Posted by inaros 5 hours ago
For instance, the employment report (establishment survey) has an error rate or +/- 122,000 with 90% confidence--completely swamping the actual value.
It be like I said I was 2m tall on my dating profile and one date is frightened off by my being -0.2m tall and another by me being 4m tall.
Yes, month to month you have large absolute error bars vs. the monthly delta, but being an imperfect monthly barometer of labor force momentum is only the headline use of the establishment report.
Everyone swiped left long ago.
On the one hand: high inflation, tariffs, layoffs, unemployment, high interest rate, energy crisis. Tons of economic red flags flashing.
On the other hand: AI is showing signs of being the next industrial revolution, we're re-industrializing, onshoring/friendshoring, and have a clear lead on chips and space tech at a time when it matters the most.
It's absolutely insane that Claude Code can spit out a week's worth of business automation tasks in half a day. And do it at relatively high quality in low-defect rate languages like Rust.
Europe won't be able to catch that. They're too busy regulating ahead of the tech. They're going to be a decade behind if they keep it up.
If we cut the chip supply right as things take off, China might not either. In a runaway takeoff scenario, they replace all their factory workers with robots and quickly scale and cost optimize. If America is smart, we might be able to do that too.
Our growth could accelerate or crater. These are wild times. More exciting than the last 20.
America needs to start pumping out new energy projects. It needs to make friends with all of its former allies. And it needs to import PhD students.
And we do need factories and raw inputs. The robots will take over for humans within a decade. If we stick the landing, we could be the new China right here at home.
Edit: rate limited on replies, so updating my comment instead.
Edit 2: Europe supplies the EUV lithography, but intelligence manifests higher up the stack. If we're talking rate limits, lots of countries supply critical inputs. I'm saying that Europe hasn't made strides towards developing their own models and infra, and it doesn't look like it's even close to starting to attack this problem. I want it to.
Edit 3: What I'm saying is that these tailwinds might put America back into the position it was in post-WWII. Manufacturing, tech, and science powerhouse in all the places that matter. Peers a generation or two behind. That's literally where America was after the war, and it looks like we could be teeing up for a repeat if it all doesn't unravel first.
America needs to double down on investing in energy and factories now. It looks like it will pay off in a big way.
Edit 4:
> You think Europe won't be able to use Claude Code
I would be extremely geopolitically anxious to rely on another country's tech in a take off scenario. Those tokens might be diverted to US businesses and factories. Or the US might strong arm concessions out of Europe. Europe needs domestic capability for this now.
It's not just Europe and sovereign nations. Workers and labor capital will be effectively frozen out of participation if there aren't open source equivalents.
> This is an downright evil take on the current situation.
It's just reality. Multipolarity means we're going to see a lot more of this type of framing, because it's what's happening on the ground.
Any Western strategy that sees this as both "us vs. them" and also pursues reduced international collaboration is bound to lose bitterly in the long run.
The result is either a silent collapse of that country's economy or the start of an ill-conceived war of conquest to gain by force what the country cannot supply itself.
The problem is that Europe does not have a choice here. The Greenland steal crisis is on hold, but not fixed. America clearly shown it will abuse any ties there are - it will lock accounts to tech to bully and get what they want. It will use tariffs to bully countries to make laws, release presidents friends criminals from prisons, you name it.
Meanwhile, America seems to take Russian side in Russian expansion. Meanwhile, America is just cause major oil issue and potentially triggered next refugees crisis. Meanwhile, America clearly shown it does not even pretend to care bout war crimes and international law at all. It is sponsoring afd and other fascist parties all around the Europe while openly insulting Europe. Maybe it is too late for disconnect, but not trying would basically be a suicide for Europe.
It would be great if it was not "us vs them". But it is "us vs them". Trust toward American made Europe super vulnerable.
The European Union has many friendly trading partners left in the world and is also receiving an influx of previously US based talent. The trade decisions of the US aren't forcing the EU into isolationism. This is where your argument goes wrong IMO.
The US government has announced that it plans to actively support extreme right wing parties in the EU. If this comes to pass, it is a direct attack on political freedom in those countries, separate from any economic policy decisions. I don't know how well EU countries can defend themselves against this in the short amd medium term. Some counties have better defenses than others. But I see virtually all of them struggling.
While asserting itself militarily. This is the Roman Republic —> Empire transition.
> Europe won't be able to catch that.
