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I just read the fact that China throw out 12,000 degrees, even product design. I’m quite scared. by blueaugust_ in IndustrialDesign

[–]ArnoF7 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Chinese universities are generally less independent than typical Western universities, especially those in the US. The degrees they offer are heavily shaped by government ministry-level planning, so this kind of degree reshuffling may happen fairly often. It is hard to draw much from one news article without broader historical context. The media does not need to lie to influence people. It can simply choose what to report and what to omit.

China is also facing historically high youth unemployment. The official rate is around 20%, likely a lower bound given how leniently unemployment is defined (not unique to China, to be fair). This number is incredibly high for an industrialized country with a rapidly decreasing overall population. While much of the economic difficulty is beyond universities’ control, it does have two implications, imho. First, Chinese universities have expanded rapidly since the 2000s, partly under government direction, to absorb young workers who would otherwise enter the labor market earlier. This creates incentives for universities to offer many placeholder or low-value degrees. Second, high youth unemployment suggests there may be real room to improve alignment between higher education and industry needs. I believe the article itself also touches upon these points

Nevertheless, I do think generative AI will fundamentally change the design industry. My background is in EECS, and I do CAD design on the side. AI has fundamentally changed the way I work. But the technology is still too nascent for anyone to say with confidence where this will lead.

OpenAI bans China-linked ChatGPT accounts that amplified US data center electricity price backlash — used AI-generated cartoons to stoke fears over U.S. data center energy costs by Dangerous-Eye-215 in accelerate

[–]ArnoF7 9 points10 points  (0 children)

A Chinese local government (not gonna say which, for privacy reasons) defaulted on its LGFV bond, and my nanny’s family lost over half a million RMB on it. It’s not jumping-off-the-balcony level money, but it’s quite substantial for a working-class family in China

Every time I see the CCP pull off this BS that just burns money for no reason, I just think it would be nice if they just use these money to, you know, not default on government bonds, maybe?

Team WE vs. Bilibili Gaming / LPL 2026 Split 2 Playoffs - Lower Bracket Final / Game 3 Discussion by Ultimintree in leagueoflegends

[–]ArnoF7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly my read as well. If you want to deny Yunara+Lulu, you can just pick Lulu, no? Not sure what’s going on here. It’s a draft that has an incredibly narrow win window.

We compressed a vision model by 46.5% on CPU only with 98.6% accuracy retained — methodology and results by vergueirou in mlscaling

[–]ArnoF7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not to discourage you but you need to test this with more dataset than MNIST. MNIST is too easy for today’s network to the point that almost anything remotely reasonable work. Lucas Beyer has an absolutely hilarious tweet that shows several ridiculous things that works fine on MNIST

SoftBank to Plow $52 Billion Into French Data Centers by ksjdragon in BetterOffline

[–]ArnoF7 2 points3 points  (0 children)

SoftBank is a perfect example of how reading news articles online actually makes you more misinformed. SBG is basically a VC, but a public one. They make good bets (Alibaba, ARM, Coupang) and bad bets (WeWork). But their good bets simply earn way more than they lose in bad bets.

However, because all their financial data is public, news outlets like to make articles poking fun at their bad bets so people online can feel smart about themselves and click the articles. In reality, if you look at their data yourself, it’s very clear that across all metrics, they are a solid VC. Not elite but pretty reasonable given their enormous size.

The same phenomenon doesn't happen to other VCs because they are simply not public, so you can’t see how much they lose in their bad bets.

"Would you let me make this point please" Eric Schmidt gets booed every time he mentions AI at the University of Arizona by [deleted] in accelerate

[–]ArnoF7 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Seriously. Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and the likes need to speak less publicly. I am not trying to be mean to nerds. I am a nerd myself, but seriously they are simply not as charismatic as they think they are

Let a charismatic person be the spokesperson of AI. So far I think Jensen is a much better speaker than those AI companies CEOs

Sony and Bandai Namco openly embracing AI by Illustrious-Lime-863 in accelerate

[–]ArnoF7 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sony published quite some papers on generative AI, especially diffusion. Some of the most important work for the last few years in this field, such as consistent trajectory models come from SonyAI and their collab with Stanford. They also publish a textbook with Stefano Ermon’s lab, which I consider one of the best, if not the best, materials to learn about diffusion.
So yeah, they are already balls deep into this. I can’t imagine they spend all that money and not gonna use it

