gm legends and welcome to Monday. In today's Leaderboard, we're covering the new Deepseek model that's got the big players breaking a sweat, an app that lets you book flights for free, and a Tinder-style app for discovering art. Let's dive in.

Deepseek R1: An advanced reasoning model from China

Deepseek R1 sent shockwaves through the AI community, boasting o1-level performance, but with fraction of the resources used by OpenAI. Some concerns remain about political independence from the Chinese Communist Party, but since the weights are open source there were demonstrations that the non-hosted version doesn’t show any signs of interference. One way or another the competitive landscape has been upended, as the other big players seek to replicate Deepseek’s efficiency. 

Roame Travel: A platform for booking vacations with your points

Figuring out how to use credit card points feels like a full-time job—and not one I signed up for. Roame Travel takes all that nonsense and streamlines it. You can search flights across 21 loyalty programs in real-time, set alerts for saver fares, and even see options by region with their SkyView feature. It’s not flashy, but that’s the point: it actually works. If you’re tired of letting your points just sit there because booking feels impossible, Roame might just save you a few headaches—and maybe even a vacation.

SwipeArt: Tinder-like app for discovering art 

I love learning more about art history, but finding a simple app to easily browse through artwork has been surprisingly difficult to find. Many of the ones I've tried in the past have been poorly designed, difficult to navigate, or too bloated with features I didn't need. I've been on the lookout for a clean app that lets me just easily browse art. Swipeart so far seems to be exactly what I was looking for. The twist of Tinder style swiping the art pieces also adds a pretty fun interactive element as you work your way through collections. This also makes it easy to go back and look at all the pieces you liked later. So far I'm enjoying it, and I'll definitely take art swiping over doom scrolling any day.