belonging through online livestreams and offline salons. 🔗 Register as a new user and receive $6. Join now:

EFSANE

28,263 views • 9 months ago

🇨🇳 Chinese EVs have been taking the world by storm, whether you like it or not When I look around here on the street in China I try recognize the car brands and I see so many brands I don't know One brand I see a lot is LI, but also BYD, Zeekr and XPeng Apparently there's now 129 (!) EV brands in China producing cars, which kinda shows the massive scale of the EV boom here There's a real historical parallel here with the US a hundred years ago, where there were about 2,000 new American car companies in America. Of course most failed, and only a few remained The same is predicted for China, where only 15 EV brands are predicted to survive in a decade, so a real battle is going down here now to see who will win One interesting thing is that there is one American brand that is remarkably present here, and that's Tesla, you see Teslas everywhere, the Tesla Y often holds the top spot for most cars sold in China, and you see Tesla superchargers here a lot What's also interesting is that where Elon Musk gets so much hatred in the West (not from me), in China he's revered as a hero. Elon is a high IQ engineer and successful entrepreneur. And it's a real artefact of the culture that Chinese respect that kind of person while in the West if you're rich, successful and smart you're seen as a bad person by at least half of society. I think that says a lot about our society and how we educate people in the West and we should really reconsider that. Engineering and entrepreneurship are the key stones of a functioning society. Engineering invents new things and entrepreneurs turn those inventions into businesses that bring them to people. Without both, you don't have jobs, money, and well, prosperity! Chinese culture seems to understand this well, which is why they like Elon Musk and still drive Teslas as one of the few Western cars here. Anyway to continue, in this video I visited the Huawei store and I have to add a correction, because due to new Chinese regulation that requires car brands to fully own their manufacturing, Huawei has "officially" separated their car business, but in fact they still fully design the car, sell the car, and get most of the profit from it. They just can't call it a Huawei car anymore Huawei is interesting because they produce everything, phones, tablets, watches, laptops, and, well indirectly, EV cars too A similar brand is Xiaomi, who actually do own the manufacturing of their EV, and their EV is one of the fastest growing in sales in China It's a real slap in the face for the West I feel that Apple, the creator of the iPhone, wasn't able to produce a car and cancelled their car project, when many of the Chinese phone companies are producing their own cars now with relative ease Of course the iPhone is produced in China, and manufacturing is in China, so being closer to the manufacturing physically, it must have been easier to design a car, than try to do it remotely from Apple's office in Cupertino But it does seem significant that we couldn't do this While I'm writing this the news comes in that Germany's car and greater manufacturing industry is tanking, their energy costs have gone up 2-3x due cutting off the Russian gas, and they've simply become too expensive overnight Germany's car industry, the historical center of car production in the world with BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Volkswagen, has started laying off 100,000+ employees and scaling down their production due to declining sales, which are a direct result of the competition from China offering cheaper, more advanced EVs with better software than the Germans And I mean you can feel it, I walk around in EV car stores here and the cars look great, the interior looks modern, the software is miles ahead of the clunky interfaces of German cars, most EVs here have a little cute robot on the dashboard that you talk to, so you never have to touch the screen anymore to do anything, like "switch on the wipers" or "route me to my hotel" etc. The EVs here honestly do not feel cheap, they're well built and comfortable Europe has tried to stop the rise of the Chinese EVs in the European market with a 45% tariff, but even with that tariffs, many Europeans still prefer to buy Chinese EVs over others, and they're still cheaper than the German cars! The US went further with a 100% tarrif, and that stopped them from being sold mostly in the US because it's not profitable anymore for the Chinese One thing I have to add which you probably know is that the Chinese government does heavily subsidize their EV industry (with about $230B+ in the last decade), it's not a secret and their subsidies do not compare to the ones the US and EU provide for their industries, which gives Chinese EV companies the (unfair) advantage to produce them at a discount and sell them abroad cheaper, which is exactly why the EU and US put tariffs on them Even with the subsidies, the engineering and production and software is impressive and feels very modern, I'm a Tesla fan, own a 2025 Tesla Y, but the Chinese EVs feel and look more modern to me. They usually have more screens, more features etc. There's real innovation happening here it feels like And that's kinda the conclusion you get being in China with every industry, they've already by far departed from being cheap clones of Western products, they're now at the next stage of adding their own features and ideas, which is what we always criticize Chinese on "they're not creative", well they are creative, they just start from the point where Western products are now, and then start innovating from there (instead of starting from scratch fully, I mean, why would they?) If you ask Grok how does the future of the Western car industry look like, especially the European/German ones, it's pessimistic. The only positive it can find is that maybe European brands can focus on premium and exclusivity. Like they do with Hermes hand bags, but then do the same with cars. BMW and Mercedes-Benz are of course luxury brands and they could survive by remaining premium and make money that way. But the regular middle and low end of car production in Europe (and America?) will most probably be wiped out and replaced by the Chinese I think That is if the Americans and Europeans will keep allowing them into their markets But even if they don't, the Chinese are happily going to the rest of the world like South America, the Middle East or the rest of Asia where you see BYDs literally everywhere As a European this does feel bittersweet, but then again we've all been shouting from the roof tops for years that this would happen if you didn't create a pro-business climate where startups would sprout, so now it's kinda "I told you so"
8:43

🇨🇳 Chinese EVs have been taking the world by storm, whether you like it or not When I look around here on the street in China I try recognize the car brands and I see so many brands I don't know One brand I see a lot is LI, but also BYD, Zeekr and XPeng Apparently there's now 129 (!) EV brands in China producing cars, which kinda shows the massive scale of the EV boom here There's a real historical parallel here with the US a hundred years ago, where there were about 2,000 new American car companies in America. Of course most failed, and only a few remained The same is predicted for China, where only 15 EV brands are predicted to survive in a decade, so a real battle is going down here now to see who will win One interesting thing is that there is one American brand that is remarkably present here, and that's Tesla, you see Teslas everywhere, the Tesla Y often holds the top spot for most cars sold in China, and you see Tesla superchargers here a lot What's also interesting is that where Elon Musk gets so much hatred in the West (not from me), in China he's revered as a hero. Elon is a high IQ engineer and successful entrepreneur. And it's a real artefact of the culture that Chinese respect that kind of person while in the West if you're rich, successful and smart you're seen as a bad person by at least half of society. I think that says a lot about our society and how we educate people in the West and we should really reconsider that. Engineering and entrepreneurship are the key stones of a functioning society. Engineering invents new things and entrepreneurs turn those inventions into businesses that bring them to people. Without both, you don't have jobs, money, and well, prosperity! Chinese culture seems to understand this well, which is why they like Elon Musk and still drive Teslas as one of the few Western cars here. Anyway to continue, in this video I visited the Huawei store and I have to add a correction, because due to new Chinese regulation that requires car brands to fully own their manufacturing, Huawei has "officially" separated their car business, but in fact they still fully design the car, sell the car, and get most of the profit from it. They just can't call it a Huawei car anymore Huawei is interesting because they produce everything, phones, tablets, watches, laptops, and, well indirectly, EV cars too A similar brand is Xiaomi, who actually do own the manufacturing of their EV, and their EV is one of the fastest growing in sales in China It's a real slap in the face for the West I feel that Apple, the creator of the iPhone, wasn't able to produce a car and cancelled their car project, when many of the Chinese phone companies are producing their own cars now with relative ease Of course the iPhone is produced in China, and manufacturing is in China, so being closer to the manufacturing physically, it must have been easier to design a car, than try to do it remotely from Apple's office in Cupertino But it does seem significant that we couldn't do this While I'm writing this the news comes in that Germany's car and greater manufacturing industry is tanking, their energy costs have gone up 2-3x due cutting off the Russian gas, and they've simply become too expensive overnight Germany's car industry, the historical center of car production in the world with BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Volkswagen, has started laying off 100,000+ employees and scaling down their production due to declining sales, which are a direct result of the competition from China offering cheaper, more advanced EVs with better software than the Germans And I mean you can feel it, I walk around in EV car stores here and the cars look great, the interior looks modern, the software is miles ahead of the clunky interfaces of German cars, most EVs here have a little cute robot on the dashboard that you talk to, so you never have to touch the screen anymore to do anything, like "switch on the wipers" or "route me to my hotel" etc. The EVs here honestly do not feel cheap, they're well built and comfortable Europe has tried to stop the rise of the Chinese EVs in the European market with a 45% tariff, but even with that tariffs, many Europeans still prefer to buy Chinese EVs over others, and they're still cheaper than the German cars! The US went further with a 100% tarrif, and that stopped them from being sold mostly in the US because it's not profitable anymore for the Chinese One thing I have to add which you probably know is that the Chinese government does heavily subsidize their EV industry (with about $230B+ in the last decade), it's not a secret and their subsidies do not compare to the ones the US and EU provide for their industries, which gives Chinese EV companies the (unfair) advantage to produce them at a discount and sell them abroad cheaper, which is exactly why the EU and US put tariffs on them Even with the subsidies, the engineering and production and software is impressive and feels very modern, I'm a Tesla fan, own a 2025 Tesla Y, but the Chinese EVs feel and look more modern to me. They usually have more screens, more features etc. There's real innovation happening here it feels like And that's kinda the conclusion you get being in China with every industry, they've already by far departed from being cheap clones of Western products, they're now at the next stage of adding their own features and ideas, which is what we always criticize Chinese on "they're not creative", well they are creative, they just start from the point where Western products are now, and then start innovating from there (instead of starting from scratch fully, I mean, why would they?) If you ask Grok how does the future of the Western car industry look like, especially the European/German ones, it's pessimistic. The only positive it can find is that maybe European brands can focus on premium and exclusivity. Like they do with Hermes hand bags, but then do the same with cars. BMW and Mercedes-Benz are of course luxury brands and they could survive by remaining premium and make money that way. But the regular middle and low end of car production in Europe (and America?) will most probably be wiped out and replaced by the Chinese I think That is if the Americans and Europeans will keep allowing them into their markets But even if they don't, the Chinese are happily going to the rest of the world like South America, the Middle East or the rest of Asia where you see BYDs literally everywhere As a European this does feel bittersweet, but then again we've all been shouting from the roof tops for years that this would happen if you didn't create a pro-business climate where startups would sprout, so now it's kinda "I told you so"

@levelsio

593,918 views • 7 months ago

Recently did an interview with the lead developer of Knight's Path on the title's future release and the state of the industry. The Western AAA gaming industry has shifted its focus away from its core audience, favoring products for smaller, less engaged demographics. This shift has led to a noticeable disconnect between large publishers and their traditional fan base. This has, however, created an environment for indies to thrive. They can prioritize authenticity and community, crafting games that resonate with their players and that is exactly the case with Knight's Path. In December of 2023, Knights Path: The Tournament was released to Very Positive reviews on Steam. It is a short medieval RPG featuring challenging combat, an immersive progression system, and a nice little story. It served as an announcement, a combat concept demo, and a teaser for the forthcoming open-world RPG Knight's Path, which is currently in active development. I asked what their plans were regarding the scope of the full release. While you might get the impression that Knight's Path is an arena fighting game, that’s not the case with the full release. "Knight's Path will be a proper open-world, story-driven RPG. Of course, as a small indie team, we’re keeping the scope modest. The open world will be compact but dense, featuring one town, one village, castle ruins, forests, valleys, and other areas to explore." Many gamers would agree it is better to have a limited number of fully fleshed-out areas than to present a gigantic, empty world. This has been a major criticism levied towards recent releases like Pokémon Scarlet and Violet and even modern Assassins Creed, which tends to rely on repetitive gameplay loops scattered across an overly large map, which can feel more like busywork than meaningful exploration. I have always believed that quality over quantity is the best way to go. The team has also made this a priority with things such as the story and weapon types. "We plan to include three main weapon types: longsword, sword and shield, and bows. These will feature the full progression system seen in the demo, with skill levels such as Novice, Adept, Expert, and Master. Players will need to learn individual skills from different trainers to progress. In addition, we’re introducing secondary weapons like spears, halberds, and other polearms. These won’t have RPG-style progression but will still offer variety in combat." Regarding the story, they plan to be bold and strive to create a 16-28 hour-long main campaign. "The story will be divided into four chapters, with each chapter offering around 4–7 hours of gameplay. As in the demo, the player character begins as a nobody, slowly learning how to wield a sword and eventually becoming a knight. However, the progression will be much more realistic than in the demo, where the peasant hilariously transformed into a champion in just four days." This is a far cry from many games that are released nowadays. In just 2024 alone at a glance, the AA release Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn provided an average of 8 hours of content, Princess Peach: Showtime at 10 hours, Silent Hill 2 Remake at 15, and even the GOTY winner Astrobot holds an average playtime of 10 hours. A major issue within the industry is the way we are treated by the people who only have jobs because of our favorite hobby. In 2024 the gaming industry is forecasted to generate $208.7 BILLION dollars, up from 5.4% in 2023. Compare that to Hollywood, which is a measly $12.3 billion. The gaming industry employs 727,000 individuals in the United States alone. So, you'd think these people would have a little bit of respect for gamers, though so many who are vocal on social media show nothing but contempt for us. Perhaps this is because of fear if they do not show loyalty to a cause or "fit in" that they may not secure funding or genuinely believe in what they preach, but the team behind Knight's Path isn't worried about that. "We are independent developers, and we plan to stay independent so we can stay true to our vision. Knight's Path is a game made by gamers for gamers. We’re prioritizing fun gameplay above all, and we firmly believe this is exactly what gamers want." I also raised some questions about their big plans moving forward. In the demo, one of the major criticisms I had was with the voice acting. I had guessed it was done via AI, which was confirmed. "You guessed correctly– the voice acting in the demo was done by AI, and it was probably the loudest critique we received, and we totally understand why! Back then, we didn’t have much of a choice, but for the full game, we don’t plan to use any AI voices. Luckily, after the demo release, many voice actors reached out to us, volunteering to lend their voices to the full game. We absolutely plan to answer their call and give them that opportunity." AI can be a useful tool, especially for developers starting out who can't commit a lot of money to voice acting or just want to see a version of the product that's closer to what they envision the full release to be, but going from that to real voice actors will bump the experience to the next level. I myself played the demo in its entirety and really enjoyed my time with it! I thought the game was reminiscent of Gothic 2 and even The Witcher. I was happily surprised when I didn't encounter any bugs or glitches and while some areas have not been fleshed out like the voice acting, I would recommend putting the game on your wishlist to see what this team does in the future when they finally deliver their updated demo and the eventual full release of the game.
2:26

Recently did an interview with the lead developer of Knight's Path on the title's future release and the state of the industry. The Western AAA gaming industry has shifted its focus away from its core audience, favoring products for smaller, less engaged demographics. This shift has led to a noticeable disconnect between large publishers and their traditional fan base. This has, however, created an environment for indies to thrive. They can prioritize authenticity and community, crafting games that resonate with their players and that is exactly the case with Knight's Path. In December of 2023, Knights Path: The Tournament was released to Very Positive reviews on Steam. It is a short medieval RPG featuring challenging combat, an immersive progression system, and a nice little story. It served as an announcement, a combat concept demo, and a teaser for the forthcoming open-world RPG Knight's Path, which is currently in active development. I asked what their plans were regarding the scope of the full release. While you might get the impression that Knight's Path is an arena fighting game, that’s not the case with the full release. "Knight's Path will be a proper open-world, story-driven RPG. Of course, as a small indie team, we’re keeping the scope modest. The open world will be compact but dense, featuring one town, one village, castle ruins, forests, valleys, and other areas to explore." Many gamers would agree it is better to have a limited number of fully fleshed-out areas than to present a gigantic, empty world. This has been a major criticism levied towards recent releases like Pokémon Scarlet and Violet and even modern Assassins Creed, which tends to rely on repetitive gameplay loops scattered across an overly large map, which can feel more like busywork than meaningful exploration. I have always believed that quality over quantity is the best way to go. The team has also made this a priority with things such as the story and weapon types. "We plan to include three main weapon types: longsword, sword and shield, and bows. These will feature the full progression system seen in the demo, with skill levels such as Novice, Adept, Expert, and Master. Players will need to learn individual skills from different trainers to progress. In addition, we’re introducing secondary weapons like spears, halberds, and other polearms. These won’t have RPG-style progression but will still offer variety in combat." Regarding the story, they plan to be bold and strive to create a 16-28 hour-long main campaign. "The story will be divided into four chapters, with each chapter offering around 4–7 hours of gameplay. As in the demo, the player character begins as a nobody, slowly learning how to wield a sword and eventually becoming a knight. However, the progression will be much more realistic than in the demo, where the peasant hilariously transformed into a champion in just four days." This is a far cry from many games that are released nowadays. In just 2024 alone at a glance, the AA release Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn provided an average of 8 hours of content, Princess Peach: Showtime at 10 hours, Silent Hill 2 Remake at 15, and even the GOTY winner Astrobot holds an average playtime of 10 hours. A major issue within the industry is the way we are treated by the people who only have jobs because of our favorite hobby. In 2024 the gaming industry is forecasted to generate $208.7 BILLION dollars, up from 5.4% in 2023. Compare that to Hollywood, which is a measly $12.3 billion. The gaming industry employs 727,000 individuals in the United States alone. So, you'd think these people would have a little bit of respect for gamers, though so many who are vocal on social media show nothing but contempt for us. Perhaps this is because of fear if they do not show loyalty to a cause or "fit in" that they may not secure funding or genuinely believe in what they preach, but the team behind Knight's Path isn't worried about that. "We are independent developers, and we plan to stay independent so we can stay true to our vision. Knight's Path is a game made by gamers for gamers. We’re prioritizing fun gameplay above all, and we firmly believe this is exactly what gamers want." I also raised some questions about their big plans moving forward. In the demo, one of the major criticisms I had was with the voice acting. I had guessed it was done via AI, which was confirmed. "You guessed correctly– the voice acting in the demo was done by AI, and it was probably the loudest critique we received, and we totally understand why! Back then, we didn’t have much of a choice, but for the full game, we don’t plan to use any AI voices. Luckily, after the demo release, many voice actors reached out to us, volunteering to lend their voices to the full game. We absolutely plan to answer their call and give them that opportunity." AI can be a useful tool, especially for developers starting out who can't commit a lot of money to voice acting or just want to see a version of the product that's closer to what they envision the full release to be, but going from that to real voice actors will bump the experience to the next level. I myself played the demo in its entirety and really enjoyed my time with it! I thought the game was reminiscent of Gothic 2 and even The Witcher. I was happily surprised when I didn't encounter any bugs or glitches and while some areas have not been fleshed out like the voice acting, I would recommend putting the game on your wishlist to see what this team does in the future when they finally deliver their updated demo and the eventual full release of the game.

Vara Dark

42,375 views • 1 year ago

Here’s the scoop on Empire Diner, one of NYC’s most photogenic icons, and definitely a spot that captures a mood (especially in Chelsea). Perfect for social media, memories, nostalgia, brunch, dates… whatever gets you going. 📍 Where It Is •Address: 210 Tenth Avenue (at the corner of West 22nd Street), Chelsea, Manhattan. •It sits just a block or two from the High Line and the galleries of Chelsea, so it straddles that art‑world / retro diner / modern NYC vibe. 🏛 History & Why It’s a Legend •The physical diner is a dining car built in 1946 by the Fodero Dining Car Company. •For years it was a plain diner; in 1976 new owners (Jack Doenias, Carl Laanes, Richard Ruskay) rescued it from neglect. They refurbished it, added its dealer touches: the stainless steel / chrome exterior, restored its windows, stripped away modifications, and even put a stylized outline of the Empire State Building on the roof as a signature flourish. •It essentially helped kick off what people sometimes call the Chelsea Renaissance, moving the neighborhood from warehouses, gas stations, auto shops toward art galleries, restaurants, and nightlife. The diner became a gathering spot for artists, late‑night conversations, people working in galleries, etc. •Closures and rebirths: It closed in 2010, reopened under different names & chefs (Amanda Freitag took it over in 2014, then closed again ~2015), then reopened more durably around 2017 under chef John DeLucie and partners. 🍽 Menu & Ambience (What It Feels Like) •Even though it calls itself a diner, it has always leaned toward “retro upscale” rather than greasy spoon: diner classics with elevated twists. Think burgers, patty melts, mac & cheese, grilled cheese, etc., but with better ingredients, seasonal touches, creative sides. •Interior design: a mix, the shiny chrome, art‑deco stainless steel exterior, diner booths / counter, but also modern touches, warm lighting, updates to infrastructure (kitchen, AC, etc.). They’ve tried to preserve what made it special while making it comfortable. •Often lively. At times late, sometimes people lingering with coffee, sometimes full of gallery folks, sometimes push past tourists snapping pictures. It has energy and character. 🎬 Pop Culture & Movies / TV Shots Movies: •Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979) •Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) •Men in Black II (2002) •Igby Goes Down (2002) •City Island (2009) •Godspell (1973) •See You In The Morning (1989) TV: •Law & Order •And Just Like That… (a Sex & the City continuation) there’s a scene in Season 1, Episode 9 at Empire Diner. •Appearances in Saturday Night Live (opening credits) among others. 🎨 The Mural by Eduardo Kobra —“Mount Rushmore of Art” One of the more recent layers of Awesome is the giant mural over the diner by Eduardo Kobra, the Brazilian street artist. Called “Mount Rushmore of Art”. •It features four iconic artists: Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat. •The theme is a nod to artistic giants, replacing the U.S. presidents in the original Mount Rushmore with visual culture legends. It lines up beautifully with Chelsea’s identity as a gallery/art district. The mural draws your eyes up, gives a vibrant splash of color, and makes the building even more of a landmark. •It also makes this place more than just a diner + movie spot: it’s now a piece of public art. Great for photos, for stories (“I had brunch under Kobra’s faces”), etc. 🌟 Why It’s So Popular •Nostalgia + authenticity: Classic windowed chrome diner, the counter, booths, old NYC feel. Yet it’s not frozen in time, the food and service are more contemporary. •Visual appeal: The architecture. The lights. The Kobra mural. At night especially, it glows. It makes for good photos / Instagram posts. • Location: Chelsea, near the High Line.
0:37

Here’s the scoop on Empire Diner, one of NYC’s most photogenic icons, and definitely a spot that captures a mood (especially in Chelsea). Perfect for social media, memories, nostalgia, brunch, dates… whatever gets you going. 📍 Where It Is •Address: 210 Tenth Avenue (at the corner of West 22nd Street), Chelsea, Manhattan. •It sits just a block or two from the High Line and the galleries of Chelsea, so it straddles that art‑world / retro diner / modern NYC vibe. 🏛 History & Why It’s a Legend •The physical diner is a dining car built in 1946 by the Fodero Dining Car Company. •For years it was a plain diner; in 1976 new owners (Jack Doenias, Carl Laanes, Richard Ruskay) rescued it from neglect. They refurbished it, added its dealer touches: the stainless steel / chrome exterior, restored its windows, stripped away modifications, and even put a stylized outline of the Empire State Building on the roof as a signature flourish. •It essentially helped kick off what people sometimes call the Chelsea Renaissance, moving the neighborhood from warehouses, gas stations, auto shops toward art galleries, restaurants, and nightlife. The diner became a gathering spot for artists, late‑night conversations, people working in galleries, etc. •Closures and rebirths: It closed in 2010, reopened under different names & chefs (Amanda Freitag took it over in 2014, then closed again ~2015), then reopened more durably around 2017 under chef John DeLucie and partners. 🍽 Menu & Ambience (What It Feels Like) •Even though it calls itself a diner, it has always leaned toward “retro upscale” rather than greasy spoon: diner classics with elevated twists. Think burgers, patty melts, mac & cheese, grilled cheese, etc., but with better ingredients, seasonal touches, creative sides. •Interior design: a mix, the shiny chrome, art‑deco stainless steel exterior, diner booths / counter, but also modern touches, warm lighting, updates to infrastructure (kitchen, AC, etc.). They’ve tried to preserve what made it special while making it comfortable. •Often lively. At times late, sometimes people lingering with coffee, sometimes full of gallery folks, sometimes push past tourists snapping pictures. It has energy and character. 🎬 Pop Culture & Movies / TV Shots Movies: •Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979) •Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) •Men in Black II (2002) •Igby Goes Down (2002) •City Island (2009) •Godspell (1973) •See You In The Morning (1989) TV: •Law & Order •And Just Like That… (a Sex & the City continuation) there’s a scene in Season 1, Episode 9 at Empire Diner. •Appearances in Saturday Night Live (opening credits) among others. 🎨 The Mural by Eduardo Kobra —“Mount Rushmore of Art” One of the more recent layers of Awesome is the giant mural over the diner by Eduardo Kobra, the Brazilian street artist. Called “Mount Rushmore of Art”. •It features four iconic artists: Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat. •The theme is a nod to artistic giants, replacing the U.S. presidents in the original Mount Rushmore with visual culture legends. It lines up beautifully with Chelsea’s identity as a gallery/art district. The mural draws your eyes up, gives a vibrant splash of color, and makes the building even more of a landmark. •It also makes this place more than just a diner + movie spot: it’s now a piece of public art. Great for photos, for stories (“I had brunch under Kobra’s faces”), etc. 🌟 Why It’s So Popular •Nostalgia + authenticity: Classic windowed chrome diner, the counter, booths, old NYC feel. Yet it’s not frozen in time, the food and service are more contemporary. •Visual appeal: The architecture. The lights. The Kobra mural. At night especially, it glows. It makes for good photos / Instagram posts. • Location: Chelsea, near the High Line.

