Interconnected
interconnected.blog · Personal blog · on HN since 2020
Kevin Xu writes about China, semiconductors, US-China tech competition, and tech business strategy.
What HN saysHN commenters call its posts interesting analysis, such as the one on why Facebook is not in the cloud business, and cite its Jack Ma speech translation.
22HN people shared it
11linked it in comments
267stories submitted
1.4Kstory points
9 months agolast shared
2020people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Jack Ma's Bund Finance Summit Speech5 people · 93 points · first shared 2020 · 31 comments on HN
- 2China's “Semiconductor Theranos”3 people · 11 points · first shared 2021 · 2 comments on HN
- 3Why Is Facebook Not in the Cloud Business?2 people · 310 points · first shared 2020 · 325 comments on HN
- 4Why Zoom Chose Oracle2 people · 147 points · first shared 2020 · 119 comments on HN
- 5Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Semiconductor Edition2 people · 67 points · first shared 2022 · 12 comments on HN
- 6RISC-V, China, Nightingales2 people · 16 points · first shared 2020 · 2 comments on HN
- 7Zhang Yiming’s Last Speech2 people · 10 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 8Morris Chang and the Global Semiconductor Competition2 people · 6 points · first shared 2021 · 2 comments on HN
- 9Why China’s Road to Self-Driving Goes Through Inner Mongolia2 people · 5 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 10Didi's $1.2B Penalty and the Global 5% Upper Bound2 people · 4 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 11The Players Driving China's Digital Currency2 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 12US vs. China: How Can America Win?2 people · 3 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 13Azure cracks, AWS strong: Covid-19 stress-tests the cloud1 people · 155 points · first shared 2020 · 86 comments on HN
- 14Is the Cloud Recession-Proof?1 people · 91 points · first shared 2020 · 111 comments on HN
- 15Stress Test the Cloud: Alibaba Cloud, AWS, Azure, GCP1 people · 25 points · first shared 2020 · 3 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
djtango · 2022-02-15
That's a great share thanks - interesting to consider all the ways the English speaking world has exerted an edge indirectly.
The observations don't necessarily have to be geopolitical (although it seems talk about China always is these days).
For example, PinDuoDuo hit 800M users in 6 years[1]
And from Kevin's InterConnected blog, the Chinese CBDC's initial "small-scale" testing did 70M transactions[2]
Seems like Chinese dev needs to be prepared for scale in ways most of us never have to dream of - would be interesting to know if they're adopting best practices we could learn from.
[1] https://stories.pinduoduo-global.com/articles/pinduoduo-intensifies-ag…
[2] https://interconnected.blog/e-cny-players-dcep-e-rmb/
yorwba · 2021-01-04
> Would love to get a transcript of exactly what he said at a forum a few months ago
Transcript: https://sfl.global/news_post/mayunshanghaiwaitanjinrongluntanyanjiangq…
Translation: https://interconnected.blog/jack-ma-bund-finance-summit-speech/
ajcp · 2025-01-05
Interconnected by Kevin Xu
https://interconnected.blog/
TomAbel · 2022-02-03
Kevin Xu of Interconnected wrote an interesting analysis post about Why Is Facebook Not in the Cloud Business[1] its worth a read, he points out that they have the tech for it but they don't seem interested and even if they were the hard part isn't necessarily the technical aspect its building the human part
>>"The tougher part is perhaps not technical, but human. Facebook will have to build out an enterprise sales and support team that is culturally and operationally very different from running an ad-supported social network. Google, also a primarily ad-supported company, suffered from this “identity crisis” and is still trying to catch up to AWS and Azure, despite offering what many believe is a superior technical product."
He also points out they also have a trust deficient due to all the privacy and misinformation scandals.
[1]https://interconnected.blog/why-is-facebook-not-in-the-cloud-business/
elefanten · 2020-11-13
This incident seems to be a mark in the column of the old argument that authoritarianism is bad for economic growth because of the ever-present potential for capricious action such as this.
While we should take the WSJ's preliminary reporting with a grain of salt, the Ant IPO halt was shortly followed by the announcement that Beijing was going to be looking at antitrust and monopolistic behavior by big tech. [0] The 'angered Xi and the old guard' narrative seems very plausible.
Also, if anyone's interested, here's a translation [1] of the speech Jack Ma gave that set off the commotion. Interesting bits about what he thinks of incumbent financial powers (or at least, what he says to that audience). It's also interesting to see what relatively mild comments could trigger this kind of reaction when power is so centralized.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-11/china-s-antitrus…
[1] - https://interconnected.blog/jack-ma-bund-finance-summit-speech/
michaelt · 2026-01-26
Apparently, this: https://interconnected.blog/jack-ma-bund-finance-summit-speech/
To my western ears, the speech doesn't seem all that shocking. Over here it's normal for the CEOs of financial services companies to argue they should be subject to fewer regulations, for 'innovation' and 'growth' (but they still want the taxpayer to bail them out when they gamble and lose).
I don't know if that stuff is just not allowed in China, or if there was other stuff going on too.
rektide · 2023-05-14
Gawd I hope so. It's so hard for me to imagine how the US actually creates a workforce.
Buying the (expensive) fab machines isn't enough. TSMC founder Morris Chang nicely outlined the major advantages that made Taiwan the powerhouse it is. Local talent, a whole nation deeply steeped in highest tech manufacturing, was the #1 advantage. https://interconnected.blog/morris-chang-global-semiconductor-competit…
rasz · 2021-08-23
China has one of the older ASML DUV machines, they got it thru a scam :o) and proceeded to pawn it for $90mil to a local bank for a quick scam exit https://chinatalk.substack.com/p/billion-dollar-heist-how-scammers
https://interconnected.blog/chinas-semiconductor-theranos-hsmc/
but even non scam Chinese initiatives are failing https://techtaiwan.com/20210714/tsinghua-unigroup-bankruptcy/
sudosysgen · 2021-07-27
He didn't seem scared to me, and the "video tape out of nowhere" was a speech at the Bund Financial Summit in Shanghai : https://interconnected.blog/jack-ma-bund-finance-summit-speech/
Why would one of the richest men in China openly defying the most basic financial regulations, and then trying to strong-arm the regulators by IPOing as fast as possible before regulations could be finalized, thus making them hurt a lot more people, and almost getting away with it, scare the CCP? I don't know, you ask me. I have no idea how an authoritarian government could be threatened by one of the most powerful people in their society openly calling them incompetent, defying them, and trying to make laws ineffective. None at all.
woofcat · 2020-06-17
Zoom I believe is on Oracle cloud:
https://interconnected.blog/why-zoom-chose-oracle/
See previous HN thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23032029
ceohockey60 · 2020-06-10
I've certainly stuck my own neck out to defend Zoom against some of the FUD around it from a more technical, E2EE performance trade off angle: https://interconnected.blog/zoom-china-fud-performance-tradeoff-open-s…
This development just made the company much less defensible...