Circular’s overall value is now US$ 30 million thanks to money.Will expand & nbsp, products in Singapore, hasten expansion in AustraliaCircular, a subscription service backed by Y Combinator that specializes in high-end consumer electronics, has successfully shut down its seed & nbsp, round & nBsP, of$ 7.6 million. Investors from YC…Continue Reading
Circular’s overall evaluation now stands at US$ 30 million thanks to money.Funds will be donated to & nbsp, which will expand its offerings in Singapore and Australia.Circular, a subscription service that specializes in high-end consumer electronics and is supported by Y Combinator, has successfully closed its seed funding round and secured…Continue Reading
has increased functional effectiveness, assisting sustainability goalsMCMC deploying 5G independent systems in collaboration with mobile service providersAt its Regasification Terminal Sungai Udang( RGTSU ) in Melaka, PETRONAS has successfully rolled out a 5G private network, making it Malaysia’s first enterprise use of 5GP technology.The deployment of a 5G private network by…Continue Reading
aims to improve the Malaysian development ecosystemhad a turbulent two-year term as MDEC chair from July 2020 to 2022.Dr. Rais Hussin Mohamed Ariff has been named the new CEO of MRANTI, according to the Malaysian Research Accelerator for Technology and Innovation ( MRANTI ) Board of Directors( BoD ), which confirms…Continue Reading
It is well known that Elon Musk envisioned Twitter, now known as X, as an” all game.” The internet was rife with contentious debates about what it would mean for X to be an all-encompassing application when Twitter’s orange bird was replaced by the Y logo.
Musk used the Taiwanese all-in-one game WeChat to promote his very app project. However, a series of inquiries followed for many American WeChat people. How does it feel to employ WeChat? How has WeChat evolved into” whatever” in China? Could the app’s victory been replicated in the US. ?
Chinese digital advertising expert here, I’ve been using WeChat since 2012. Musk is enthusiastic, but I don’t believe WeChat is something to read about at house. In comparison to the other well-known apps I looked at for my present book project on Chinese touchscreen media, I think it’s ordinary more than special and lacks unique features.
My phone’s WeChat inconspicuity is not a coincidence. WeChat is an” anything” app in the sense that it serves as a digital hub for more than one billion people, but the phone’s design is purposefully based on an even more nuanced and philosophical interpretation of the word than you might anticipate.
WeChat, which was introduced in 2011, has evolved into an all-in-one app that provides services for the majority of daily life, from instant messaging and mobile payments to photo – and video-sharing social networking. For 1.3 billion Foreign wireless users, it has become a regular part of daily life.
If they only want to place one app, China-bound travelers can even get WeChat. You can use WeChat to pay for your hotel room, get food, call a cab, and fill out traditions pronouncement forms.
A traveller in China would be like a bass out of water without WeChat because everything in the country today uses cellphone windows and smart payment methods.
WeChat is an all-encompassing game in this feeling. Its” everythingness” alludes to its close omnipresence and power in daily life. The software develops a vast and constantly growing media ecosystem that has an impact on users’ day-to-day actions. According to German scholar and press theorist Peter Sloterdijk, it creates a massive online hub that” has drawn anything that was once on the outside inward.”
This” everythingness” makes it difficult for rival businesses to maintain their dominance and transforms every click or click on a person’s smartphone into something the large tech company can take advantage of. Perhaps what makes technical leaders like Musk so alluring is their desire for an online empire.
WeChat is one of the least noteworthy and appealing apps on my cellphone, despite its claim to be an all-purpose application. WeChat hardly ever sends users login notifications or changes its brand to mark holidays. Since WeChat people can only see what their associates post, as opposed to applications like Weibo or TikTok, where celebrities amass millions of followers, the software creates a fairly closed social area.
However, as WeChat’s chairman and chief designer Allen Xiaolong Zhang made clear in his yearly people speeches in 2019 and 2020, the absence of bright, attention-grabbing features is truly one of the companys’ purposeful design philosophies.
Zhang emphasized that one of WeChat’s design concepts is to” getting people out of the game as quickly as possible ,” which entails cutting down on user interaction.
This may seem counterintuitive: how you WeChat maintain its internet empire if it is trying to get its users to leave the application as soon as possible? The popularity of an app is generally determined by how long users spend using it, and users’ attention is a valuable resource that many digital platforms compete for.
Zhang asserts, however, that it’s crucial to permit users leave the app as soon as possible in order to maintain their regular engagement with it in the long run. To entice users again into the game without wearing them out, there must be little time or effort required.
