Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 82 posts

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#51

Post by tanderson92 »

meric wrote: post #50
tanderson92 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese people are not the Chinese government. When someone is speaking about what "China" wants, it is the ruling party.

"I have spent lots of time in China. They still want payback for the humiliation they believe they endured in the 1800s." "What I was trying to say is that my opinion is not informed based on what I have read in the press but based on the fact that I have spent time in the country and have read the local press, and spoken with the local people. The humiliation faced by the Chinese at the hand of the western powers is…

When one is talking about Chinese territorial aggression and their desire to surpass the US as the geopolitical superpower, it is definitely not about the individual people.

Nothing the GGP said about the national Chinese interests was remotely controversial (perhaps subsequent comments are unrepresentative of individuals' thinking). Heck, Obama wanted to pass TPP mostly as a bulwark against Chinese ambitions.

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#52

Post by alexeldeib »

ori_b wrote: post #31
enraged_camel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about Chinese history. What humiliation did they endure in the 1800s?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

Adding onto this, consider that China was, for a relatively long period in its development, the dominant power in its interactions. Interactions with the colonial West in the 1800s were a dramatic departure from long term history in a number of ways. At the end of the 1800s, the Sino Japanese War was also a major defeat for the Chinese. From a certain perspective, the current state of affairs could be viewed as something of a long-term return to normal.

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#53

Post by myrandomcomment »

meric wrote: post #47
myrandomcomment wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know I am not Chinese or my wife is not? Or my best friend? Or someone in my family? I wish the best for China and the Chinese people. I hope for a peaceful and prosperous future. That however does not involve the threat to take Taiwan by force or claiming all of the South China Sea as theirs. What I was trying to say is that my opinion is not informed based on what I have read in the press but based on th…

Well, for one, I am Chinese. My parents are Chinese, so are my grandparents, and their grandparents. I've listened to my grandmother talk about her grandparents, who are from the 1800's. Of course we're drawn to movies and books and TV shows from that era. Same reason why teenagers in Europe are interested in Medieval stuff and Roman empire stuff. It's part of their history. Is China taking Taiwan by force? Taiwan ha…

The claim of the South China Sea is a violation of International Law and the Convention of the Sea.

China has publicly acknowledged they are pointing DF-16 missiles at Taiwan.

China has publicly stated they will use force to prevent an independent Taiwan, despite the fact that Taiwan is a functioning democracy, unlike China.

China arrest and brutalized dissidents.

The rule of law in China is what ever the current leader says it is - Where is 吳小暉 (Wu Xiaohui)?

China kidnapped booksellers from Hong Kong in violation of the treaty that governs Hong Kong because of their political views.

I could make a list a mile long.

I stand by my statement that China's rise to power is scary because the motivations of the government of China are not driven by democratic principles that provides for checks on power.

The USA could have had an empire after WW2 and there was NO ONE IN THE WORLD that could have stopped them. Instead the USA paid even more of their money to re-built the world and help the countries which they fought.

The USA makes stupid mistakes sometimes, but they alway eventually sort it and sort it on the right side of history even if it takes time.

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#54

Post by meric »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #53
meric wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for one, I am Chinese. My parents are Chinese, so are my grandparents, and their grandparents. I've listened to my grandmother talk about her grandparents, who are from the 1800's. Of course we're drawn to movies and books and TV shows from that era. Same reason why teenagers in Europe are interested in Medieval stuff and Roman empire stuff. It's part of their history. Is China taking Taiwan by force? Taiwan ha…

The claim of the South China Sea is a violation of International Law and the Convention of the Sea. China has publicly acknowledged they are pointing DF-16 missiles at Taiwan. China has publicly stated they will use force to prevent an independent Taiwan, despite the fact that Taiwan is a functioning democracy, unlike China. China arrest and brutalized dissidents. The rule of law in China is what ever the current lea…

None of that has anything to do with "Pay back for humiliation in the 1800's". What you've described is actions of the Chinese government, I don't believe for one second Chinese people support all these actions - I do not, my parents do not, and my grandparents do not, therefore it's not true. Do my grandparents want "payback" on the Japanese for her suffering in world war 2? If she does I won't begrudge her for that. But you cannot claim I do.