You think Europe won't be able to use Claude Code? If Claude Code is the one reaping the majority of the benefits of "spit[ing] out a week's worth of business automation tasks", then it's not worth much to the business. If Claude Code isn't the one reaping the majority of those benefits, then...Europe can use Claude Code too and reap the benefits for their business as well.
You don't need anybody to permit you access.
You can, in all seriousness, thank Meta and the Chinese for this.
42 European here.
I've heard my whole adult life that Europe is ten years behind USA.
That doesn't feel that bad though. Being bleeding edge comes with the thrill of the avant garde prestige. But it does also mean you take the downsides of navigating the unexplored unknown in your face with no one to help with turn key solution when it happens.
If it means 10 years buffer on big social seismic troubles, that doesn't sound too bad if there is indeed an efficient shelve. That's not necessarily the case on every matter though, like global climate change is going to impact everyone, no matter the political isolation, and if a direct military aggression happens, it can be hurtful no matter how prepared is the society.
The US kneecapped itself for no reason.
Yeah, the EUV photolithography machine, but not much else. American companies like Lam Research and Applied Materials are the leaders in thin film deposition and etch, KLA Tencor is the leader in metrology, and Synopsys and Cadance are the leaders in EDA (though there's also Germany's Mentor Graphics).
The US, not Europe.
ASML's EUV and High NA EUV production is all done in California via US DoE joint ventures (specifically Cymer LLC [0]). Additionally, their metrology IP is Taiwanese [1] as part of ASML's acquisition of HMI back in 2016 with Taiwanese approval [2].
ASML is the capital partner because in the early 2000s, the US government wanted to prevent a duopoly forming between Nikon and Canon for photolithography as part of an antitrust battle.
And the next generation of lithography tooling coming into Taiwan is being funded and developed by Japan [3] due to MUFG, Mitsui, Mizuho, and SoftBank becoming the primary capital partners for Taiwan's electronics industry [4]. This is also why TSMC is expanding in Japan and Taiwanese players are transferring IP to Rapidus.
Additonally, all the packaging, testing, and design work - especially leading edge nodes - is done in Asia, the US, and even Israel but not Europe.
---
Personally, I think Europe is too far behind at this point for the EUV and High NA EUV boom - Taiwan, the US, Japan, South Korea, China, and others deployed significant amounts of capital and subsidizes in the late 2010s and early 2020s and worked to build IP partnerships for front-end work with players like TSMC (US, Japan), UMC (China until 2019), PSMC (Japan, India), and Samsung (US).
The EU had a shot but Intel rolled back their Germany expansion plan in order to double down on 18A in Arizona, and TSMC decided to double down on Japan. Additonally, all the backend work is done in Taiwan, South Korea, China, ASEAN (Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam), Japan, the US, and even India now because Micron, Samsung, Amkor, and others transferred their IP there, and design is primarily concentrated in Taiwan, the US, China, Israel, and India and with Malaysia and Vietnam likely to become much more prominent in the next few years due to Arm and Marvell respectively.
What the EU can instead do is concentrate on power electronics (already a strong suite) and compound semiconductors (already a strong suite) and target a leapfrog technology like 2D semiconductor design and fabrication which is still in it's infancy and also has applications for quantum computing. The EU already has the capacity for "legacy" (but still critical) semiconductors but is too late to the game for sub-14nm fabrication.
And based on the kind of fundamental research and funding I've been seeing in the EU, this is the strategy that appears to be increasingly adopted within the EU - but this is something the US, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, the UK, Singapore, Canada, and even Vietnam and India are doing as well, and both French and German initiatives risk being misaligned due to mutual industrial competition. The fact that French players in the space would rather collaborate with Singaporean [5], Korean [6], American [7], Israeli [8], and Canadian [9] partners to develop IP instead of with other partners within Europe, it shows issues around misalignment.
On a separate note, as I mentioned before on HN, the French seem to be on the right track - other European states other than the UK less so. French players are much more ruthless and "American" in attitude.
[0] - https://www.cymer.com/
[1] - https://www.asml.com/en/company/about-asml/hmi
[2] - https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2016/asml-obtain...
[3] - https://www.nikkei.com/nkd/company/us/SNPS/news/?DisplayType...
[4] - https://asia.nikkei.com/business/tech/semiconductors/japan-l...
[5] - https://www.pasqal.com/newsroom/three-new-partnerships-signe...
[6] - https://www.pasqal.com/newsroom/pasqal-expands-into-korea/
[7] - https://gov-pritzker-newsroom.prezly.com/governor-pritzker-a...
