Everyone talks about AI enabling the "one-person Hollywood studio." I spent the last two months putting that to the test. The result? A full, 2+ hour feature film. Introducing "The Four Classics." Using @suno, @soraofficialapp , @grok Imagine 1.0, and Genie 3 by @GoogleLabs , I adapted China’s greatest literary epics into a sprawling, cyberpunk hip-hop opera. Grab some popcorn. Welcome to the future of AI film production. 🍿🎥 Timestamps: Water Margin 0:00:09 “The Tiger (十八婉)”- Wu Song rejects the law and engages in a drunken battle defeating the Tiger 0:03:20 “Forced to the Mountain (逼上梁山)”- Lin Chong seeks revenge on Gao Qiu for destroying his life and familial honor 0:09:24 “Black Whirlwind (黑俊峰)”- Introduction of the brute Li Kui and his love for violence 0:11:42 “The Gathering / 108 (大聚义)”- The Liangshan heroes formally assemble to announce their reign at the Hall of Loyalty and Righteousness 0:14:08 “The Amnesty (招安)”- Song Jiang, leader of the heroes, debates the pros of accepting an offer of Amnesty from the Emperor 0:18:05 “The Poison Wine (神聚蓼儿洼)”- Song Jiang encourages Li Kui to join him in drinking Poisoned Wine gifted by the Emperor Romance of the Three Kingdoms 0:22:20 “The Oath (桃园)”- Liu Bei is a small time hustler with ambition to take over the nation. He makes a blood oath with Guan Yu and Zhang Fei to do so. 0:25:57 “The Mastermind (卧龙)”- Liu Bei recruits the strategist Zhuge Liang to join his cause and take over the kingdom 0:30:49 “The Burden (​仁义)”- Caocao’s troops attack causing Liu Bei and Shu to flee south. Liu Bei burns the city of Xinye and uses common people as human shields to make his escape. 0:33:44 “The License (挟天子)”- Caocao plans his move to crush the growing nation of Shu from his penthouse 0:36:45 “No Regrets (​宁负)”- Flashback to Caocao’s betrayal of his ally Old Lu. He chooses to massacre a banquet after hearing the sound of knives sharpening. An examination of ruthless ambition. 0:39:59 “The Flex (​八十万)”- Caocao’s army of 800k soldiers races south to destroy Liu Bei’s Shu. 0:43:26 “The Estate (​江东)”- Sun Quan, leader of Wu, forms an unlikely alliance with Liu Bei to quell the approach of Caocao’s army 0:47:27 “The Shift (东风)”- Zhuge Liang summons the East Wind to change the fate of Caocao’s army at the Red Cliffs 0:51:15 “The Chains (​连环)”- Pang Tong of Shu deceives Caocao into chaining his fleet of ships together setting the perfect trap 0:54:37 “Symphony No.7 (​​第七交响曲)”- General Zhou Yu of Wu sparks the trap set by Shu strategists lighting Caocao’s entire fleet ablaze. The Epic Battle of the Red Cliffs concludes Caocao’s push south. 0:59:25 “The Split (​​三分)”- Opening Credits. Sima Yi reviews the status of the Three Kingdoms after The Red Cliffs result in an uneasy truce. 1:02:23 “Still G.U.A.N.”- Following the war, Guan Yu runs operations in Jingzhou. Sun Quan sends a formal message requesting Guan Yu’s daughter marry his son strengthening the alliance. Guan Yu promptly refuses insulting the leader of Wu. 1:05:58 “The Statue (刮骨)”- After an assassination attempt, Guan Yu is struck with poison that makes its way into his bone. He requires immediate, invasive surgery. He survives through his grit, maintaining his arrogance, but weakened from the procedure. 1:09:42 “The Funeral (白衣)”- Guan Yu is ambushed by Wu’s forces after retreating to the mountains of Maicheng. The Wu assassins approach as merchants, disguised in white clothing, catching Guan Yu by surprise. 1:13:19 “The Lie (桃园)”- Liu Bei receives news of Guan Yu’s death and sets out on a war path against Wu. He loses his composure leaning into pills to cope with the loss of his blood brothers. 1:17:08 “The O.D. (七百里)”- Liu Bei’s madness leads him to make a fatal strategic error. He stretches his army thin in a 700 mile long “snake” formation. 