mikechen233

It depends on the product. But software has stronger the ecosystem effect and data lockin more so than any previous technology. Think facebook, youtube, Windows, office, apple ecosystem of products. They have two market characteristics: 1. People need to be on the platform that others are in 2. Once you are in you it's hard to leave. Both creates tendency for winner takes all economics. And I think many people knows this. Part of the reason why software companies since the 90s have higher valuation than other industries.

Environmental regulations, like air quality, water treatment is a lot tougher these days. Air and water quality has been improving for the past 7 years. These days a lot of people are giving approvals for increase environmental quality, though much work has to be done. I feel people outside don't understand how china's political system works at all. We support democracy, it's just that we think there could be different governance structures to achieve democracy and more effective governance. A lot of people, like environmental scientists, are in position of power to make changes to regulations and policy. At the same time, we are doing things to mitigate negatives of climate regulations such as increasing hassle, more costs to businesses and so on that climate regulations deniers use as excuses. It's very comprehensive.

Yeah, this was pretty much the norm. But these past 4 years, this kind of "using public money for private events" are much less common. There is much much tight curb on "dinners" "using government owned cars" "red pockets gifts". And there is a lot of auditing, approvals, and documentation for doing anything. Source: my cousin works in a governmental department. His co-worker was fired for hosting a expensive dinner for potential collaboration partner. Before, people wanted to get a government position for the "nice Perks". Nowadays, government position is no longer that "you can do whatever you want job". There are actually tons of rules for government jobs. Ex: My brother is not allowed to purchase a drink more than 8% alcohol content if the meal is sponsored by government money and there is amount cap per meal. He is mid ranked. And people can report evidence of corruption rules breaking so he is very careful with the rules.

Nvidia's big market is in servers and big training projects that train 10s or 100s gb of data or more. Almost all of these environment the data are stored in a Hadoop store, or cloud storage or big sql servers. No one is going to hook up a mac to the network add it to part of the data processing pipeline. And cloud is the natural place where this happens. Until apple releases a dedicated gpu/neural network processor in pcie card, Nvidia has nothing to fear. Nvidia is more concerned about amd or other machine learning processor startup. Apple is going to keep apple silicon running only on apple personal devices because that is being used as a competitive advantage to apple devices.

I feel is both. Also a good strategist would have made sure whatever plan and vision you have is also going to be executed well. A strategy that didn't end up to be executed well is a failed strategy.

The memory on m1 is nothing special. It's not part of the m1 die. M1 still have traditional memory controllers. It's just they built the logic die and the memory die in a single package for lower memory power. Increase package size is simple or if you really need big memory, do the traditional memory connection on a pcb.

As for gaming, I don't it's a hardware issue. It's software support. Microsoft now also owns a lot of gaming studio for xbox exclusivesz those will never come to the Mac. Also big gaming companies are now working with likes of microsoft, amazon, Google on cloud gaming. That seems like the way forward for making AAA games run everywhere. I doubt these companies will spin up another team to support these games on the Mac platform. It sucks that m1 is actually really good gaming processor.

Why is x86 waste? It was beating everything on the market during the 90s and 2000s no? Its just intel hasn't pushed things forward in 10 years right?

Armv8 instructions should be consistent between vendors. Gcc and llvm is very likely to produce standard armv8 code that is portable. At work we use intel chips to compile armv8 linux executables and librarys and run them on broadcom arm chips.

Apple's advantage is in the virtuous cycle of big demand and big market for their products. And now they have built up the talent, the process, to build different chips and chips that are very large. M1 is not a small chip, it's complexity is comparable if not more than intel or amd or Nvidia's chips. They also established a sustainable relationship with tsmc. I am sure tsmc have exclusive or volume contracts for apple to be the first adopter to their most dense node. Tsmc allocates a lot more of waffer capacity to apple than other designers. The marginal cost for apple to design and build a large version of m1 is pretty cheap.