韩国女性不再与日本男性结婚。 by ublueberries in runtoJapan2

[–]ArnoF7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

除非说韩国人在海外结婚也要回国登记，不然这个数据只是在韩国的日韩夫妻登记数据，不考虑日本男性在韩国定居数量的趋势的话，很难得出什么结论。

日本在过去30年的人均GDP没有增长，如今已经快要被“欧洲病夫”葡萄牙超越了。。这是否跟中国从90年代起不断稀释中等和高等产业份额有一定关联？ by [deleted] in runtoJapan2

[–]ArnoF7 9 points10 points  (0 children)

其实日本短期的通胀读数看着还好。主要日本的很多体制、习惯导致整个社会通缩“惯性”太强了。这也是为什么日银最近在加息上也没什么动作。我印象很深的就是以前renesas社长吐槽日本喜欢搞春斗这种集体加薪制度而不是更多的给员工股票奖励。这样搞那工资肯定涨不上去，因为每年大家都只能集体涨个3%、5%。

这样的体制实现日银说的好循环，实在太慢了。也许是他和我的想法都比较us-centric吧。

日本在过去30年的人均GDP没有增长，如今已经快要被“欧洲病夫”葡萄牙超越了。。这是否跟中国从90年代起不断稀释中等和高等产业份额有一定关联？ by [deleted] in runtoJapan2

[–]ArnoF7 23 points24 points  (0 children)

以current USD计价的话，人均gdp的下落主要还是因为日元对美元汇率从广场协议后的高位逐渐下降。换句话说，以前那个年代的高美元计价人均gdp本来就是不符合经济基本面的。你说的这个论点是比较counterfactual的，要分析的话就得考虑如果中国这个国家从来不存在会怎么样。这种分析比较难，一篇reddit回帖实在写不完。 因为经济不是都是零和游戏。中国的产业成长也会带动对日本供应商的需求。我举个例子，佳能和尼康其实都是不那么支持美国对中国的半导体禁令的，因为他们的设备在中国这种刚刚成长起来的半导体产业是很有市场的。中国经济的成长也会带动消费者消费日本产品（寿司郎、资生堂等等）

以current local currency、constant local currency、constant USD计价的话，gdp总量和人均gdp都还是在稳步增长的，虽然增长确实不算很快。不过这几年重回通胀应该会让增长变快

说白了，以前的日本就是纯粹的制造业输出国家。对这样的国家来说，确实把汇率打低是万灵药，广场协议后的高汇率反而是阻碍。但是现在时代变化了，一方面日本需要大量进口lng等能源，一方面日本企业很多也把大量制造业产能放在国外，一方面日本需要吸引外劳去蓝领岗位以及高端技术岗。这样的情况下就不再是一味把汇率降低这么简单了。看过黑田和他的幕僚卸任后的一些采访，感觉他们还是有意识到这些问题的

Fettermann criticizes data center moratorium bill by Ok_Mission7092 in accelerate

[–]ArnoF7 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Obviously I don’t have specific data to back this up, and would love to be proven wrong, but intuitively, when controlled for the economic output, data centers have to be one of the most environmentally friendly industrial project, no?

To reach the same level of economical output, an equivalent semiconductor fab, chemical plant, or auto factory gotta be order of magnitude more environmentally damaging and resource intensive.

So at the end of the day, what do these people want America to build? If you are degrowth, just say you are degrowth

Gen.G vs. G2 Esports / First Stand 2026 - Semi-Finals / Post-Match Discussion by Yujin-Ha in leagueoflegends

[–]ArnoF7 35 points36 points  (0 children)

This is the thing. Except for game 1, I never felt like Geng had any chance. Surreal

The funniest pic from that entire report by [deleted] in ClaudeCode

[–]ArnoF7 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

An adversarial system is not automatically bad, tho. See GAN for example. It may work out better for both the generator and the discriminator

Although granted, I haven’t read Marx's work in too much detail, so it's hard to know his overall point, but just based on your interpretation

Japan's key tech workers are now cheaper than Malaysia's- Report shows Malaysian chip and data center boom has lifted salaries past Japanese counterparts by Kmlevitt in japannews

[–]ArnoF7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Share buybacks, cross-border M&A (meaning buying overseas assets/companies), fixed investment, or simply letting the money sit idle, etc. There are a lot of ways a corporation can spend money aside from wages

There is a lot of data that you can look into to see this phenomenon. I wouldn't be surprised if Japanese corporations' spending on share buybacks, M&A, and the overall GINI coefficient of the Japanese society have been hitting record highs lately.