NewYorkCityKopp

30,097 views • 10 months ago

대통령님, 뉴진스- 하이브 이슈를 봐주십시오 [English Transcript] Mr. President, please take a closer look at the issue between NewJeans and HYBE. This video does not simply address a dispute between one company and one artist team. It deals with nationally significant issues... the structure of the cultural industry within the K-pop creative ecosystem, the way power operates, how public opinion is shaped, and the transparency of democracy itself. That is why this video may be somewhat lengthy, but I sincerely ask you to watch it until the end. The key messages I want to convey are organized as follows: 1. Why the State Must Pay Attention to K-pop Industry Issues K-pop drives domestic demand, exports, and tourism. Alongside semiconductors and defense, it is a strategic industry led by the next generation, a core field that the nation must protect and foster. Therefore, the government needs to inspect the health and structural problems of the K-pop creative ecosystem. 2. Why the Government Must Pay Attention to the NewJeans–HYBE Case (Reason 1) The new direction that Min Hee-jin and NewJeans have shown in K-pop represents a healthy production model centered on respect for artists and the creative process. This could become a turning point for improving the problems in the current K-pop system. (Reason 2) This is not merely an issue involving one team. It is a case that exposes how structures of power suppress and exclude creative agents. To ensure the sustainability of the entire cultural and industrial ecosystem, this needs to be examined and addressed. (Reason 3) The way this situation has been handled, through media influence, legal maneuvering, and alleged manipulation of public opinion, raises issues that go beyond this industry and are directly tied to the principles of fairness and democracy. Therefore, a special audit of the company is necessary for the sake of the public interest. 3. Comprehensive Proposal: This is not a trivial internal conflict within one company. It exposes structural problems in the K-pop industry and holds the potential to change its future. Moreover, it could become a symbolic turning point that brings about meaningful structural change in Korea’s cultural and industrial landscape. Please, take the time to listen until the end. This video was made independently and conscientiously, with no personal or financial interest, out of concern for Korea’s cultural and industrial development and national competitiveness. So please, I ask that you take the time to listen until the end. This video was made independently, without any private interest, and with a sincere concern for the development of Korea’s cultural industry and national competitiveness. Why the K-pop Industry Deserves National Attention Mr. President, you have emphasized revitalizing the domestic economy as a national priority. K-pop does precisely that, it stimulates exports and tourism, invigorates small businesses and local economies, and supports livelihood industries. The economic ripple effect of the K-pop industry can revitalize entire regions, from restaurants, souvenir shops, and accommodations to transportation, shopping, performances, and exhibitions. While public support funds only redistribute an existing domestic pie, growth in industries like K-pop that reach global markets expands the pie itself. K-pop also creates value from nothing, with far fewer geographic or geopolitical constraints than manufacturing, and generates steady global revenue. As a brand, K-culture has unique global competitiveness and irreplaceable differentiation. Moreover, as a nation in a key geopolitical position, the more South Korea is recognized culturally and attracts visitors, the stronger its hand becomes in diplomacy, trade, and security negotiations. 4. The Need for New Generational Leadership And in a rapidly changing global era, South Korea’s future depends on young creative talent, those who can’t be constrained by the old frameworks of industrialization. K-pop, as a youth-led, globally competitive field, symbolizes this new future. Therefore, K-pop should be protected and developed just like semiconductors or defense industries, with government support to ensure a healthy and sustainable ecosystem. 5. Why NewJeans and Min Hee-jin Matter You may ask: To what extent should the government intervene? You once said that in the arts, where politicians may not fully grasp the nuances, it is essential to listen to skilled professionals who have proven results. Min Hee-jin is one such professional. From her start as a junior employee at SM Entertainment to becoming an executive, she demonstrated unmatched ability to connect artistic vision with popular success, without a single failure. At ADOR, with only around 16 billion won of capital, she achieved over 190 billion won in sales within two years, proving that artistic value can translate into economic value. Most importantly, she refused to exploit unethical industry practices like album bulk-buying. Instead, she built NewJeans to show that art itself can be profitable, proving that honesty and creativity can coexist in business. 6. A Healthier Model for Artist Treatment Under her leadership, artists were treated with dignity, provided good housing and supportive environments, invited to her home, encouraged to study art and participate in songwriting, and even paid promptly within two months of debut. When ADOR achieved major success, NewJeans members received tens of billions in settlements, unprecedented in K-pop. She never exploited fan loyalty for profit. Even if fans could afford only one album, she ensured it was worth their money, offering honest, high-quality content. This proved that true profit in K-pop can come from the artistic value itself, not from manipulative marketing. It showed a path toward ethical, sustainable growth for K-pop. Therefore, please, give Min Hee-jin and NewJeans a chance to work together again. At the very least, hear what they have to say about K-pop. And as for HYBE, there must be an audit equivalent to a special investigation. 7. The Mechanism of Power that Suppresses Creativity In April 2024, NewJeans’ global popularity was explosive, topping Billboard and Spotify, reshaping girl-group trends, and breaking Guinness World Records. Without any world tour, they achieved over 100 billion won in revenue through music alone, surpassing even the early growth rates of BTS and BLACKPINK. Yet, at the height of this success, HYBE raided ADOR’s offices, dismissed CEO Min Hee-jin, and dismantled the creative foundation that built NewJeans. This not only destroyed one team’s future but also dealt a severe blow to Korea’s cultural competitiveness. HYBE’s public reason? That Min Hee-jin tried to take NewJeans independent. But given that HYBE owns 80% of ADOR’s shares, such independence was structurally impossible. The true goal appears to have been to strip Min of her authority and seize control of the creative process. After her removal, the core creative staff who built NewJeans were fired or pushed out. Suspicious internal financial transactions followed. The pattern matches what we have seen before in HYBE, talented creators producing success, only to be marginalized once their results can be absorbed by corporate power. 8. The Pattern of Power and Control within HYBE In previous cases, key developers and creators were pushed out as HYBE’s management centralized around one man, Chairman Bang Si-hyuk. After public listing, HYBE expanded aggressively through acquisitions, and the CEOs of those subsidiaries were later removed. The same pattern repeated with Min Hee-jin and ADOR. And in all this, the creative value, the art itself, was disregarded. No healthy company destroys its most successful creative division. This is abnormal, and therefore demands scrutiny. The courts may hesitate to intervene, since rulings could affect corporate precedents, but that is exactly why state-level oversight is needed. K-pop is a national asset, and if a leading K-pop company makes such abnormal decisions toward one of its most promising teams, the state has ample reason for a public audit. 9. The Need for Transparency in Media and Judiciary HYBE’s pattern involves media manipulation, legal intimidation, and organized online smear campaigns. Comparing reports over the past year reveals clear imbalance, suggesting external influence on editorial direction. Thus, media reform to ensure fair reporting is needed. Judicial and public-opinion manipulation must also be examined. Cases of coordinated comment attacks on lawmakers who criticized HYBE during the 2024 National Assembly audit indicate possible “comment factory” activity, systematic online operations that distort public opinion. If such manipulation exists, it is a grave threat to democracy itself. When power can distort truth through money and media, neither creators, workers, nor consumers can be fairly evaluated. Auditing HYBE could expose how such systems operate, not only protecting K-pop, but preventing similar abuse in politics and other industries. 10. Broader Implications for Korea’s Future Industries This is a matter of principle. In every industry, from AI to manufacturing, progress depends on fair competition, respect for skilled practitioners, and merit-based leadership. When leadership is earned through competence, industries thrive; when it is preserved through privilege, they decay. Korea’s rapid development has produced entrenched interests without fair verification of ability, a structural problem visible across industries. And when the leading company in such a vital cultural field behaves this way, the state must intervene. Good leaders and companies that value authenticity, fairness, and creativity should be given the opportunity to set the new standard. Min Hee-jin and NewJeans demonstrated that possibility in K-pop. Only when merit-based, ethical companies lead can any industry, including K-pop, achieve sustainable and healthy growth. A strong, fair industrial foundation is the prerequisite for a truly sustainable welfare state. That is the responsibility of government. 11. Final Appeal Mr. President, the NewJeans–HYBE issue is not just an internal dispute. It is a test case, whether Korea will continue allowing power to suppress creativity and absorb others’ achievements, or whether it will set a new standard for fairness across industries. Please give Min Hee-jin and NewJeans the opportunity to work together again. Please listen to the voices of artists who have built the true value of K-pop. That voice can become the driving force for Korea’s future. To all viewers This channel is not monetized and holds no vested interests in any party. I speak not as a fan of any group, but as a citizen who loves this country and wishes for Korea’s cultural and industrial future to grow in the right direction. I know my perspective may not always be correct. If there are misunderstandings, I welcome correction with evidence. But if this message carries even a grain of truth, if it sounds fair and meaningful, then please help deliver it to those who can make change, including the President. Somewhere around you, a friend, colleague, family member, or even your local hairdresser, there may be someone who can understand and act. This voice may be minor, it may soon fade, but if even one more person begins to think critically about these unjust structures, that awareness can gather and become the power to build a better society. ------ Watch the video on youtube:
24:30

대통령님, 뉴진스- 하이브 이슈를 봐주십시오 [English Transcript] Mr. President, please take a closer look at the issue between NewJeans and HYBE. This video does not simply address a dispute between one company and one artist team. It deals with nationally significant issues... the structure of the cultural industry within the K-pop creative ecosystem, the way power operates, how public opinion is shaped, and the transparency of democracy itself. That is why this video may be somewhat lengthy, but I sincerely ask you to watch it until the end. The key messages I want to convey are organized as follows: 1. Why the State Must Pay Attention to K-pop Industry Issues K-pop drives domestic demand, exports, and tourism. Alongside semiconductors and defense, it is a strategic industry led by the next generation, a core field that the nation must protect and foster. Therefore, the government needs to inspect the health and structural problems of the K-pop creative ecosystem. 2. Why the Government Must Pay Attention to the NewJeans–HYBE Case (Reason 1) The new direction that Min Hee-jin and NewJeans have shown in K-pop represents a healthy production model centered on respect for artists and the creative process. This could become a turning point for improving the problems in the current K-pop system. (Reason 2) This is not merely an issue involving one team. It is a case that exposes how structures of power suppress and exclude creative agents. To ensure the sustainability of the entire cultural and industrial ecosystem, this needs to be examined and addressed. (Reason 3) The way this situation has been handled, through media influence, legal maneuvering, and alleged manipulation of public opinion, raises issues that go beyond this industry and are directly tied to the principles of fairness and democracy. Therefore, a special audit of the company is necessary for the sake of the public interest. 3. Comprehensive Proposal: This is not a trivial internal conflict within one company. It exposes structural problems in the K-pop industry and holds the potential to change its future. Moreover, it could become a symbolic turning point that brings about meaningful structural change in Korea’s cultural and industrial landscape. Please, take the time to listen until the end. This video was made independently and conscientiously, with no personal or financial interest, out of concern for Korea’s cultural and industrial development and national competitiveness. So please, I ask that you take the time to listen until the end. This video was made independently, without any private interest, and with a sincere concern for the development of Korea’s cultural industry and national competitiveness. Why the K-pop Industry Deserves National Attention Mr. President, you have emphasized revitalizing the domestic economy as a national priority. K-pop does precisely that, it stimulates exports and tourism, invigorates small businesses and local economies, and supports livelihood industries. The economic ripple effect of the K-pop industry can revitalize entire regions, from restaurants, souvenir shops, and accommodations to transportation, shopping, performances, and exhibitions. While public support funds only redistribute an existing domestic pie, growth in industries like K-pop that reach global markets expands the pie itself. K-pop also creates value from nothing, with far fewer geographic or geopolitical constraints than manufacturing, and generates steady global revenue. As a brand, K-culture has unique global competitiveness and irreplaceable differentiation. Moreover, as a nation in a key geopolitical position, the more South Korea is recognized culturally and attracts visitors, the stronger its hand becomes in diplomacy, trade, and security negotiations. 4. The Need for New Generational Leadership And in a rapidly changing global era, South Korea’s future depends on young creative talent, those who can’t be constrained by the old frameworks of industrialization. K-pop, as a youth-led, globally competitive field, symbolizes this new future. Therefore, K-pop should be protected and developed just like semiconductors or defense industries, with government support to ensure a healthy and sustainable ecosystem. 5. Why NewJeans and Min Hee-jin Matter You may ask: To what extent should the government intervene? You once said that in the arts, where politicians may not fully grasp the nuances, it is essential to listen to skilled professionals who have proven results. Min Hee-jin is one such professional. From her start as a junior employee at SM Entertainment to becoming an executive, she demonstrated unmatched ability to connect artistic vision with popular success, without a single failure. At ADOR, with only around 16 billion won of capital, she achieved over 190 billion won in sales within two years, proving that artistic value can translate into economic value. Most importantly, she refused to exploit unethical industry practices like album bulk-buying. Instead, she built NewJeans to show that art itself can be profitable, proving that honesty and creativity can coexist in business. 6. A Healthier Model for Artist Treatment Under her leadership, artists were treated with dignity, provided good housing and supportive environments, invited to her home, encouraged to study art and participate in songwriting, and even paid promptly within two months of debut. When ADOR achieved major success, NewJeans members received tens of billions in settlements, unprecedented in K-pop. She never exploited fan loyalty for profit. Even if fans could afford only one album, she ensured it was worth their money, offering honest, high-quality content. This proved that true profit in K-pop can come from the artistic value itself, not from manipulative marketing. It showed a path toward ethical, sustainable growth for K-pop. Therefore, please, give Min Hee-jin and NewJeans a chance to work together again. At the very least, hear what they have to say about K-pop. And as for HYBE, there must be an audit equivalent to a special investigation. 7. The Mechanism of Power that Suppresses Creativity In April 2024, NewJeans’ global popularity was explosive, topping Billboard and Spotify, reshaping girl-group trends, and breaking Guinness World Records. Without any world tour, they achieved over 100 billion won in revenue through music alone, surpassing even the early growth rates of BTS and BLACKPINK. Yet, at the height of this success, HYBE raided ADOR’s offices, dismissed CEO Min Hee-jin, and dismantled the creative foundation that built NewJeans. This not only destroyed one team’s future but also dealt a severe blow to Korea’s cultural competitiveness. HYBE’s public reason? That Min Hee-jin tried to take NewJeans independent. But given that HYBE owns 80% of ADOR’s shares, such independence was structurally impossible. The true goal appears to have been to strip Min of her authority and seize control of the creative process. After her removal, the core creative staff who built NewJeans were fired or pushed out. Suspicious internal financial transactions followed. The pattern matches what we have seen before in HYBE, talented creators producing success, only to be marginalized once their results can be absorbed by corporate power. 8. The Pattern of Power and Control within HYBE In previous cases, key developers and creators were pushed out as HYBE’s management centralized around one man, Chairman Bang Si-hyuk. After public listing, HYBE expanded aggressively through acquisitions, and the CEOs of those subsidiaries were later removed. The same pattern repeated with Min Hee-jin and ADOR. And in all this, the creative value, the art itself, was disregarded. No healthy company destroys its most successful creative division. This is abnormal, and therefore demands scrutiny. The courts may hesitate to intervene, since rulings could affect corporate precedents, but that is exactly why state-level oversight is needed. K-pop is a national asset, and if a leading K-pop company makes such abnormal decisions toward one of its most promising teams, the state has ample reason for a public audit. 9. The Need for Transparency in Media and Judiciary HYBE’s pattern involves media manipulation, legal intimidation, and organized online smear campaigns. Comparing reports over the past year reveals clear imbalance, suggesting external influence on editorial direction. Thus, media reform to ensure fair reporting is needed. Judicial and public-opinion manipulation must also be examined. Cases of coordinated comment attacks on lawmakers who criticized HYBE during the 2024 National Assembly audit indicate possible “comment factory” activity, systematic online operations that distort public opinion. If such manipulation exists, it is a grave threat to democracy itself. When power can distort truth through money and media, neither creators, workers, nor consumers can be fairly evaluated. Auditing HYBE could expose how such systems operate, not only protecting K-pop, but preventing similar abuse in politics and other industries. 10. Broader Implications for Korea’s Future Industries This is a matter of principle. In every industry, from AI to manufacturing, progress depends on fair competition, respect for skilled practitioners, and merit-based leadership. When leadership is earned through competence, industries thrive; when it is preserved through privilege, they decay. Korea’s rapid development has produced entrenched interests without fair verification of ability, a structural problem visible across industries. And when the leading company in such a vital cultural field behaves this way, the state must intervene. Good leaders and companies that value authenticity, fairness, and creativity should be given the opportunity to set the new standard. Min Hee-jin and NewJeans demonstrated that possibility in K-pop. Only when merit-based, ethical companies lead can any industry, including K-pop, achieve sustainable and healthy growth. A strong, fair industrial foundation is the prerequisite for a truly sustainable welfare state. That is the responsibility of government. 11. Final Appeal Mr. President, the NewJeans–HYBE issue is not just an internal dispute. It is a test case, whether Korea will continue allowing power to suppress creativity and absorb others’ achievements, or whether it will set a new standard for fairness across industries. Please give Min Hee-jin and NewJeans the opportunity to work together again. Please listen to the voices of artists who have built the true value of K-pop. That voice can become the driving force for Korea’s future. To all viewers This channel is not monetized and holds no vested interests in any party. I speak not as a fan of any group, but as a citizen who loves this country and wishes for Korea’s cultural and industrial future to grow in the right direction. I know my perspective may not always be correct. If there are misunderstandings, I welcome correction with evidence. But if this message carries even a grain of truth, if it sounds fair and meaningful, then please help deliver it to those who can make change, including the President. Somewhere around you, a friend, colleague, family member, or even your local hairdresser, there may be someone who can understand and act. This voice may be minor, it may soon fade, but if even one more person begins to think critically about these unjust structures, that awareness can gather and become the power to build a better society. ------ Watch the video on youtube:

1tokki

15,061 views • 8 months ago

🎉 new skill unlocked: 20s uninterrupted, unstitched, single render from our new ai video engine: Nami. This is my birb (#7531) from the Moonbirds collection, idling in the library. patent: "Intra-Latent Semantic Injection via Cross-Spatial Encoding and Decoding during Multi-Pass Inference for Generative AI Video Creation" At Scrypted we've been quietly working on an agentic generative AI stack for two years: • integrating and testing w/ partners across the games & entertainment sectors • stealthily building a community of early believers through AVB • showcasing some of what we're doing with amazing projects like H011yw00d Agent. -- about Nami -- Nami is an agentic orchestration layer for AI video models: it unlocks their inner superpowers without making them rely on custom LoRAs or fine-tunings. Instead of throwing raw training power and tens of millions of dollars at training yet another ai video model: we figured out new ways to use what we have. Nami harnesses a multi-agent system to perform the work needed in taking a simple prompt or image and turning it into something bigger - much bigger. The agentic steps are allowed to manipulate latent space, digging into tensors, yet doing so in semantically aware chunks - meaning that Nami inherently supports video generation of arbitrary length, though it's bound to O(n) rendering time. (We do have some cool sharding tech that allows us to cut the generative time in half for a reference pose idle-animation like this demo). It's also fairly agnostic, picking and choosing the right tools for the job, and plays really well with emerging tech like FLUX Kontext, FramePack, or <- without being limited by any of them. -- use cases -- Even just a year or two ago the 20 second render below would cost a company, paying an agency, around $10k start-to-finish. This one cost me $6.25 on our dev hardware in an unoptimized environment. There's something mind-blowing about the state-of-the-art when we reduce costs to 0.0625% - less than 1% - of what we used to pay. It's also empowering. For creators. Game developers. Content influencers: you name it. -- superpowers -- 1. it does the things you ask for, in the order you asked for it 2. consistency is king 3. single-shot text or image-to-video 4. future videos can reference previous ones to seamlessly maintain style 5. semantic stitching: can't wait to showcase this -- gtm -- We think Generative AI Video, like image generation, like text, like games, should be a publicly accessible common good. We believe democratizing access to Nami in web3, via x402 payments proposed by Drew Coffman, or in World's mini-apps, is a bold step forward for digital freedom. Permissionless, decentralized, generative ai video. Naturally, we'll also soon release a web platform for using Nami in a traditionally SaaSy way: bring your own images, videos, or prompts and we'll take care of the rest. In the mid-term, Scrypted is building a stack of agentic skills (we call it AVB) and making them available to projects like H011yw00d Agent on Virtuals Protocol and other platforms. -- long-term vision -- Scrypted's mission is to decentralize the things that can't be decentralized. We participated in a16z crypto's CSX (London 2024) during our pre-seed specifically to research a new consensus protocol for hard things like AI video and AI agents: where there's no "one right answer". When Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) can't secure it, and Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) are too small, we've got you covered with our upcoming Inori Network. -- how you can help -- 1. Are you a GPU farm? We're gonna need more flops. 2. Do you represent an L1 or L2? We want to build bridges. 3. Do you represent a Wallet or App creator? Let's get an endpoint exposed. 4. Are you an investor? Let's chat. 5. Like, repost, share! -- team background -- We come from a background of AI in the Video Game industry with each founder having over 20 years of experience at companies like Electronic Arts & Square Enix. -- contact -- DMs are open, reach out if you want to be an early tester for your site, game, collection, or project! -- try it out -- Go anywhere on X and tag H011yw00d Agent with a prompt and she'll give you a free 2 second render. Have fun making cinematic shorts or meme videos! -- thanks -- AWS Startups has been an incredible help scaling our prototypes. Also, shout out to all loyal beans 🫘 in the Autonomous Virtuals Beings (AVB) community. Nami has a very important role in the upcoming XP agent platform, can't wait to show you all. AVbeings
0:23

🎉 new skill unlocked: 20s uninterrupted, unstitched, single render from our new ai video engine: Nami. This is my birb (#7531) from the Moonbirds collection, idling in the library. patent: "Intra-Latent Semantic Injection via Cross-Spatial Encoding and Decoding during Multi-Pass Inference for Generative AI Video Creation" At Scrypted we've been quietly working on an agentic generative AI stack for two years: • integrating and testing w/ partners across the games & entertainment sectors • stealthily building a community of early believers through AVB • showcasing some of what we're doing with amazing projects like H011yw00d Agent. -- about Nami -- Nami is an agentic orchestration layer for AI video models: it unlocks their inner superpowers without making them rely on custom LoRAs or fine-tunings. Instead of throwing raw training power and tens of millions of dollars at training yet another ai video model: we figured out new ways to use what we have. Nami harnesses a multi-agent system to perform the work needed in taking a simple prompt or image and turning it into something bigger - much bigger. The agentic steps are allowed to manipulate latent space, digging into tensors, yet doing so in semantically aware chunks - meaning that Nami inherently supports video generation of arbitrary length, though it's bound to O(n) rendering time. (We do have some cool sharding tech that allows us to cut the generative time in half for a reference pose idle-animation like this demo). It's also fairly agnostic, picking and choosing the right tools for the job, and plays really well with emerging tech like FLUX Kontext, FramePack, or <- without being limited by any of them. -- use cases -- Even just a year or two ago the 20 second render below would cost a company, paying an agency, around $10k start-to-finish. This one cost me $6.25 on our dev hardware in an unoptimized environment. There's something mind-blowing about the state-of-the-art when we reduce costs to 0.0625% - less than 1% - of what we used to pay. It's also empowering. For creators. Game developers. Content influencers: you name it. -- superpowers -- 1. it does the things you ask for, in the order you asked for it 2. consistency is king 3. single-shot text or image-to-video 4. future videos can reference previous ones to seamlessly maintain style 5. semantic stitching: can't wait to showcase this -- gtm -- We think Generative AI Video, like image generation, like text, like games, should be a publicly accessible common good. We believe democratizing access to Nami in web3, via x402 payments proposed by Drew Coffman, or in World's mini-apps, is a bold step forward for digital freedom. Permissionless, decentralized, generative ai video. Naturally, we'll also soon release a web platform for using Nami in a traditionally SaaSy way: bring your own images, videos, or prompts and we'll take care of the rest. In the mid-term, Scrypted is building a stack of agentic skills (we call it AVB) and making them available to projects like H011yw00d Agent on Virtuals Protocol and other platforms. -- long-term vision -- Scrypted's mission is to decentralize the things that can't be decentralized. We participated in a16z crypto's CSX (London 2024) during our pre-seed specifically to research a new consensus protocol for hard things like AI video and AI agents: where there's no "one right answer". When Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) can't secure it, and Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) are too small, we've got you covered with our upcoming Inori Network. -- how you can help -- 1. Are you a GPU farm? We're gonna need more flops. 2. Do you represent an L1 or L2? We want to build bridges. 3. Do you represent a Wallet or App creator? Let's get an endpoint exposed. 4. Are you an investor? Let's chat. 5. Like, repost, share! -- team background -- We come from a background of AI in the Video Game industry with each founder having over 20 years of experience at companies like Electronic Arts & Square Enix. -- contact -- DMs are open, reach out if you want to be an early tester for your site, game, collection, or project! -- try it out -- Go anywhere on X and tag H011yw00d Agent with a prompt and she'll give you a free 2 second render. Have fun making cinematic shorts or meme videos! -- thanks -- AWS Startups has been an incredible help scaling our prototypes. Also, shout out to all loyal beans 🫘 in the Autonomous Virtuals Beings (AVB) community. Nami has a very important role in the upcoming XP agent platform, can't wait to show you all. AVbeings

Tim Cotten

12,617 views • 1 year ago

The multi-leader blockchain endgame: competitive information inclusion as a self-reinforcing mechanism for global price discovery - how we got here, and why Aptos is leading the charge Onchain trading is the killer app In the nine years since the launch of programmable transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, onchain trading has revealed itself as the killer use case for blockchains: onchain listings, volume, and total value locked are all growing with no signs of slowing down, due to the censorship-resistant, permissionless, 24/7/365 qualities afforded by decentralized (DeFi) systems. Monolithic parallelism is key In 2020 Solana was first to market with monolithic, parallel execution (as opposed sharded execution which offers parallelism by partitioning global state into separate information silos), establishing a new design paradigm that raised the bar for throughput and latency: put all of the information in one replicated state machine and make it run as fast as possible. This design produces a single, global hub for activity, liquidity, and token launches, a kind of financial data whiteboard in the sky, where anyone can come and trade at any time with everybody else who has plugged into the system. DEXes are becoming more competitive Historically decentralized systems have been juxtaposed with centralized ones since the latter eliminates the overhead associated with distributed systems coordination. And yet despite this overhead, Solana as a decentralized exchange (DEX) is still pulling in billions of trading volume per day, exceeding that of all but the largest centralized crypto exchanges (CEXs), that simply can't compete with the giant DEX in the sky on token listings or fees. After all, CEXs have to pay for server space, salaries, and lawyers, while a DEX outsources everything. The colocation arms race The one place where CEXs have an advantage over DEXs is on end-to-end latency for colocation applications, or in other words: someone sets up a trading bot in the same data center as the exchange, and their trades get to the exchange faster than everyone else's. When there is only one data ingestion point the fastest trader wins, and after the arms race has played out everyone ends up huddling around the trading hub, effectively cutting off the rest of the world from playing the latency trading game. This is the model that traditional securities exchanges like the Nasdaq or the NYSE 🏛 employ, and because they own the server they can effectively charge whatever they want for access to it. The colocation arms race is also why L2s will probably never decentralize: running the sequencer is practically the same as running the NASDAQ, with the same monopoly on transaction fees collected from a nearby cluster of trading bots (I understand from conversations with Logan Jastremski that the Arbitrum arms race has already hit a Nash Equilibrium in Portland, Oregon). Colocation is a trap But once the colocation arms race has played out, trades become less about incorporating new information in the market and more about skimming off the top by spoofing all of the trades coming in from the other bots. High-frequency trading (HFT) bots located in the NYSE New Jersey data center, for example, are constantly placing buys and sell orders that they have no intention of executing, just to spoof the other colocated bots who are playing the same adversarial game. Information inclusion, on the other hand, the synthesis of real-time world events into prices, takes a back seat because anyone who tries to include new information first needs to batch up their order and send it through a series of middlemen before it ultimately ends up on the exchange: you, I, or practically any other individual can not actually "trade on the NASDAQ", no, we have to express our intent to someone like Robinhood, who then sells our order flow to @CitadelSecurities, who then sends it to the exchange, oh and by the way it doesn't actually even "clear" or "settle" once it "executes" because for whatever reason the whole systems splits these things up and prevents them from happening instantaneously even though it's 2024 and we have computers. Onchain trading cuts out middlemen This whole mess is why we have onchain trading, and why it's starting to win: if you want a mainline to the exchange, without setting up a server, and you want to trade on a news event without getting immediately frontrun by an HFT bot that is sniffing out the trades of every other HFT bot who is easing in batched up order flow on their own terms, then you submit your order to a node in the blockchain and the information gets included in the price upon ingestion. Oh, and by the way the trade is actually fully complete: settled, cleared, reconciled, done, whatever you want to call it, because the people who build decentralized finance (DeFi) build it how it should actually work, not in a way that creates a million incumbents and charges exorbitant rents for access to the system. Onchain trading better for price discovery And the beautiful part about this is that even if a distributed system has more latency than a centralized system, DeFi still ends up incorporating more information into the price faster than centralized finance, because with DeFi the information gets included in the system as soon as it is submitted, not after it has been batched up and sent through a series of middlemen. The consensus mechanism of the blockchain disseminates the information around the world in the form of a price update, while the centralized exchange model requires information about the event to first get propagate to the region of the trading hub, then to get submitted to the colocation server. This means that in terms of global price discovery, onchain trading is strictly a better system because the entire consensus model is based around accelerated information propagation. Because price discovery is a global phenomenon, blockchains, which are global, are actually better than the centralized status quo, on a performance basis, not just from an ideological or convenience-based view. And it has to be multi-leader In practice, effective global information synthesis of information has an additional key requirement: multi-leader architecture. That is, in a single-leader blockchain like Solana, where one validator at a time has a monopoly on ordering transactions into blocks, for their duration as a leader they effectively function as a colocation server. This means that if the current leader is in New York, someone in Singapore who wants to trade on local news as soon as it breaks will still need to get their order all the way around the world to the leader, who is effectively serving as the chain's data ingestion point, before the order can start propagating through the network. But this is issue solved by the introduction of multiple distributed leaders, because then anyone with access to new information can submit their order to the leader closest to them, yielding faster information inclusion in the form of price updates. Multi-leader is also required for fair markets A multi-leader architecture is also required for fair markets, because in a single-leader system the leader has the power to censor transactions, reorder them to their advantage, or even replace transactions with copycats that extract maximum value by replacing the sender's address with their own. For example if someone wants to capture an arbitrage opportunity between two onchain DEXes, they'll need to submit a transaction to the leader and trust that the leader won't simply copy the transaction and submit it themselves. But when there are two or more leaders, users whose transactions are censored by one leader will simply work with a different leader the next time around, eventually cutting off transaction fee flow to the extractive leader. Beyond just strict inclusion, in a multi-leader architecture validators are also forced to compete with each other on latency, because the leader who is fastest at disseminating users' transactions across the network will over time gobble up the largest share of the order flow. Transparent priority fees are a must, or a private mempool will emerge But in order to make this work, a multi-leader architecture must also offer users the ability to pay priority fees AKA "tips" or "bribes" to move their transaction to the front of the line: if there is a $5 arbitrage opportunity onchain, users need to have assurance that they if they pay a 4.99 priority fee to take that arb, they will get priority over a different user who is only willing to tip 4.98. If the native blockchain system does not offer this fair market priority fee mechanism, then it is only a matter of time before one spontaneously emerges in the form of a private mempool like Jito, which can create centralization pressures and undermine the integrity of the system as a whole. Competitive payment for order flow is the stable solution With the right architecture in place, the end result is a competitive environment where endpoints running maximum extractable value (MEV) bots compete with one to offer users the best price for their order flow. In other words, if a user wants to submit an order that can get sandwich attacked for as much as $2 of MEV, then the order should ultimately go to the endpoint bot that is willing to pay the user as much as $1.99 for the right to process their transaction. The price that the provider is willing to pay is ultimately a function of how much in priority fees they might need to pay to the current leader (0 they are the current one), but notably at each stage there is a competitive market for order flow, whether in the form of retail trader's orders, or priority fees among bots that might be forwarding orders to one of the leaders. AptosLabs is already building all this With a public mempool and transaction priority fees, Aptos additionally includes a pipelined architecture that already includes concurrent batching of transactions into blocks, with a single consensus leader who propagates the batched blocks out to the network. And the team is already researching running multiple instances of the consensus algorithm in parallel, yielding multiple consensus leaders who can compete with each other on latency and inclusion - just ask pranav | Shelby, Alexander Spiegelman, and Zekun Li. This means that block times can shrink as the number of consensus leaders grows, with each leader having its own geographical radius of inclusion beyond which it makes more sense to submit to a different leader. The starting point? Something like 60 ms blocks and 3 consensus leaders, partitioning the global information space into competitive and constantly-rotating regions of information inclusion. Messaging is important With concurrent pipelined transaction batching, a public mempool, priority fees, and a clear path to a multi-leader architecture, Aptos leads the industry in onchain trading infrastructure that can truly supplant the centralized colocation paradigm that has heretofore dominated global finance - by offering a truly superior product. And I am hopeful that this deep dive is the first step in communicating not how or that superior product is getting built, but what it means from a bigger picture perspective. If blockchains have found product market fit in anything, it is in trading, and the trading game can only be won by building the biggest, baddest, most high performance system that has as its north star a single, concrete goal: constantly reducing, ever lower toward zero, time time it takes to incorporate information from anywhere in the world into the global price discovery computer. Whoever does this, even 1 ms faster than the competitor, wins the price discovery game, as other blockchains are left in the dust, their DEXes arbed away to zero against the fastest chain on the block. And sure, the blockchain that can rise to this challenge can also handle useful things like payments, NFTs, or other solutions that benefit from permissionlessness and low gas costs, but I want to impress that at the core of this pursuit must be the urge to drive down information inclusion latency to the absolute minimum afforded by the laws of physics through a competitive, market-driven environment. I call on avery.apt 🇺🇸 , CTO of Aptos Labs, to lean in on this messaging, to make it clear that Aptos is here for this singular mission, to build the most performant price discovery engine in history, as a rallying call for alignment in development efforts across the ecosystem and broader industry. Where does this go? As the latencies drop, the spreads tighten, and the information inclusion increases with every incremental increase in network bandwidth, we can expect a new class of competing techno-financial hubs that aggregate around the world's largest information sources: New York, Washington DC, London, Tokyo, etc., commanding stake distribution commensurate with the density of information flow in these respective locales. With the right incentives in place, competing concurrent leaders will invest ever more in infrastructure to get their packets out to the network faster than the rest, yielding clusters of fiber optic cable around the world's financial hubs, neurons in the global financial brain connecting not just HFT firms to servers in their city, but connecting every city with every other city, to move pricing information across oceans and continents. And retail traders, who have been left out of the colocation game, will only benefit: this entire system gets faster, more inclusive, with tighter spreads and lower fees, and it is such an amazing opportunity to watch all of this unfold in real time. The future of blockchains is the future of trading, is the future of competitive information inclusion in real-time, is the future of truly unified global markets, because at the the core of this industry is a simple idea: connect the computers, and see where the incentives lead. They lead to this, and Aptos is leading the charge, because its tech is purpose-built for this exact purpose. So tell the world about it.
2:41

