🗞 What's New: Takeaways from tech's hottest new conference

Here's what you'll find in this issue:

• The hottest new conference in tech, the Network State Conference, had 40 speakers, including Pieter Levels. Here's what we went down there.
• It's cheaper than ever to build on top of AI models. Looks like the future of AI may be open source (or so says Meta).
• $4K MRR with a browser extension for design. Erwin Lengkeek built in 2 weeks, launched on Product Hunt, and promoted with a newsletter.
• ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode this week, after a four-month wait.

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What event attracts speakers from Vitalik Buterin and Naval Ravikant, to Bryan Johnson and Pieter Levels?

The Network State Conference, of course.

The "Network State" is tech entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan’s idea for an internet community that inhabits a physical space and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from other nations.

It’s a radical idea, but it’s very appealing to those interested in decentralized technologies, like crypto and remote work (hence, Vitalik’s and Levels’s appearances at the conference).

Luckily for you, we watched all 10 hours of it so you don’t have to.

Here are the top takeaways.

This issue is sponsored by Duckbill

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It's becoming cheaper to build on top of powerful AI models.

Last week, Mistral, one of the world's largest AI companies, announced a new free tier for developers.

You read that right: Free API access for an AI model.

Here's what this means for indie hackers.

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👀 Meta Connect 2024: Here's how to watch the event.

📱 Telegram will now hand over your phone number and IP if you're a criminal suspect.

🤖 How do we write software for robots?

🚀 The rebirth of a controversial mobile game.

After two failed projects, Erwin Lengkeek decided to ditch his social media shyness and start building in public.

When he started out, he only had 300 followers on X, but his first demo video hit 70K impressions and 500 likes.

His design tool, Tailscan, is currently at $4K MRR.

Here are his marketing hacks and fails.

Fiiiiinally! I can't think of any other tech I've been more excited to try this year. I constantly talk to ChatGPT in voice mode and it's incredibly useful.

The gap between people who make a habit of interfacing with AI vs those who don't, will be bigger than the gap between people who made a habit of Googling things vs those who never did. —@csallen

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Stephen Flanders, Darko Gjorgjievski, and Katie Hignett for contributing posts. —Channing