Comment by i5heu
2 days ago
I think it is because of the Chinese new year. The Chinese labs like to publish their models arround the Chinese new year, and the US labs do not want to let a DeepSeek R1 (20 January 2025) impact event happen again, so i guess they publish models that are more capable then what they imagine Chinese labs are yet capable of producing.
Singularity or just Chinese New Year?
The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday, during Chinese New Year
I guess. Deepseek v3 was released on boxing day a month prior
https://api-docs.deepseek.com/news/news1226
And made almost zero impact, it was just a bigger version of Deepseek V2 and when mostly unnoticed because its performances weren't particularly notable especially for its size.
It was R1 with its RL-training that made the news and crashed the srock market.
Aren't we saying "lunar new year" now?
I don't think so; there are different lunar calendars.
In fact, many Asian countries use lunisolar calendars, which basically follow the moon for the months but add an extra month every few years so the seasons don't drift.
As these calendars also rely on time zones for date calculation, there are rare occasions where the New Year start date differs by an entire month between 2 countries.
If that's a sole problem, it should be called "Chinese-Japanese-Korean-whateverelse new year" instead. Maybe "East Asian new year" for short. (Not that there are absolutely no discrepancies within them, but they are so similar enough that new year's day almost always coincide.)
1 reply →
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For another example, Singapore, one of the "many Asian countries" you mentioned, list "Chinese New Year" as the official name on government websites. [0] Also note that both California and New York is not located in Asia.
And don't get me started with "Lunar New Year? What Lunar New Year? Islamic Lunar New Year? Jewish Lunar New Year? CHINESE Lunar New Year?".
[0] https://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/public-holidays
“Lunar New Year” is vague when referring to the holiday as observed by Chinese labs in China. Chinese people don’t call it Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year anyways. They call it Spring Festival (春节).
As it turns out, people in China don’t name their holidays based off of what the laws of New York or California say.
Please don't because "Lunar New Year" is ambiguous. Many other Asian cultures also have traditional lunar calendars but a different new years day. It's a bit presumptuous to claim that this is the sole "Lunar New Year" celebration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_New_Year%27s_days#Calen...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_New_Year
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowruz
I didn't expect language policing has reached such level. This is specifically related to China and DeepSeek who celebrates Chinese new year. Do you demand all Chinese to say happy luner new year to each other?
"Happy Holidays" comes to the diaspora
Happy Lunar Holidays to you!
"Lunar New Year" is perhaps over-general, since there are non-Asian lunar calendars, such as the Hebrew and Islamic calendars.
That said, "Lunar New Year" is probably as good a compromise as any, since we have other names for the Hebrew and Islamic New Years.
There's more than one Asian lunar calendar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46996396.
The Islamic calendar originated in Arabia. Calling it an Asian lunar calendar wouldn't be inaccurate.
This all seems like a plot to get everyone worshipping the Roman goddess Luna.
But they're Chinese companies specifically, in this case
Where do all of those Asian countries have that tradition from?
Have you ever had a Polish Sausage? Did it make you Polish?