The multi-leader blockchain endgame: competitive information inclusion as a self-reinforcing mechanism for global price discovery - how we got here, and why Aptos is leading the charge Onchain trading is the killer app In the nine years since the launch of programmable transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, onchain trading has revealed itself as the killer use case for blockchains: onchain listings, volume, and total value locked are all growing with no signs of slowing down, due to the censorship-resistant, permissionless, 24/7/365 qualities afforded by decentralized (DeFi) systems. Monolithic parallelism is key In 2020 Solana was first to market with monolithic, parallel execution (as opposed sharded execution which offers parallelism by partitioning global state into separate information silos), establishing a new design paradigm that raised the bar for throughput and latency: put all of the information in one replicated state machine and make it run as fast as possible. This design produces a single, global hub for activity, liquidity, and token launches, a kind of financial data whiteboard in the sky, where anyone can come and trade at any time with everybody else who has plugged into the system. DEXes are becoming more competitive Historically decentralized systems have been juxtaposed with centralized ones since the latter eliminates the overhead associated with distributed systems coordination. And yet despite this overhead, Solana as a decentralized exchange (DEX) is still pulling in billions of trading volume per day, exceeding that of all but the largest centralized crypto exchanges (CEXs), that simply can't compete with the giant DEX in the sky on token listings or fees. After all, CEXs have to pay for server space, salaries, and lawyers, while a DEX outsources everything. The colocation arms race The one place where CEXs have an advantage over DEXs is on end-to-end latency for colocation applications, or in other words: someone sets up a trading bot in the same data center as the exchange, and their trades get to the exchange faster than everyone else's. When there is only one data ingestion point the fastest trader wins, and after the arms race has played out everyone ends up huddling around the trading hub, effectively cutting off the rest of the world from playing the latency trading game. This is the model that traditional securities exchanges like the Nasdaq or the NYSE 🏛 employ, and because they own the server they can effectively charge whatever they want for access to it. The colocation arms race is also why L2s will probably never decentralize: running the sequencer is practically the same as running the NASDAQ, with the same monopoly on transaction fees collected from a nearby cluster of trading bots (I understand from conversations with Logan Jastremski that the Arbitrum arms race has already hit a Nash Equilibrium in Portland, Oregon). Colocation is a trap But once the colocation arms race has played out, trades become less about incorporating new information in the market and more about skimming off the top by spoofing all of the trades coming in from the other bots. High-frequency trading (HFT) bots located in the NYSE New Jersey data center, for example, are constantly placing buys and sell orders that they have no intention of executing, just to spoof the other colocated bots who are playing the same adversarial game. Information inclusion, on the other hand, the synthesis of real-time world events into prices, takes a back seat because anyone who tries to include new information first needs to batch up their order and send it through a series of middlemen before it ultimately ends up on the exchange: you, I, or practically any other individual can not actually "trade on the NASDAQ", no, we have to express our intent to someone like Robinhood, who then sells our order flow to @CitadelSecurities, who then sends it to the exchange, oh and by the way it doesn't actually even "clear" or "settle" once it "executes" because for whatever reason the whole systems splits these things up and prevents them from happening instantaneously even though it's 2024 and we have computers. Onchain trading cuts out middlemen This whole mess is why we have onchain trading, and why it's starting to win: if you want a mainline to the exchange, without setting up a server, and you want to trade on a news event without getting immediately frontrun by an HFT bot that is sniffing out the trades of every other HFT bot who is easing in batched up order flow on their own terms, then you submit your order to a node in the blockchain and the information gets included in the price upon ingestion. Oh, and by the way the trade is actually fully complete: settled, cleared, reconciled, done, whatever you want to call it, because the people who build decentralized finance (DeFi) build it how it should actually work, not in a way that creates a million incumbents and charges exorbitant rents for access to the system. Onchain trading better for price discovery And the beautiful part about this is that even if a distributed system has more latency than a centralized system, DeFi still ends up incorporating more information into the price faster than centralized finance, because with DeFi the information gets included in the system as soon as it is submitted, not after it has been batched up and sent through a series of middlemen. The consensus mechanism of the blockchain disseminates the information around the world in the form of a price update, while the centralized exchange model requires information about the event to first get propagate to the region of the trading hub, then to get submitted to the colocation server. This means that in terms of global price discovery, onchain trading is strictly a better system because the entire consensus model is based around accelerated information propagation. Because price discovery is a global phenomenon, blockchains, which are global, are actually better than the centralized status quo, on a performance basis, not just from an ideological or convenience-based view. And it has to be multi-leader In practice, effective global information synthesis of information has an additional key requirement: multi-leader architecture. That is, in a single-leader blockchain like Solana, where one validator at a time has a monopoly on ordering transactions into blocks, for their duration as a leader they effectively function as a colocation server. This means that if the current leader is in New York, someone in Singapore who wants to trade on local news as soon as it breaks will still need to get their order all the way around the world to the leader, who is effectively serving as the chain's data ingestion point, before the order can start propagating through the network. But this is issue solved by the introduction of multiple distributed leaders, because then anyone with access to new information can submit their order to the leader closest to them, yielding faster information inclusion in the form of price updates. Multi-leader is also required for fair markets A multi-leader architecture is also required for fair markets, because in a single-leader system the leader has the power to censor transactions, reorder them to their advantage, or even replace transactions with copycats that extract maximum value by replacing the sender's address with their own. For example if someone wants to capture an arbitrage opportunity between two onchain DEXes, they'll need to submit a transaction to the leader and trust that the leader won't simply copy the transaction and submit it themselves. But when there are two or more leaders, users whose transactions are censored by one leader will simply work with a different leader the next time around, eventually cutting off transaction fee flow to the extractive leader. Beyond just strict inclusion, in a multi-leader architecture validators are also forced to compete with each other on latency, because the leader who is fastest at disseminating users' transactions across the network will over time gobble up the largest share of the order flow. Transparent priority fees are a must, or a private mempool will emerge But in order to make this work, a multi-leader architecture must also offer users the ability to pay priority fees AKA "tips" or "bribes" to move their transaction to the front of the line: if there is a $5 arbitrage opportunity onchain, users need to have assurance that they if they pay a 4.99 priority fee to take that arb, they will get priority over a different user who is only willing to tip 4.98. If the native blockchain system does not offer this fair market priority fee mechanism, then it is only a matter of time before one spontaneously emerges in the form of a private mempool like Jito, which can create centralization pressures and undermine the integrity of the system as a whole. Competitive payment for order flow is the stable solution With the right architecture in place, the end result is a competitive environment where endpoints running maximum extractable value (MEV) bots compete with one to offer users the best price for their order flow. In other words, if a user wants to submit an order that can get sandwich attacked for as much as $2 of MEV, then the order should ultimately go to the endpoint bot that is willing to pay the user as much as $1.99 for the right to process their transaction. The price that the provider is willing to pay is ultimately a function of how much in priority fees they might need to pay to the current leader (0 they are the current one), but notably at each stage there is a competitive market for order flow, whether in the form of retail trader's orders, or priority fees among bots that might be forwarding orders to one of the leaders. AptosLabs is already building all this With a public mempool and transaction priority fees, Aptos additionally includes a pipelined architecture that already includes concurrent batching of transactions into blocks, with a single consensus leader who propagates the batched blocks out to the network. And the team is already researching running multiple instances of the consensus algorithm in parallel, yielding multiple consensus leaders who can compete with each other on latency and inclusion - just ask pranav | Shelby, Alexander Spiegelman, and Zekun Li. This means that block times can shrink as the number of consensus leaders grows, with each leader having its own geographical radius of inclusion beyond which it makes more sense to submit to a different leader. The starting point? Something like 60 ms blocks and 3 consensus leaders, partitioning the global information space into competitive and constantly-rotating regions of information inclusion. Messaging is important With concurrent pipelined transaction batching, a public mempool, priority fees, and a clear path to a multi-leader architecture, Aptos leads the industry in onchain trading infrastructure that can truly supplant the centralized colocation paradigm that has heretofore dominated global finance - by offering a truly superior product. And I am hopeful that this deep dive is the first step in communicating not how or that superior product is getting built, but what it means from a bigger picture perspective. If blockchains have found product market fit in anything, it is in trading, and the trading game can only be won by building the biggest, baddest, most high performance system that has as its north star a single, concrete goal: constantly reducing, ever lower toward zero, time time it takes to incorporate information from anywhere in the world into the global price discovery computer. Whoever does this, even 1 ms faster than the competitor, wins the price discovery game, as other blockchains are left in the dust, their DEXes arbed away to zero against the fastest chain on the block. And sure, the blockchain that can rise to this challenge can also handle useful things like payments, NFTs, or other solutions that benefit from permissionlessness and low gas costs, but I want to impress that at the core of this pursuit must be the urge to drive down information inclusion latency to the absolute minimum afforded by the laws of physics through a competitive, market-driven environment. I call on avery.apt 🇺🇸 , CTO of Aptos Labs, to lean in on this messaging, to make it clear that Aptos is here for this singular mission, to build the most performant price discovery engine in history, as a rallying call for alignment in development efforts across the ecosystem and broader industry. Where does this go? As the latencies drop, the spreads tighten, and the information inclusion increases with every incremental increase in network bandwidth, we can expect a new class of competing techno-financial hubs that aggregate around the world's largest information sources: New York, Washington DC, London, Tokyo, etc., commanding stake distribution commensurate with the density of information flow in these respective locales. With the right incentives in place, competing concurrent leaders will invest ever more in infrastructure to get their packets out to the network faster than the rest, yielding clusters of fiber optic cable around the world's financial hubs, neurons in the global financial brain connecting not just HFT firms to servers in their city, but connecting every city with every other city, to move pricing information across oceans and continents. And retail traders, who have been left out of the colocation game, will only benefit: this entire system gets faster, more inclusive, with tighter spreads and lower fees, and it is such an amazing opportunity to watch all of this unfold in real time. The future of blockchains is the future of trading, is the future of competitive information inclusion in real-time, is the future of truly unified global markets, because at the the core of this industry is a simple idea: connect the computers, and see where the incentives lead. They lead to this, and Aptos is leading the charge, because its tech is purpose-built for this exact purpose. So tell the world about it.

Alex Kahn

24,432 views • 1 year ago

The CIA's information war with American citizens and the operation that started it all. Project Mockingbird. This is one main aspect as to why people are so divided and brainwashed in today's society. Information has always been a crucial component to power and control. Knowledge is power, right? The only difference today from 40+ years ago is that now information flows at a rate that is absolutely mind-boggling and allows you to connect with anyone, at anytime, anywhere in the world, with real-time information 24/7 at your finger tips. So what happens when you have people who are suppose to be giving you accurate, truthful, information, and start to give you information that benefits, manipulates, and persuades the global population with mis and disinformation, protects certain corrupt people and groups by not reporting on other information, and who also lies and slanders other individuals all for the purpose to maintain power and control over the entire population, entirely on PURPOSE? You get what's called PROPAGANDA, aka, a sh*t show of so much purposeful bad and fake information, that it literally starts to persuade and mold the populations overall views and opinions on an array of various topics to fit the nefarious controllers, behind the scenes narrative or agenda. Ultimitely benefitting only them. If you take notice, these campaigns have been around for a long time, depending what side your on, your personal views and where you get your overall information will ultimately decide or be a factor of how much it has affected you or how much you are aware of the deception in the first place. Most legacy mainstream media groups are owned and operated by a small group of wealthy globalist individuals who seem to lean towards the left, and some leaning even farther left than others. These campaigns started to really pick up when Trump entered the picture in 2016. Trump was never suppose to win in the first place. Obama reinstated propaganda to be used on American citizens once again in 2013. The task to slander and attempt to destroy and imprison Trump through multiple operations and media campaigns were in full effect for the deep state to regain control of The White House. The group that these campaigns affected the most were the older groups and the younger groups. The people in the middle basically got to see both worlds play out in their lives at a crucial time period in their lives. They've seen the mainstream shift from what it once was, to an extreme lying, propaganda machine when Trump took office. The older aged crowd was so used to the regular nightly news and not as comfortable with newer technology to access alternative media sites and really just stuck with the mainstream's words and kept their faith in the MSM. Now the younger crowd literally grew up with the fully scripted, CIA, propaganda MSM because that is literally all they've ever known and haven't experienced anything else before or have anything to compare it to. Especially when your indoctrinated in a public school system that has been infiltrated itself with a majority of far-left teachers who usually end up being predators as well. That's a whole other story. The problem this CIA operation has caused was a population with people all in their own separate groups and boxes, fighting with each other over many things, instead of the people who started this mess in the first place, that aren't even true because one side has been lied to and manipulated. Brainwashed from a literal military style operation that's used to topple foreign countries during regime changes. And the worst part on top of all this is that know since Elon has started DOGE, a government efficiency operation, we are now uncovering that all these communist, Marxist, ideas, and operations and slander campaigns, and legal cases against Trump, down to these politicians luxurious lifestyles have been all funded and paid for by us, the TAXPAYERS. On the one example above, through USAID, there is proof of over $9 MILLION dollars that went to Reuters for a campaign named, " ACTIVE SOCIAL ENGINEERING DEFENSE LARGE SCALE SOCIAL DECEPTION," which is a definitive contract. There are thousands of examples just like this for all different companies, influencers, T.V. shows, Magazines, Articles, any type of media, and all of them are left leaning outlets. This has been going on for decades. Then on top off all of that, you have people who own these publishing and media companies who are not only getting paid by the taxpayers from the CIA to deceive us, but many of these owners are best friends with people like Jeffery Epstein and Ghislaine Maxell as you can also see above who is with Laurene Powell Jobs, the owner of "The Atlantic" publication, on vacation just hanging out. You wonder why the media never talks about child trafficking. Their paid to cover it up, or they're literally involved themselves... It just get's better and better. The good news is that it is now being exposed and shut down. Let's dive into the history of PROJECT MOCKINGBIRD now. The story of Project Mockingbird begins in the shadow of the Cold War, a period defined by ideological warfare between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the early 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), under the leadership of Director John McCone, launched a covert operation codenamed "Project Mockingbird." Unlike the broader, alleged "Operation Mockingbird" often cited in conspiracy circles as a sprawling media manipulation scheme, the historical Project Mockingbird was a specific, documented wiretapping effort aimed at curbing leaks of classified information. Initiated on March 12, 1963, and concluding on June 15, 1963, Project Mockingbird targeted two Washington-based journalists, Robert S. Allen and Paul J. Scott, who wrote the syndicated "Allen-Scott Report." These columnists had a knack for publishing articles laced with highly classified CIA details—information so sensitive it included Top Secret and Special Intelligence data. Their scoops, often sourced from government insiders, rattled the Kennedy administration, particularly after a July 26, 1962, New York Times article by Hanson Baldwin exposed details of a National Intelligence Estimate comparing U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals. President John F. Kennedy, incensed by such leaks, sought to plug the holes. The operation was a collaborative effort, greenlit by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Joseph Carroll. The CIA’s Office of Security, led by Sheffield Edwards, executed the wiretapping, monitoring the journalists’ home and office phones. The surveillance results identified congressional sources, including then-Speaker of the House John McCormack, who spoke with Scott on March 26, 1963. The "Family Jewels"—a 1973 CIA document declassified in 2007—later exposed this operation, revealing its scope and raising questions about its legality. Daniel L. Pines, a CIA Assistant General Counsel, argued in a 2009 Indiana Law Journal review that the wiretapping likely violated legal bounds, as its primary aim was to trace leaks rather than gather foreign intelligence. This historical Project Mockingbird, though limited in duration and scope, planted a seed of distrust between the government, the press, and the public—a seed that would grow into a broader narrative of media manipulation. From Wiretaps to Media Empire While Project Mockingbird of 1963 was a discrete surveillance effort, it became conflated with a larger CIA program dubbed "Operation Mockingbird." This narrative emerged most prominently in Deborah Davis’s 1979 book, Katharine the Great, which claimed that the CIA, under Frank Wisner of the Office of Policy Coordination, had systematically infiltrated American media starting in the 1950s. Davis alleged that Wisner recruited Washington Post publisher Phil Graham to orchestrate a propaganda network, embedding CIA-friendly journalists in outlets like The New York Times, Newsweek, and CBS. Cord Meyer, a key CIA figure, was said to have taken the reins in 1951, expanding the operation’s reach. The Church Committee’s 1975-1976 investigation lent some credence to these claims, uncovering CIA ties to around 50 American journalists and covert funding of front groups like the National Student Association, exposed by Ramparts magazine in 1967. Carl Bernstein’s 1977 Rolling Stone article, "The CIA and the Media," further detailed how over 400 U.S. journalists had covertly worked with the CIA, often disseminating propaganda abroad that would then filter back to domestic audiences. the CIA admitted overreach. By 1976, under Director George H.W. Bush, the CIA publicly pledged to end paid relationships with U.S. journalists. Yet, skeptics argued the agency merely shifted tactics, maintaining influence through foreign media outlets that indirectly shaped American narratives. The line between historical fact and conspiracy theory blurred, setting the stage for modern reinterpretations of Mockingbird’s legacy. They claim. The Turning Point came in 2013 and the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act Fast forward to July 2, 2013, a date that marks a pivotal shift in the Mockingbird saga. Under President Barack Obama, the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act—embedded in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)—took effect. This legislation amended the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, commonly known as the Smith-Mundt Act, which had long barred government-funded broadcasters like Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty—overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (now the U.S. Agency for Global Media, USAGM)—from disseminating their content domestically. The original intent was to prevent the U.S. government from propagandizing its own citizens, a safeguard rooted in post-World War II fears of authoritarian overreach. The 2013 amendment, co-sponsored by Representatives Adam Smith (D-WA) and Mac Thornberry (R-TX), lifted this restriction, allowing USAGM content to be requested and accessed by Americans. Proponents hailed it as a transparency win, arguing that taxpayers deserved to see what their dollars funded—news and programming in 61 languages, reaching over 100 countries. Critics, however, saw it as a Pandora’s box. Foreign Policy reported on July 14, 2013, that the change unleashed "thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption," raising fears of legalized propaganda. The timing was notable: it followed a decade of post-9/11 media scrutiny and preceded a surge in misinformation debates. in 2024 claimed "Operation Mockingbird never ended," tying the NDAA to a supposed CIA media takeover. No hard evidence supports a direct CIA role, but the legal shift undeniably blurred lines between foreign and domestic information flows. While the USAGM insists its mission remains outward-facing—delivering uncensored news to foreign audiences lacking free press—and that its journalists adhere to strict objectivity standards, the repeal stoked speculation. Could this be a modern resurrection of Mockingbird-style influence? The answer is yes. Most projects they say they stopped just get renamed or go black and off the books so Congress doesn't even know it exists or get access to it. Be careful what you read, who you follow, and who you get your information from. Look for patterns and scripts. They're easy to find once you understand what's really going on and their tactics and techniques. Keep asking questions, cross reference everything, do your due diligence, have multiple sources, do not buy everything at face value, go deeper, think about the bigger picture or long term goals. And always remember that there are layers, optics, and timing to everything you see. 90% of everything that comes out gets run by the intelligence agencies first. Lastly, keep fighting for the truth and and continue to help others to wake up as well.
8:02