Zhang’s concept is made evident by the design of WeChat miniprograms. Miniprograms are integrated into WeChat as third-party sub-applications, and they give clients quick access to a wide range of services without leaving the site, such as hailing screamers, ordering food, purchasing train tickets, or playing games.
People can skip the time-consuming steps of installing and uninstalling innovative programs by simply searching within the game or scanning a QR code to open eSymbolically.
At the top of the display, a hidden board contains miniprograms. They can be accessed by dragging the camera down. These miniprograms seem fleeting, diffuse, and nearly atmospheric in nature. They give customers the impression that WeChat has vanished or assimilated into the surroundings.
Media experts refer to WeChat as being” elemental” because it is subtle and unobtrusive but pervasive and just as important as the elements themselves, such as heat, water, and clouds.
The ancient Chinese Taoist philosophy, which views nothing( wu, or” not – being”) as that which constitutes the basis of all things( wanwi, also known as” ten thousand things”), is echoed by this environment of pervasiveness and unobtrusivelyness.
According to Tao Te Ching,” Dao begets One( or nothingness ), One begats Two( yin and yang ), Two is the mother of all things( Heaven, Earth, and Man, or Yin, Yang and Breath Qi ).” According to Chinese philosophers, not-being is what causes everything in the galaxy to exist, change, and vanish.
The level of these wise texts is incomprehensible, but Chinese ideas from the past help people understand how everything and nothing interacts. This viewpoint gives” everything” a new level of meaning and creates new perspectives on what an whatever app can be.
Perhaps the key to WeChat’s success over the past ten years is its interpretation of the word” everything” as together pervasive and discreet. Some tech leaders, in my opinion, could benefit from having a more in-depth understanding of” everything” when designing the everything game rather than just thinking of it as big and complete.
At Washington University in St. Louis, United States, Jianqing Chen teaches South Asian languages and cultures as well as video and media studies, arts andamp, and sciences.
Disclosure: Jianqing Chen has disclosed no related affiliations outside of their educational session and does not work for, read, private shares in, or obtain funding from any company or organization that may benefit from this article.
Under a Creative Commons license, this essay has been republished from The Conversation. Read the article in its entirety.
According to Chinese media accounts, work on Chinese chipmaker TSMC’s fresh silicon shop in Kumamoto on the Japanese island of Kyushu is moving along quickly and might even be ahead of schedule. This development is in stark contrast to TSMC’s shop task, which is about a month behind schedule and is located in the US state of Arizona.
Questions about the disparity between US coverage and South Asian priorities are raised by the difference, which is based on the investment structure, organizational culture, and social expectations. & nbsp,
The world’s top chipmaker, TSMC, has received strong support from both Chinese and US government officials. In Phoenix, Arizona, in December 2022, President Joe Biden declared,” American manufacturing is back, folks ,” while standing in front of an American flag and a banner that read” A Future Made in America.” He praised TSMC and the part it is playing in reviving the semiconductor industry in America in proper notes.
Yasutoshi Nishimura, the Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry, posted the following message in Japanese on X ( Twitter ) at the start of October 2023:
” Mark Liu, chairman of Taiwan’s TSMC, and I had a gathering. An important national initiative aimed at revitalizing Japan’s semiconductor industry is the construction of a factory in Kumamoto by JASM ] Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing. This collaboration between TSMC, Sony, and Denso. In Kumamoto, cooperation is developing as Chinese manufacturers of materials and equipment and other related businesses announce novel investments one after another. We will keep working together and cooperating, including in upcoming advances.
Since April 2022, the second shop of TSMC in Kumamoto has been operating without a hitch. The project has been managed by lots of TSMC technicians who have been sent from Taiwan, and hundreds more will be sent by the company’s suppliers, according to the Asian media. Additionally, more than 300 Chinese personnel have been trained by TSMC so far in Taiwan. & nbsp,
Equipment assembly in Kumamoto is expected to start this month and be finished by the following spring. Production is expected to begin before the date of 2024 expires.
However, what TSMC refers to as a shortage of skilled workers has slowed progress in the US. Bureaucratic red tape and regional labor organizations that oppose the use of imported workers have exacerbated this lack. & nbsp,
Additionally, the labor unions have expressed dissatisfaction with inadequate business, lax safety standards, and absurd work schedules. According to American internet, non-union immigrants and out-of-state employees are frequently employed. & nbsp,
The loud assistance for union labor from the Biden administration may be one cause of the issue. If you don’t mind my telling, union workers are the best in the world, according to Biden, who stated in December of last year. They are the best professionals in the entire world.
