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Introducing my latest project, 3DConversions.com … AI-powered 2D-to-3D mesh generation built specifically for 3D crystal engraving (subsurface laser engraving).
In the crystal engraving industry, operators normally pay $6-10 per subject for human-sculpted meshes that are then engraved into crystal. My platform automates the entire process.
It performs automatic background removal with segmentation (plus point-and-click refinement), 180-degree 3D mesh reconstruction in Wavefront OBJ, texture contrast optimization for engraving clarity, and soon, point cloud export for laser-ready files.
The pipeline is tuned for crystal-friendly content like portraits and pets, and the models are optimized for the features we see the most: faces, hair, glasses, fingers, and common poses. And where AI falls short, we have designers ready to fix difficult images.
The final result is high quality, engraving-ready 3D meshes in minutes instead of paying human designers per-subject sculpting fees with 24+ hour turnaround.
Revolutionizing a weird little niche, but a fun one :) – at Tampa, FL
There is no way non business (corporate) users would pay $5,000/mo for subs. I’m sure OpenAI is finding even their $500 plan doesn’t have a huge uptake.
So either they offer less usage for the same price or they offer dumber models that are cheaper to serve.
We already see that with OpenAI encouraging people to use Sol and Terra.
And that’s where I see it headed. The market has proven $200 plans work, the providers just need to get their costs in line.
I wired $20k USD from my USA LLC to my Korean company to for operating expenses, etc.
This is the list of documents my Korean Bank (Hana Bank) wants to complete the wire.
It will require two, probably three physical branch visits and numerous printed documents pulled from various government websites (that they themselves could have pulled).
Never take for granted how easy it is to do business in the United States.
this is a never-ending struggle xitter.cf/danyay/status/21153596…
Had to ask my helpful rep a question via email and my Korean bank blocked the email (despite us emailing back and forth numerous times), requiring me to submit a CAPTCHA
But of course the CAPTCHA is broken
Friction at every step
I wired $20k USD from my USA LLC to my Korean company to for operating expenses, etc.
This is the list of documents my Korean Bank (Hana Bank) wants to complete the wire.
It will require two, probably three physical branch visits and numerous printed documents pulled from various government websites (that they themselves could have pulled).
Never take for granted how easy it is to do business in the United States.
Love getting messages from friends who listen to me babble on about AI at length but don't quite understand it...
...until they use it and see the magic
This guy's a chef, by the way
Look at all the SaaS devs in the comments with their cope
At work (R&D at a fortune 500 company w/ 15k+ employees), every time a SaaS pitches their product, my first question in the review meeting is, "Why don't we just build this ourselves?"
In the past, there were always good answers to that question. Today, I can't think of any.
If we can point an agent at any website or demo, have it research the broader problem for 72 hours, build the product with a focus on our specific needs, with any extra features we want, AND save a million a year why would we pay for your SaaS?
Scale? It only has to scale to 15,000 employees and a few million customers. We don't have the same scaling problem you do serving 1,000 businesses with 100s of million of customers. Scale is a non-issue.
Reliability? Your 99.9% self-reported uptime is not impressive. We can pay to host an app on a hyperscaler too. And when we do it, we know with certainty whether the uptime number is true or not. Github's official status page reports ~99% uptime. The Missing GitHub Status Page reports 93%. Reliability is a non-issue.
Bugs? You think your SaaS product doesn't have bugs to work out? I've seen bugs in third party products cost our company millions. Everyone is shipping early and often. Including your SaaS. Every piece of software has bugs. But there is a big difference between a bug in your code and a bug in ours. When the bug is in your code, we are at your mercy. Maybe you put it into Jira immediately. Are you going to bypass sprint planning? You won't have a fix for two weeks. Maybe you'll fail to reproduce and blame our code. Maybe it is our code. Maybe its an interplay. Since you don't have our code and we don't have your code, how are we going to figure that out? If it's all our code, an employee can fix it in an hour. If we need to, we can throw ten engineers with agents in a call until it's reproduced, the fix is merged, and it's validated. Bugs are a non-issue.
Bandwidth? Agents are nearly autonomous now. They don't need to be babysat. I can spin up a project and let an agent run for 50 hours, have it build a PowerPoint and walk into a demo with leadership blind. If anything breaks, "I'm still working on that." Things always break in demos. Nobody cares. If leadership proposes a feature, the answer is, "Yeah, great idea, I can add that." Because I can. Bandwidth is a non-issue.