The CIA's information war with American citizens and the operation that started it all. Project Mockingbird. This is one main aspect as to why people are so divided and brainwashed in today's society. Information has always been a crucial component to power and control. Knowledge is power, right? The only difference today from 40+ years ago is that now information flows at a rate that is absolutely mind-boggling and allows you to connect with anyone, at anytime, anywhere in the world, with real-time information 24/7 at your finger tips. So what happens when you have people who are suppose to be giving you accurate, truthful, information, and start to give you information that benefits, manipulates, and persuades the global population with mis and disinformation, protects certain corrupt people and groups by not reporting on other information, and who also lies and slanders other individuals all for the purpose to maintain power and control over the entire population, entirely on PURPOSE? You get what's called PROPAGANDA, aka, a sh*t show of so much purposeful bad and fake information, that it literally starts to persuade and mold the populations overall views and opinions on an array of various topics to fit the nefarious controllers, behind the scenes narrative or agenda. Ultimitely benefitting only them. If you take notice, these campaigns have been around for a long time, depending what side your on, your personal views and where you get your overall information will ultimately decide or be a factor of how much it has affected you or how much you are aware of the deception in the first place. Most legacy mainstream media groups are owned and operated by a small group of wealthy globalist individuals who seem to lean towards the left, and some leaning even farther left than others. These campaigns started to really pick up when Trump entered the picture in 2016. Trump was never suppose to win in the first place. Obama reinstated propaganda to be used on American citizens once again in 2013. The task to slander and attempt to destroy and imprison Trump through multiple operations and media campaigns were in full effect for the deep state to regain control of The White House. The group that these campaigns affected the most were the older groups and the younger groups. The people in the middle basically got to see both worlds play out in their lives at a crucial time period in their lives. They've seen the mainstream shift from what it once was, to an extreme lying, propaganda machine when Trump took office. The older aged crowd was so used to the regular nightly news and not as comfortable with newer technology to access alternative media sites and really just stuck with the mainstream's words and kept their faith in the MSM. Now the younger crowd literally grew up with the fully scripted, CIA, propaganda MSM because that is literally all they've ever known and haven't experienced anything else before or have anything to compare it to. Especially when your indoctrinated in a public school system that has been infiltrated itself with a majority of far-left teachers who usually end up being predators as well. That's a whole other story. The problem this CIA operation has caused was a population with people all in their own separate groups and boxes, fighting with each other over many things, instead of the people who started this mess in the first place, that aren't even true because one side has been lied to and manipulated. Brainwashed from a literal military style operation that's used to topple foreign countries during regime changes. And the worst part on top of all this is that know since Elon has started DOGE, a government efficiency operation, we are now uncovering that all these communist, Marxist, ideas, and operations and slander campaigns, and legal cases against Trump, down to these politicians luxurious lifestyles have been all funded and paid for by us, the TAXPAYERS. On the one example above, through USAID, there is proof of over $9 MILLION dollars that went to Reuters for a campaign named, " ACTIVE SOCIAL ENGINEERING DEFENSE LARGE SCALE SOCIAL DECEPTION," which is a definitive contract. There are thousands of examples just like this for all different companies, influencers, T.V. shows, Magazines, Articles, any type of media, and all of them are left leaning outlets. This has been going on for decades. Then on top off all of that, you have people who own these publishing and media companies who are not only getting paid by the taxpayers from the CIA to deceive us, but many of these owners are best friends with people like Jeffery Epstein and Ghislaine Maxell as you can also see above who is with Laurene Powell Jobs, the owner of "The Atlantic" publication, on vacation just hanging out. You wonder why the media never talks about child trafficking. Their paid to cover it up, or they're literally involved themselves... It just get's better and better. The good news is that it is now being exposed and shut down. Let's dive into the history of PROJECT MOCKINGBIRD now. The story of Project Mockingbird begins in the shadow of the Cold War, a period defined by ideological warfare between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the early 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), under the leadership of Director John McCone, launched a covert operation codenamed "Project Mockingbird." Unlike the broader, alleged "Operation Mockingbird" often cited in conspiracy circles as a sprawling media manipulation scheme, the historical Project Mockingbird was a specific, documented wiretapping effort aimed at curbing leaks of classified information. Initiated on March 12, 1963, and concluding on June 15, 1963, Project Mockingbird targeted two Washington-based journalists, Robert S. Allen and Paul J. Scott, who wrote the syndicated "Allen-Scott Report." These columnists had a knack for publishing articles laced with highly classified CIA details—information so sensitive it included Top Secret and Special Intelligence data. Their scoops, often sourced from government insiders, rattled the Kennedy administration, particularly after a July 26, 1962, New York Times article by Hanson Baldwin exposed details of a National Intelligence Estimate comparing U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals. President John F. Kennedy, incensed by such leaks, sought to plug the holes. The operation was a collaborative effort, greenlit by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Joseph Carroll. The CIA’s Office of Security, led by Sheffield Edwards, executed the wiretapping, monitoring the journalists’ home and office phones. The surveillance results identified congressional sources, including then-Speaker of the House John McCormack, who spoke with Scott on March 26, 1963. The "Family Jewels"—a 1973 CIA document declassified in 2007—later exposed this operation, revealing its scope and raising questions about its legality. Daniel L. Pines, a CIA Assistant General Counsel, argued in a 2009 Indiana Law Journal review that the wiretapping likely violated legal bounds, as its primary aim was to trace leaks rather than gather foreign intelligence. This historical Project Mockingbird, though limited in duration and scope, planted a seed of distrust between the government, the press, and the public—a seed that would grow into a broader narrative of media manipulation. From Wiretaps to Media Empire While Project Mockingbird of 1963 was a discrete surveillance effort, it became conflated with a larger CIA program dubbed "Operation Mockingbird." This narrative emerged most prominently in Deborah Davis’s 1979 book, Katharine the Great, which claimed that the CIA, under Frank Wisner of the Office of Policy Coordination, had systematically infiltrated American media starting in the 1950s. Davis alleged that Wisner recruited Washington Post publisher Phil Graham to orchestrate a propaganda network, embedding CIA-friendly journalists in outlets like The New York Times, Newsweek, and CBS. Cord Meyer, a key CIA figure, was said to have taken the reins in 1951, expanding the operation’s reach. The Church Committee’s 1975-1976 investigation lent some credence to these claims, uncovering CIA ties to around 50 American journalists and covert funding of front groups like the National Student Association, exposed by Ramparts magazine in 1967. Carl Bernstein’s 1977 Rolling Stone article, "The CIA and the Media," further detailed how over 400 U.S. journalists had covertly worked with the CIA, often disseminating propaganda abroad that would then filter back to domestic audiences. the CIA admitted overreach. By 1976, under Director George H.W. Bush, the CIA publicly pledged to end paid relationships with U.S. journalists. Yet, skeptics argued the agency merely shifted tactics, maintaining influence through foreign media outlets that indirectly shaped American narratives. The line between historical fact and conspiracy theory blurred, setting the stage for modern reinterpretations of Mockingbird’s legacy. They claim. The Turning Point came in 2013 and the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act Fast forward to July 2, 2013, a date that marks a pivotal shift in the Mockingbird saga. Under President Barack Obama, the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act—embedded in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)—took effect. This legislation amended the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, commonly known as the Smith-Mundt Act, which had long barred government-funded broadcasters like Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty—overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (now the U.S. Agency for Global Media, USAGM)—from disseminating their content domestically. The original intent was to prevent the U.S. government from propagandizing its own citizens, a safeguard rooted in post-World War II fears of authoritarian overreach. The 2013 amendment, co-sponsored by Representatives Adam Smith (D-WA) and Mac Thornberry (R-TX), lifted this restriction, allowing USAGM content to be requested and accessed by Americans. Proponents hailed it as a transparency win, arguing that taxpayers deserved to see what their dollars funded—news and programming in 61 languages, reaching over 100 countries. Critics, however, saw it as a Pandora’s box. Foreign Policy reported on July 14, 2013, that the change unleashed "thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption," raising fears of legalized propaganda. The timing was notable: it followed a decade of post-9/11 media scrutiny and preceded a surge in misinformation debates. in 2024 claimed "Operation Mockingbird never ended," tying the NDAA to a supposed CIA media takeover. No hard evidence supports a direct CIA role, but the legal shift undeniably blurred lines between foreign and domestic information flows. While the USAGM insists its mission remains outward-facing—delivering uncensored news to foreign audiences lacking free press—and that its journalists adhere to strict objectivity standards, the repeal stoked speculation. Could this be a modern resurrection of Mockingbird-style influence? The answer is yes. Most projects they say they stopped just get renamed or go black and off the books so Congress doesn't even know it exists or get access to it. Be careful what you read, who you follow, and who you get your information from. Look for patterns and scripts. They're easy to find once you understand what's really going on and their tactics and techniques. Keep asking questions, cross reference everything, do your due diligence, have multiple sources, do not buy everything at face value, go deeper, think about the bigger picture or long term goals. And always remember that there are layers, optics, and timing to everything you see. 90% of everything that comes out gets run by the intelligence agencies first. Lastly, keep fighting for the truth and and continue to help others to wake up as well.

The SCIF

85,126 views • 1 year ago

$MU $SNDK $LITE $VRT NVIDIA and Groq: 2nd and 3rd Order Strategic Infrastructure Effects and Market Implications Public reporting indicates NVIDIA has agreed to acquire Groq for approximately $20,000,000,000 in cash, while excluding Groq’s nascent cloud business from the transaction perimeter. The reported carve-out materially constrains the immediate, direct linkage from the acquisition to incremental, NVIDIA-controlled data center capacity build-out because GroqCloud appears to be the principal channel through which Groq hardware is currently monetized at scale as a service. The infrastructure-market implications therefore depend primarily on post-close product strategy: whether NVIDIA (1) commercializes Groq silicon as a distinct inference product line and drives broad deployment through OEM/ODM channels and partners, (2) uses the acquisition mainly to absorb IP and talent while de-emphasizing standalone Groq hardware volumes, or (3) uses Groq technology to reshape NVIDIA’s own inference systems and networking roadmaps. The dominant transmission mechanism into memory, networking, and facility infrastructure markets is the degree to which NVIDIA shifts incremental inference deployments away from GPU architectures that are tightly coupled to external high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and toward Groq’s current architecture, which emphasizes large on-chip SRAM, deterministic compiler-scheduled execution, and direct chip-to-chip connectivity. Independent and company-published materials describe Groq’s current-generation approach as having no external memory, keeping weights and KV cache on-chip during processing, and requiring model sharding across multiple chips due to limited on-chip SRAM per device. That architectural choice is directionally HBM-negative on a per-accelerator basis and ambiguous for DRAM, NAND, networking, power, and cooling on a per-token basis because the design can reduce memory wall losses and tail-latency overhead while potentially increasing the number of chips and interconnect endpoints required to serve large models and long-context workloads. HBM implications are the most mechanically straightforward but should be framed as second-derivative rather than absolute. If Groq-class inference silicon meaningfully displaces NVIDIA GPU-based inference deployments, incremental HBM bit demand tied to inference growth could be reduced relative to a GPU-only baseline because Groq’s current approach does not appear to attach HBM stacks to each accelerator. However, current market structure suggests HBM remains supply-constrained and is being pulled by multiple vectors including continued GPU training scale and high-capacity inference configurations, with leading suppliers signaling tight conditions extending beyond 2026. In that environment, reduced inference-driven HBM intensity could primarily reallocate scarce HBM supply toward higher-end training and premium inference GPUs rather than creating an outright volume collapse, preserving high utilization of HBM capacity while potentially affecting the slope of pricing power and capacity expansion urgency over a multi-year horizon. The key downside scenario for the HBM complex would be a durable architectural bifurcation where “good-enough” inference shifts disproportionately to HBM-less ASICs across a broad swath of deployments (latency-sensitive, batch-1, cost-per-token optimized), while training remains GPU-HBM dominated; such a split would reduce the portion of future inference compute that naturally monetizes through HBM content and could compress the incremental HBM-per-AI-dollar ratio. The key upside/neutral scenario for HBM is that the supply chain remains fully allocated regardless, with NVIDIA using any “freed” HBM to ship more high-end GPUs into training and long-context inference, especially as roadmaps increase HBM per GPU, sustaining robust aggregate bit demand even if inference becomes more heterogeneous. Conventional DRAM implications split into 2 channels: (1) DRAM wafer capacity diversion into HBM and (2) DDR content per server in AI clusters. Supplier commentary indicates that AI-driven memory demand is supporting elevated DRAM markets more broadly, and HBM production is resource-intensive versus conventional DRAM, tightening supply for DDR products in parallel. A meaningful NVIDIA pivot to an inference architecture that reduces HBM dependence could, at the margin, ease the most acute HBM-driven bottlenecks and allow memory manufacturers more flexibility in balancing DRAM mix, which could be modestly DDR-positive on the supply side (less crowding-out) even if it is DDR-neutral or slightly negative on the demand side (if per-node CPU/DDR requirements decline due to more efficient accelerator utilization). The dominant practical outcome is likely that DDR demand remains supported by broad AI server proliferation and increasing memory footprints at the system level (CPUs, networking stacks, caching layers, retrieval-augmented pipelines), while HBM remains the premium profit pool; therefore, any HBM displacement that increases total server volumes could indirectly keep DDR demand resilient even if DDR per accelerator is not rising materially. NAND flash implications are comparatively indirect and volume-driven rather than architecture-driven. Inference clusters require SSD capacity for model storage, container images, logging, and increasingly for fast local retrieval indices and embedding stores, but the storage footprint per unit of compute is typically smaller than in training pipelines that stage large datasets and checkpoints. If NVIDIA uses Groq to lower inference cost and latency enough to expand the total number of inference deployment locations (regional colocation, enterprise on-prem, sovereign footprints), aggregate SSD attach could rise through geographic fragmentation and replication of model artifacts across more sites, even if per-site storage is modest. The NAND effect is therefore likely to be demand-broadening and mix-positive (datacenter SSDs) but not a primary swing factor versus the macro AI capex cycle and consumer/device cycles. Hard disk drive (HDD) markets should see negligible direct sensitivity because nearline HDD demand is driven by bulk storage and cloud archiving economics, while inference acceleration choices primarily reshape compute and network layers; any HDD benefit would be a tertiary function of overall data center square footage expansion rather than a direct consequence of Groq silicon displacing GPUs. Optical networking implications require separating (1) intra-cluster back-end fabrics that connect accelerators and (2) front-end / data center interconnect (DCI) that connects sites and regions. Groq’s own positioning and third-party reporting suggest scaling beyond a single node or rack relies on high-bandwidth fabrics and, in some described configurations, optical interconnect scaling across hundreds of chips. If NVIDIA commercializes Groq at scale, 2 offsetting forces emerge: lower cost-per-token and improved latency could expand inference throughput and drive more east-west traffic, increasing demand for high-speed switching and optics; conversely, if Groq delivers materially higher utilization and tokens per unit of network bandwidth for certain workloads, the network required per served token could decline. Public NVIDIA materials already indicate an aggressive photonics roadmap aimed at scaling AI factories, including co-packaged optics (CPO) switches and explicit collaboration with Coherent and Lumentum in the silicon photonics supply chain. That linkage is important because it suggests that, independent of Groq, NVIDIA is already pushing optics integration deeper into the switch package to reduce power and increase resiliency; Groq increases the strategic incentive to reduce network power and latency if inference becomes even more distributed and latency-sensitive. For Lumentum and Coherent specifically, the net implication is less about “more optics versus fewer optics” and more about a shift in optics form factor and value capture. Co-packaged optics can reduce reliance on pluggable transceivers in some switch architectures while increasing demand for integrated photonic engines, lasers, fiber attach, packaging processes, and component-level supply. NVIDIA’s own announcements explicitly position Coherent and Lumentum as collaborators in creating the integrated silicon/optics process and supply chain for photonics switches. If Groq accelerates the transition to very large-scale fabrics (more endpoints, higher port speeds, tighter power envelopes), that tends to pull forward CPO adoption and amplifies demand for the underlying photonics components even if the conventional pluggable module TAM is structurally pressured over time. If Groq instead pushes inference toward smaller, more localized pods (closer to users, more regional colocation), that can be optics-positive for DCI and metro connectivity because more sites must be interconnected at high bandwidth with low latency, favoring coherent optics and high-speed interconnect between facilities. The principal risk for optics suppliers is timing and margin structure: a faster move to NVIDIA-driven integrated photonics could concentrate bargaining power and compress margins for commoditized transceiver modules while favoring suppliers with differentiated lasers, integration capability, and qualification depth in NVIDIA’s CPO ecosystem. AEC and copper interconnect implications hinge on whether Groq deployment increases the density of short-reach links inside racks and rows. High-speed copper remains structurally advantaged at very short distances on cost, power, and serviceability, but reaches become constrained as lane speeds and aggregate bandwidth rise, creating a role for active electrical cables (AECs), retimers, and signal-conditioning silicon. Credo explicitly positions its AEC products as enabling reliable lossless 800G connectivity for AI clusters, and the company has highlighted participation at NVIDIA GTC with content focused on extending PCIe/CXL using AECs, indicating relevance to next-generation system topologies that require longer reach and higher signal integrity than passive copper can deliver. If NVIDIA turns Groq into a widely deployed inference card or chassis product, the likely near-term effect is AEC-positive because (1) more inference throughput tends to increase top-of-rack connectivity requirements, (2) distributing inference across more racks and sites increases short-reach links per unit of delivered service, and (3) PCIe-attached accelerator architectures tend to require robust signal conditioning as systems move to PCIe 6.x and beyond. Groq workshop materials explicitly reference GroqCard and GroqNode form factors, reinforcing that PCIe-attached deployment has been central to Groq’s current packaging strategy. The main countervailing risk is that Groq’s deterministic chip-to-chip fabric could be implemented primarily through backplanes and direct board-level connectivity that reduces the need for merchant AECs inside the box; in that case, incremental AEC demand would concentrate more in rack-to-switch and node-to-fabric links rather than within-chassis chip fabrics. Astera Labs implications are connectivity-architecture sensitive and, on balance, skew positive if NVIDIA increases heterogeneity and disaggregation in AI systems. NVIDIA has publicly positioned NVLink Fusion as a pathway for partners to build semi-custom AI infrastructure and has explicitly identified Astera Labs as a partner in that ecosystem, with Astera describing NVLink-related solutions expanding its connectivity platform across PCIe, CXL, and Ethernet plus fleet observability software. A Groq acquisition increases the probability that NVIDIA offers a broader menu of accelerators (training GPUs, inference-focused ASICs) and therefore increases the importance of scalable, high-reliability connectivity, retiming, switching, and telemetry across mixed topologies. If Groq silicon remains PCIe-attached in many deployments, PCIe 6.x retimers/switches and active cable modules become more central, aligning with Astera’s core portfolio. If NVIDIA instead integrates Groq concepts into scale-up fabrics (NVLink-like domains) or uses Groq to expand into inference “appliances” that must be rapidly deployed in colocation environments, the need for standard-compliant, serviceable connectivity with strong RAS/telemetry increases, again aligning with Astera’s positioning. Power equipment and cooling implications for Vertiv and adjacent suppliers should be viewed through the lens of rack power density, cooling modality (air vs liquid), and site deployment model (hyperscale campuses vs distributed colocation/enterprise). Groq claims its LPU and rack designs are “air-cooled by design” and require no complex cooling and power infrastructure, and third-party reporting has described Groq’s approach as relying on parallelism across many lower-power units rather than extreme per-chip performance. If NVIDIA scales Groq as a mainstream inference platform, the mix of data center cooling spend could shift modestly away from the highest-density liquid-cooled racks toward more air-cooled or hybrid deployments, particularly for inference pods placed in existing facilities that cannot easily retrofit for very high rack heat flux. That would be a mix headwind for suppliers most levered exclusively to high-end liquid cooling attachments per rack, but it is not necessarily a volume headwind for Vertiv given the company’s broad exposure to both power and cooling infrastructure and the likelihood that total AI deployment locations expand. Vertiv’s own industry commentary emphasizes that AI racks require higher power-density UPS, batteries, power distribution equipment, and switchgear capable of handling rapid load transients, and that hybrid cooling systems will evolve across deployment environments. Those statements align with a world where inference growth increases the count of powered racks and raises the operational complexity of power delivery even if per-rack density is lower than the most extreme training clusters. The most material infrastructure impact may occur outside the rack and upstream of the data hall: grid interconnects, substations, transformers, switchgear, generators, and utility-scale generation additions. Recent regulatory actions in the U.S. highlight that projected data center demand is already driving large planned increases in electricity generation capacity, underscoring that power availability is a binding constraint. In that context, an inference architecture that lowers joules per token could reduce the power required per unit of inference delivered, but it can also accelerate demand by lowering cost and improving latency, increasing the total volume of inference served (a classic rebound effect). The net outcome is likely continued, elevated demand for power infrastructure even if efficiency improves, with the key swing factor being whether AI capex remains on a multi-year growth trajectory or enters a digestion phase. Other data center infrastructure implications include server/ODM mix, facility design standardization, and networking architecture choices. If NVIDIA positions Groq-based inference as a broadly distributable “standard server + accelerator” solution rather than as an integrated, liquid-cooled rack like GB200 NVL72, spend could shift toward more conventional air-cooled server designs, higher unit volumes of mainstream racks, and faster deployment in colocation footprints, increasing demand for modular power rooms, busways, and rapidly deployable cooling solutions. If NVIDIA instead integrates Groq into its “AI factory” paradigm, the primary effect is likely acceleration of dense back-end fabric build-outs and a faster push toward photonics switching, increasing demand for fiber plant, connectors, and integrated optics supply chains while potentially compressing the lifecycle of transitional architectures based on pluggable optics and mid-reach copper. NVIDIA’s stated roadmap toward co-packaged optics and silicon photonics switches is already oriented toward scaling to very large GPU counts; adding a high-end inference ASIC increases the strategic importance of power-efficient, low-latency fabrics because inference economics become increasingly sensitive to network overhead as compute cost declines. Across the covered segments, the most defensible base case is limited near-term dislocation and a medium-term increase in uncertainty around memory intensity per unit of inference growth. HBM faces the clearest relative risk from an HBM-less inference platform, but supply tightness and GPU training roadmaps reduce the probability of an absolute demand shock over the next 12–24 months. Optical, AEC/copper, and power/cooling are more likely to remain volume-supported because they scale with endpoint count, deployment fragmentation, and total data center footprint, and those tend to rise when inference becomes cheaper and more widely deployed. The highest-conviction second-order effect is a shift in infrastructure mix: incrementally more distributed inference deployments (favoring colocation power/cooling standardization, DCI optics, and serviceable short-reach interconnect) and a gradual migration from pluggable optics toward integrated photonics in back-end fabrics (favoring suppliers positioned in the CPO ecosystem).
9:00

$MU $SNDK $LITE $VRT NVIDIA and Groq: 2nd and 3rd Order Strategic Infrastructure Effects and Market Implications Public reporting indicates NVIDIA has agreed to acquire Groq for approximately $20,000,000,000 in cash, while excluding Groq’s nascent cloud business from the transaction perimeter. The reported carve-out materially constrains the immediate, direct linkage from the acquisition to incremental, NVIDIA-controlled data center capacity build-out because GroqCloud appears to be the principal channel through which Groq hardware is currently monetized at scale as a service. The infrastructure-market implications therefore depend primarily on post-close product strategy: whether NVIDIA (1) commercializes Groq silicon as a distinct inference product line and drives broad deployment through OEM/ODM channels and partners, (2) uses the acquisition mainly to absorb IP and talent while de-emphasizing standalone Groq hardware volumes, or (3) uses Groq technology to reshape NVIDIA’s own inference systems and networking roadmaps. The dominant transmission mechanism into memory, networking, and facility infrastructure markets is the degree to which NVIDIA shifts incremental inference deployments away from GPU architectures that are tightly coupled to external high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and toward Groq’s current architecture, which emphasizes large on-chip SRAM, deterministic compiler-scheduled execution, and direct chip-to-chip connectivity. Independent and company-published materials describe Groq’s current-generation approach as having no external memory, keeping weights and KV cache on-chip during processing, and requiring model sharding across multiple chips due to limited on-chip SRAM per device. That architectural choice is directionally HBM-negative on a per-accelerator basis and ambiguous for DRAM, NAND, networking, power, and cooling on a per-token basis because the design can reduce memory wall losses and tail-latency overhead while potentially increasing the number of chips and interconnect endpoints required to serve large models and long-context workloads. HBM implications are the most mechanically straightforward but should be framed as second-derivative rather than absolute. If Groq-class inference silicon meaningfully displaces NVIDIA GPU-based inference deployments, incremental HBM bit demand tied to inference growth could be reduced relative to a GPU-only baseline because Groq’s current approach does not appear to attach HBM stacks to each accelerator. However, current market structure suggests HBM remains supply-constrained and is being pulled by multiple vectors including continued GPU training scale and high-capacity inference configurations, with leading suppliers signaling tight conditions extending beyond 2026. In that environment, reduced inference-driven HBM intensity could primarily reallocate scarce HBM supply toward higher-end training and premium inference GPUs rather than creating an outright volume collapse, preserving high utilization of HBM capacity while potentially affecting the slope of pricing power and capacity expansion urgency over a multi-year horizon. The key downside scenario for the HBM complex would be a durable architectural bifurcation where “good-enough” inference shifts disproportionately to HBM-less ASICs across a broad swath of deployments (latency-sensitive, batch-1, cost-per-token optimized), while training remains GPU-HBM dominated; such a split would reduce the portion of future inference compute that naturally monetizes through HBM content and could compress the incremental HBM-per-AI-dollar ratio. The key upside/neutral scenario for HBM is that the supply chain remains fully allocated regardless, with NVIDIA using any “freed” HBM to ship more high-end GPUs into training and long-context inference, especially as roadmaps increase HBM per GPU, sustaining robust aggregate bit demand even if inference becomes more heterogeneous. Conventional DRAM implications split into 2 channels: (1) DRAM wafer capacity diversion into HBM and (2) DDR content per server in AI clusters. Supplier commentary indicates that AI-driven memory demand is supporting elevated DRAM markets more broadly, and HBM production is resource-intensive versus conventional DRAM, tightening supply for DDR products in parallel. A meaningful NVIDIA pivot to an inference architecture that reduces HBM dependence could, at the margin, ease the most acute HBM-driven bottlenecks and allow memory manufacturers more flexibility in balancing DRAM mix, which could be modestly DDR-positive on the supply side (less crowding-out) even if it is DDR-neutral or slightly negative on the demand side (if per-node CPU/DDR requirements decline due to more efficient accelerator utilization). The dominant practical outcome is likely that DDR demand remains supported by broad AI server proliferation and increasing memory footprints at the system level (CPUs, networking stacks, caching layers, retrieval-augmented pipelines), while HBM remains the premium profit pool; therefore, any HBM displacement that increases total server volumes could indirectly keep DDR demand resilient even if DDR per accelerator is not rising materially. NAND flash implications are comparatively indirect and volume-driven rather than architecture-driven. Inference clusters require SSD capacity for model storage, container images, logging, and increasingly for fast local retrieval indices and embedding stores, but the storage footprint per unit of compute is typically smaller than in training pipelines that stage large datasets and checkpoints. If NVIDIA uses Groq to lower inference cost and latency enough to expand the total number of inference deployment locations (regional colocation, enterprise on-prem, sovereign footprints), aggregate SSD attach could rise through geographic fragmentation and replication of model artifacts across more sites, even if per-site storage is modest. The NAND effect is therefore likely to be demand-broadening and mix-positive (datacenter SSDs) but not a primary swing factor versus the macro AI capex cycle and consumer/device cycles. Hard disk drive (HDD) markets should see negligible direct sensitivity because nearline HDD demand is driven by bulk storage and cloud archiving economics, while inference acceleration choices primarily reshape compute and network layers; any HDD benefit would be a tertiary function of overall data center square footage expansion rather than a direct consequence of Groq silicon displacing GPUs. Optical networking implications require separating (1) intra-cluster back-end fabrics that connect accelerators and (2) front-end / data center interconnect (DCI) that connects sites and regions. Groq’s own positioning and third-party reporting suggest scaling beyond a single node or rack relies on high-bandwidth fabrics and, in some described configurations, optical interconnect scaling across hundreds of chips. If NVIDIA commercializes Groq at scale, 2 offsetting forces emerge: lower cost-per-token and improved latency could expand inference throughput and drive more east-west traffic, increasing demand for high-speed switching and optics; conversely, if Groq delivers materially higher utilization and tokens per unit of network bandwidth for certain workloads, the network required per served token could decline. Public NVIDIA materials already indicate an aggressive photonics roadmap aimed at scaling AI factories, including co-packaged optics (CPO) switches and explicit collaboration with Coherent and Lumentum in the silicon photonics supply chain. That linkage is important because it suggests that, independent of Groq, NVIDIA is already pushing optics integration deeper into the switch package to reduce power and increase resiliency; Groq increases the strategic incentive to reduce network power and latency if inference becomes even more distributed and latency-sensitive. For Lumentum and Coherent specifically, the net implication is less about “more optics versus fewer optics” and more about a shift in optics form factor and value capture. Co-packaged optics can reduce reliance on pluggable transceivers in some switch architectures while increasing demand for integrated photonic engines, lasers, fiber attach, packaging processes, and component-level supply. NVIDIA’s own announcements explicitly position Coherent and Lumentum as collaborators in creating the integrated silicon/optics process and supply chain for photonics switches. If Groq accelerates the transition to very large-scale fabrics (more endpoints, higher port speeds, tighter power envelopes), that tends to pull forward CPO adoption and amplifies demand for the underlying photonics components even if the conventional pluggable module TAM is structurally pressured over time. If Groq instead pushes inference toward smaller, more localized pods (closer to users, more regional colocation), that can be optics-positive for DCI and metro connectivity because more sites must be interconnected at high bandwidth with low latency, favoring coherent optics and high-speed interconnect between facilities. The principal risk for optics suppliers is timing and margin structure: a faster move to NVIDIA-driven integrated photonics could concentrate bargaining power and compress margins for commoditized transceiver modules while favoring suppliers with differentiated lasers, integration capability, and qualification depth in NVIDIA’s CPO ecosystem. AEC and copper interconnect implications hinge on whether Groq deployment increases the density of short-reach links inside racks and rows. High-speed copper remains structurally advantaged at very short distances on cost, power, and serviceability, but reaches become constrained as lane speeds and aggregate bandwidth rise, creating a role for active electrical cables (AECs), retimers, and signal-conditioning silicon. Credo explicitly positions its AEC products as enabling reliable lossless 800G connectivity for AI clusters, and the company has highlighted participation at NVIDIA GTC with content focused on extending PCIe/CXL using AECs, indicating relevance to next-generation system topologies that require longer reach and higher signal integrity than passive copper can deliver. If NVIDIA turns Groq into a widely deployed inference card or chassis product, the likely near-term effect is AEC-positive because (1) more inference throughput tends to increase top-of-rack connectivity requirements, (2) distributing inference across more racks and sites increases short-reach links per unit of delivered service, and (3) PCIe-attached accelerator architectures tend to require robust signal conditioning as systems move to PCIe 6.x and beyond. Groq workshop materials explicitly reference GroqCard and GroqNode form factors, reinforcing that PCIe-attached deployment has been central to Groq’s current packaging strategy. The main countervailing risk is that Groq’s deterministic chip-to-chip fabric could be implemented primarily through backplanes and direct board-level connectivity that reduces the need for merchant AECs inside the box; in that case, incremental AEC demand would concentrate more in rack-to-switch and node-to-fabric links rather than within-chassis chip fabrics. Astera Labs implications are connectivity-architecture sensitive and, on balance, skew positive if NVIDIA increases heterogeneity and disaggregation in AI systems. NVIDIA has publicly positioned NVLink Fusion as a pathway for partners to build semi-custom AI infrastructure and has explicitly identified Astera Labs as a partner in that ecosystem, with Astera describing NVLink-related solutions expanding its connectivity platform across PCIe, CXL, and Ethernet plus fleet observability software. A Groq acquisition increases the probability that NVIDIA offers a broader menu of accelerators (training GPUs, inference-focused ASICs) and therefore increases the importance of scalable, high-reliability connectivity, retiming, switching, and telemetry across mixed topologies. If Groq silicon remains PCIe-attached in many deployments, PCIe 6.x retimers/switches and active cable modules become more central, aligning with Astera’s core portfolio. If NVIDIA instead integrates Groq concepts into scale-up fabrics (NVLink-like domains) or uses Groq to expand into inference “appliances” that must be rapidly deployed in colocation environments, the need for standard-compliant, serviceable connectivity with strong RAS/telemetry increases, again aligning with Astera’s positioning. Power equipment and cooling implications for Vertiv and adjacent suppliers should be viewed through the lens of rack power density, cooling modality (air vs liquid), and site deployment model (hyperscale campuses vs distributed colocation/enterprise). Groq claims its LPU and rack designs are “air-cooled by design” and require no complex cooling and power infrastructure, and third-party reporting has described Groq’s approach as relying on parallelism across many lower-power units rather than extreme per-chip performance. If NVIDIA scales Groq as a mainstream inference platform, the mix of data center cooling spend could shift modestly away from the highest-density liquid-cooled racks toward more air-cooled or hybrid deployments, particularly for inference pods placed in existing facilities that cannot easily retrofit for very high rack heat flux. That would be a mix headwind for suppliers most levered exclusively to high-end liquid cooling attachments per rack, but it is not necessarily a volume headwind for Vertiv given the company’s broad exposure to both power and cooling infrastructure and the likelihood that total AI deployment locations expand. Vertiv’s own industry commentary emphasizes that AI racks require higher power-density UPS, batteries, power distribution equipment, and switchgear capable of handling rapid load transients, and that hybrid cooling systems will evolve across deployment environments. Those statements align with a world where inference growth increases the count of powered racks and raises the operational complexity of power delivery even if per-rack density is lower than the most extreme training clusters. The most material infrastructure impact may occur outside the rack and upstream of the data hall: grid interconnects, substations, transformers, switchgear, generators, and utility-scale generation additions. Recent regulatory actions in the U.S. highlight that projected data center demand is already driving large planned increases in electricity generation capacity, underscoring that power availability is a binding constraint. In that context, an inference architecture that lowers joules per token could reduce the power required per unit of inference delivered, but it can also accelerate demand by lowering cost and improving latency, increasing the total volume of inference served (a classic rebound effect). The net outcome is likely continued, elevated demand for power infrastructure even if efficiency improves, with the key swing factor being whether AI capex remains on a multi-year growth trajectory or enters a digestion phase. Other data center infrastructure implications include server/ODM mix, facility design standardization, and networking architecture choices. If NVIDIA positions Groq-based inference as a broadly distributable “standard server + accelerator” solution rather than as an integrated, liquid-cooled rack like GB200 NVL72, spend could shift toward more conventional air-cooled server designs, higher unit volumes of mainstream racks, and faster deployment in colocation footprints, increasing demand for modular power rooms, busways, and rapidly deployable cooling solutions. If NVIDIA instead integrates Groq into its “AI factory” paradigm, the primary effect is likely acceleration of dense back-end fabric build-outs and a faster push toward photonics switching, increasing demand for fiber plant, connectors, and integrated optics supply chains while potentially compressing the lifecycle of transitional architectures based on pluggable optics and mid-reach copper. NVIDIA’s stated roadmap toward co-packaged optics and silicon photonics switches is already oriented toward scaling to very large GPU counts; adding a high-end inference ASIC increases the strategic importance of power-efficient, low-latency fabrics because inference economics become increasingly sensitive to network overhead as compute cost declines. Across the covered segments, the most defensible base case is limited near-term dislocation and a medium-term increase in uncertainty around memory intensity per unit of inference growth. HBM faces the clearest relative risk from an HBM-less inference platform, but supply tightness and GPU training roadmaps reduce the probability of an absolute demand shock over the next 12–24 months. Optical, AEC/copper, and power/cooling are more likely to remain volume-supported because they scale with endpoint count, deployment fragmentation, and total data center footprint, and those tend to rise when inference becomes cheaper and more widely deployed. The highest-conviction second-order effect is a shift in infrastructure mix: incrementally more distributed inference deployments (favoring colocation power/cooling standardization, DCI optics, and serviceable short-reach interconnect) and a gradual migration from pluggable optics toward integrated photonics in back-end fabrics (favoring suppliers positioned in the CPO ecosystem).