1:20:32 “The Boomarang (​回旋镖)”- Liu Bei’s army burns to ashes in a brutal defeat reminiscent of his triumph at the Red Cliffs. 1:23:46 “The Flop (​扶不起)”- Zhuge Liang tries to pick up the ashes of Shu nation by educating Liu Bei’s son Adou. Adou is too busy enjoying his life and inherited wealth to bother with the burden of leadership. 1:27:48 “The Frequency (​空城)”- Cornered by the army of Wei led by Sima Yi, Zhugeliang employes the empty city strategy to outsmart his rival. 1:31:12 “The Flatline (​五丈原)”- Zhuge Liang tries to outlive his corporeal form to ensure the longevity of the nation of Shu and prevail in the war. 1:34:33 “The Liquidation (​归晋)”- Sima Yi consolidates control of the Three Kingdoms and unifies China under Wei. Journey to the West 1:38:20 “Eight Trigrams Furnace (炼丹炉)”- A family flees the grind of life in China in search of “Freedom” offered by the American Dream 1:41:36 “White Bone Spirit (白骨精)”- The family experiences the demons and tribulations of modern American life in their struggle to assimilate 1:45:33 “Thunderclap Temple (雷音寺)”- The family realizes the truth of the Blank Scriptures. Dream of the Red Chamber 1:49:39 “顽石GENESIS BLOCK (Final Cut)” - Rejecting its status as a useless system glitch, the sentient Stone signs a smart contract to download its consciousness into the mortal avatar of Jia Baoyu. Trading the safety of eternal numbness for the sensory overload of a physical body, Baoyu logs into the simulation specifically to chase the lust, trauma, and "pain" of human existence. 1:54:17 “大观园THE GARDEN (HYPE HOUSE)” - Inside the simulation, Baoyu lives as the pampered admin of the Grand View Garden, a walled-off, hyper-capitalist echo chamber where the elite ignore the rotting code of the outside world. Surrounded by the Twelve Beauties, he gorges on digital excess and mindless consumption—literally "eating the rouge"—pushing the server to the absolute brink of failure. 1:57:45 “葬花DELETING ASSETS (THE CRASH)”- The manic party violently ends with a massive system crash, forcing Baoyu to watch the algorithmic destruction of his decadent world. Amidst the digital decay, his tragic soulmate Lin Daiyu desperately tries to save the pure, beautiful files of their love, burying her fragile memories to protect them from the corrupted stream before she is permanently deleted. 2:01:09 “白茫茫WHITE NOISE (LOGOUT)”- The corrupted simulation undergoes a complete format, wiping out the Jia family's vast digital empire and leaving nothing behind but a stark, quiet white wasteland.

🇺🇸US DATA RUNS HOT: INFLATION STICKY, DEMAND FIRM INFLATION • Headline PCE MoM: +0.2% vs +0.1% est.; prior -0.1% • Headline PCE YoY: +3.7% vs +3.6% est.; prior +3.7% • Core PCE MoM: +0.2% vs +0.2% est.; prior +0.1% • Core PCE YoY: +3.3% vs +3.3% est.; prior +3.3% GDP • Q2 GDP annualized: +1.5% vs +1.5% est.; prior +1.5% • Personal consumption: +3.4% vs +3.2% est.; prior +3.2% • GDP Price Index: +6.4% vs +6.2% est.; prior +6.2% • Core PCE QoQ: +3.6% vs +3.4% est.; prior +3.4% INCOME & SPENDING • Personal income MoM: +0.4% vs +0.2% est.; prior +0.2% • Personal spending MoM: +0.2% vs +0.1% est.; prior +0.3% • Real personal spending MoM: 0.0% vs 0.0% est.; prior +0.4% DURABLE GOODS • Durable goods orders MoM: +1.1% vs +0.5% est.; prior +0.5% • Durables ex-transportation: +0.4% vs +0.6% est.; prior +0.7% • Core capital goods orders: +0.2% vs +0.7% est.; prior revised to +1.7% • Core capital goods shipments: +1.4% vs +1.0% est.; prior revised to +2.4% BOTTOM LINE: Inflation remains sticky while consumer demand and headline durable goods beat expectations. GDP growth was in line, but stronger price pressures could keep the Fed cautious on rates.