Rosetta 2 probably also have a JIT mode to deal with software that JIT produces x86 instructions like browsers and java VM. And of course you can do AOT or trans compile static x86 executables. I feel a lot of success of rosetta comes from the sheer perf of the m1 so even the jit and transcompile process is fast, and the execution of not well optimized code is fast. The firestorm cores is at least 60% faster than snapdragons cores per annandtech

I found say intel not just failed in the process nodes. It also failed to see the rise of the dedicated fab (tsmc) and fabless business model as a more efficient model. Intel also failed at innovating on lower power designs and the gpu. Even at 14nm, there are so much that could be done to improve igpu performance. From color compression, to the more efficient shader array. The nintendo switch runs Nvidia tegra x1. It's a 20nm chip, and look at the performance of the gpu. Intel could have also put their markshare weight to put the alternative to cuda be it opencl or even their own API to really gain market traction. They could have their dedicated gpu. Yet they just ignored the whole massive simd compute market. I think for intel, lossing mobile to arm and see the improvements in mobile year over year should be a wake-up call. Yet they didn't do anything to increase their moat for the past 10 years. Or maybe they did try, but their strategies are just flawed. The strategists at Intel just don't have enough foresight and vision.

Next gen consoles and Nvidia rtx io is kind of doing that with graphics textures. Textures are memory mapped but stored in nvme storage. When GPU reads a texture, it first looks in the ram, if not found in the ram, the controller talks to nvme controllers to load from storage.

If you think about it, gen4 pce nvme can reach 5GB/s doing 16k ramdom reads. The bandwidth is getting close to ddr2/3 territory. And new storage tech like 3dxpoint will have ram like access latency to improve small io perf.

You will always still need ram, but you can be more efficient at how to use the ram.

It's not due to the on package or the united memory. M1 is using industry standard 128bits lpddr4. On package is still using regular dram chips. What seemingly is the advantage is the firestorm cpu has much wider pipeline and capable doing more load and store in-flight at the time. Also the cache is also able to provide low latency and the bandwidth numbers. Intel or amd is able to achieve similar performance in memory bound workloads if they designed the logic on cpu for that workload.

I feel the Mac os ui is still a lot better than both win32 ui and the new "modern" ui in uwp apps. Mac os ui is functional, easy to use, enough information density. And the animation, styling and graphics that looks great on a high dpi screen. And there is cohesive design and animation on the system and the apps. Apple's design is both beautiful, fluid to use and functional. While microsoft's design? It's still non existent. Even app design is just... Like teams ui is clunky to use, has huge title and side bars, low information density.

Win32 ui just looks 90s, and some looks broken on high dpi screens. While microsoft's new ui is just broken for the desktop use. Text size is different between uwp apps like mail, and win32 apps like word. They are even from the same company and same product team.

I don't think ever mac will be touch based. They share design style with ios. But it's going to be optimized for mouse and keyboard. And I love how you can search for commands in a app on the Mac in the help menu. It allow you to access app features all by typing what you want. You can use gui like a cmd.

All the new plants Chinese government approve to build now are super critical coal plants. These are the most efficient ones. The gov also regulated older coal plants to retrofit NOx, SOx, pm2.5 treatment equipments. China doesn't have much oil and natural gas but has a lot of coal. So for energy security at the present moment they kinda have to still use coal. They already import lots of oil for transportation and industrial use. But at least they are doing something to reduce coal impact which I think is better than nothing. The air quality issue is known to every Chinese person now, so the government has a lot pressure to improve it. The gov also have good strategies to drive solar adoption. Like if farmers to build solar panels in their farm fields they get tax breaks and they earn money from selling to the grid. And with the price of solar and electricity rate, it's a profitable business. So far it's being working. Solar installation is growing year by year. The gov also pushed to build a few extreme high voltage DC transmission line from the west to the east to transit the renewables generated in that region to the east where energy is demanded. The China National Nuclear Corporation has a mandate to research and build new nuclear technologies. It's now building a number of gen 3 nuclear reactors and they are researching gen 4. A number of electric car companies are taking off in China. Big Chinese cities are already clogged by ICE cars. To buy a car you need to take a lottery for licence plates. In these cities they have separate lottery group for new energy vehicles, which includes hybrid and pure electric vehicles. The gov is now giving equal quota for both groups or more for NEVs. So a lot of people are buying NEVs just because the lottery line is shorter. These people probably won't consider a NEVs before. But companies like Tesla and nio is making great cars too and that is driving demand as well. Some cities are also transition public utility vehicles like buses to electric. Also the high speed rail system and subway system also has major environmental benefits. HSR moved 2.35 billion people in 2019. I think thats amazing. Thats 2.36 billion trips on electric transportation, and not on cars and airplanes. So without the massive investments and foresight to build the HSR, there will be more cars clogging the environment and oil used.