TheValueist

76,170 views • 7 months ago

THE CIA's INFORMATION WAR on American citizens and the operation that started it all. PROJECT MOCKINGBIRD. This is one main aspect as to why people are so divided and brainwashed in today's society. Information has always been a crucial component to power and control. Knowledge is power, right? The only difference today from 40+ years ago is that now information flows at a rate that is absolutely mind-boggling and allows you to connect with anyone, at anytime, anywhere in the world, with real-time information 24/7 at your finger tips. So what happens when you have people who are suppose to be giving you accurate, truthful, information, and start to give you information that benefits, manipulates, and persuades the global population with mis and disinformation, protects certain corrupt people and groups by not reporting on other information, and who also lies and slanders other individuals all for the purpose to maintain power and control over the entire population, entirely on PURPOSE? You get what's called PROPAGANDA, aka, a sh*t show of so much purposeful bad and fake information, that it literally starts to persuade and mold the populations overall views and opinions on an array of various topics to fit the nefarious controllers, behind the scenes narrative or agenda. Ultimately benefitting only them. If you take notice, these campaigns have been around for a long time, depending what side your on, your personal views and where you get your overall information will ultimately decide or be a factor of how much it has affected you or how much you are aware of the deception in the first place. Most legacy mainstream media groups are owned and operated by a small group of wealthy globalist individuals who seem to lean towards the left, and some leaning even farther left than others. These campaigns started to really pick up when Trump entered the picture in 2016. Trump was never suppose to win in the first place. Obama reinstated propaganda to be used on American citizens once again in 2013. The task to slander and attempt to destroy and imprison Trump through multiple operations and media campaigns were in full effect for the deep state to regain control of The White House. The group that these campaigns affected the most were the older groups and the younger groups. The people in the middle basically got to see both worlds play out in their lives at a crucial time period in their lives. They've seen the mainstream shift from what it once was, to an extreme lying, propaganda machine when Trump took office. The older aged crowd was so used to the regular nightly news and not as comfortable with newer technology to access alternative media sites and really just stuck with the mainstream's words and kept their faith in the MSM. Now the younger crowd literally grew up with the fully scripted, CIA, propaganda MSM because that is literally all they've ever known and haven't experienced anything else before or have anything to compare it to. Especially when your indoctrinated in a public school system that has been infiltrated itself with a majority of far-left teachers who usually end up being predators as well. That's a whole other story. The problem this CIA operation has caused was a population with people all in their own separate groups and boxes, fighting with each other over many things, instead of the people who started this mess in the first place, that aren't even true because one side has been lied to and manipulated. Brainwashed from a literal military style operation that's used to topple foreign countries during regime changes. And the worst part on top of all this is that know since Elon has started DOGE, a government efficiency operation, we are now uncovering that all these communist, Marxist, ideas, and operations and slander campaigns, and legal cases against Trump, down to these politicians luxurious lifestyles have been all funded and paid for by us, the TAXPAYERS. On the one example above, through USAID, there is proof of over $9 MILLION dollars that went to Reuters for a campaign named, " ACTIVE SOCIAL ENGINEERING DEFENSE LARGE SCALE SOCIAL DECEPTION," which is a definitive contract. There are thousands of examples just like this for all different companies, influencers, T.V. shows, Magazines, Articles, any type of media, and all of them are left leaning outlets. This has been going on for decades. Then on top off all of that, you have people who own these publishing and media companies who are not only getting paid by the taxpayers from the CIA to deceive us, but many of these owners are best friends with people like Jeffery Epstein and Ghislaine Maxell as you can also see above who is with Laurene Powell Jobs, the owner of "The Atlantic" publication, on vacation just hanging out. You wonder why the media never talks about child trafficking. Their paid to cover it up, or they're literally involved themselves... It just get's better and better. The good news is that it is now being exposed and shut down. Let's dive into the history of PROJECT MOCKINGBIRD now. The story of Project Mockingbird begins in the shadow of the Cold War, a period defined by ideological warfare between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the early 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), under the leadership of Director John McCone, launched a covert operation codenamed "Project Mockingbird." Unlike the broader, alleged "Operation Mockingbird" often cited in conspiracy circles as a sprawling media manipulation scheme, the historical Project Mockingbird was a specific, documented wiretapping effort aimed at curbing leaks of classified information. Initiated on March 12, 1963, and concluding on June 15, 1963, Project Mockingbird targeted two Washington-based journalists, Robert S. Allen and Paul J. Scott, who wrote the syndicated "Allen-Scott Report." These columnists had a knack for publishing articles laced with highly classified CIA details—information so sensitive it included Top Secret and Special Intelligence data. Their scoops, often sourced from government insiders, rattled the Kennedy administration, particularly after a July 26, 1962, New York Times article by Hanson Baldwin exposed details of a National Intelligence Estimate comparing U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals. President John F. Kennedy, incensed by such leaks, sought to plug the holes. The operation was a collaborative effort, greenlit by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Joseph Carroll. The CIA’s Office of Security, led by Sheffield Edwards, executed the wiretapping, monitoring the journalists’ home and office phones. The surveillance results identified congressional sources, including then-Speaker of the House John McCormack, who spoke with Scott on March 26, 1963. The "Family Jewels"—a 1973 CIA document declassified in 2007—later exposed this operation, revealing its scope and raising questions about its legality. Daniel L. Pines, a CIA Assistant General Counsel, argued in a 2009 Indiana Law Journal review that the wiretapping likely violated legal bounds, as its primary aim was to trace leaks rather than gather foreign intelligence. This historical Project Mockingbird, though limited in duration and scope, planted a seed of distrust between the government, the press, and the public—a seed that would grow into a broader narrative of media manipulation. From Wiretaps to Media Empire While Project Mockingbird of 1963 was a discrete surveillance effort, it became conflated with a larger CIA program dubbed "Operation Mockingbird." This narrative emerged most prominently in Deborah Davis’s 1979 book, Katharine the Great, which claimed that the CIA, under Frank Wisner of the Office of Policy Coordination, had systematically infiltrated American media starting in the 1950s. Davis alleged that Wisner recruited Washington Post publisher Phil Graham to orchestrate a propaganda network, embedding CIA-friendly journalists in outlets like The New York Times, Newsweek, and CBS. Cord Meyer, a key CIA figure, was said to have taken the reins in 1951, expanding the operation’s reach. The Church Committee’s 1975-1976 investigation lent some credence to these claims, uncovering CIA ties to around 50 American journalists and covert funding of front groups like the National Student Association, exposed by Ramparts magazine in 1967. Carl Bernstein’s 1977 Rolling Stone article, "The CIA and the Media," further detailed how over 400 U.S. journalists had covertly worked with the CIA, often disseminating propaganda abroad that would then filter back to domestic audiences. the CIA admitted overreach. By 1976, under Director George H.W. Bush, the CIA publicly pledged to end paid relationships with U.S. journalists. Yet, skeptics argued the agency merely shifted tactics, maintaining influence through foreign media outlets that indirectly shaped American narratives. The line between historical fact and conspiracy theory blurred, setting the stage for modern reinterpretations of Mockingbird’s legacy. They claim. The Turning Point came in 2013 and the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act Fast forward to July 2, 2013, a date that marks a pivotal shift in the Mockingbird saga. Under President Barack Obama, the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act—embedded in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)—took effect. This legislation amended the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, commonly known as the Smith-Mundt Act, which had long barred government-funded broadcasters like Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty—overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (now the U.S. Agency for Global Media, USAGM)—from disseminating their content domestically. The original intent was to prevent the U.S. government from propagandizing its own citizens, a safeguard rooted in post-World War II fears of authoritarian overreach. The 2013 amendment, co-sponsored by Representatives Adam Smith (D-WA) and Mac Thornberry (R-TX), lifted this restriction, allowing USAGM content to be requested and accessed by Americans. Proponents hailed it as a transparency win, arguing that taxpayers deserved to see what their dollars funded—news and programming in 61 languages, reaching over 100 countries. Critics, however, saw it as a Pandora’s box. Foreign Policy reported on July 14, 2013, that the change unleashed "thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption," raising fears of legalized propaganda. The timing was notable: it followed a decade of post-9/11 media scrutiny and preceded a surge in misinformation debates. In 2024, claimed "Operation Mockingbird never ended," tying the NDAA to a supposed CIA media takeover. No hard evidence supports a direct CIA role, but the legal shift undeniably blurred lines between foreign and domestic information flows. While the USAGM insists its mission remains outward-facing—delivering uncensored news to foreign audiences lacking free press—and that its journalists adhere to strict objectivity standards, the repeal stoked speculation. Could this be a modern resurrection of Mockingbird-style influence? The answer is yes. Most projects they say they stopped just get renamed or go black and off the books so Congress doesn't even know it exists or get access to it. Be careful what you read, who you follow, and who you get your information from. Look for patterns and scripts. They're easy to find once you understand what's really going on and their tactics and techniques. Keep asking questions, cross reference everything, do your due diligence, have multiple sources, do not buy everything at face value, go deeper, think about the bigger picture or long term goals. Remember that there are layers, optics, and timing with everything.
11:31

THE CIA's INFORMATION WAR on American citizens and the operation that started it all. PROJECT MOCKINGBIRD. This is one main aspect as to why people are so divided and brainwashed in today's society. Information has always been a crucial component to power and control. Knowledge is power, right? The only difference today from 40+ years ago is that now information flows at a rate that is absolutely mind-boggling and allows you to connect with anyone, at anytime, anywhere in the world, with real-time information 24/7 at your finger tips. So what happens when you have people who are suppose to be giving you accurate, truthful, information, and start to give you information that benefits, manipulates, and persuades the global population with mis and disinformation, protects certain corrupt people and groups by not reporting on other information, and who also lies and slanders other individuals all for the purpose to maintain power and control over the entire population, entirely on PURPOSE? You get what's called PROPAGANDA, aka, a sh*t show of so much purposeful bad and fake information, that it literally starts to persuade and mold the populations overall views and opinions on an array of various topics to fit the nefarious controllers, behind the scenes narrative or agenda. Ultimately benefitting only them. If you take notice, these campaigns have been around for a long time, depending what side your on, your personal views and where you get your overall information will ultimately decide or be a factor of how much it has affected you or how much you are aware of the deception in the first place. Most legacy mainstream media groups are owned and operated by a small group of wealthy globalist individuals who seem to lean towards the left, and some leaning even farther left than others. These campaigns started to really pick up when Trump entered the picture in 2016. Trump was never suppose to win in the first place. Obama reinstated propaganda to be used on American citizens once again in 2013. The task to slander and attempt to destroy and imprison Trump through multiple operations and media campaigns were in full effect for the deep state to regain control of The White House. The group that these campaigns affected the most were the older groups and the younger groups. The people in the middle basically got to see both worlds play out in their lives at a crucial time period in their lives. They've seen the mainstream shift from what it once was, to an extreme lying, propaganda machine when Trump took office. The older aged crowd was so used to the regular nightly news and not as comfortable with newer technology to access alternative media sites and really just stuck with the mainstream's words and kept their faith in the MSM. Now the younger crowd literally grew up with the fully scripted, CIA, propaganda MSM because that is literally all they've ever known and haven't experienced anything else before or have anything to compare it to. Especially when your indoctrinated in a public school system that has been infiltrated itself with a majority of far-left teachers who usually end up being predators as well. That's a whole other story. The problem this CIA operation has caused was a population with people all in their own separate groups and boxes, fighting with each other over many things, instead of the people who started this mess in the first place, that aren't even true because one side has been lied to and manipulated. Brainwashed from a literal military style operation that's used to topple foreign countries during regime changes. And the worst part on top of all this is that know since Elon has started DOGE, a government efficiency operation, we are now uncovering that all these communist, Marxist, ideas, and operations and slander campaigns, and legal cases against Trump, down to these politicians luxurious lifestyles have been all funded and paid for by us, the TAXPAYERS. On the one example above, through USAID, there is proof of over $9 MILLION dollars that went to Reuters for a campaign named, " ACTIVE SOCIAL ENGINEERING DEFENSE LARGE SCALE SOCIAL DECEPTION," which is a definitive contract. There are thousands of examples just like this for all different companies, influencers, T.V. shows, Magazines, Articles, any type of media, and all of them are left leaning outlets. This has been going on for decades. Then on top off all of that, you have people who own these publishing and media companies who are not only getting paid by the taxpayers from the CIA to deceive us, but many of these owners are best friends with people like Jeffery Epstein and Ghislaine Maxell as you can also see above who is with Laurene Powell Jobs, the owner of "The Atlantic" publication, on vacation just hanging out. You wonder why the media never talks about child trafficking. Their paid to cover it up, or they're literally involved themselves... It just get's better and better. The good news is that it is now being exposed and shut down. Let's dive into the history of PROJECT MOCKINGBIRD now. The story of Project Mockingbird begins in the shadow of the Cold War, a period defined by ideological warfare between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the early 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), under the leadership of Director John McCone, launched a covert operation codenamed "Project Mockingbird." Unlike the broader, alleged "Operation Mockingbird" often cited in conspiracy circles as a sprawling media manipulation scheme, the historical Project Mockingbird was a specific, documented wiretapping effort aimed at curbing leaks of classified information. Initiated on March 12, 1963, and concluding on June 15, 1963, Project Mockingbird targeted two Washington-based journalists, Robert S. Allen and Paul J. Scott, who wrote the syndicated "Allen-Scott Report." These columnists had a knack for publishing articles laced with highly classified CIA details—information so sensitive it included Top Secret and Special Intelligence data. Their scoops, often sourced from government insiders, rattled the Kennedy administration, particularly after a July 26, 1962, New York Times article by Hanson Baldwin exposed details of a National Intelligence Estimate comparing U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals. President John F. Kennedy, incensed by such leaks, sought to plug the holes. The operation was a collaborative effort, greenlit by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Joseph Carroll. The CIA’s Office of Security, led by Sheffield Edwards, executed the wiretapping, monitoring the journalists’ home and office phones. The surveillance results identified congressional sources, including then-Speaker of the House John McCormack, who spoke with Scott on March 26, 1963. The "Family Jewels"—a 1973 CIA document declassified in 2007—later exposed this operation, revealing its scope and raising questions about its legality. Daniel L. Pines, a CIA Assistant General Counsel, argued in a 2009 Indiana Law Journal review that the wiretapping likely violated legal bounds, as its primary aim was to trace leaks rather than gather foreign intelligence. This historical Project Mockingbird, though limited in duration and scope, planted a seed of distrust between the government, the press, and the public—a seed that would grow into a broader narrative of media manipulation. From Wiretaps to Media Empire While Project Mockingbird of 1963 was a discrete surveillance effort, it became conflated with a larger CIA program dubbed "Operation Mockingbird." This narrative emerged most prominently in Deborah Davis’s 1979 book, Katharine the Great, which claimed that the CIA, under Frank Wisner of the Office of Policy Coordination, had systematically infiltrated American media starting in the 1950s. Davis alleged that Wisner recruited Washington Post publisher Phil Graham to orchestrate a propaganda network, embedding CIA-friendly journalists in outlets like The New York Times, Newsweek, and CBS. Cord Meyer, a key CIA figure, was said to have taken the reins in 1951, expanding the operation’s reach. The Church Committee’s 1975-1976 investigation lent some credence to these claims, uncovering CIA ties to around 50 American journalists and covert funding of front groups like the National Student Association, exposed by Ramparts magazine in 1967. Carl Bernstein’s 1977 Rolling Stone article, "The CIA and the Media," further detailed how over 400 U.S. journalists had covertly worked with the CIA, often disseminating propaganda abroad that would then filter back to domestic audiences. the CIA admitted overreach. By 1976, under Director George H.W. Bush, the CIA publicly pledged to end paid relationships with U.S. journalists. Yet, skeptics argued the agency merely shifted tactics, maintaining influence through foreign media outlets that indirectly shaped American narratives. The line between historical fact and conspiracy theory blurred, setting the stage for modern reinterpretations of Mockingbird’s legacy. They claim. The Turning Point came in 2013 and the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act Fast forward to July 2, 2013, a date that marks a pivotal shift in the Mockingbird saga. Under President Barack Obama, the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act—embedded in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)—took effect. This legislation amended the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, commonly known as the Smith-Mundt Act, which had long barred government-funded broadcasters like Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty—overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (now the U.S. Agency for Global Media, USAGM)—from disseminating their content domestically. The original intent was to prevent the U.S. government from propagandizing its own citizens, a safeguard rooted in post-World War II fears of authoritarian overreach. The 2013 amendment, co-sponsored by Representatives Adam Smith (D-WA) and Mac Thornberry (R-TX), lifted this restriction, allowing USAGM content to be requested and accessed by Americans. Proponents hailed it as a transparency win, arguing that taxpayers deserved to see what their dollars funded—news and programming in 61 languages, reaching over 100 countries. Critics, however, saw it as a Pandora’s box. Foreign Policy reported on July 14, 2013, that the change unleashed "thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption," raising fears of legalized propaganda. The timing was notable: it followed a decade of post-9/11 media scrutiny and preceded a surge in misinformation debates. In 2024, claimed "Operation Mockingbird never ended," tying the NDAA to a supposed CIA media takeover. No hard evidence supports a direct CIA role, but the legal shift undeniably blurred lines between foreign and domestic information flows. While the USAGM insists its mission remains outward-facing—delivering uncensored news to foreign audiences lacking free press—and that its journalists adhere to strict objectivity standards, the repeal stoked speculation. Could this be a modern resurrection of Mockingbird-style influence? The answer is yes. Most projects they say they stopped just get renamed or go black and off the books so Congress doesn't even know it exists or get access to it. Be careful what you read, who you follow, and who you get your information from. Look for patterns and scripts. They're easy to find once you understand what's really going on and their tactics and techniques. Keep asking questions, cross reference everything, do your due diligence, have multiple sources, do not buy everything at face value, go deeper, think about the bigger picture or long term goals. Remember that there are layers, optics, and timing with everything.