🧩 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next: A 6B-Active Preview of the Qwen4 Architecture On the same night Zhipu's GLM-5.3-Flash took over the timeline, @Alibaba_Qwen open-sourced Qwen3.8-Flash-Next — explicitly positioned as a preview of the Qwen4 architecture. Zhihu contributor Kitt在进化 argues that for people who actually run models locally, this is the more practical release of the night. The local-deployment groups he is in are, in his words, on fire. His take: the model is called 3.8, but the architecture is really Qwen4 in preview — and it borrows the best ideas from across the field. 1️⃣ Smaller, cheaper, and realistic for local deployment Flash-Next has 125B total parameters with only 6B active — far smaller than the 300B-class GLM-5.3-Flash. The API is priced at ¥1 input, ¥3 output, and ¥0.1 per cached million tokens, roughly matching DeepSeek-V4-Flash's off-peak rates. His comparison, per 1M tokens in RMB — input / output / cache hit: 🔹 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next: 1.0 / 3.0 / 0.1 🔹 GLM-5.3-Flash: 0.4 / 1.4 / 0.115 (limited-time promo rate) 🔹 DeepSeek-V4-Flash (off-peak): 1.5 / 4.5 / 0.05 2️⃣ A Qwen4 preview wearing a Qwen3.8 name The author points out this is the same play Zhipu made: GLM-5.3-Flash's architecture is also completely different from GLM-5.3. Shipping the new architecture as open weights early is deliberate pathfinding. Inference frameworks like vLLM and SGLang, plus the quantization toolchain, all need lead time to adapt before Qwen4 proper arrives. 3️⃣ An architecture that borrows from everyone The author reads Flash-Next as a synthesis of the field's best recent ideas. 🔹 Attention: Qwen's in-house QSA, built to balance throughput and speed on long context. 🔹 Knowledge: it absorbs DeepSeek's Engram line of work, packing prior knowledge into 51B of N-gram side parameters — high knowledge density at minimal compute cost. 🔹 Training: the Muon optimizer, popularized by Kimi, scheduled together with AdamW. 4️⃣ Half the active parameters, still overtaking At 6B active, Flash-Next is nearly half the size of DeepSeek-V4-Flash — yet Qwen's reported benchmarks show it overtaking that model on multiple coding and agent leaderboards. The author says he is not worried about real-world experience: the recent Qwen3.8-27B already proved itself in daily use, and this sits on the same foundation. 🔗 Full Reading: #Qwen# #Alibaba# #Qwen4# #OpenWeights# #LLM# #AIInference# #MoE#

ZEROBASE WEEKLY 8.10-8.16 ZBT came under pressure this week, trading overall in the $0.085–$0.105 range. It opened near $0.105 on August 10, gradually pulled back through mid-week (dipping toward the mid-$0.08s), and closed the period around $0.083–$0.087. Despite the notable decline of roughly 15–20% from the weekly open, trading volumes remained decent on most sessions and liquidity conditions stayed relatively stable, with bid-ask spreads holding at reasonable levels. Crypto markets traded lower and range-bound this week amid fading post-jobs momentum, mixed ETF flows, regulatory delays, and persistent Middle East supply risks. Total cryptocurrency market capitalization drifted from roughly the $2.21–$2.22T area early in the period toward approximately $2.16T by the weekend, reflecting modest net outflows in risk appetite. Bitcoin opened the week near $64,800–$65,000 on August 10 (with intraday highs above $65,300), then ground lower through mid-week, touching lows near $62,500–$62,800 before stabilizing. It closed the period around $62,900–$63,100, for a net weekly decline of roughly 2.7–3.5% from the August 10 levels. Ethereum moved in a tighter band, starting near $1,900–$1,910, dipping below $1,870, and finishing near $1,870–$1,880 — a weekly loss of approximately 1.5–2%. Derivatives metrics pointed to cautious positioning. Open interest held relatively steady-to-soft (total crypto OI near $117B by weekend), 24-hour liquidations stayed moderate outside of brief volatility spikes, and funding rates on major pairs hovered near neutral to mildly negative, consistent with reduced leverage appetite in thin summer liquidity. Macro and geopolitical developments supplied the main headwinds and occasional relief. Ongoing U.S.