[8] - https://www.quantum-machines.co/blog/pushing-the-boundaries-...
[9] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/09/25/quebec-...
The EUV IP which Cymer owns was originally part of EUV LLC, which was an LLNL [0], Sandia [1], and Intel [2] initiative as part of a CRADA. Cymer eventually began working on EUV as well building on EUV LLC and SEMATECH's work, and was eventually purchased by ASML after the Dept of Commerce and DoE backed their acquisition in 2013 [4], but included Cymer in additional CRADAs [3], ongoing projects [5], and maintain Cymer as a separate operating unit [6] within ASML.
It is these CRADAs that allow the DoE to exert its muscle on IP ownership and knowhow, as they are essentially a license of IP and personnel on US DoE terms [7] while also allowing for private partners to commercialize.
[0] - https://www.llnl.gov/article/27641/euvl-partnership-makes-it...
[1] - https://newsreleases.sandia.gov/partners-unveil-first-extrem...
[2] - https://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/speeches/EUV91197.HT...
[3] - https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1413999
[4] - https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2013/asml-comple...
[5] - https://www.llnl.gov/article/52226/llnl-selected-lead-next-g...
[6] - https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021...
[7] - https://www.directives.doe.gov/directives-documents/400-seri...
The machine is a clump of metal without the light source.
But it's the light source and the metrology that is the blocker.
Edit: can't reply
> And mirrors from Carl Zeiss
Absolutely! But note how Zeiss/Trumpf is not ASML. If the US DoE changes the terms of the Cymer partnership and pressures Taiwan (who have just purchased $8B in US military equipment and whom the EU logistically speaking cannot protect) to revert the HMI acquisition, ASML is over.
Additonally, a lot of the muscle around Zeiss/Trumpf's mirrors is also at the Zeiss office in the Tri-Valley because of their partnership with LLNL.
And both China [0] and Japan [1] are in the process of building an Ex-ASML supply chain for EUV, NA EUV, and DUV, and will likely reach that point by the late 2020s to early 2030s.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/how-china-built-its-manh...
[1] - https://www.nikkei.com/nkd/company/us/SNPS/news/?DisplayType...
There is no way they would go as far as cutting the US off from ASML. At least not without a significant shift in Dutch politics.
Arguably the greatest threats to the US's future is ourselves. If we fundamentally corrupt who we are as a nation we've already lost before the competition with rivals has even begun.
Our significant tech advances could become tools of our own downfall if they violate our values or undermine the social mobility of the American dream.
Frankly I think the people pushing this competitive mindset (particularly against the EU) are trying to mislead otherwise intelligent builder-sorts to not pay attention to the looting & destruction of American values.
It still gets things wrong occasionally but the time its saved me has been substantial. Im starting to enjoy it.
Starting with systems stuff like "Set up vscode with whatever it needs to work with codex and talk to an esp32," and ending with "Now add a web interface with persistent tunables that always runs in both AP and station modes," my prompt inputs were very terse.
And it'd just kind of go forth and just do it. It'd even design and run its own tests.
I never once looked at the code. For all I know, the code doesn't even exist.
And it works. I'll be using it in the field (in the proverbial middle of nowhere) all next week. I have every expectation that it will behave itself.
(I did spend a lot of time defining and refining some ground rules with AGENTS.md, but in theory I get to re-use that effort for the next go.)
My immediate thought is - why is it a race. Like holy shit imagine if we could actually work together instead of having this mentality of "if we work hard the other countries won't catch that". As someone who grew up in the golden age of globalization and rise of the information superhighway, the way countries are just siloing themselves and treating everything as a zero sum game is both sad and scary - that's exactly how you lead the world on a path to another world war - telling yourself that you don't need anyone else and in fact you need to beat them to the punch and everyone else is your opponent. If an alien race was looking at us right now they'd be shaking their heads.
Corporations, along with greedy, selfish people and also perhaps ignorant people too, tend to choose extremes.
The rest of us are remarkably good at compromising and finding common ground.
How has Europe failed here? Did you expect Poland to start shooting missiles towards Moscow, or something else?
Euro leaders are terrified by this. Europe, which is supposed to have global parity with the big players, was just as much (maybe even more) of a paper tiger as Russia. But unlike Russia they have a big friend who has lots of money and lots of weapons.
For the average European who has only ever know life under the protective wing of NATO (read: America), this is just Tuesday. For the versed European leader, who needs to ensure their country can be safe if America goes away, it's totally harrowing. Even more harrowing when your population doesn't understand the need for defense.
