I grew up in China, lived here for more than twenty years. I've never heard of such a thing: unemployment means a high probability of being homeless, and then losing one's life within three to five years. It's truly shocking.
I have some people in my neighborhood who have been Full-time preparation for the exam to work as civil servants for many years, and some people have simply been living at home without working, relying on their parents' support. However, I have never heard of anyone being frozen or starved to death, nor have I ever seen anyone who has been addicted to drugs.
When I use Claude Code and Codex for development, I've had some similar experiences. Claude Code always completes tasks very quickly, but leaves behind a mess that makes me anxious. Codex, on the other hand, is always slow—it slowly reads through the entire project's code, then makes changes very cautiously, testing and verifying after every small modification, and even calls codex review --uncommitted once more before committing.
At first, I found writing code with Claude Code to be enjoyable, while Codex seemed boring. But over time, I've discovered that I actually prefer Codex. Perhaps slowing down really is the key to writing high-quality code.
I self-hosted Penpot, and during use I also encountered crashes — but it was my browser that crashed. I’m not sure what caused it (because I was forced to close the page).
This may already be a bubble in social or financial terms, but at least for me personally, my capabilities have been greatly expanded (especially when it comes to coding and accessing information).
I think this might be why, during the reasoning process of GPT and Gemini, even for purely English prompts the model may choose to think in Chinese. That may make it easier for the model to express what it means, and thus be more conducive to its reasoning.
Of course, a better way to reason is to think in vector space rather than by producing tokens that humans can read.
My Mac mini M4 has been sitting idle because I can't install Linux on it, and I don't know how to operate it from a remote terminal in macOS. I'm only familiar with the Linux terminal for things like firewalls, and sometimes I don't even know how to install packages on macOS that work perfectly fine for me on Linux.
I guess this is because I'm not skilled enough, but I really hope Asahi Linux can support the M4 chip soon, or why can't Apple provide a native installation channel? I think many Mac mini owners would love that.
I feel like this learning method has benefited me, but it doesn't seem to be widely supported:
I'll work on a project for a while, then realize what knowledge I'm lacking, to the point where I can't even think meaningfully while working on it.
Then I'll take courses for a while, which helps me build a "knowledge map." I'll think, "Oh, so that's how it works."
Then I'll go back to working on projects.
As for documentation, I see many people recommend reading it directly to learn, but I find it hard to get through, and just reading documentation also makes it difficult for the knowledge to organize itself in my mind (it's like getting lost in a well-made game without map hints)
If I watch tutorial videos first, then writing projects or reading documentation becomes more comfortable. I think these things might be mutually reinforcing.
I would binge-watch courses on Coursera for many days straight. I think the problem mentioned in this article seems to be that he didn't actually watch the videos he saved, so even if he were to learn through documentation, the result would be the same. Learning and practice are mutually reinforcing, while learning styles may vary for each individual.
Yes, this goes back to that fundamental and long-debated question: How do we eliminate poverty?
I've studied some sociological and economic theories, and I generally understand that this problem is very difficult to solve.
From my perspective, China's biggest problem right now is actually unequal distribution (especially between different regions), and it's sad to see such a problem in a socialist country.
I really hope our government can truly commit to solving such inter-regional distribution problems, instead of just shouting slogans and doing nothing (which they often do).
I have many classmates from underdeveloped regions who come to Beijing for university and then never return to their hometowns because there are simply no opportunities there. Major resources are concentrated in a few large cities.
I don't know if this is a common characteristic of East Asian countries (Tokyo is also very large, and small cities in Japan are also declining). However, Japan's Gini coefficient is very low, and I think we should learn from Japan in this regard.
I often browse Hacker News and like it here. As a young Chinese entrepreneur, comments like these make me feel frustrated. China has a large wealth gap, and we have many people with lower education levels who earn meager wages through manual labor to support their families, highly dependent on manufacturing for income. In a sense, they are somewhat like the American Rust Belt before the loss of manufacturing (though they probably don't live as well as Americans, as they can afford neither homes nor cars). The setbacks manufacturing faces in international trade are making their lives even worse.
I can roughly understand why you made such a comment, because many friendly and kind people around you are, or have been, worse off due to the competition between our countries. The people around me are also friendly and kind, and I think the best outcome should be for all of us to live better, rather than one side getting better at the expense of the other.
I think we should find ways to develop that benefit everyone, because we are all human, and those who are awake when you are sleeping are not bad people.