I know, I’m not keeping up a weekly rhythm for my reader’s digest at all, as I would have hoped, but at least, I keep going!
Building a High-End AI Desktop
https://dnhkng.github.io/posts/hopper
A blog post about how the author was able to salvage a Grace Hopper server sold for cheap (10k€) to run 235B parameter LLM models at home. Who wouldn’t like to have their own ChatGPT?
The idea is just as cool as the execution, and demanded serious hardware knowledge.
Is Europe headed towards a century of humiliation ?
https://aymondeboissieu.substack.com/p/is-europe-headed-towards-a-century
An interesting piece that draws a parallel between China’s « century of humiliation« , a concept I was unaware of, and Europe’s current political hurdles.
The century of humiliation started in China with the opium wars and ended with the creation of the Republic of China. It describes a moment in China’s history when the country was effectively vassalized by foreign powers, mostly due to incompetent leadership, an inability to adapt to the modern world, and lack of education in the lower layers of society.
The piece then draws a comparison with the Meiji Restoration in Japan, the starting point of a successful transformation of feudal Japan by integrating Western science, technology, and institutions while preserving its traditional culture and values following the Wakon Yōsai principle (和魂洋才 ) : “Japanese spirit, Western techniques”.
My take on the subject: I never heard about the century of humiliation before (goes to show my culture about Chinese history is seriously lacking…), but reading about it, it now makes perfect sense to me that historically, culturally, and politically, leaders of China have since then been moved by an ironclad motivation to avenge their ancestors and reclaim their rank as one of the top powers in the world.
They may not present it this way, or talk about it so openly, but I do believe that their actions and philosophy of the past decades show that China’s ultimate goal has always been to make the West pay for all the wrong they have done, and they plan to do so by taking control of the global economy, which they already have quite succeeded at (so they’re actually, literally, going to make us pay).
Nowadays, some observers also rave about the « Chinese economic miracle », and how China is now a leader in many sectors such as tech, energy, or education, and a perfect example to follow.
But in my opinion, we must also never forget that these come at a great price: China is also this imperialist force invading its neighbors (think Tibet), committing crimes against humanity and alleged genocide (think Uyghurs), employing sweatshop workers in inhumane conditions for ridiculously low wages to allow for low prices, and massively burning fossil fuels (coal) to both power its fast economic growth and shift to renewable energy. China’s bottom line may appear impressive, but only if we’re willing to ignore the means that have been employed to get there.
As for Europe, I think we do have a deep philosophical crisis, causing a political one: in the past decades, we relied too much on powers such as China for quick economic growth, despite the fact that they repeatedly trample the very values we pride ourselves to be champions of (human rights, just to give one).
It’s a conundrum that will only be solved when we start acting in line with our true values, not against them.
Why Gen Z Will Never Leave Home
https://macleans.ca/society/why-gen-z-will-never-leave-home
An interesting piece that takes the example of a family in British Columbia to demonstrate how hard it’s going to be for Gen Z juniors hitting the job market to leave the nest.
With a dwindling amount of open junior positions, salaries stagnating while the cost of life increases, and the rise of generative AI that’s going to empower already senior employees, only to make entry-level positions go out of existence, the job market of tomorrow looks rather bleak for the young graduates of today.
There’s going to be competition, and there won’t be enough jobs, nor housing, for everyone. So, in the meantime, lots of late teenagers are going to live « the Italian way », by staying at their parents’ home as long as possible, while they figure it out.
It’s going to be a lifestyle change that both parents and children should be prepared for. I wonder how the situation will have evolved in 10 years…
The Junior Hiring Crisis
https://people-work.io/blog/junior-hiring-crisis
This article resonates with the previous one by going deeper on the subject of why software companies are not recruiting juniors anymore.
It basically boils down to:
- We prefer to replace entry-level tasks by AI, so instead of recruiting juniors, we prefer to give tools to senior engineers to enhance their productivity.
- Current organization structures do not value nor integrate mentoring as an official responsibility of senior engineers. Because mentoring takes a long time and takes valuable effort of a senior away from the critical tasks at hand, we never invest in mentoring as much as we should, leaving the few juniors who actually make it inside the company poorly trained and struggling with the existing software complexity.
- Companies always optimize for short-term results, not long-term strategies. Hiring juniors is detrimental to the first one, because they’re less efficient and take a long time to train, but is fundamental to the second one: without juniors, we won’t create the seniors of tomorrow, which could throw the company in total disarray when the current seniors decide to leave.
In short, what the article recommends juniors trying to land their first jobs is to build their relational intelligence and cater to their professional network to kind of stand out by their soft skills instead of their hard skills, since the latter will soon get more equalized than ever by the rise of generative AI.
The RAM Shortage Comes for Us All
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/ram-shortage-comes-us-all/
A good recap of how and why RAM prices are currently surging to all-time highs.
Long-story short: the manufacturing industry cannot, at the moment, keep up with the demand from AI datacenters. It’s the same scenario as with GPUs all over again (before NVidia created enterprise-grade hardware dedicated to AI), but this time with memory.
Therefore, the professional market takes over the consumer grade one, leaving nothing but very high prices behind for those who simply wanted to upgrade the memory of their PC or build a new configuration.
All things pass, but this is another proof that the AI industry, and its extremely quick development, can reveal itself dangerous for surprising reasons no one would have seen coming.
See you next time!