That 6 cases will grow exponentially if left unchecked, like what happened in Wuhan in early January. I thought people outside of China condemned it so vehemently for what they view as an lack of action by the government and in extension the country. They said china must pay, they must be sent back to the dark ages, they must be destroyed. Interesting that now being responsible to people's lives is also wrong.

This case it's fine. There is a due process. Hard evidence is brought forth, court ruled in according to law. Where is the due process for handing the sentencing that prevents tiktok from transaction with US persons in the first EO. White House also gets to define transaction as whatever they want. Salary to US employees? App store listing? Ad transaction? White House can play tiktok however they please.

Tiktok has a completely different concept than Instagram and Snapchat. The entire product philosophy is different.

The EO on bytedance is forcing Bytedance to sell all global tiktok operations. How is that a reciprocate issue? A reciprocate would be deny tiktok market accesses in US only. But clearly US gov doesn't want bytedance to exist at all. They want to kill it everywhere.

China already enacted foreign investments law. Tesla uses it to enter the Chinese market freely. Build factories, sale electric vehicles, enjoy all tax and subsidy that local companies are. And so will VW, and any other auto maker. IP protection is strengthening as well. In the areas of internet service there is still the internet security law, which requires all internet services providers to store data locally and moderate content. Google fb Twitter doesn't want to comply so they don't operate in that market. Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Uber, Airbnb and more are complying so they are operating in China. In other sectors, it's already open access to Chinese market and equality between local and foreign businesses. China is responding to criticisms.

Google, fb, Twitter doesn't comply with internet security law in China, which requires servers in China and content regulation. The same law applies to everyone. If you follow it by the letter, you can operate. Case in point, Apple iCloud, Amazon, Microsoft azure etc. Yes the law itself is highly controversial. I for one would want this law changed. But at least the path for market access is documented. In tiktok case, it didn't break any existing us laws. It has an American office and hires Americans to do security and content monitoring. All data is stored on US soil. It promised to let outside review of data practices and how the algorithm works. There is no clearly spelled out procedure to follow to be allowed operating in the US. I am sure tiktok people are searching in the air for ideas to get themselves allowed to operate. I think thats the difference between fb in China and tiktok in the US.

China enacted a new foriegn investment law. It no longer require joint venture, IP transfers. Tesla is able to use this law to built an wholly owned subsidiary and factory in China. A lot of big autos in China are now buying back their ownership in joint venture, previously they were 50% 50%. BMW now fully owns all their operations in China. Also for 50% 50% joint venture, it actually has benefits for foreign companies because it reduced their capital expenditure and split the risks when Chinese market was not a known factor during the early 2000s. For IP transfers, they would most likely be evaluated against the risk and rewards. It's basically buying market access with IP. Companies don't transfers their best IP, but an outdated version. But for Chinese at that time it's still valuable.

But the big difference is that Amazon still controls aws in China, the product, the brand, the IP. And aws is developed employees in Seattle. It's just operated by the Chinese company. The Chinese company deal with servers, deployment, accesses to the servers and stuff. Amazon also get a significant share of revenue from that market. That is totally different from US gov forcing Bytedance to sell tiktok. Bytedance will no longer own tiktok. It's will have 0 shares. Zero control and no revenue sharing. Technically Microsoft can do whatever they want with tiktok in the future.

Tiktok CEO, management and employees are all Americans. Their office is in California. There are now a few hundreds American employees at tiktok. If Chinese government control them or forcing them to hand over American data, they would have came out by then. You think that no one would have said anything? No one in China office can touch tiktok's code and user data. How is that ccp or government controlled?

That's a domestic issue in the United States. US GDP has grown steadily during the last 30 years. The corporate earnings of the s&p 500 has went up by multiple folds. Companies like Microsoft, Apple, Nike , McDonald, Johnson & Johnson etc are earnings more money from around the world then ever before. The record levels of s&p stock buybacks tells you that companies have more money than they know what to do with it. So the US is earning a lot more money from all of globalization. Yet all of this earning is not benefited the lower class Americans. It should have been distributed better internally within the US. Yet, the politics within the US is preventing that from happening. But have you thought about what other countries feels about US dominating in so many industries? Other countries need income as well. They have people to feed. From a equality stand point, they should also enjoy similar quality of life that developed countries are enjoying. If you have visited a developing country, you would know that life is so much different there than here in US. Globalization lifted hundreds of millions of people out of proverty around the world, not only in China, but also in Philippines, Thailand, vitenem, etc. Then these people have more money to spend on more expensive US goods, iPhones, computers, Starbucks etc. Globalization didn't put millions in the developed world in poverty, uneven tax system, economic distribution system, government that doesn't invest in the lower class population did. In the US for example, you have record jobs creation, yet a lot of companies say they can't hire the right talent. They have to hire h1bs. From a personal experience, a lot of companies would love to hire locally yet they can't because there is no talent available. The fundamental issue is that the education system does not produce enough talents needed by the job market.