The SCIF

30,873 views • 1 year ago

We’re often told Western societies are experiencing conditions reminiscent of the German Weimar Republic. But what exactly was the German Weimar Republic? I’d like to explain the republic…and its incredible levels of debauchery, meaninglessness, sex, drugs, and—of course—Jews. “The decay of moral values in all areas of life—the period of deepest German degradation—coincided exactly with the height of Jewish power in Germany.” -Karl Wiehe Background The Weimar Republic is the unofficial name—that was popularized by Adolf Hitler—of the German nation-state that existed from November of 1918 to March of 1933. It was named for the city of Weimar, Germany where the constitutional assembly that established the new German republic met. The official name of the republic was the German Reich. The Weimar Republic was established after Germany’s loss in WWI. Germany was forced under the Treaty of Versailles to accept “full responsibility” for the war and pay the debts of all the allied countries. Being forced to pay these massive debts devastated the German economy and skyrocketed inflation, unemployment, and suicide within Germany. At one point 40% of Germans were unemployed and many were homeless. In 1932, the German suicide rate was more than three times that of Great Britain and in one two-year period, Germany had more suicides than there had been deaths of American soldiers in all of WWI. The German currency became the most worthless currency in Europe. A loaf of bread in Berlin that cost around 160 German Marks at the end of 1922, cost 200,000,000,000 German Marks by late 1923. The German peoples’ life savings and purchasing power had melted away over the course of a few months. With a single US dollar being worth 4,210,500,000,000 German Marks by November of 1923, foreign currencies had much greater buying power in Germany. So naturally, foreigners flocked to Germany to take advantage of the cheap prices. With these foreigners arriving en masse, Germans desperate for work turned to one of primary industries the foreigners flocked to Germany for: the sex industry. Sex and Drugs Germans began flocking to urban hubs in search of work, and no urban hub was more popular than Berlin. Prostitution in Berlin wasn’t explicitly legal but existed in a kind of legal gray area where certain aspects of the sex trade were regulated while others remained unregulated. However, enforcement of any laws restricting prostitution was lax to non-existent. On any given night up to 100,000 prostitutes would line the streets of Berlin. Every type of prostitute was available: midgets, pregnant prostitutes who lined up on the street according to how pregnant they were, prostitutes that purposefully tried to be ugly, prostitutes with acid-scarred faces, prostitutes with missing limbs, mother and daughter prostitute pairs, dominatrixes, even hunchback prostitutes. Interracial, inter-generational, forced or abusive sex acts were all available for the right price. There was also a large male prostitution industry and homosexual men from across Europe came to Germany to pay for homosexual sex. And unlike most cities, Berlin boasted having not a single red-light district—but multiple. Child prostitutes were bought and sold in Weimar Berlin in a booming industry. Advertisements for child prostitutes were even placed in German magazines and newspapers. A person could order a child, or any other type of prostitute for that matter, over the phone and have them a few short minutes later. British historian Sir Arthur Bryant describes throngs of child prostitutes outside the doors of the great Berlin hotels and restaurants. Bryant adds, “most of them—the night clubs and vice resorts—were owned and managed by Jews. And it was the Jews among the promoters of this trade who were remembered in after years.” There were homosexual, lesbian, and even transsexual bars where, occasionally, public masturbation and orgies took place. These homosexual bars weren’t isolated or rare one-off outliers either, there were over 50 lesbian bars in Berlin and around 100 homosexual bars total. Drag shows and cross dressing were commonplace in these bars. Sexual acts involving torture or acts bringing a victim close to death, or even—in some instances—to death were performed in Weimar Germany (called Lustmord). As often happens when violent sexual perversions arise, so too do serial killers playing out their fetishes in reality. I refuse to name serial killers in my writings because I think it glorifies them, but you can look them up yourself. German Newspapers devoted entire sections to the violent sexual crimes of these serial killers and fictional accounts of murders sold very well on German book stands. Serial Killers had a romanticized lore around them, similar to what we see in western society today. Alongside prostitution and homosexual clubs, porn also enjoyed a golden age during the Weimar Republic. Like prostitution, porn existed in a kind of legal gray area where enforcement of any regulations on it were lax to non-existent. Images could be purchased under-the-counter at most street media kiosks. According to one report there were as many as 30 homosexual publications on any given Berlin media kiosk. Above all, pornography featuring models who bore a resemblance to the biggest movie stars of the day, such as Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo, were in the highest demand. Fashion began to blur the lines between masculine and feminine. The female image began to experiment with a more strong-willed independent tone and some women began to dress in masculine clothing. Similarly, male fashion began to experiment with feminization and cross-dressing amongst men began to rise. Berlin’s women began to question the need for a man in their lives at all and many Berlin women had no desire to start or raise a family. Drug use in the Weimar Republic also ran rampant and Berlin gained a reputation as a drug dealing hub around Germany and Europe. Cocaine was the most popular drug in the Weimar Republic and only required a simple prescription from a doctor. That said, opium (a predecessor to heroin), morphine and amphetamines were all readily available and extensively used as well. The drug usage was so pervasive there was even experimentation with using drugs for “scientific” sexual purposes. One of the chief “scientists” behind this experimentation with sex was a man named Magnus Hirshfeld. Magnus Hirschfeld was a homosexual Jew and one of the thought leaders behind the sexual debauchery overtaking Berlin. Hirschfeld had founded political organizations that fought for the rights of homosexuals in Germany well before the Weimar era and as far back as 1896. He led the campaign to overturn a statue of German Law called Paragraph 175 which forbid homosexuality in Germany. Hirschfeld would later go on to write a 1914 book called The Homosexuality of Men and Women in which he attempted to prove homosexuality occurred in every society around the world. Hirschfeld’s crowning achievement of debauchery, however, occurred in July of 1919 when he opened The Institute of Sexual Research (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) in Berlin. The institute’s stated purpose was to establish the sexual sciences…and establish the sexual sciences the institute did. It was at the Institute of Sexual Research where the initial rubric for the innumerable genders we see in leftism today originated. At the institute, Hirschfeld developed a system which categorized 64 possible types of sexual intermediary (aka genders) and it was Hirschfeld who coined the term transvestite in 1910 and the term transsexual in 1923. The institute even performed sex re-assignment surgery. The Institute of Sexual Research also housed a large library for any and all homosexual, transsexual, and erotic literature. The institute had places for homosexuals to stay overnight as well as some of the first counseling services specifically tailored to homosexuals. Homosexual-specific medical services were provided in the institute as well. The institute also housed the Museum of Sex, an educational resource for the public, which was reported to have been visited by school classes. I think the writer Luigi Barzini most succinctly summarized the rampant debauchery that was Weimar Berlin when he said: “I saw pimps offering anything to anybody: little boys, little girls, robust young men, libidinous women, animals. The story went the rounds that a male goose whose neck you cut at just the right ecstatic moment would give you the most delicious frisson of all—as it allowed you to enjoy sod*my, bestiality, homosexuality, necrophilia, and sadism at one stroke.” A debaucherous infestation had overtaken Berlin and nowhere was that more evident than in the arts. Art, Music, and Film Art, music, and film in Berlin were overtaken by the sexual revolution and a move toward a Jewish-influenced anti-authoritarianism as well. The Berlin film industry started releasing risqué and homosexual films. The world’s first known homosexual film—Anders als die Andern (1919)—came out in Berlin during the Weimar era and is the story a man falling in love with one of his male violin students. This film was written by and featured none other than Magnus Hirschfeld himself. Another film called Mädchen in Uniform (1931) is about a schoolgirl who falls in love with her female teacher. The two commence a forbidden love and eventually even share an on-screen lesbian kiss on the mouth. The film ends when this lesbian love is exposed and the protagonist attempts suicide. German expressionist cinema also came to prominence in the Weimar Republic. This form of cinema emphasized depicting the artist's inner emotions (no matter how crude those emotions may be) rather than attempting to replicate reality. Two of the three key figures for the German expressionist movement were the Jews Fritz Lang and Robert Wiene. The expressionist film Metropolis was one of the biggest films of the Weimar era. Metropolis’ content is emblematic of the anti-authoritarian and communist messages of German expressionist cinema. The film takes place in a futuristic city where a beautiful and cultured utopia exists above a bleak underworld populated by mistreated workers. When a privileged young man discovers the grim scene under the city, he becomes intent on helping the workers. He befriends a rebellious teacher which puts him at odds with his authoritative father. The film was directed the Jew Fritz Lang and produced by the Jew Erich Pommer. The credits of the films of the Berlin movie industry were also littered with Jews. In fact, in 1931, over 60 percent of German films were produced by Jews and 82 percent of film scripts were written by Jews. In the art scene, a thoroughly anti-authoritarian and communist movement called Dada arose. The Dadaist movement was comprised of artists who rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, instead expressing nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest in their works. Dadaist works opposed any type of authority and made fun of far-right figures, including Hitler himself. According to Wikipedia, some sources claim the Dadaist movement was founded by a group of Jewish modernist artists. In music, one of the most popular singers of the day was a woman who was largely regarded as “the first official lesbian of Berlin” named Claire Waldoff. Waldoff dressed masculine and made no secret of her sexuality while actively trying to convert other culturally important women to become lesbian. One culturally important woman Waldoff succeeded in converting to bisexuality was one of the biggest movie stars in the world, Marlene Dietrich. Marlene was famous for pushing social norms and sometimes wore a tuxedo, helping to erode the image of traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine roles. Marlene credits Clarie Waldoff as “introducing her to lesbian love”. Marlene Deitrich was openly bisexual and an icon for homosexual women around the world when no other homosexual icons existed. One newspaper dubbed Dietrich “perhaps the busiest and most passionate bisexual in theatrical Berlin.” Anita Berber was one of the most popular nude dancers of the Weimar Republic and danced to songs with titles like, suicide, morphiem, and mad house. One of her husbands was also openly homosexual. In one famous story about Anita, she was being ignored by one of the tables she was dancing for, so she went over to the table, stood on top of it, and started peeing on the table while drinking their champagne. What a gal… Architecture One aesthetic element that I think tends to be overlooked in most writings on social decay is architecture. It should come as no surprise that the principal architecture movement of the Weimar Republic—called expressionist architecture—also took a turn from an aesthetic focused on beauty and perfection toward an aesthetic that focused on “distortion of form to create an emotional effect”. This is architecture that’s generally perceived as hideous or repulsive. I’d also argue there’s a larger psychological component to this expressionist architecture. This ugly architecture contributes to social decay by glorifying the more disgusting elements of society and humanity. It subconsciously undermines the idea that society should strive for perfection and instead is a call to accept society’s more heinous elements. This repulsive architecture is, in my view, anti-authoritarian and destructive to social norms. Two of the key architects of the expressionist architecture movement were the Jews Bruno Taut and Erich Mendelsohn. Jews One of the key factors in Hitler’s rise to power was his opposition of the Jewish influence inside Berlin. As such, this article would be incomplete without looking at the Jewish influence that existed inside Berlin or—possibly more importantly—the German public’s perception of the Jewish influence inside Berlin. Here are some of the figures I think best illustrate the Jewish over-representation in the Weimar Republic. All these figures should be viewed in consideration of this fact: Jews made up less than 1% (.09%) of the German population in the years of the Weimar Republic. In my opinion, these figures are staggering primarily because of the Jews’ immense over-representation in major positions of power within German society. Politics • The author of the 1919 German constitution was the Jew Hugo Preuss. • One quarter of the members of the 8-person Council of the People's Deputies that established the Weimar Republic were Jews (Otto Landesberg and Hugo Haase). • The main competing faction against the official Weimar government was headed by the Jew Kurt Eisner. • The SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) was the political party that primarily ran the Weimar Republic. 22% of the entirety of the SPD were Jews. • The SPD’s main political theorist was a Jew: Eduard Bernstein • Two of the political thinkers most respected by the SPD were Jews: Ferdinand Lassalle, Leopold Sonnemann. • SPD's “foremost theoretician of this century” was the Jew Rudolf Hilferding. • SPD Key Figure, industrialist, and political thinker Walther Rathenau was a Jew. • The Vice President of the Berlin Police was the jew Bernhard Weiss. • In the first Weimar administration Vice Chancellor Eugen Schiffer was Jewish as was Weimar Interior Minister Erich Koch-Weser. • 15% of the members of the Reichstag (German Parliament) were Jewish. • A large number of the members of the political elite of the Weimar Republic were Jews: Rosa Luxemburg, Paul Levi, Ernst Toller, Erich Muhsam, Gustav Landauer, Eugen Levine, and Karl Radek. The Press • The Ullstein Press was the publisher of many of the largest German newspapers and was owned by the Jew Leopold Ullstein. • The Berliner Iliustrirte Zeitung was one of the largest German newspapers. It was Published by the Ullstein Press and its chief editor was the Jew Kurt Korff. • The Vossische Zeitung was another of the largest German newspapers and was published by the Ullstein Press. Its chief editor was the Jew Georg Bernhard. • Another of the othe r largest newspaper publishers was the Jew Rudolf Mosse. • The Berliner Tageblatt was the largest of Rudolf Mosse’s newspapers and its chief editor was the Jew Theodor Wolff • Editor-in-chief of the SPD’s party paper Vorwärts was the Jew Friedrich Stampfer The Arts • The Jew Erich Pommer was a German-born film producer and executive. According to Wikipedia, “Pommer was perhaps the most powerful person in the German and European film industries in the 1920s and early 1930s.” • In 1931, over 60 percent of German films were produced by Jews and 82 percent of film scripts were written by Jewish writers. • Two of the three key figures for the largest film movement of the Weimar era—the German expressionist movement—were the Jews Fritz Lang and Robert Wiene. • Two of the key Architects of the expressionist architecture movement were the Jews Bruno Taut and Erich Mendelsohn. • Some of the most influential producers, directors, & actors in Weimar cinema were Jews as well to name a few: Paul Davidson, Joseph Mandel, Jules Greenbaum, Max Reinhardt, Josef Von Sternberg, Fritz Kohn, Otto Wallburg, Peter Lowenstein. • To conclude the arts, some claim the anti-authoritarian and thoroughly communist Dadaist movement was founded by a group of Jewish modernist artists. Sex • Magnus Hirschfeld was Jewish. He was dubbed "the Einstein of Sex". He was president of World League of Sexual Reform and of course, founder of the Institute for Sexual Research. • Ivan Bloch was Jewish and is often called the "first Sexologist". • As quoted by Sir Arthur Bryant earlier, “most of them—the night clubs and vice resorts—were owned and managed by Jews. And it was the Jews among the promoters of this trade who were remembered in after years.” Other notable Jewish over-representations: (**Please Note** these next five bullet points are not official numbers and are from a NSDAP piece that was distributed in Weimar Germany. I'm including them because although I can't be completely sure of their accuracy, I think they most likely do generally represent the amalgamations of Jewish power in Weimar society. And, at the very least, these numbers represent the German public’s perception of Jewish amalgamations of power in Weimar society): • 56% of notaries were Jews. • 52% of doctors were Jews. • 45% of Hospital Directors were Jews. • 48% of lawyers were Jews. • 35% of dentists were Jews. One last note on the Jews of the Weimar Republic. I included a link with more detail below, but many Weimar Jews actively tried to conceal their Jewish identity and even went so far as bragging to other Jews when gentiles were unable to identify them. This is one of the reasons that, to this day, it’s somewhat difficult to identify who the Jews of the Weimar Republic were. What this means is that, although the identity of every Jew I list is verified, there are undoubtedly other prominent and non-prominent Jews I was unable to identify. The provided list should not be viewed as wholly representative of the Jewish influence within Weimar Germany. But even just considering the provided list, you can see the Jewish influence was substantial for a race of people comprising less than 1% of the total German population. This Jewish over-representation is even more substantial when you consider that many of these Jewish amalgamations of over-representation occurred within many of Germany’s most important social, political, and economic institutions. The Weimar Republic was often referred to as the "Juden Republic" (Jew's Republic) by Germans. I think it's easy to see why... Enter the National Socialists After Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Goebbels and the Brownshirts began shutting down the homosexual dive bars that had risen to prominence during the Weimar Republic. They made one of the most popular homosexual bars in Berlin their headquarters after shutting it down. They pillaged Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Research and Hirschfeld’s books on transsexual ideology were some of the first books the National Socialists burned. From Wikipedia itself, the books the National Socialists burned were: • Writings on sexuality and sexual education which serve the egocentric pleasure of the individual and thus, destroy the principles of race and Volk. • Pornography and explicit literature. • Pacifist literature. • All books degrading German purity. • Literature by Jewish authors, regardless of the field. • Popular entertainment literature that depicts life and life's goals in a superficial, unrealistic and sickly sweet manner, based on a bourgeois or upper class view of life. • The works of traitors, emigrants and authors from foreign countries who believe they can attack and denigrate the new Germany. • The literature of Marxism, Communism and Bolshevism. • Literature with liberal, democratic tendencies and attitudes, and writings supporting the Weimar Republic. • Books that advocate "art" which is decadent, bloodless, or purely constructivist. • The decadent, destructive and Volk-damaging writings of "Asphalt and Civilization" literati • Patriotic kitsch in literature. • All historical writings whose purpose is to denigrate the origin, the spirit and the culture of the German Volk, or to dissolve the racial and structural order of the Volk, or that denies the force and importance of leading historical figures in favor of egalitarianism and the masses, and which seeks to drag them through the mud. Very quickly after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, the chief purveyors of the degeneracy that had overtaken Berlin would leave the city and National Socialist Germany would rise from its ashes. The rest—as they say—is history. (Sources and further reading in the comments below)
28:45

We’re often told Western societies are experiencing conditions reminiscent of the German Weimar Republic. But what exactly was the German Weimar Republic? I’d like to explain the republic…and its incredible levels of debauchery, meaninglessness, sex, drugs, and—of course—Jews. “The decay of moral values in all areas of life—the period of deepest German degradation—coincided exactly with the height of Jewish power in Germany.” -Karl Wiehe Background The Weimar Republic is the unofficial name—that was popularized by Adolf Hitler—of the German nation-state that existed from November of 1918 to March of 1933. It was named for the city of Weimar, Germany where the constitutional assembly that established the new German republic met. The official name of the republic was the German Reich. The Weimar Republic was established after Germany’s loss in WWI. Germany was forced under the Treaty of Versailles to accept “full responsibility” for the war and pay the debts of all the allied countries. Being forced to pay these massive debts devastated the German economy and skyrocketed inflation, unemployment, and suicide within Germany. At one point 40% of Germans were unemployed and many were homeless. In 1932, the German suicide rate was more than three times that of Great Britain and in one two-year period, Germany had more suicides than there had been deaths of American soldiers in all of WWI. The German currency became the most worthless currency in Europe. A loaf of bread in Berlin that cost around 160 German Marks at the end of 1922, cost 200,000,000,000 German Marks by late 1923. The German peoples’ life savings and purchasing power had melted away over the course of a few months. With a single US dollar being worth 4,210,500,000,000 German Marks by November of 1923, foreign currencies had much greater buying power in Germany. So naturally, foreigners flocked to Germany to take advantage of the cheap prices. With these foreigners arriving en masse, Germans desperate for work turned to one of primary industries the foreigners flocked to Germany for: the sex industry. Sex and Drugs Germans began flocking to urban hubs in search of work, and no urban hub was more popular than Berlin. Prostitution in Berlin wasn’t explicitly legal but existed in a kind of legal gray area where certain aspects of the sex trade were regulated while others remained unregulated. However, enforcement of any laws restricting prostitution was lax to non-existent. On any given night up to 100,000 prostitutes would line the streets of Berlin. Every type of prostitute was available: midgets, pregnant prostitutes who lined up on the street according to how pregnant they were, prostitutes that purposefully tried to be ugly, prostitutes with acid-scarred faces, prostitutes with missing limbs, mother and daughter prostitute pairs, dominatrixes, even hunchback prostitutes. Interracial, inter-generational, forced or abusive sex acts were all available for the right price. There was also a large male prostitution industry and homosexual men from across Europe came to Germany to pay for homosexual sex. And unlike most cities, Berlin boasted having not a single red-light district—but multiple. Child prostitutes were bought and sold in Weimar Berlin in a booming industry. Advertisements for child prostitutes were even placed in German magazines and newspapers. A person could order a child, or any other type of prostitute for that matter, over the phone and have them a few short minutes later. British historian Sir Arthur Bryant describes throngs of child prostitutes outside the doors of the great Berlin hotels and restaurants. Bryant adds, “most of them—the night clubs and vice resorts—were owned and managed by Jews. And it was the Jews among the promoters of this trade who were remembered in after years.” There were homosexual, lesbian, and even transsexual bars where, occasionally, public masturbation and orgies took place. These homosexual bars weren’t isolated or rare one-off outliers either, there were over 50 lesbian bars in Berlin and around 100 homosexual bars total. Drag shows and cross dressing were commonplace in these bars. Sexual acts involving torture or acts bringing a victim close to death, or even—in some instances—to death were performed in Weimar Germany (called Lustmord). As often happens when violent sexual perversions arise, so too do serial killers playing out their fetishes in reality. I refuse to name serial killers in my writings because I think it glorifies them, but you can look them up yourself. German Newspapers devoted entire sections to the violent sexual crimes of these serial killers and fictional accounts of murders sold very well on German book stands. Serial Killers had a romanticized lore around them, similar to what we see in western society today. Alongside prostitution and homosexual clubs, porn also enjoyed a golden age during the Weimar Republic. Like prostitution, porn existed in a kind of legal gray area where enforcement of any regulations on it were lax to non-existent. Images could be purchased under-the-counter at most street media kiosks. According to one report there were as many as 30 homosexual publications on any given Berlin media kiosk. Above all, pornography featuring models who bore a resemblance to the biggest movie stars of the day, such as Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo, were in the highest demand. Fashion began to blur the lines between masculine and feminine. The female image began to experiment with a more strong-willed independent tone and some women began to dress in masculine clothing. Similarly, male fashion began to experiment with feminization and cross-dressing amongst men began to rise. Berlin’s women began to question the need for a man in their lives at all and many Berlin women had no desire to start or raise a family. Drug use in the Weimar Republic also ran rampant and Berlin gained a reputation as a drug dealing hub around Germany and Europe. Cocaine was the most popular drug in the Weimar Republic and only required a simple prescription from a doctor. That said, opium (a predecessor to heroin), morphine and amphetamines were all readily available and extensively used as well. The drug usage was so pervasive there was even experimentation with using drugs for “scientific” sexual purposes. One of the chief “scientists” behind this experimentation with sex was a man named Magnus Hirshfeld. Magnus Hirschfeld was a homosexual Jew and one of the thought leaders behind the sexual debauchery overtaking Berlin. Hirschfeld had founded political organizations that fought for the rights of homosexuals in Germany well before the Weimar era and as far back as 1896. He led the campaign to overturn a statue of German Law called Paragraph 175 which forbid homosexuality in Germany. Hirschfeld would later go on to write a 1914 book called The Homosexuality of Men and Women in which he attempted to prove homosexuality occurred in every society around the world. Hirschfeld’s crowning achievement of debauchery, however, occurred in July of 1919 when he opened The Institute of Sexual Research (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) in Berlin. The institute’s stated purpose was to establish the sexual sciences…and establish the sexual sciences the institute did. It was at the Institute of Sexual Research where the initial rubric for the innumerable genders we see in leftism today originated. At the institute, Hirschfeld developed a system which categorized 64 possible types of sexual intermediary (aka genders) and it was Hirschfeld who coined the term transvestite in 1910 and the term transsexual in 1923. The institute even performed sex re-assignment surgery. The Institute of Sexual Research also housed a large library for any and all homosexual, transsexual, and erotic literature. The institute had places for homosexuals to stay overnight as well as some of the first counseling services specifically tailored to homosexuals. Homosexual-specific medical services were provided in the institute as well. The institute also housed the Museum of Sex, an educational resource for the public, which was reported to have been visited by school classes. I think the writer Luigi Barzini most succinctly summarized the rampant debauchery that was Weimar Berlin when he said: “I saw pimps offering anything to anybody: little boys, little girls, robust young men, libidinous women, animals. The story went the rounds that a male goose whose neck you cut at just the right ecstatic moment would give you the most delicious frisson of all—as it allowed you to enjoy sod*my, bestiality, homosexuality, necrophilia, and sadism at one stroke.” A debaucherous infestation had overtaken Berlin and nowhere was that more evident than in the arts. Art, Music, and Film Art, music, and film in Berlin were overtaken by the sexual revolution and a move toward a Jewish-influenced anti-authoritarianism as well. The Berlin film industry started releasing risqué and homosexual films. The world’s first known homosexual film—Anders als die Andern (1919)—came out in Berlin during the Weimar era and is the story a man falling in love with one of his male violin students. This film was written by and featured none other than Magnus Hirschfeld himself. Another film called Mädchen in Uniform (1931) is about a schoolgirl who falls in love with her female teacher. The two commence a forbidden love and eventually even share an on-screen lesbian kiss on the mouth. The film ends when this lesbian love is exposed and the protagonist attempts suicide. German expressionist cinema also came to prominence in the Weimar Republic. This form of cinema emphasized depicting the artist's inner emotions (no matter how crude those emotions may be) rather than attempting to replicate reality. Two of the three key figures for the German expressionist movement were the Jews Fritz Lang and Robert Wiene. The expressionist film Metropolis was one of the biggest films of the Weimar era. Metropolis’ content is emblematic of the anti-authoritarian and communist messages of German expressionist cinema. The film takes place in a futuristic city where a beautiful and cultured utopia exists above a bleak underworld populated by mistreated workers. When a privileged young man discovers the grim scene under the city, he becomes intent on helping the workers. He befriends a rebellious teacher which puts him at odds with his authoritative father. The film was directed the Jew Fritz Lang and produced by the Jew Erich Pommer. The credits of the films of the Berlin movie industry were also littered with Jews. In fact, in 1931, over 60 percent of German films were produced by Jews and 82 percent of film scripts were written by Jews. In the art scene, a thoroughly anti-authoritarian and communist movement called Dada arose. The Dadaist movement was comprised of artists who rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, instead expressing nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest in their works. Dadaist works opposed any type of authority and made fun of far-right figures, including Hitler himself. According to Wikipedia, some sources claim the Dadaist movement was founded by a group of Jewish modernist artists. In music, one of the most popular singers of the day was a woman who was largely regarded as “the first official lesbian of Berlin” named Claire Waldoff. Waldoff dressed masculine and made no secret of her sexuality while actively trying to convert other culturally important women to become lesbian. One culturally important woman Waldoff succeeded in converting to bisexuality was one of the biggest movie stars in the world, Marlene Dietrich. Marlene was famous for pushing social norms and sometimes wore a tuxedo, helping to erode the image of traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine roles. Marlene credits Clarie Waldoff as “introducing her to lesbian love”. Marlene Deitrich was openly bisexual and an icon for homosexual women around the world when no other homosexual icons existed. One newspaper dubbed Dietrich “perhaps the busiest and most passionate bisexual in theatrical Berlin.” Anita Berber was one of the most popular nude dancers of the Weimar Republic and danced to songs with titles like, suicide, morphiem, and mad house. One of her husbands was also openly homosexual. In one famous story about Anita, she was being ignored by one of the tables she was dancing for, so she went over to the table, stood on top of it, and started peeing on the table while drinking their champagne. What a gal… Architecture One aesthetic element that I think tends to be overlooked in most writings on social decay is architecture. It should come as no surprise that the principal architecture movement of the Weimar Republic—called expressionist architecture—also took a turn from an aesthetic focused on beauty and perfection toward an aesthetic that focused on “distortion of form to create an emotional effect”. This is architecture that’s generally perceived as hideous or repulsive. I’d also argue there’s a larger psychological component to this expressionist architecture. This ugly architecture contributes to social decay by glorifying the more disgusting elements of society and humanity. It subconsciously undermines the idea that society should strive for perfection and instead is a call to accept society’s more heinous elements. This repulsive architecture is, in my view, anti-authoritarian and destructive to social norms. Two of the key architects of the expressionist architecture movement were the Jews Bruno Taut and Erich Mendelsohn. Jews One of the key factors in Hitler’s rise to power was his opposition of the Jewish influence inside Berlin. As such, this article would be incomplete without looking at the Jewish influence that existed inside Berlin or—possibly more importantly—the German public’s perception of the Jewish influence inside Berlin. Here are some of the figures I think best illustrate the Jewish over-representation in the Weimar Republic. All these figures should be viewed in consideration of this fact: Jews made up less than 1% (.09%) of the German population in the years of the Weimar Republic. In my opinion, these figures are staggering primarily because of the Jews’ immense over-representation in major positions of power within German society. Politics • The author of the 1919 German constitution was the Jew Hugo Preuss. • One quarter of the members of the 8-person Council of the People's Deputies that established the Weimar Republic were Jews (Otto Landesberg and Hugo Haase). • The main competing faction against the official Weimar government was headed by the Jew Kurt Eisner. • The SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) was the political party that primarily ran the Weimar Republic. 22% of the entirety of the SPD were Jews. • The SPD’s main political theorist was a Jew: Eduard Bernstein • Two of the political thinkers most respected by the SPD were Jews: Ferdinand Lassalle, Leopold Sonnemann. • SPD's “foremost theoretician of this century” was the Jew Rudolf Hilferding. • SPD Key Figure, industrialist, and political thinker Walther Rathenau was a Jew. • The Vice President of the Berlin Police was the jew Bernhard Weiss. • In the first Weimar administration Vice Chancellor Eugen Schiffer was Jewish as was Weimar Interior Minister Erich Koch-Weser. • 15% of the members of the Reichstag (German Parliament) were Jewish. • A large number of the members of the political elite of the Weimar Republic were Jews: Rosa Luxemburg, Paul Levi, Ernst Toller, Erich Muhsam, Gustav Landauer, Eugen Levine, and Karl Radek. The Press • The Ullstein Press was the publisher of many of the largest German newspapers and was owned by the Jew Leopold Ullstein. • The Berliner Iliustrirte Zeitung was one of the largest German newspapers. It was Published by the Ullstein Press and its chief editor was the Jew Kurt Korff. • The Vossische Zeitung was another of the largest German newspapers and was published by the Ullstein Press. Its chief editor was the Jew Georg Bernhard. • Another of the othe r largest newspaper publishers was the Jew Rudolf Mosse. • The Berliner Tageblatt was the largest of Rudolf Mosse’s newspapers and its chief editor was the Jew Theodor Wolff • Editor-in-chief of the SPD’s party paper Vorwärts was the Jew Friedrich Stampfer The Arts • The Jew Erich Pommer was a German-born film producer and executive. According to Wikipedia, “Pommer was perhaps the most powerful person in the German and European film industries in the 1920s and early 1930s.” • In 1931, over 60 percent of German films were produced by Jews and 82 percent of film scripts were written by Jewish writers. • Two of the three key figures for the largest film movement of the Weimar era—the German expressionist movement—were the Jews Fritz Lang and Robert Wiene. • Two of the key Architects of the expressionist architecture movement were the Jews Bruno Taut and Erich Mendelsohn. • Some of the most influential producers, directors, & actors in Weimar cinema were Jews as well to name a few: Paul Davidson, Joseph Mandel, Jules Greenbaum, Max Reinhardt, Josef Von Sternberg, Fritz Kohn, Otto Wallburg, Peter Lowenstein. • To conclude the arts, some claim the anti-authoritarian and thoroughly communist Dadaist movement was founded by a group of Jewish modernist artists. Sex • Magnus Hirschfeld was Jewish. He was dubbed "the Einstein of Sex". He was president of World League of Sexual Reform and of course, founder of the Institute for Sexual Research. • Ivan Bloch was Jewish and is often called the "first Sexologist". • As quoted by Sir Arthur Bryant earlier, “most of them—the night clubs and vice resorts—were owned and managed by Jews. And it was the Jews among the promoters of this trade who were remembered in after years.” Other notable Jewish over-representations: (**Please Note** these next five bullet points are not official numbers and are from a NSDAP piece that was distributed in Weimar Germany. I'm including them because although I can't be completely sure of their accuracy, I think they most likely do generally represent the amalgamations of Jewish power in Weimar society. And, at the very least, these numbers represent the German public’s perception of Jewish amalgamations of power in Weimar society): • 56% of notaries were Jews. • 52% of doctors were Jews. • 45% of Hospital Directors were Jews. • 48% of lawyers were Jews. • 35% of dentists were Jews. One last note on the Jews of the Weimar Republic. I included a link with more detail below, but many Weimar Jews actively tried to conceal their Jewish identity and even went so far as bragging to other Jews when gentiles were unable to identify them. This is one of the reasons that, to this day, it’s somewhat difficult to identify who the Jews of the Weimar Republic were. What this means is that, although the identity of every Jew I list is verified, there are undoubtedly other prominent and non-prominent Jews I was unable to identify. The provided list should not be viewed as wholly representative of the Jewish influence within Weimar Germany. But even just considering the provided list, you can see the Jewish influence was substantial for a race of people comprising less than 1% of the total German population. This Jewish over-representation is even more substantial when you consider that many of these Jewish amalgamations of over-representation occurred within many of Germany’s most important social, political, and economic institutions. The Weimar Republic was often referred to as the "Juden Republic" (Jew's Republic) by Germans. I think it's easy to see why... Enter the National Socialists After Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Goebbels and the Brownshirts began shutting down the homosexual dive bars that had risen to prominence during the Weimar Republic. They made one of the most popular homosexual bars in Berlin their headquarters after shutting it down. They pillaged Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Research and Hirschfeld’s books on transsexual ideology were some of the first books the National Socialists burned. From Wikipedia itself, the books the National Socialists burned were: • Writings on sexuality and sexual education which serve the egocentric pleasure of the individual and thus, destroy the principles of race and Volk. • Pornography and explicit literature. • Pacifist literature. • All books degrading German purity. • Literature by Jewish authors, regardless of the field. • Popular entertainment literature that depicts life and life's goals in a superficial, unrealistic and sickly sweet manner, based on a bourgeois or upper class view of life. • The works of traitors, emigrants and authors from foreign countries who believe they can attack and denigrate the new Germany. • The literature of Marxism, Communism and Bolshevism. • Literature with liberal, democratic tendencies and attitudes, and writings supporting the Weimar Republic. • Books that advocate "art" which is decadent, bloodless, or purely constructivist. • The decadent, destructive and Volk-damaging writings of "Asphalt and Civilization" literati • Patriotic kitsch in literature. • All historical writings whose purpose is to denigrate the origin, the spirit and the culture of the German Volk, or to dissolve the racial and structural order of the Volk, or that denies the force and importance of leading historical figures in favor of egalitarianism and the masses, and which seeks to drag them through the mud. Very quickly after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, the chief purveyors of the degeneracy that had overtaken Berlin would leave the city and National Socialist Germany would rise from its ashes. The rest—as they say—is history. (Sources and further reading in the comments below)

