Not Bear Liu

After squatting around doing stuff for a while, I suddenly stood up and felt dizzy, so I quickly steadied myself with both hands on the table. My daughter, standing nearby, asked with concern, “Dad, what’s wrong? Are you okay? Is everything all right?”

I said, “I’m fine.”

She said, “Oh, I thought you’d become disabled.”

Before I could respond, she continued, “If you were disabled, we could park in a disabled parking spot.”

Me: ???

Seeing what Jensen Huang is going through, I suddenly thought of our fellow Yunnan native, Chu Shijian.

So Old Huang doesn’t just have one affair—he has two? No wonder his name is Jensen; it sounds like “ginseng.” He’s bursting with energy.

As an introvert, after a whole day of networking, this is what I look like.

Auckland is already covered in GTA 6 ads, so I'm starting to play Red Dead Redemption now.

New personal embarrassing moment unlocked: seeing my giant face on the movie theater screen 😂

The official event is Monday at 6 p.m. Auckland friends, come say hi in person!

I recently finished listening to the audiobook version of Fei-Fei Li’s memoir, *The Worlds I See*. Here are some thoughts on it.

Three keywords first drew me in: immigration, AI, and Asian identity. But what stayed with me was a fourth: curiosity.

The book follows two parallel threads. One is her personal journey: born in Beijing, raised in Chengdu, she moved to the United States at fifteen. She worked to help her family pay off their debts while trying to find her place in a completely unfamiliar education system. She went on to study physics at Princeton, earn a PhD from Caltech, and eventually lead Stanford’s AI Lab. The other thread is the scientific history of how machines learned to “see” the world. At its heart is ImageNet, a public benchmark dataset containing tens of millions of images labeled and categorized so that different algorithms could be compared fairly.

One detail in the story of ImageNet really stuck with me: while many people were focused on competing over algorithms, Fei-Fei Li’s team devoted its energy to the scale and diversity of the data. Early on, this approach seemed clunky, even not very “smart.” But what happened? Later, large-scale data, GPUs, and deep neural networks came together, and computer vision made a genuine leap forward.

This changed how I think about “technological breakthroughs.” The narrower the training material, the more a model can only be smart in a narrow world. The value of broad input is that it forces you to keep distinguishing what an object is from the background you’ve simply grown used to.

This idea has also influenced how I plan my own vocabulary learning. I have nearly 800 words in my vocabulary notebook… I talk about this in more detail on the podcast.

This episode is for anyone curious about the history of AI, or currently reading this book. The link is below 👇
https://redcircle.com/shows/936a3212-92e5-41c7-b6f9-39e3596adeb8/episodes/6d6ed2ed-7068-47c7-a7b5-84c34cb6a5f8

The truly interesting part begins after you launch a small product.

I recently wrote in my newsletter about what happened after I launched CUBE. It’s not one of those “monthly revenue crossed $XX” stories, but a more practical question: who actually found the product, and why did they use it?

If you build products, you’ve probably felt this too: the excitement of launch day is brief. What really gets you thinking is how your first users behave. Where did they come from? What’s different about the ones who stick around and the ones who leave? Which features are they actually using, and which ones did you just assume they’d use?

In Issue 96, I’ve written down all these observations. No spin—just what really happened.

If you’re building an indie product too, or thinking about whether to launch something, this might be worth a read.

👉 https://newsletter.bearliu.com/p/what-happened-after-i-launched-cube

The words everyone uses—especially creative professionals, designers, and product people—leave a very important language footprint. You can’t leave semantic precision to AI; you still have to manage it yourself.

After using TypeLess for two or three months, I found that the density of my thinking had decreased, but my efficiency in taking action had improved. In the end, I switched back to Whisperflow.

In this episode, we also talk about the two-thread trap of running multiple AI tasks in parallel, just how fast Vibe Coding really is, whether thinking can be outsourced, and how I currently divide tasks between ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

https://bearliu.substack.com/p/83

《A Letter to Grandma》—this movie is such a tearjerker.

People from Chaoshan are so lovely.

Pair it with Cai Chongda’s *Skin* and *Fate*, and it hits even harder.

I spotted a Street Fighter II arcade machine at the movie theater. Finally, I could show off the skills I’d spent years honing in front of my daughter! Then I realized it was the turbo version, with the difficulty cranked up to the max (what a greedy arcade owner).

I didn’t even get to see the Four Kings—I got taken out by Chun-Li…

I only suddenly realized it was Singles’ Day today while writing in my diary. I had no idea. Maybe it’s just faded from my mind, and I’m not in China anymore. Friends back in China, is Singles’ Day still a thing? Does anyone still actually rush to buy things?

I just finished watching the new Resident Evil movie. It was great. This time, instead of those larger-than-life characters flying around and striking poses, we get a foul-mouthed courier who loves video games and refuses to grow up. He can’t bring himself to accept that his girlfriend is pregnant, but he’s also a genuinely kind person, determined to deliver a medical package entrusted to him to the hospital and get someone to sign for it.

The movie pays homage to all the classic Resident Evil elements, like the typewriter save points, herbs, healing items, and shotguns.

There are also plenty of great moments that defy expectations, like the cool, aloof female assassin heading out to clean up the scene—only to get killed herself. I love twists like that.

The ending is a little sad.

I recommend checking it out.

New achievement unlocked: I officially became a rescue boat operator/instructor for a New Zealand children's aquatic program (rookie level)

How does a family photo album app that costs $69.99 a year convince people to pay? Especially when iPhones already come with a free Photos app.

I recently tried Sundrop, and a few details in its onboarding caught my attention.

First, it needed to scan more than 10,000 photos on my phone, but it didn’t leave me waiting around. While scanning, it showed me photos and asked, “Who’s this?” I could answer as it went and get familiar with the product at the same time.

It also knows when to ask for things. It showed me some results before requesting notification permissions. And on the paywall, the collages were made entirely from my own photos.

Of course, it has its issues. The home screen looks a lot like the iPhone’s built-in Photos app, and the experience lacks a really powerful aha moment. But all those little surprises added up and made me want to keep exploring.

Full video: https://youtu.be/KBufU26IUjs

There are so many screen recording apps these days. I’ve probably used more than ten myself, from Loom to CleanShot, but in the end, I still think Screen Studio is the most reliable.

In its latest version, it supports 4K cameras—and it’s incredibly smooth. It automatically captures screen layouts, lets you add LUTs, and turns off the camera automatically when there’s no sound. Every feature hits a real pain point for content creators.

How could such a great product not be popular? I’m a genuine fan. I haven’t even been paid to promote it—Adam should send me some perks!

I just finished watching the Michael Jackson biopic, *Michael*. The film tells the story of Jackson, from his early days in a five-member group to going solo and beginning to record *Thriller*. All the big hits we know so well are played several times in the movie.

I realized that things we take in during childhood tend to leave a deeper impression. Listening to Michael Jackson's music now still gets me fired up. The story itself is pretty good too. It's mainly about a child growing up under the control of a domineering father and finally stepping out of his shadow. With a theme like that, anyone can be moved and relate to it. Otherwise, a story about a genius saying nobody understands him would just feel overdramatic.

The key thing is, the actor in this film is pretty good—he's Jackson's nephew, and he really does look and sound a lot like him when he sings and dances. Combined with the stage production, it makes you feel like you're right there.

I haven't listened to Michael Jackson's music in a long time. Listening to it again now, I really do miss him a little.