Maintenance? We have so much prior art, inputs and outputs, we can benchmark anything. We have autonomous PR systems built on top of in-app feedback SDKs so even the non-dev users can contribute to every app or service. Even our analytics systems are tied to automated PRs. Maintenance is a non-issue.
Support? It doesn't matter how much we're paying a month for your platinum level enterprise support when our point of contact has to fetch the one dev who already went home for every non-trivial incident. The incident is never trivial. We already checked the top 10 things it could be because that was faster than asking you. Support is a non-issue.
Expertise? Agentic research. We can build anything. Expertise is a non-issue.
Cost? The cost of intelligence has gone down 100x every year. You're still charging 2022 prices. You should be charging closer to your electricity costs. Cost is a non-issue.
At this point, the only reason we don't switch off existing services is that transitioning 15,000 employees to something else is a pain in the butt. It would be a pain in the butt even with a perfect bug-free, infinitely scalable, perfectly-reliable clone.
Your new SaaS doesn't have that moat.
But it does give me an idea for a product to build.
One of the reasons I chose to live in Korea is because of the interactions with the people.
When I was deciding on where to live, one thing I wanted to do was be able to interact with the locals before I learned the language (and even more once I did). I didn’t want to be in an “expat island.”
Nowhere in Asia gave me an opportunity to learn from people vastly different than me on day 1 like Korea did. And every night I go out and meet people who share their stories, wonder about themselves, are curious about us, and just generally educate me on how our upbringing varies totally from theirs - teaching me as much as I can teach them.
Some of it, sure, is being on equal financial footing - in many SEA countries, if you want to go to a “local” bar it’s quite different than what you might expect, locals and foreigners don’t really mingle because of the income gap. That’s fine, but it’s not what you’d experience in Korea, and also where Koreans speak English.
But to meet and communicate with the locals is such a rewarding experience and I’m so fortunate to be able to stay in this country.
Pictured is a convo with a Korean tonight who was sad about her perceived perception of her country, which wasn’t really true anymore. She spoke good English but wanted ChatGPT to give a proper translation of this thought. ❤️
Don’t forget $SHOP holders and customers…
3 years ago during the peak of software, Shopify signed us to 3 year contracts if we wanted to keep our Shopify Plus prices and features
The world has changed a lot since then, and I’m looking forward to saving $2000+ a month in a few months…
I can see my shift in thinking after living in East Asia for a couple years
In East Asia, we give up trying to find ways around things. The rules are the rules. You're not special, they won't be changed for you. Follow the process.
In the west, we like to figure out ways to get around them. Maybe you know someone in city hall. Maybe you'll do those renovations without a permit.
In Latin America and Southeast Asia, people learn to use money to get around issues. Bribe the cops to get out of that helmet ticket. Pay the immigration officer to overstay your visa.
living in East Asia has molded me a bit to try not to push against the system unless I want to make my life even more difficult lol
You are proposing great solutions as any westerner would, unfortunately they are incompatible with East Asian protocols lol
I'm sure I'd get big questions about sources of funds at my next visa renewal if I did that
Oh, did I mention I need a document that can only print to specific printers, with software that only runs on Windows?
It's so bad that someone has even hacked together Windows drivers so you can Print to PDF and print it from there normally modu-print.com/%EB%AC%B8%EC%…
I tried to wire money online once from my Korean bank (Hana Bank) to my Chinese supplier for goods once.
Impossible. Would have required physical branch visits (to branches that don't speak English, mind you) and stacks of paperwork.
Instead I logged into my US LLC's Chase account and sent the wire to China with like 5 clicks.
There are two types of people replying to this:
- Those that immediately read this and say "SAMSUNG IS EVIL! THEY SHOULD BE PROSECUTED! PEOPLE NEED TO GO TO JAIL!"
- Those that read the summary, think "hmm, I wonder why," check the product detail page, and see that Samsung TVs have AI features to detect crying babies and barking dogs, and that it's right there on their marketing pages
you guys are worried about claude banning you for even asking about reverse engineering and i'm asking Sol 6.1 to create scripts to mass download TV shows off The Pirate Bay
i don’t even know how my clankers work, couldn’t even define a token
this guy is doing invasive brain surgery on open models