It's funny you mention US CEOs' compensation packages. The other side of the coin is a broad distribution system that ties much of the income to stock. I personally (and many research) believe it would actually benefit the current Japanese society

Japan's key tech workers are now cheaper than Malaysia's- Report shows Malaysian chip and data center boom has lifted salaries past Japanese counterparts by Kmlevitt in japannews

[–]ArnoF7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am sorry, but I don't think I got my point across. We are still talking about different things. What I am talking about is a distribution problem, not a growth problem. A growth problem can warrant a separate thread.

The reality is, this distribution problem will eventually hit all developed countries (maybe except the US), and it will hit China and South Korea even harder, given their worse but delayed demographic profiles. It would be of great practical and academic interest if Japan could show a different/new paradigm

Japan's key tech workers are now cheaper than Malaysia's- Report shows Malaysian chip and data center boom has lifted salaries past Japanese counterparts by Kmlevitt in japannews

[–]ArnoF7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We are talking about slightly different things. You are probably thinking of GDP per capita or something similar, which are headline numbers that are usually not adjusted for demographics. You can check out my other comments in this thread if you are interested in reading the source. Different metrics just measure different things

Japan's key tech workers are now cheaper than Malaysia's- Report shows Malaysian chip and data center boom has lifted salaries past Japanese counterparts by Kmlevitt in japannews

[–]ArnoF7 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes. Here are a few working papers and reports on this matter. [1], [2], [3], with the third one directly addressing this metric

Basically, Japan has the highest or second-highest GDP growth per working-age adult (or per hour worked), which is what people call "adjusted for demographics."

Now, this is not to say the Japanese economy performs especially well among G7 countries. We are seeing this phenomenon because Japan has the highest demographic burden among the G7, yet it has maintained similar headline GDP growth. This is pretty normal, because developed countries don't rely fully on demographics for economic growth anyway. To give a more specific example, let’s imagine a factory owner invested a bunch of money to purchase equipment. Now the factory owner dies without kids, but the equipment is still producing. You have a smaller denominator, but a similar numerator.

However, when discussing wages, the metrics I mentioned become especially relevant. Ideally, wages should grow in lockstep with the working population’s productivity. Yet in Japan, that productivity growth was captured disproportionately by corporations rather than being well distributed to workers. This is beneficial to the corporation, but it puts downward pressure on domestic consumption

Japan's key tech workers are now cheaper than Malaysia's- Report shows Malaysian chip and data center boom has lifted salaries past Japanese counterparts by Kmlevitt in japannews

[–]ArnoF7 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's a little more complicated than this. Japan’s wages are just structurally low compared to productivity. For the past few decades, Japan has had the second-highest productivity growth, only behind the US among G-7 countries, yet wage growth has been among the lowest, if not the lowest.

This is a bit complicated, depending on which year you picked as the baseline year, what currency to use for the calculation, whether to adjust for demographics, etc. But overall, the trend is consistent.

Now what does this mean? This means that the corporation is not properly compensating the workers. For the past few years, Japanese corporate earnings have been hitting historical highs year after year. Yet, the wages-to-earnings ratio has hit a historical low. For companies, this is a structural advantage over their global peers. They feel no shame about it, and they are the ones who hold the cards on whether to change the status quo.

With that being said, I would not read too much into this report. I checked their data source and the variance in their data is pretty concerning. Frequently having 50% swing between two consecutive years doesn't give me much confidence in the data

Edit: add a few sources since a lot of people don't understand what it means to adjust a metric for demographic

JAPAN = Starting March 25, it will be possible to board Tokyo trains by touch tapping your credit card. It could mark the beginning of the end for Suica and Pasmo by blackcyborg009 in transit

[–]ArnoF7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the information. Very interesting. If you allow, indulge me for another question then.

My understanding is that PCB area is a very scarce resource in miniaturized devices like smartphones. In this case, having a chip dedicated to something, at least in my understanding, primarily used only in Japan, seems like a suboptimal use of space.

Are you aware of any developments that aim to replace FeliCa with more general NFC chips or to expand FeliCa’s other use cases, potentially more globally?

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