China never kicked Western journalists out. It revoked journalist liscence from a number of journalists from Washington Post, nyt, and wall street journal as a retailation when the US designated five Chinese media as Beijing operatives. Media from other countries, UK, Germany etc are all in China. You can see reporting and interviews in China by bbc, Reuters and many others right now.

As from the virus in China, as person who have many relatives and friends near wuhan and in Beijing, from all information sources I can gather, there is no massive spread in China right now. They staying highly alert but there isn't a large number of infections right now. And my anecdotal observation on the severity of the issue during February matches with the official count. So I don't believe there is massive under-reporting. All my friends and family don't buy there is massive deliberate under reporting as well.

Just today telsa sold 10000 cars in the Shanghai factory in March and Tesla stock jumped as result. I have a feeling that with Europe and US in continue lock down, China is going to support a huge number businesses. Looking at a number of Western business, all cite china has a very important market. Everyone of them earned a ton of money from that market. Some manufacturing will leave china, but if business want to access that market, they will continue to be near that market meaning involve China as part of the supply chain. On side note, ccp and China has brought a lot to Chinese people, wealth, stability, and education. 800 million was lifted out of property in the last 30 years. Chinese middle class is more than the entire US population. As a Chinese person, I no longer has to worry about whether I will have enough food or clothing. Nowadays I am interested which iPhone I can buy and which Nike shoes I like. To say the government doesn't care about the well being of the citizens is dishonest at best. All of this has given and will continue give a massive opportunity to foreign business. Hundreds of billion of dollars of cooperate profits per year. If we cut earnings from China out of companies on SPY, how much is the stock market valuation is going to drop by? So next time if you want to bash and vilify China and ccp using fake news, think about how much China and ccp contributed to your retirement fund. I have more than happy to discuss China and it's policies using facts, data and reason. But it's the smearing and vilification using fake news I cannot stand. And of course it's not perfect in anyway. Internet information regulations and media control is one of them. But I feel people outside don't really understand this country and it's government. They say the government oppresses and doesn't care about the people. Yet a majority of people feels the complete opposite in their daily lives.

I am Chinese, when has zhong nanshan ever being removed from heading the epidemic control committee. Just a few days ago he was making statements and directives as a member of that committee. This news is so fake it just smells like another Taiwan news piece smearing the Chinese government. (I have seen a number Taiwan news article that are just straight out lies. They often spin whatever happens in China has negative on the government, and push the government is evil narrative. Mainland also has it's share of fake news and propaganda. Both side is just equally guilty in brewing hostility against each other's government) And the government's treatment plan has never stated only to use TCMs instead of regular medicine. We don't have any effective drugs against the virus yet. All the treatment treats the symptoms. Say if the patient can't breathe so we give him oxygen. TCMs has a whole theory about regulating body as a system, it's supposed to reduce stress and improve immunity. I personally used TCMs and I have gotten better after using them. But the TCMs could very well be placebo. But when there is no drugs to use, why not try TCMs? Maybe it's just comforting thing. The patient is scared and super stressed. You give him this thing that claims to help, they gets to calm down, they are not stressed anymore, they sleep better at night, they are more hopeful. This is scientifically proven to help recovery. Also TCMs is cheap and you can get massive qualities in a short time. Whereas for Western medicine we gotta pay the drug companies expansive prices.

A Chinese team of doctors working with the Chinese CDC released this paper on the characteristics of patients.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.06.20020974v...

(By the way I wish the mainstream media can report on more papers like this. I heard there are a number of papers released on the scientific information about the virus and patients)

I think each day the infected count increases 2000 to 3000. It indicates a capacity limits at the health care system to diagnose and confirm an infected case.