-Iran tensions and the Strait of Hormuz disruption remained central: negotiations between Iran and Oman on temporary shipping arrangements stayed incomplete, with Tehran continuing to demand compensation, sanction relief, and an end to the U.S. naval blockade. Houthi strikes on Saudi facilities added to supply concerns. Brent crude rose from the mid-$80s early in the week toward the high-$80s (settling near $88.50 by August 16), while WTI climbed into the low-to-mid $80s — a weekly gain of more than 5% for both benchmarks after the prior week’s decline. Higher energy prices reinforced inflation stickiness concerns even as other data softened. July CPI data released on August 12 came in line with expectations and provided limited relief: headline CPI rose 0.1% month-over-month (3.4% year-over-year, down from 3.5%), while core CPI rose 0.2% MoM (2.5% YoY). Energy prices continued to ease on a monthly basis but remained elevated annually. The print, following the previous week’s weak nonfarm payrolls (-23,000), supported the view that the Fed could stay on hold longer, yet it failed to catalyze a sustained crypto rally as liquidity remained light and regulatory overhang persisted. U.S. equity markets finished the core trading week (through August 14) mixed. The S&P 500 posted a modest gain of approximately 0.4% (closing near 7,830), the Nasdaq Composite edged higher by roughly 0.1–0.2% (near 26,730), while the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined about 0.6%. Technology and semiconductor names showed dispersion amid AI-spending scrutiny and oil volatility; overall risk assets consolidated after the prior week’s stronger advance driven by the soft labor report. Institutional flows shifted from the prior week’s strong inflows. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs had recorded roughly $850–$865 million in net inflows over the preceding five sessions (August 3–7). This week opened with a notable outflow of approximately $145 million on August 10, followed by small positive or negative prints and further net outflows (including roughly -$61 million on August 12, -$131 million on August 13, and -$58 million on August 14), leaving the period net negative for BTC products. Ethereum ETF flows were more mixed, with intermittent modest inflows offsetting earlier redemptions. Regulatory caution added pressure: the SEC cancelled a planned meeting on crypto rules, and the Senate entered recess without advancing the Clarity Act (now eyed for September). The Crypto Fear & Greed Index remained firmly in Fear territory, fluctuating mostly in the 26–35 range (ending near 34). On-chain data offered a more constructive contrast to the soft price action. Large holders (“strongest hands”) continued to accumulate: the number of wallets holding ≥10,000 BTC reached a six-month high near 90, and addresses in the 10–10,000 BTC cohort added substantial volume (earlier estimates pointed to ~$1.5 billion equivalent accumulation since late July). Whales recorded one of the larger single-day accumulations in recent months (over 46,000 BTC on one notable session), while smaller/micro wallets distributed. Some dormant supply (2010–2017 vintage) moved, though residual non-clustered activity remained elevated relative to July. Exchange inflows from whales early in the week signaled selective distribution readiness, yet the overall rotation toward larger, longer-term holders continued to build support at current levels. In summary, the August 10–16 period delivered a measured pullback and consolidation in spot prices. Soft CPI and lingering hopes for a less restrictive Fed stance were outweighed by fading ETF momentum, regulatory delays, thin liquidity, and elevated energy prices from the unresolved Hormuz disruption. Higher oil is likely to keep near-term inflation sticky, yet the labor-market cooling already underway points to limited room for aggressive further tightening. With on-chain accumulation by large holders providing a floor and ETF flows showing early signs of stabilization potential, the market remains in a cautious consolidation phase within a still-complex macro and geopolitical backdrop.