Chinese, South Koreans, Japanese, and Europeans all have the right to disagree. Whatever the motives, TSMC has moved Arizona’s industrial production from 2024 to 2025.
In the meantime, Chinese and foreign manufacturers of technology are growing their existence in Kumamoto in response to increased demand brought on by the TSMC joint venture. On Japan’s” Silicon Island” and” Kyushu ,” which is already a significant center of semiconductor production, TSMC is causing an unprecedented wave of growth.
The largest manufacturer of transistor equipment in Japan, Tokyo Electron, is constructing a new facility in Kumamoto for the creation and development of material coaters and developers. It will double the length of its activities in Kyushu and be finished by the end of 2024. The largest coater / developer market worldwide is dominated by Tokyo Electron.
After Applied Materials of the US, Ebara is the second-largest manufacturer of chemical mechanical planarization ( CMP ) equipment. It has started building a new factory in Kumamoto that will roughly double its CMP production capacity. It should also go online by the end of 2024 and be finished with new R & amp, D facilities in Fujisawa, close to Tokyo. & nbsp,
Disco, the nation’s top manufacturer of silicon chip dicing, milling, and polishing machinery, as well as relevant consumables, has formally opened its Mid-Process Research Center in Kumamoto. Consumers and other visitors were able to visit the facility in July after it had been operating under Covid-related health restrictions since December 2021.
The goal of this facility is to make the process of fabricating numerous semiconductor devices on silicon or other types of wafers more efficient than the” back-end” process, which Disco specializes in, of dicing( wafer singulation through cutting, separating individual die for packaging in chips ). By preventing the silicon from deteriorating, yields are kept high. & nbsp,
The mid-process R & amp, D center also enables the verification of unmanned operations by integrating a number of processes with an automated transfer robot. These procedures include pick-up, evaluation, and die assessment, as well as thinning the chip with a grinders and singulation using knife dicing and laser saws.
In June, Screen Holdings, the nation’s top manufacturer of semiconductor cleaning supplies, opened a new training facility at its Kumamoto location. & nbsp,
The top US manufacturer of polishing equipment and semiconductor lithography systems, ASML, both intend to increase their support and service offerings in Kumamoto. There are also offices for Applied Materials, the largest manufacturer of semiconductor production equipment in the world, and KLA, a market leader in transistor assessment equipment. & nbsp,
Two significant Japanese businesses that are both shareholders and the biggest potential customers of the enterprise are Sony and Denso( which is affiliated with Toyota ), with which TSMC is collaborating in Kumamoto. In a comparable business and social environment, without antagonistic management-union relations, it will be expanding its IC factory services for both of them not far from Taiwan. TSMC is the sole owner of its innovative business in Arizona. & nbsp,
Strong local partners who are both investors and customers will also be working with TSMC in Dresden, Germany, where the company intends to launch a joint venture with Bosch, Infineon, and NXP called & nbsp, European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. It appears likely that the Germany-based job, similar to the one in Japan, will proceed more efficiently than the Arizona project that was delayed.
Follow this author on Twitter at @ ScottFo83517667.
Launch of Digital Johor Masterplan 2030 and leadership of TMJ as incoming Sultan
No-nonsense, results oriented leadership style could make the difference
There is a digital reboot going on in Johor, the southern Malaysian state that is a short causeway ride away from Singapore, which many observers on both sides of the causeway,…Continue Reading
Second business class to introduce a complete collection of VR educational resourcesUtilized by 40 profs, 13 k students, and accessible globally through the INSEAD XR PortalThe INSEAD XR Portal was just unveiled by the company. The cutting-edge platform provides a comprehensive solution to bring these immersive learning…Continue Reading
First card to issue Mastercard Travel Rewards in M’sia & amp, SEAUsers can use a pre-approved credit line and obtain money from their Boost wallet.The Beyond Card, a two-in-one foreign passport in Malaysia powered by the Mastercard system, has been unveiled by Boost and CelcomDigi. & nbsp,This revolutionary card, according to…Continue Reading
pursuing bright town objectives, local government and nbsp in Jakarta, teams with SAS partnersReal-time data analysis on rainfall, water levels, river flow, and flooding to predict & nbspSmart cities can use a growing tide of data to make better decisions, safer communities, and vibrant economies with the aid of AI, real-time…Continue Reading