Bobby Thorne

67,770 views • 1 year ago

Min Hee-jin (NewJeans Producer) NHK Music Interview 🔗 “Meticulously planned debut ‘Attention’” 🧢: When I was preparing to launch NewJeans, I really struggled with deciding what our first piece of content should be. I thought about it for a long time and considered many possibilities. It was a project that came with high expectations, and for me personally, it was also my first opportunity to prove myself. So how I presented it mattered enormously. Even down to the smallest details… like the impression the very first released photo might give, or what kind of impact we could make at launch. I thought hard about what kind of content would be the most effective… should it be a video or a photo? What time of day would be most effective to release it? I consider things like that very carefully. For example, the way a person experiences content at night versus during the day can feel quite different emotionally. So I even thought about those subtle aspects. Eventually, the conclusion I reached was: “Let’s make the most of our situation.” At the time, the members hadn’t been revealed, and no one knew how many of them there were or what kind of group this would be. So I wanted to maximize that curiosity. You know how the more something is concealed, the more curious people become? I wanted to build that curiosity to a peak and then release everything all at once. That’s why we decided not to release a teaser and instead go straight into a full music video. (This was actually inspired by Hyein suggesting we skip teasers.) I didn’t think still images or photos would be enough to fully convey the feeling I wanted to express. I felt that video and music together would evoke the emotional response I was looking for because people experience things synesthetically. When sound, image, and feeling come together, the emotional impact is stronger. I believed the best way to present the members’ images was through music and a moving picture… that’s why we led with a music video. In the debut music video, “Attention,” there’s a scene where the members act out a little drama. I paid very close attention to that moment and created music that would fit it precisely. For me, I don’t just make content… I design the entire process of how it should be shown for the greatest effect. And I believe that’s incredibly important. That first feeling someone gets when they encounter something… that emotion, that spark… is so important to me. I’m very detail-oriented, but I also value fun deeply. So rather than just releasing content, I want to enjoy the process leading up to it. Even when we released our second album, since we shot the entire music video across the country, the sequence of how we released the videos was critical for me. It’s hard to explain all this simply in an interview, but maybe some people noticed: the first content we released that time was actually a teaser for the last track, “ASAP,” and then we followed that with the full music video for “New Jeans,” which was the first track. That order was a carefully calculated strategy. It was designed to guide the audience’s emotional journey. Seeing the audience react just as I had hoped—that whole process was honestly so fun and thrilling for me. I think I really enjoy that kind of thing. ——— “How 'Ditto' was born” 🧢: People often praise the music of NewJeans, and I hear a lot of talk about genres. But actually, I don’t feel bound by genre at all. I love a wide variety of music. I’m not the type to insist on only one particular genre. What I love are songs that blend genres cleverly… those are my personal favorites. So going forward, my focus is not on genre but on whether something feels fresh and whether it can create an emotional moment. I don’t want to define what kind of music we make. And I think you have to experience the flow of the times to really understand what’s meaningful in a given moment. For instance, the song “Ditto” was chosen because it delivered emotion. It matched perfectly with the winter album concept I had envisioned, both in terms of timing and mood. When I hear a song, I tend to trust my gut. I have a pretty strong intuition for which songs will resonate. It’s not about objectively predicting what will be a “hit,” but about whether a song moves your heart… you can just feel it. Of course, my own taste plays a big role. But I think that’s actually my strength as a producer, not as a composer. When I hear a song, I can immediately picture the visual… what kind of story, what kind of vibe it could carry. That allows me to work faster. For example, when expressing something like school uniforms, there are so many possible variations. But I always like to start from the basics… what’s the original idea of a school uniform? I try to return to that. So with “Ditto,” I wanted to tap into something primal… the pure, basic feeling of liking someone. That kind of emotion is universal. Everyone has it; it’s wired into us. When I saw Director Shin Woo-seok’s interpretation of it, I thought, “Yes, that’s it.” That’s the kind of complete interpretation I look for. I believe the completion of a project comes from every person involved thinking about their part down to the final detail… the maximum quality they can bring out. My role is to unify and refine all of that. I draw out the essence of each person’s creativity, trimming away anything unnecessary. So the final product is something that’s polished and high-quality, just the way I envisioned it. That’s my working style. So it’s not like I’m fixated on retro or stuck in a particular style. I don’t think human taste has changed all that much. Things people liked in the past are the same things we like now. It’s just the form of expression that changes with time. I don’t feel bound by “past” or “present.” I don’t even think in those boundaries. To me, it’s all just good taste. You know how kids sometimes have their own little treasure boxes when they’re young? I think my work is kind of like that. I want to make things that never feel dated—that are timelessly enjoyable. ——— “Dance Expression and 'Hype Boy'” 🧢: I had a vision of what kind of girl group I wanted to create. That’s why I chose a song like “Hype Boy.” And to bring out that feeling, we created four different versions of the music video. Every choice had a purpose, everything was designed to maximize the experience of the song. “Hype Boy” is such a unique song. It has this strange, piercing melody that gives people chills in a good way. To emphasize that tingling feeling, I had to break away from the standard K-pop choreography format… you know, the kind where everyone is in perfect formation, doing synchronized moves. But our songs don’t suit that kind of choreography. Our dances are much harder. They require the body to move very naturally with the groove of the melody and beat. So I think our members are incredible. It’s not easy to express naturalness with your body, and you have to really enjoy it to make it look effortless. But they pulled it off so well. They’re still young, but they’re so talented. And through it all, I wanted to avoid making them look like they were performing just for business. I wanted them to show the pure joy and bright spirit that’s natural for people their age… genuine, carefree, radiant. ——— “The difference between NewJeans and conventional K-POP” 🧢: Ah, for me, it’s all about naturalness. And honestly, naturalness isn’t something you can produce or direct into existence. It comes from how I interact with the NewJeans members on a daily basis… what kind of environment they practice in, how they live and work. There are so many things that don’t appear on camera, but those unseen aspects have to be in place in order for true naturalness to come through. That’s why I wanted to create that kind of environment for the girls. And also, I wanted to shape my own working environment in that way too. Only then can something truly natural, something unforced and not overly stimulating, really come out. To begin with, I don’t believe anyone can be completely natural in front of a camera or under the gaze of others. It’s human nature to become self-conscious. That’s why I think naturalness is our strength, but it can’t be our concept. If you try to turn “naturalness” into a concept, it actually becomes incredibly artificial. So why do I place so much importance on naturalness? It’s because the girls are still so young. While other kids their age are going through school and having a wide range of life experiences, these members are living very different lives. Before they officially debuted, I told them, “This is like studying together with me.” Our standard contract is seven years, which is about the same length as going through high school and college in Korea: three years of high school and four years of university. So I told them, “We’re going to school together. We’re learning together.” And in that sense, I want to be a good teacher to them. They’re also surrounded by an incredibly professional team, people they’d never meet even in a traditional school setting. I’ve never really liked the word idol. These days, that word is used more like a job title, something manufactured by the industry, and it’s far from its original meaning. To me, the term idol feels misplaced. It doesn’t really reflect who these artists are or what they represent. And I’m not the kind of person who clings to labels or terminology. In fact, what I really want is to break the stereotypes and preconceptions that come with the idol industry. I want us to show people something different… to challenge those assumptions and redefine what this can look like. That’s the kind of mindset I have. ——— “Isn't it difficult for the members to express "naturalness"?” 🧢: There were a lot of things I considered when forming the group. First and foremost, I think it was important that the members shared a similar vibe… like how I prefer working with staff who align with my taste. It’s important for the crew to be on the same wavelength. And by that, I mean more than just getting along… it also extends to shared values. Of course, people won’t all share identical values, but when we’re facing in a similar direction, everything becomes easier. It’s also just more efficient to work with people who have overlapping tastes. Now, when it comes to our members, they each have their own individual tastes, but those preferences are still in development. Just like we all went through as kids, they’re still growing, still discovering themselves. They’re not in a finished state. So we didn’t cast them based on some complete or polished version of themselves. It wasn’t like, “This person is fully formed, let’s pick her.” It was more like, “Ah, she has potential, there’s something there.” That sense of a spark… those were the kinds of subtleties I paid attention to. I didn’t cast anyone just because they were pretty or could sing well. I don’t work like that. I really value those finer, more delicate aspects. Even the design of the light stick wasn’t something that came from a long strategic planning session… it was actually a spontaneous idea. I didn’t sit down and think, “Let’s make a light stick like this.” NewJeans didn’t have a fixed logo, but I felt we still needed a unifying symbol. So one night, just before going to sleep, I kept thinking about it. Right before dozing off, I started sketching and it turned into a rabbit’s face. When I drew it out, the shape just continued and turned into a bunny. To me, the NewJeans members are like little bunnies… playful, innocent. Their visuals also resemble rabbits in a way. And rabbits symbolize abundance. That made me think: “Ah, maybe our fans will multiply like rabbits. That would be great.” So that bunny face became both a symbol for the members and the fans. The image came to me all at once, and I imagined a venue completely filled with bunny light sticks. That vision led to the creation of the light stick itself. Since I always prioritize fun in everything I do, the next idea that came to mind was making the light stick customizable. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if fans could personalize their bunny?” That way, each rabbit would represent a different person’s character. So we included accessories, allowing everyone to customize their own bunny. It’s symbolic of all these different bunnies coming together and enjoying a good time as one. Our light stick has a big head, so when it’s used in a concert hall, it lights up in heart shapes that are very visible. That was the image I really wanted. And that bunny face… it’s also a heart. It represents both the face of NewJeans and our hearts. It’s the love we’re showing to our fans, and the love we want to receive in return. Every time I see it, I feel deeply moved. It’s very emotional for me because it’s a perfect realization of what I envisioned. As someone with a background in creative direction, there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing an idea materialize exactly the way you imagined it. That kind of work holds deep meaning for me. ⸻ 🧢: Looking back, I think in 2023 we were able to achieve almost everything we had hoped for. I’m so incredibly grateful for that. Of course, this is an ongoing challenge… and the better things go, the more pressure there is. That’s why I always try to return to my original mindset. Just like I tell the members, I try to remind myself of the beginning and keep things fun. Back then, when we were first putting out content, planning the music, and working on visuals, I felt this thrill… this rush of excitement. I don’t want to forget that feeling. So I try hard to engrave that emotion into every album we release. I’m constantly working to rediscover the joy in all of it. So for 2024, I hope everyone can look forward to us with fresh anticipation. And even if we come out with something completely new, I hope people will receive it warmly and with excitement. That’s really my deepest wish. 🙏
21:30

Min Hee-jin (NewJeans Producer) NHK Music Interview 🔗 “Meticulously planned debut ‘Attention’” 🧢: When I was preparing to launch NewJeans, I really struggled with deciding what our first piece of content should be. I thought about it for a long time and considered many possibilities. It was a project that came with high expectations, and for me personally, it was also my first opportunity to prove myself. So how I presented it mattered enormously. Even down to the smallest details… like the impression the very first released photo might give, or what kind of impact we could make at launch. I thought hard about what kind of content would be the most effective… should it be a video or a photo? What time of day would be most effective to release it? I consider things like that very carefully. For example, the way a person experiences content at night versus during the day can feel quite different emotionally. So I even thought about those subtle aspects. Eventually, the conclusion I reached was: “Let’s make the most of our situation.” At the time, the members hadn’t been revealed, and no one knew how many of them there were or what kind of group this would be. So I wanted to maximize that curiosity. You know how the more something is concealed, the more curious people become? I wanted to build that curiosity to a peak and then release everything all at once. That’s why we decided not to release a teaser and instead go straight into a full music video. (This was actually inspired by Hyein suggesting we skip teasers.) I didn’t think still images or photos would be enough to fully convey the feeling I wanted to express. I felt that video and music together would evoke the emotional response I was looking for because people experience things synesthetically. When sound, image, and feeling come together, the emotional impact is stronger. I believed the best way to present the members’ images was through music and a moving picture… that’s why we led with a music video. In the debut music video, “Attention,” there’s a scene where the members act out a little drama. I paid very close attention to that moment and created music that would fit it precisely. For me, I don’t just make content… I design the entire process of how it should be shown for the greatest effect. And I believe that’s incredibly important. That first feeling someone gets when they encounter something… that emotion, that spark… is so important to me. I’m very detail-oriented, but I also value fun deeply. So rather than just releasing content, I want to enjoy the process leading up to it. Even when we released our second album, since we shot the entire music video across the country, the sequence of how we released the videos was critical for me. It’s hard to explain all this simply in an interview, but maybe some people noticed: the first content we released that time was actually a teaser for the last track, “ASAP,” and then we followed that with the full music video for “New Jeans,” which was the first track. That order was a carefully calculated strategy. It was designed to guide the audience’s emotional journey. Seeing the audience react just as I had hoped—that whole process was honestly so fun and thrilling for me. I think I really enjoy that kind of thing. ——— “How 'Ditto' was born” 🧢: People often praise the music of NewJeans, and I hear a lot of talk about genres. But actually, I don’t feel bound by genre at all. I love a wide variety of music. I’m not the type to insist on only one particular genre. What I love are songs that blend genres cleverly… those are my personal favorites. So going forward, my focus is not on genre but on whether something feels fresh and whether it can create an emotional moment. I don’t want to define what kind of music we make. And I think you have to experience the flow of the times to really understand what’s meaningful in a given moment. For instance, the song “Ditto” was chosen because it delivered emotion. It matched perfectly with the winter album concept I had envisioned, both in terms of timing and mood. When I hear a song, I tend to trust my gut. I have a pretty strong intuition for which songs will resonate. It’s not about objectively predicting what will be a “hit,” but about whether a song moves your heart… you can just feel it. Of course, my own taste plays a big role. But I think that’s actually my strength as a producer, not as a composer. When I hear a song, I can immediately picture the visual… what kind of story, what kind of vibe it could carry. That allows me to work faster. For example, when expressing something like school uniforms, there are so many possible variations. But I always like to start from the basics… what’s the original idea of a school uniform? I try to return to that. So with “Ditto,” I wanted to tap into something primal… the pure, basic feeling of liking someone. That kind of emotion is universal. Everyone has it; it’s wired into us. When I saw Director Shin Woo-seok’s interpretation of it, I thought, “Yes, that’s it.” That’s the kind of complete interpretation I look for. I believe the completion of a project comes from every person involved thinking about their part down to the final detail… the maximum quality they can bring out. My role is to unify and refine all of that. I draw out the essence of each person’s creativity, trimming away anything unnecessary. So the final product is something that’s polished and high-quality, just the way I envisioned it. That’s my working style. So it’s not like I’m fixated on retro or stuck in a particular style. I don’t think human taste has changed all that much. Things people liked in the past are the same things we like now. It’s just the form of expression that changes with time. I don’t feel bound by “past” or “present.” I don’t even think in those boundaries. To me, it’s all just good taste. You know how kids sometimes have their own little treasure boxes when they’re young? I think my work is kind of like that. I want to make things that never feel dated—that are timelessly enjoyable. ——— “Dance Expression and 'Hype Boy'” 🧢: I had a vision of what kind of girl group I wanted to create. That’s why I chose a song like “Hype Boy.” And to bring out that feeling, we created four different versions of the music video. Every choice had a purpose, everything was designed to maximize the experience of the song. “Hype Boy” is such a unique song. It has this strange, piercing melody that gives people chills in a good way. To emphasize that tingling feeling, I had to break away from the standard K-pop choreography format… you know, the kind where everyone is in perfect formation, doing synchronized moves. But our songs don’t suit that kind of choreography. Our dances are much harder. They require the body to move very naturally with the groove of the melody and beat. So I think our members are incredible. It’s not easy to express naturalness with your body, and you have to really enjoy it to make it look effortless. But they pulled it off so well. They’re still young, but they’re so talented. And through it all, I wanted to avoid making them look like they were performing just for business. I wanted them to show the pure joy and bright spirit that’s natural for people their age… genuine, carefree, radiant. ——— “The difference between NewJeans and conventional K-POP” 🧢: Ah, for me, it’s all about naturalness. And honestly, naturalness isn’t something you can produce or direct into existence. It comes from how I interact with the NewJeans members on a daily basis… what kind of environment they practice in, how they live and work. There are so many things that don’t appear on camera, but those unseen aspects have to be in place in order for true naturalness to come through. That’s why I wanted to create that kind of environment for the girls. And also, I wanted to shape my own working environment in that way too. Only then can something truly natural, something unforced and not overly stimulating, really come out. To begin with, I don’t believe anyone can be completely natural in front of a camera or under the gaze of others. It’s human nature to become self-conscious. That’s why I think naturalness is our strength, but it can’t be our concept. If you try to turn “naturalness” into a concept, it actually becomes incredibly artificial. So why do I place so much importance on naturalness? It’s because the girls are still so young. While other kids their age are going through school and having a wide range of life experiences, these members are living very different lives. Before they officially debuted, I told them, “This is like studying together with me.” Our standard contract is seven years, which is about the same length as going through high school and college in Korea: three years of high school and four years of university. So I told them, “We’re going to school together. We’re learning together.” And in that sense, I want to be a good teacher to them. They’re also surrounded by an incredibly professional team, people they’d never meet even in a traditional school setting. I’ve never really liked the word idol. These days, that word is used more like a job title, something manufactured by the industry, and it’s far from its original meaning. To me, the term idol feels misplaced. It doesn’t really reflect who these artists are or what they represent. And I’m not the kind of person who clings to labels or terminology. In fact, what I really want is to break the stereotypes and preconceptions that come with the idol industry. I want us to show people something different… to challenge those assumptions and redefine what this can look like. That’s the kind of mindset I have. ——— “Isn't it difficult for the members to express "naturalness"?” 🧢: There were a lot of things I considered when forming the group. First and foremost, I think it was important that the members shared a similar vibe… like how I prefer working with staff who align with my taste. It’s important for the crew to be on the same wavelength. And by that, I mean more than just getting along… it also extends to shared values. Of course, people won’t all share identical values, but when we’re facing in a similar direction, everything becomes easier. It’s also just more efficient to work with people who have overlapping tastes. Now, when it comes to our members, they each have their own individual tastes, but those preferences are still in development. Just like we all went through as kids, they’re still growing, still discovering themselves. They’re not in a finished state. So we didn’t cast them based on some complete or polished version of themselves. It wasn’t like, “This person is fully formed, let’s pick her.” It was more like, “Ah, she has potential, there’s something there.” That sense of a spark… those were the kinds of subtleties I paid attention to. I didn’t cast anyone just because they were pretty or could sing well. I don’t work like that. I really value those finer, more delicate aspects. Even the design of the light stick wasn’t something that came from a long strategic planning session… it was actually a spontaneous idea. I didn’t sit down and think, “Let’s make a light stick like this.” NewJeans didn’t have a fixed logo, but I felt we still needed a unifying symbol. So one night, just before going to sleep, I kept thinking about it. Right before dozing off, I started sketching and it turned into a rabbit’s face. When I drew it out, the shape just continued and turned into a bunny. To me, the NewJeans members are like little bunnies… playful, innocent. Their visuals also resemble rabbits in a way. And rabbits symbolize abundance. That made me think: “Ah, maybe our fans will multiply like rabbits. That would be great.” So that bunny face became both a symbol for the members and the fans. The image came to me all at once, and I imagined a venue completely filled with bunny light sticks. That vision led to the creation of the light stick itself. Since I always prioritize fun in everything I do, the next idea that came to mind was making the light stick customizable. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if fans could personalize their bunny?” That way, each rabbit would represent a different person’s character. So we included accessories, allowing everyone to customize their own bunny. It’s symbolic of all these different bunnies coming together and enjoying a good time as one. Our light stick has a big head, so when it’s used in a concert hall, it lights up in heart shapes that are very visible. That was the image I really wanted. And that bunny face… it’s also a heart. It represents both the face of NewJeans and our hearts. It’s the love we’re showing to our fans, and the love we want to receive in return. Every time I see it, I feel deeply moved. It’s very emotional for me because it’s a perfect realization of what I envisioned. As someone with a background in creative direction, there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing an idea materialize exactly the way you imagined it. That kind of work holds deep meaning for me. ⸻ 🧢: Looking back, I think in 2023 we were able to achieve almost everything we had hoped for. I’m so incredibly grateful for that. Of course, this is an ongoing challenge… and the better things go, the more pressure there is. That’s why I always try to return to my original mindset. Just like I tell the members, I try to remind myself of the beginning and keep things fun. Back then, when we were first putting out content, planning the music, and working on visuals, I felt this thrill… this rush of excitement. I don’t want to forget that feeling. So I try hard to engrave that emotion into every album we release. I’m constantly working to rediscover the joy in all of it. So for 2024, I hope everyone can look forward to us with fresh anticipation. And even if we come out with something completely new, I hope people will receive it warmly and with excitement. That’s really my deepest wish. 🙏