America, in the form of the Trump administration and a Trump-subservient Congress, just spent the last year completely destroying trust on these issues and it would take decades of sustained effort to rebuild it.
While we're on the topic, why is it that we love to point the finger at other countries' corruption and we completely ignore the very obvious, rampant corruption in our own government? And I mean on both sides - Democrat and Republican. Insider trading, revolving door policies, etc. That's not even mentioning why we have people like Luigi Mangione. That's a whole separate elephant in the room.
But here it is going directly to the President's pockets. That has never happened before.
This is a lot of similar-sounding-but-different problems.
EDIT:
For those not realizing that China has a long history of less-trustworthy stats, along with Iran and some other governments, here is some reading you can consider
[0] https://sites.pitt.edu/~tgrawski/papers/2001%20What%27s%20Ha...
[1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29349/w293...
[2] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2...
[3] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/245398/1/cesifo1_wp9...
[4] https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/350051528721174623-0050...
[5] https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf
[6] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5140733
[7] https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/22/4620
[8] https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2022/06/03/mea...
[9] https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf
[10] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23323/w233...
[11] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26372649
[12] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15199/w151...
[13] https://www.economic-policy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/S...
[14] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1273505
[15] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2...
[16] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10439...
We need to use a metric that is closer to "total economic benefit for the median person", that would include income, as well as government services.
%Debt to GDP excluding military pay and allowances indicates how your grandchildren will live. Above >130% they will be poor, and remain poor indefinitely. You may disagree, but it is not like anyone wants this to happen.
The economic conservatives were compromised, and went insane =3
When I lived in California I was always weirded out by colleagues talking about how they never took vacations. It's like bragging about being poor.
Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win.
Have a glorious day =3
The ikigai chart helps some highlight better options:
https://hyperisland.com/en/blog/thought-leadership/feeling-d...
Transplanting to even just the 80s would be a culture shock for most people.
EI think if you’re a professional class baby boomer the trajectory has looked fantastic through your life.
If you’re a 35 middle income living on the coasts (where at least 100 million Americans live) you may have watched affordability collapse and QOL decease significantly over the last decade.
I think people have an overly rosy view of the past and an overly negative view of the present. What has changed more than anything is we all have the 24/7 instantaneous news cycle, and algorithmic propaganda delivery.
Every election year zillion of dollars get spent convincing you the country went to hell in a handbasket because of the other party.
Which is not to say there are not issues, or even some new ones, but I don’t think the present is significantly worse than the past in many ways, and it is significantly better in several
World wars happened when large numbers of countries had mutual aid agreements that were triggered. Those largely don’t exist anymore outside of NATO. See how literally nobody is putting troops on the ground to defend Iran, Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, etc. If world war war risk existed, the nukes would already be flying and we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
The propaganda I’m talking about is very clear in your comment, you can’t just say some things suck, and there are things you don’t like, it has to be the most extreme version. We can’t just be involved in a couple wars we shouldn’t, it has to be World War III. Trump can’t just be a terrible president. He has to be Hitler. The DHS has killed three people, which is terrible, but it’s pretty far from the gestapo. That extremeism is exactly what I’m talking about.
I’m sorry your income has not increased in the last five years, but that is not the average Americans experience. The plural of anecdote is not data.
Further I think “the economy isn’t as bad as it could be so everything else that doesn’t directly affect me is propaganda and all the problems right now in the world are perfectly fine” is the ultimate propaganda. You’re essentially saying “shut up you’re still alive just be okay with the world state even if it’s not desireable”.
You are definitely a maroon. Especially in the way you are talking down and hand waving away my complaints and taking my brief list as the only things that I have an issue with.
And Case-Shiller is based on price-per-square footage, so the argument that houses are bigger is moot.
Edit: noneconomic not none comic.
- Whatever you measure gets optimized.
- When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
I have no idea which is more relevant here. Looking at the first one, my whole life people have been complaining that the measures that get touted in political discourse don't reflect quality of life. So if we stop looking at those as measures because they cease to be reliable, maybe they stop getting myopically optimized and we can get less myopic about what we prioritize in aggregate.
But looking at the second one, I've also wondered whether those measures really do reflect typical quality of life, and it's just that the people doing worse than typical will always see the measure as the wrong measure. So then we'd be losing the ability to prioritize actually useful things.
In my heart though, I kinda lean towards the first one. I've been in enough orgs where "the dashboard goes up" is incentivized to the detriment of the unmeasurable things that actually matter to the org.