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#55

Post by dragonwriter »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #53
meric wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for one, I am Chinese. My parents are Chinese, so are my grandparents, and their grandparents. I've listened to my grandmother talk about her grandparents, who are from the 1800's. Of course we're drawn to movies and books and TV shows from that era. Same reason why teenagers in Europe are interested in Medieval stuff and Roman empire stuff. It's part of their history. Is China taking Taiwan by force? Taiwan ha…

The claim of the South China Sea is a violation of International Law and the Convention of the Sea. China has publicly acknowledged they are pointing DF-16 missiles at Taiwan. China has publicly stated they will use force to prevent an independent Taiwan, despite the fact that Taiwan is a functioning democracy, unlike China. China arrest and brutalized dissidents. The rule of law in China is what ever the current lea…

> The USA makes stupid mistakes sometimes, but they alway eventually sort it and sort it on the right side of history even if it takes time.

There are several areas where the US has not yet done so (including some that are older than the US, like treatment of Native Americans, and including some where it's heading in the opposite direction of the right side), so the idea that the US always does so is empty nationalistic sloganeering.

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#56

Post by Retric »

batbomb wrote: post #45
Retric wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS is a terrible match for super computing hardware. Sure, there are some embarrassingly parallel workloads that don't need fast interconnects, but mostly latency or memory becomes the issue.

Dirty little secret: Much the computing on these machines isn't supercomputing and doesn't need fast interconnects. In fact, many (most?) workloads would be best done in the cloud. Except we already bought these machines. So there's tons of frameworks around meant to use these machines like they are AWS pizza boxes. If it's inefficient due to an architectural mismatch, that's fine. You're still using the machine that…

Amdahl's law, if you spend more on interconnects you only speed up a subset of your workloads. But the reverse is also true so buying more nodes and less interconnects only speeds up a subset of your workloads. The optimum is going to seem wasteful on average.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#57

Post by trendia »

bpodgursky wrote: post #22
crb002 wrote: post #7

That's like 1/5 the cost of one F35 Flying Turkey?

No, it's 2 F35s. Unit cost will be a bit under 100mm each.

Does that price include oxygen? Not all of them do [0].

[0] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/13/f35_pilots_report_h...

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#58

Post by tanderson92 »

meric wrote: post #54
myrandomcomment wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim of the South China Sea is a violation of International Law and the Convention of the Sea. China has publicly acknowledged they are pointing DF-16 missiles at Taiwan. China has publicly stated they will use force to prevent an independent Taiwan, despite the fact that Taiwan is a functioning democracy, unlike China. China arrest and brutalized dissidents. The rule of law in China is what ever the current lea…

None of that has anything to do with "Pay back for humiliation in the 1800's". What you've described is actions of the Chinese government, I don't believe for one second Chinese people support all these actions - I do not, my parents do not, and my grandparents do not, therefore it's not true. Do my grandparents want "payback" on the Japanese for her suffering in world war 2? If she does I won't begrudge her for that…

When describing the broad beliefs of a group of people, there is general agreement that the beliefs are not held universally. I would think we can all agree on that; therefore your mention of your family (which is itself necessarily highly correlated and less representative) is of suspect value.

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#59

Post by perseusprime11 »

meric wrote: post #54
myrandomcomment wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim of the South China Sea is a violation of International Law and the Convention of the Sea. China has publicly acknowledged they are pointing DF-16 missiles at Taiwan. China has publicly stated they will use force to prevent an independent Taiwan, despite the fact that Taiwan is a functioning democracy, unlike China. China arrest and brutalized dissidents. The rule of law in China is what ever the current lea…

None of that has anything to do with "Pay back for humiliation in the 1800's". What you've described is actions of the Chinese government, I don't believe for one second Chinese people support all these actions - I do not, my parents do not, and my grandparents do not, therefore it's not true. Do my grandparents want "payback" on the Japanese for her suffering in world war 2? If she does I won't begrudge her for that…

Can you point to any links that shows the chinese people protest on streets about their Govt's stance on south china sea, Tibet and Taiwan? If they don't, does that not mean they agree 100% with their Govt?

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#60

Post by brettdong »

perseusprime11 wrote: post #59
meric wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that has anything to do with "Pay back for humiliation in the 1800's". What you've described is actions of the Chinese government, I don't believe for one second Chinese people support all these actions - I do not, my parents do not, and my grandparents do not, therefore it's not true. Do my grandparents want "payback" on the Japanese for her suffering in world war 2? If she does I won't begrudge her for that…

Can you point to any links that shows the chinese people protest on streets about their Govt's stance on south china sea, Tibet and Taiwan? If they don't, does that not mean they agree 100% with their Govt?

'The Chinese people agree their government's stance on south china sea, Tibet and Taiwan' doesn't mean 'they agree everything with their government'.
Post reply on HN