1tokki

17,635 views • 1 year ago

$NVDA $GFS NVIDIA’s reported agreement to acquire Groq for $20B in cash (per CNBC, amplified via Reuters and other wire coverage) represents a materially different strategic posture than NVIDIA’s prior M&A pattern, given both the headline size (largest reported NVIDIA acquisition to date) and the unusual carve-out that Groq’s early-stage cloud business would not be included. Public reporting indicates the information originated from Alex Davis, CEO of Disruptive (lead investor in Groq’s latest financing), and that neither NVIDIA nor Groq had issued an immediate confirmation at the time of publication. The same reporting frames the transaction as coming together quickly, only months after Groq raised $750M at a ~$6.9B valuation, and highlights Groq’s positioning as a high-performance inference chip vendor founded by ex-Google TPU engineers. Groq is best understood as a vertically integrated inference acceleration company whose core asset is an application-specific processor optimized for deterministic, low-latency execution of transformer-style workloads, paired with a compiler-led software stack and a distribution layer (GroqCloud) designed to reduce developer friction via OpenAI-compatible APIs and integrations. Groq brands its architecture as a Language Processing Unit (LPU) and consistently emphasizes that the design target is inference, not training. The company’s own architecture description centers on 1-core execution, large on-chip SRAM used as primary storage (explicitly not cache), a custom compiler that statically schedules compute and communication, and direct chip-to-chip connectivity intended to coordinate multi-chip execution without relying on conventional caching hierarchies or dynamic runtime scheduling. The technical premise is a deliberate inversion of the conventional GPU approach. GPUs deliver throughput via massively parallel, multi-core execution with dynamic scheduling, complex memory hierarchies, and heavy reliance on off-chip HBM bandwidth and sophisticated runtime/kernel optimization. Groq instead argues that inference bottlenecks are driven by latency variance (tail latency), synchronization overhead, and memory access unpredictability inherent in dynamically scheduled, cache-heavy architectures, particularly when workloads are latency sensitive and batch sizes cannot be inflated. Groq’s solution is to move “control” into the compiler: the full execution graph and inter-chip communication schedule are computed ahead of time down to clock-cycle granularity, with deterministic execution designed to reduce run-to-run variance. In Groq’s framing, the removal of caches, reorder buffers, speculative execution overhead, and other sources of contention enables predictable latency and high utilization without per-model kernel engineering typical of GPU tuning cycles. A critical nuance is that Groq’s determinism is not merely a software claim; it is tightly coupled to architectural constraints and system design choices that trade flexibility for predictability. Third-party technical commentary indicates Groq’s chip uses a fully deterministic VLIW-style approach with minimal buffering, no external memory, and heavy dependence on sharding models across many chips because on-chip SRAM capacity is limited. SemiAnalysis describes a ~725 mm^2 die on GlobalFoundries 14nm with ~230MB of SRAM and notes that “no useful models” fit on a single chip, forcing multi-chip partitioning for modern LLMs and driving a system-level design where networking and compilation are first-class scheduling problems rather than ancillary infrastructure. This is consistent with Groq’s own messaging that tensor parallelism across chips is a primary design goal, enabled by large on-chip SRAM and compile-time coordination of compute plus interconnect. The on-chip SRAM emphasis is central to Groq’s latency story and also its most constraining trade-off. Groq claims on-chip SRAM bandwidth “upwards of 80 TB/s” and contrasts that with off-chip HBM bandwidth “about 8 TB/s,” asserting a potential 10x advantage from bandwidth plus reduced trips across chip-to-memory boundaries. While these comparisons are marketing-oriented and depend on workload specifics, the architectural implication is clear: Groq prioritizes ultra-fast local weight/activation access and then scales capacity by adding chips, not by attaching large off-chip memory pools. This design can reduce latency for sequential inference layers and minimize unpredictable stalls, but it pushes complexity into partitioning strategy, interconnect topology, and compiler scheduling, and it increases the number of chips needed for very large parameter counts and large KV-cache footprints. Groq also highlights numeric formats and compiler-driven precision management as a performance lever. In its 2025 technical blog, Groq describes “TruePoint numerics,” including 100-bit intermediate accumulation and selective quantization choices (FP32 for attention-sensitive operations, block floating point for MoE weights, FP8 storage in error-tolerant layers), and claims 2-4x speedups versus BF16 without measurable accuracy degradation on benchmarks such as MMLU and HumanEval. Even if the absolute uplift is workload dependent, the strategic point is that Groq is pursuing performance via end-to-end co-design: precision policy is not just hardware capability (FP8/BF16) but compiler-enforced mapping of precision to error sensitivity, which can matter materially for inference cost-per-token if it reduces memory traffic and boosts throughput without forcing aggressive, accuracy-damaging quantization. Independent performance datapoints indicate Groq has been credible on latency-oriented inference speed, at least for certain regimes. EE Times reported in 2023 that Groq demonstrated Llama-2 70B inference at ~240 tokens/s per user on a cloud-based dev system described as 10 racks and 64 chips, using the company’s 1st-gen silicon introduced several years earlier. Separate Groq commentary around independent benchmarking cites results showing ~241 tokens/s throughput and ~0.8s time to receive 100 output tokens for a Llama-2 70B API configuration, positioning the platform as a step-change in “available speed” for certain interactive use cases. These figures do not settle total cost-of-ownership versus GPUs or hyperscaler ASICs, but they establish that Groq’s system-level architecture can deliver strong single-user throughput and latency on large models when properly partitioned and scheduled. GroqCloud is the commercial wrapper that packages this hardware/software stack as “tokens-as-a-service,” aiming to make Groq adoption feel like switching API endpoints rather than adopting new silicon. Groq’s documentation states its API is designed to be “mostly compatible” with OpenAI client libraries, and its pricing page provides model-specific token rates, published speeds (tokens/s), prompt caching discounts, and batch processing discounts. For example, pricing lists inputs as low as $0.05 per 1M tokens and outputs as low as $0.08 per 1M tokens for certain smaller LLM configurations, with higher prices for larger models and long-context or MoE variants; it also advertises prompt caching with a 50% discount on cached input tokens for certain models and a batch API offering 50% lower cost for asynchronous processing windows. These mechanics are economically important because they demonstrate Groq’s go-to-market is not simply “sell chips,” but “sell predictable unit economics per token,” with tooling (batch, caching) that directly targets inference cost drivers (reused prompts, throughput smoothing, and asynchronous workloads). The cloud footprint and distribution partnerships indicate Groq has been building an inference-native “edge within the cloud” strategy rather than competing head-on with hyperscalers on breadth of services. A 2025 Groq newsroom release describes a European deployment in Helsinki with Equinix, positioned as latency reduction and data governance for European customers, and explicitly references Equinix Fabric enabling private connectivity to GroqCloud over public, private, or sovereign infrastructure. The same release enumerates additional capacity in the U.S. (Equinix, DataBank), Canada (Bell Canada), and Saudi Arabia (HUMAIN), and states these sites collectively served more than 20M tokens/s across Groq’s global network at that time. That supply-side metric matters because it provides a directional sense that Groq is scaling capacity as a network, not merely as a chip vendor. Customer disclosure is inherently limited because Groq is private and many enterprise deployments are not public, but Groq’s marketing materials and partnerships provide signals about demand vectors. The company’s public website displays logos of large consumer and enterprise brands (e.g., Dropbox, Vercel, Chevron, Volkswagen, Canva, Robinhood, Riot Games, Workday, Ramp) and includes a published customer quote claiming a 7.41x chat speed increase and an 89% cost reduction after moving to GroqCloud, followed by a tripling of token consumption. While marketing claims should be treated as case-specific and not generalized, they indicate that Groq is targeting both AI-native developers (who measure success by latency and cost-per-token) and enterprise buyers (who care about predictable performance and governance). Supplier and dependency mapping for Groq spans 3 layers: silicon production, system integration, and cloud infrastructure. On silicon, third-party analysis indicates GlobalFoundries 14nm for the 1st-gen Groq chip, implying a supply chain less constrained by the most capacity-tight leading-edge nodes and advanced packaging bottlenecks that dominate high-end GPU supply (HBM stacks, CoWoS-type packaging constraints). If accurate, this is strategically meaningful because it suggests Groq capacity expansion could be gated more by conventional wafer supply, board assembly, and data center power than by the same HBM/advanced packaging scarcity that has constrained top-tier GPU ramp cycles. On systems and cloud, Groq’s own releases identify colocation and connectivity partners (Equinix, DataBank, Bell Canada) and a Middle East partner (HUMAIN), implying dependencies on data center real estate, power availability, and network connectivity, alongside procurement of standard server components, NICs/switching, racks, and cooling infrastructure. The Groq design narrative also emphasizes air cooling and reduced need for complex power/cooling infrastructure, which—if realized in deployments—can widen the set of feasible hosting locations and lower deployment friction relative to liquid-cooled, very high power density GPU racks. Against that backdrop, the strategic rationale for NVIDIA acquiring Groq can be framed as a set of overlapping objectives: inference silicon optionality, architectural hedging, competitive defense, and supply chain diversification, with the carve-out of GroqCloud signaling a preference to avoid direct cloud competition and to focus on IP and product portfolio control rather than operating a capital-intensive token-serving business. The deal, if confirmed, would occur at a valuation step-up of ~190% versus Groq’s reported ~$6.9B private valuation in the September $750M round, reinforcing that any acquisition logic would be predominantly strategic rather than a conventional financial multiple arbitrage. The most compelling strategic driver is inference. Training has historically been the center of gravity for cutting-edge GPU demand, but inference volume is structurally larger and more distributed as deployments scale, with economics dominated by cost-per-token, latency guarantees, and utilization under spiky demand. Inference workloads also create a strategic vulnerability for NVIDIA: hyperscalers and large platforms can justify bespoke ASICs (TPU, Trainium/Inferentia, Maia-class efforts) because inference is stable, repeatable, and can amortize software investment at massive scale. Groq’s core proposition—deterministic, compiler-scheduled inference with predictable latency—aligns directly with the segment where GPU generality is least valued and where “good enough” programmability plus superior unit economics can win share. Acquiring Groq would allow NVIDIA to own a credible inference-native architecture rather than relying solely on GPUs and software optimization to defend that segment. Competitive defense logic is also plausible. Groq occupies a specific competitive wedge: low-latency, high-throughput interactive inference, delivered via a simple API abstraction that reduces switching cost. That wedge directly pressures GPU inference margins in the long run because it makes inference price/performance comparisons more transparent at the token level, and it targets a developer persona that historically defaulted to CUDA-first ecosystems. Even if NVIDIA’s current-generation systems can achieve very high tokens/s per user with extensive optimization, the strategic risk is that competing architectures normalize the idea that inference is best served by special-purpose silicon with a simpler programming model, weakening CUDA lock-in at the application layer. NVIDIA has actively demonstrated that Blackwell-era systems can exceed 1,000 tokens/s per user in benchmarked configurations, but that performance leadership does not automatically translate to lowest cost-per-token across the full range of batch sizes, latency targets, and deployment environments. Groq’s existence as a credible alternative architecture forces NVIDIA to keep defending inference economics rather than only raw performance leadership. The “technology acquisition” rationale is unusually strong in this specific case because Groq’s differentiator is not a single block of silicon IP but an end-to-end methodology: compiler-led static scheduling, deterministic networking, and a system architecture designed around tensor-parallel inference rather than throughput-maximizing batch inference. NVIDIA’s stack is already compiler-heavy (TensorRT, Triton, CUDA graphs, kernel fusion, speculative decoding techniques), but GPUs remain dynamically scheduled devices with complex memory hierarchies and stochastic latency behaviors under contention. Groq’s approach provides an alternate design point: treating the entire inference execution (compute plus communication) as a statically schedulable program. In principle, that IP could be valuable even if Groq silicon itself is not adopted at massive scale, because it can inform how NVIDIA builds future inference-optimized products, compilers, and networking fabrics, especially as distributed inference with large models makes communication a first-order performance determinant. Supply chain diversification is a non-obvious but potentially important driver. If Groq’s mainstream product generation is truly based on a mature process node and avoids HBM, then the scaling constraints look different than those of state-of-the-art GPUs. NVIDIA’s ability to meet incremental demand has been tightly coupled to advanced packaging and HBM supply, and those constraints can remain binding even when wafer supply is available. An inference ASIC architecture that relies primarily on on-chip SRAM and scales by adding chips—while not costless—could reduce dependence on HBM availability and advanced packaging capacity, enabling NVIDIA to ship “inference capacity” in higher absolute volumes or into geographies and customer segments where the highest-end GPUs are economically or logistically difficult to deploy. This could be particularly relevant for latency-sensitive inference deployed in regional colocation footprints rather than centralized hyperscale campuses. The carve-out of GroqCloud, if accurate, is itself a strategic signal about NVIDIA’s priorities. Operating a token-serving cloud at scale is capital intensive, structurally lower margin than silicon IP rents, and creates channel conflict with hyperscalers and CSP partners who are core NVIDIA customers. NVIDIA has generally positioned its cloud offerings through partnerships rather than as a direct hyperscale competitor. Excluding GroqCloud would preserve neutrality with CSPs and avoid inheriting multi-region data residency obligations and partner contracts, while still allowing NVIDIA to acquire Groq’s silicon, compiler technology, and engineering talent. At the same time, excluding GroqCloud would also mean NVIDIA would not automatically acquire the commercial proof-point of Groq’s unit economics or the customer contracts that validate product-market fit at scale, increasing the importance of diligence on whether Groq’s cloud pricing is structurally profitable or partially subsidized by fundraising. There is also a “preemptive acquisition” angle. The reporting identifies recent investors in Groq’s latest round including large financial institutions and strategic/industry players. In that context, Groq represents an asset that could plausibly have been acquired by a competitor (AMD/Intel) or by a hyperscaler seeking to accelerate inference independence. NVIDIA acquiring Groq could be a defensive move to prevent a credible inference-native architecture from being weaponized by a rival with deep distribution. Even if GroqCloud is carved out, controlling the silicon roadmap and compiler IP would meaningfully constrain Groq’s ability to evolve into a standalone competitor, unless the carved-out entity retains long-term rights to the hardware and software stack. However, the strategic case is not one-sided; there are meaningful risks and potential contradictions that would need to be reconciled for the transaction to be value-accretive on a multi-year horizon. 1st, Groq’s architecture appears to rely on scaling out chip count to achieve capacity, which introduces system cost, networking complexity, and physical footprint considerations. The absence of external memory and limited on-chip SRAM implies very large models require substantial chip parallelism, and the economics then depend heavily on chip cost, yield, power efficiency, and interconnect overhead. SemiAnalysis explicitly frames Groq as trading space for time and raises questions about token economics and whether publicly advertised pricing reflects fully loaded costs or market share capture. 2nd, integration risk is non-trivial. Groq’s compiler-led deterministic model is philosophically and practically different from CUDA’s dominant programming and execution model. A poorly executed integration could create internal product confusion, dilute engineering focus, or alienate developers if the combined stack fragments. 3rd, there is cannibalization risk. If Groq-class inference silicon undercuts GPU inference economics, NVIDIA could face internal margin trade-offs, even if the goal is to defend share against hyperscaler ASICs. Cannibalization can still be rational if it prevents larger share loss, but it would require crisp portfolio segmentation and go-to-market discipline. The presence of NVIDIA’s own rapidly improving inference performance complicates the “need” for Groq but does not eliminate the “option value.” NVIDIA has demonstrated benchmark-leading tokens/s per user on Blackwell-based systems, suggesting that raw interactive throughput is not necessarily the limiting factor for NVIDIA’s product line. The more enduring strategic question is unit economics and architectural control: whether future inference demand is better monetized through general-purpose GPUs plus software optimization, or whether a bifurcated product portfolio (training GPUs plus inference-native ASICs) becomes necessary to defend total AI compute wallet share as hyperscaler ASIC penetration increases. Acquiring Groq could be a decisive move to ensure NVIDIA participates in both regimes rather than betting exclusively on GPUs to win inference forever. What is “special” about Groq’s technology relative to a typical accelerator roadmap is the tight coupling of determinism, compilation, and networking into a single scheduling problem. The LPU narrative emphasizes deterministic compute and networking, static scheduling, and direct chip-to-chip coordination that allows “hundreds” (more precisely, 100s) of chips to behave like a single scheduled resource. The architecture also explicitly targets tensor-parallel, latency-optimized distribution rather than pure data-parallel throughput scaling, which matters for real-time applications where a single response must arrive quickly rather than many requests being processed in bulk. The implication is that Groq is optimized for the time-to-first-token and steady token streaming behavior that defines user experience in interactive LLMs, and it attempts to achieve that without relying on large batch sizes that can degrade latency. From a portfolio manager’s perspective, the most important interpretation is that an NVIDIA-Groq combination would likely be less about “NVIDIA needs more inference speed” and more about controlling the architectural trajectory of inference acceleration and removing a fast-improving, developer-friendly competitor from the market. The carve-out of GroqCloud would reinforce that the transaction is aimed at IP, talent, and product optionality, not acquiring a cloud revenue stream. The valuation step-up implied by $20B versus $6.9B would therefore be justified only if the acquired assets materially reduce long-term competitive risk (hyperscaler ASIC displacement, inference margin compression) or enable new monetization vectors (inference ASIC product line, supply chain de-bottlenecking, improved software determinism) that would be difficult to achieve on a comparable timeline via internal R&D.
10:20

$NVDA $GFS NVIDIA’s reported agreement to acquire Groq for $20B in cash (per CNBC, amplified via Reuters and other wire coverage) represents a materially different strategic posture than NVIDIA’s prior M&A pattern, given both the headline size (largest reported NVIDIA acquisition to date) and the unusual carve-out that Groq’s early-stage cloud business would not be included. Public reporting indicates the information originated from Alex Davis, CEO of Disruptive (lead investor in Groq’s latest financing), and that neither NVIDIA nor Groq had issued an immediate confirmation at the time of publication. The same reporting frames the transaction as coming together quickly, only months after Groq raised $750M at a ~$6.9B valuation, and highlights Groq’s positioning as a high-performance inference chip vendor founded by ex-Google TPU engineers. Groq is best understood as a vertically integrated inference acceleration company whose core asset is an application-specific processor optimized for deterministic, low-latency execution of transformer-style workloads, paired with a compiler-led software stack and a distribution layer (GroqCloud) designed to reduce developer friction via OpenAI-compatible APIs and integrations. Groq brands its architecture as a Language Processing Unit (LPU) and consistently emphasizes that the design target is inference, not training. The company’s own architecture description centers on 1-core execution, large on-chip SRAM used as primary storage (explicitly not cache), a custom compiler that statically schedules compute and communication, and direct chip-to-chip connectivity intended to coordinate multi-chip execution without relying on conventional caching hierarchies or dynamic runtime scheduling. The technical premise is a deliberate inversion of the conventional GPU approach. GPUs deliver throughput via massively parallel, multi-core execution with dynamic scheduling, complex memory hierarchies, and heavy reliance on off-chip HBM bandwidth and sophisticated runtime/kernel optimization. Groq instead argues that inference bottlenecks are driven by latency variance (tail latency), synchronization overhead, and memory access unpredictability inherent in dynamically scheduled, cache-heavy architectures, particularly when workloads are latency sensitive and batch sizes cannot be inflated. Groq’s solution is to move “control” into the compiler: the full execution graph and inter-chip communication schedule are computed ahead of time down to clock-cycle granularity, with deterministic execution designed to reduce run-to-run variance. In Groq’s framing, the removal of caches, reorder buffers, speculative execution overhead, and other sources of contention enables predictable latency and high utilization without per-model kernel engineering typical of GPU tuning cycles. A critical nuance is that Groq’s determinism is not merely a software claim; it is tightly coupled to architectural constraints and system design choices that trade flexibility for predictability. Third-party technical commentary indicates Groq’s chip uses a fully deterministic VLIW-style approach with minimal buffering, no external memory, and heavy dependence on sharding models across many chips because on-chip SRAM capacity is limited. SemiAnalysis describes a ~725 mm^2 die on GlobalFoundries 14nm with ~230MB of SRAM and notes that “no useful models” fit on a single chip, forcing multi-chip partitioning for modern LLMs and driving a system-level design where networking and compilation are first-class scheduling problems rather than ancillary infrastructure. This is consistent with Groq’s own messaging that tensor parallelism across chips is a primary design goal, enabled by large on-chip SRAM and compile-time coordination of compute plus interconnect. The on-chip SRAM emphasis is central to Groq’s latency story and also its most constraining trade-off. Groq claims on-chip SRAM bandwidth “upwards of 80 TB/s” and contrasts that with off-chip HBM bandwidth “about 8 TB/s,” asserting a potential 10x advantage from bandwidth plus reduced trips across chip-to-memory boundaries. While these comparisons are marketing-oriented and depend on workload specifics, the architectural implication is clear: Groq prioritizes ultra-fast local weight/activation access and then scales capacity by adding chips, not by attaching large off-chip memory pools. This design can reduce latency for sequential inference layers and minimize unpredictable stalls, but it pushes complexity into partitioning strategy, interconnect topology, and compiler scheduling, and it increases the number of chips needed for very large parameter counts and large KV-cache footprints. Groq also highlights numeric formats and compiler-driven precision management as a performance lever. In its 2025 technical blog, Groq describes “TruePoint numerics,” including 100-bit intermediate accumulation and selective quantization choices (FP32 for attention-sensitive operations, block floating point for MoE weights, FP8 storage in error-tolerant layers), and claims 2-4x speedups versus BF16 without measurable accuracy degradation on benchmarks such as MMLU and HumanEval. Even if the absolute uplift is workload dependent, the strategic point is that Groq is pursuing performance via end-to-end co-design: precision policy is not just hardware capability (FP8/BF16) but compiler-enforced mapping of precision to error sensitivity, which can matter materially for inference cost-per-token if it reduces memory traffic and boosts throughput without forcing aggressive, accuracy-damaging quantization. Independent performance datapoints indicate Groq has been credible on latency-oriented inference speed, at least for certain regimes. EE Times reported in 2023 that Groq demonstrated Llama-2 70B inference at ~240 tokens/s per user on a cloud-based dev system described as 10 racks and 64 chips, using the company’s 1st-gen silicon introduced several years earlier. Separate Groq commentary around independent benchmarking cites results showing ~241 tokens/s throughput and ~0.8s time to receive 100 output tokens for a Llama-2 70B API configuration, positioning the platform as a step-change in “available speed” for certain interactive use cases. These figures do not settle total cost-of-ownership versus GPUs or hyperscaler ASICs, but they establish that Groq’s system-level architecture can deliver strong single-user throughput and latency on large models when properly partitioned and scheduled. GroqCloud is the commercial wrapper that packages this hardware/software stack as “tokens-as-a-service,” aiming to make Groq adoption feel like switching API endpoints rather than adopting new silicon. Groq’s documentation states its API is designed to be “mostly compatible” with OpenAI client libraries, and its pricing page provides model-specific token rates, published speeds (tokens/s), prompt caching discounts, and batch processing discounts. For example, pricing lists inputs as low as $0.05 per 1M tokens and outputs as low as $0.08 per 1M tokens for certain smaller LLM configurations, with higher prices for larger models and long-context or MoE variants; it also advertises prompt caching with a 50% discount on cached input tokens for certain models and a batch API offering 50% lower cost for asynchronous processing windows. These mechanics are economically important because they demonstrate Groq’s go-to-market is not simply “sell chips,” but “sell predictable unit economics per token,” with tooling (batch, caching) that directly targets inference cost drivers (reused prompts, throughput smoothing, and asynchronous workloads). The cloud footprint and distribution partnerships indicate Groq has been building an inference-native “edge within the cloud” strategy rather than competing head-on with hyperscalers on breadth of services. A 2025 Groq newsroom release describes a European deployment in Helsinki with Equinix, positioned as latency reduction and data governance for European customers, and explicitly references Equinix Fabric enabling private connectivity to GroqCloud over public, private, or sovereign infrastructure. The same release enumerates additional capacity in the U.S. (Equinix, DataBank), Canada (Bell Canada), and Saudi Arabia (HUMAIN), and states these sites collectively served more than 20M tokens/s across Groq’s global network at that time. That supply-side metric matters because it provides a directional sense that Groq is scaling capacity as a network, not merely as a chip vendor. Customer disclosure is inherently limited because Groq is private and many enterprise deployments are not public, but Groq’s marketing materials and partnerships provide signals about demand vectors. The company’s public website displays logos of large consumer and enterprise brands (e.g., Dropbox, Vercel, Chevron, Volkswagen, Canva, Robinhood, Riot Games, Workday, Ramp) and includes a published customer quote claiming a 7.41x chat speed increase and an 89% cost reduction after moving to GroqCloud, followed by a tripling of token consumption. While marketing claims should be treated as case-specific and not generalized, they indicate that Groq is targeting both AI-native developers (who measure success by latency and cost-per-token) and enterprise buyers (who care about predictable performance and governance). Supplier and dependency mapping for Groq spans 3 layers: silicon production, system integration, and cloud infrastructure. On silicon, third-party analysis indicates GlobalFoundries 14nm for the 1st-gen Groq chip, implying a supply chain less constrained by the most capacity-tight leading-edge nodes and advanced packaging bottlenecks that dominate high-end GPU supply (HBM stacks, CoWoS-type packaging constraints). If accurate, this is strategically meaningful because it suggests Groq capacity expansion could be gated more by conventional wafer supply, board assembly, and data center power than by the same HBM/advanced packaging scarcity that has constrained top-tier GPU ramp cycles. On systems and cloud, Groq’s own releases identify colocation and connectivity partners (Equinix, DataBank, Bell Canada) and a Middle East partner (HUMAIN), implying dependencies on data center real estate, power availability, and network connectivity, alongside procurement of standard server components, NICs/switching, racks, and cooling infrastructure. The Groq design narrative also emphasizes air cooling and reduced need for complex power/cooling infrastructure, which—if realized in deployments—can widen the set of feasible hosting locations and lower deployment friction relative to liquid-cooled, very high power density GPU racks. Against that backdrop, the strategic rationale for NVIDIA acquiring Groq can be framed as a set of overlapping objectives: inference silicon optionality, architectural hedging, competitive defense, and supply chain diversification, with the carve-out of GroqCloud signaling a preference to avoid direct cloud competition and to focus on IP and product portfolio control rather than operating a capital-intensive token-serving business. The deal, if confirmed, would occur at a valuation step-up of ~190% versus Groq’s reported ~$6.9B private valuation in the September $750M round, reinforcing that any acquisition logic would be predominantly strategic rather than a conventional financial multiple arbitrage. The most compelling strategic driver is inference. Training has historically been the center of gravity for cutting-edge GPU demand, but inference volume is structurally larger and more distributed as deployments scale, with economics dominated by cost-per-token, latency guarantees, and utilization under spiky demand. Inference workloads also create a strategic vulnerability for NVIDIA: hyperscalers and large platforms can justify bespoke ASICs (TPU, Trainium/Inferentia, Maia-class efforts) because inference is stable, repeatable, and can amortize software investment at massive scale. Groq’s core proposition—deterministic, compiler-scheduled inference with predictable latency—aligns directly with the segment where GPU generality is least valued and where “good enough” programmability plus superior unit economics can win share. Acquiring Groq would allow NVIDIA to own a credible inference-native architecture rather than relying solely on GPUs and software optimization to defend that segment. Competitive defense logic is also plausible. Groq occupies a specific competitive wedge: low-latency, high-throughput interactive inference, delivered via a simple API abstraction that reduces switching cost. That wedge directly pressures GPU inference margins in the long run because it makes inference price/performance comparisons more transparent at the token level, and it targets a developer persona that historically defaulted to CUDA-first ecosystems. Even if NVIDIA’s current-generation systems can achieve very high tokens/s per user with extensive optimization, the strategic risk is that competing architectures normalize the idea that inference is best served by special-purpose silicon with a simpler programming model, weakening CUDA lock-in at the application layer. NVIDIA has actively demonstrated that Blackwell-era systems can exceed 1,000 tokens/s per user in benchmarked configurations, but that performance leadership does not automatically translate to lowest cost-per-token across the full range of batch sizes, latency targets, and deployment environments. Groq’s existence as a credible alternative architecture forces NVIDIA to keep defending inference economics rather than only raw performance leadership. The “technology acquisition” rationale is unusually strong in this specific case because Groq’s differentiator is not a single block of silicon IP but an end-to-end methodology: compiler-led static scheduling, deterministic networking, and a system architecture designed around tensor-parallel inference rather than throughput-maximizing batch inference. NVIDIA’s stack is already compiler-heavy (TensorRT, Triton, CUDA graphs, kernel fusion, speculative decoding techniques), but GPUs remain dynamically scheduled devices with complex memory hierarchies and stochastic latency behaviors under contention. Groq’s approach provides an alternate design point: treating the entire inference execution (compute plus communication) as a statically schedulable program. In principle, that IP could be valuable even if Groq silicon itself is not adopted at massive scale, because it can inform how NVIDIA builds future inference-optimized products, compilers, and networking fabrics, especially as distributed inference with large models makes communication a first-order performance determinant. Supply chain diversification is a non-obvious but potentially important driver. If Groq’s mainstream product generation is truly based on a mature process node and avoids HBM, then the scaling constraints look different than those of state-of-the-art GPUs. NVIDIA’s ability to meet incremental demand has been tightly coupled to advanced packaging and HBM supply, and those constraints can remain binding even when wafer supply is available. An inference ASIC architecture that relies primarily on on-chip SRAM and scales by adding chips—while not costless—could reduce dependence on HBM availability and advanced packaging capacity, enabling NVIDIA to ship “inference capacity” in higher absolute volumes or into geographies and customer segments where the highest-end GPUs are economically or logistically difficult to deploy. This could be particularly relevant for latency-sensitive inference deployed in regional colocation footprints rather than centralized hyperscale campuses. The carve-out of GroqCloud, if accurate, is itself a strategic signal about NVIDIA’s priorities. Operating a token-serving cloud at scale is capital intensive, structurally lower margin than silicon IP rents, and creates channel conflict with hyperscalers and CSP partners who are core NVIDIA customers. NVIDIA has generally positioned its cloud offerings through partnerships rather than as a direct hyperscale competitor. Excluding GroqCloud would preserve neutrality with CSPs and avoid inheriting multi-region data residency obligations and partner contracts, while still allowing NVIDIA to acquire Groq’s silicon, compiler technology, and engineering talent. At the same time, excluding GroqCloud would also mean NVIDIA would not automatically acquire the commercial proof-point of Groq’s unit economics or the customer contracts that validate product-market fit at scale, increasing the importance of diligence on whether Groq’s cloud pricing is structurally profitable or partially subsidized by fundraising. There is also a “preemptive acquisition” angle. The reporting identifies recent investors in Groq’s latest round including large financial institutions and strategic/industry players. In that context, Groq represents an asset that could plausibly have been acquired by a competitor (AMD/Intel) or by a hyperscaler seeking to accelerate inference independence. NVIDIA acquiring Groq could be a defensive move to prevent a credible inference-native architecture from being weaponized by a rival with deep distribution. Even if GroqCloud is carved out, controlling the silicon roadmap and compiler IP would meaningfully constrain Groq’s ability to evolve into a standalone competitor, unless the carved-out entity retains long-term rights to the hardware and software stack. However, the strategic case is not one-sided; there are meaningful risks and potential contradictions that would need to be reconciled for the transaction to be value-accretive on a multi-year horizon. 1st, Groq’s architecture appears to rely on scaling out chip count to achieve capacity, which introduces system cost, networking complexity, and physical footprint considerations. The absence of external memory and limited on-chip SRAM implies very large models require substantial chip parallelism, and the economics then depend heavily on chip cost, yield, power efficiency, and interconnect overhead. SemiAnalysis explicitly frames Groq as trading space for time and raises questions about token economics and whether publicly advertised pricing reflects fully loaded costs or market share capture. 2nd, integration risk is non-trivial. Groq’s compiler-led deterministic model is philosophically and practically different from CUDA’s dominant programming and execution model. A poorly executed integration could create internal product confusion, dilute engineering focus, or alienate developers if the combined stack fragments. 3rd, there is cannibalization risk. If Groq-class inference silicon undercuts GPU inference economics, NVIDIA could face internal margin trade-offs, even if the goal is to defend share against hyperscaler ASICs. Cannibalization can still be rational if it prevents larger share loss, but it would require crisp portfolio segmentation and go-to-market discipline. The presence of NVIDIA’s own rapidly improving inference performance complicates the “need” for Groq but does not eliminate the “option value.” NVIDIA has demonstrated benchmark-leading tokens/s per user on Blackwell-based systems, suggesting that raw interactive throughput is not necessarily the limiting factor for NVIDIA’s product line. The more enduring strategic question is unit economics and architectural control: whether future inference demand is better monetized through general-purpose GPUs plus software optimization, or whether a bifurcated product portfolio (training GPUs plus inference-native ASICs) becomes necessary to defend total AI compute wallet share as hyperscaler ASIC penetration increases. Acquiring Groq could be a decisive move to ensure NVIDIA participates in both regimes rather than betting exclusively on GPUs to win inference forever. What is “special” about Groq’s technology relative to a typical accelerator roadmap is the tight coupling of determinism, compilation, and networking into a single scheduling problem. The LPU narrative emphasizes deterministic compute and networking, static scheduling, and direct chip-to-chip coordination that allows “hundreds” (more precisely, 100s) of chips to behave like a single scheduled resource. The architecture also explicitly targets tensor-parallel, latency-optimized distribution rather than pure data-parallel throughput scaling, which matters for real-time applications where a single response must arrive quickly rather than many requests being processed in bulk. The implication is that Groq is optimized for the time-to-first-token and steady token streaming behavior that defines user experience in interactive LLMs, and it attempts to achieve that without relying on large batch sizes that can degrade latency. From a portfolio manager’s perspective, the most important interpretation is that an NVIDIA-Groq combination would likely be less about “NVIDIA needs more inference speed” and more about controlling the architectural trajectory of inference acceleration and removing a fast-improving, developer-friendly competitor from the market. The carve-out of GroqCloud would reinforce that the transaction is aimed at IP, talent, and product optionality, not acquiring a cloud revenue stream. The valuation step-up implied by $20B versus $6.9B would therefore be justified only if the acquired assets materially reduce long-term competitive risk (hyperscaler ASIC displacement, inference margin compression) or enable new monetization vectors (inference ASIC product line, supply chain de-bottlenecking, improved software determinism) that would be difficult to achieve on a comparable timeline via internal R&D.

TheValueist

102,145 views • 7 months ago