Hacker News: Tor3

Toyota uses superconducting motor in race for first time

Tor3 — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:41:59 +0000

Article URL: https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/16626731

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48460359

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 10:10:24 +0000

Japanese rice is not commonly produced in other countries. And even where they do, the rice is not the same. I eat rice made inside Japan and made outside of Japan, and the latter is a poor substitute.

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 06:01:31 +0000

I specifically mentioned families where the economy is not a burden, and they still don't want many children. Very few will want more than two. Please note that in my country at least, as long as the economy is good enough that there aren't any real problems living, then it doesn't matter if it costs more with more children. That is not the reason.

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 09:42:42 +0000

I didn't say that 1500 years ago is a short timeframe. I'm saying that if you look at short timeframes like a decade or a generation or two it may look like there's not much migration going on. But stretch that a bit, and you'll see the changes. It's like a slow-moving river. Always moving, if you yourself move your viewpoint back a little.

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 09:39:34 +0000

In what way? I included England just because those particular periods are well-known. If you look at ALL of Europe's history, all up to recent times, there's been constant movements and migrations. People with different backgrounds, moving around, a lot of movement came as trade increased (and, as it has lately been found, there was much more trade even 3k years ago than anyone had previously anticipated). If you look at a snapshot of time it looks pretty static, but let your time-tick be generations and you see constant changes.

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 06:33:43 +0000

If you have a way to secure rice production, please let us know. Or did you mean to abandon rice because it's too labor intensive? There's a reason for subsidies, just as there are reasons for agricultural support in my home country - without it there would be no agriculture. And, without going into details, that would be a disaster.

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 06:30:58 +0000

It only looks like that because you're looking over a relatively short timeframe. Start looking over more than a generation and things will look different. I just have to check my father's ancestry research to see that - his notes includes a lot of extra information not directly related to my forefathers, and yes people moved. That a lot of people move in, historically, an instant, is something that doesn't happen always, but it has happened again and again over time. The net result is in any case that anyone country is, when you look back, always a product of its immigration. And it's still a country which you would attribute national culture to. The culture isn't frozen if you look over a large enough timeframe, and I for one am happy for that - my boring childhood town isn't that way anymore: boring.

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 05:29:54 +0000

Rice fields, around here at least. That's always been very labor intensive. They do use tractors to do some of it, but around the periphery of every field it's still done manually. Rice fields are very different from wheat production.

In my country strawberries are picked manually. There's yet no mechanical solution which can do what humans can, with respect to quality and more. And that's already a problem, without seasonal immigration there will be no strawberries on the market, simple as that. There are many other kind of work which still requires a young healthy work force.

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 05:22:55 +0000

What I'm asking is "..dared to try what?". What, excactly, would you offer? As I mentioned in another comment, those families in my own country which a) do not have any economical worries, and b) have great family leave support from work, i.e. no career problems whatsoever, and c) even more that I don't list here, they DO NOT WANT more than two children anyway. Because it feels fine with two. And then there's a problem, because that's not enough - there are a lot of singles out there, and most of them don't produce any children. You need more than two children per family, on average, to keep up the birthrate vs the death rate.

So, what is the solution that nobody has dared to try?

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 05:13:35 +0000

>They’ll find it easy to keep their homogenous culture and shared traditional values.

That idea is a fallacy. It has never been true. All of Europe was always a melting pot for people from everywhere. Over the centuries people kept moving, immigrating and emigrating. England.. Britons, Celts, Anglo-Saxxon, Norse, Normans (which were themselves originally immigrants). And my own country? Surnames from everywhere. 40% of my language's vocabulary came from immigrants. Is that a problem? I most certainly can't see any.

The idea about 'homogenous culture and shared traditional values' is as true as looking at a flower for five minutes and then claiming that "nah, it doesn't grow, it's frozen".

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 04:58:57 +0000

It is not as simple as that. In my country giving birth is free. And you get economic support for every child. For most people it's still an economic burden to some extent, but for the majority it's not something which blocks them from having children. It's more that most families I know are content with having two children. It feels fine to them. But that's the families that do have children. 25% of men in my country never have children. It's not enough. A lot of families need to produce 3 children, and better if there are some with four.. and most people simply don't want that. And that's for the most part not a question of economy.

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 04:55:18 +0000

The worldometer statistics site doesn't fully agree with that, the Guardian reports that the rate went from 0.75 to 0.80, while worldometer states that the 2026 rate will probably end up at 0.76. At best this has kind of stopped dropping, but it is any case catastrophically low (and way worse than Japan)

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 04:51:52 +0000

Look back a few hundred years and you'll find that the country you grew up in, in Europe, was constantly in that situation. People moved a lot back then too. And the countries are today.. the countries. It'll be fine.

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 04:49:32 +0000

I don't think that's correct. Saying that "solutions would be very expensive" implies that there are actual solutions in existence. I've seen a lot of suggestions, and many have been implemented, some do slow down the dropping birthrate problem (countries with good maternity leave systems and regulated working hours are doing way better than those without), but nowhere have I seen any true fix presented, with or without a label "will work, but will be too expensive".

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 04:36:39 +0000

Around 1900 the median age of the Japanese population was somewhere in the twenties, in other words, they had a healthy and able work force relative to the population size. Today the median age is above 50, and there aren't many who can work the fields. In fact around here I see very old people doing that, and a lot of them can hardly walk normally, they're permanently bent.

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 04:33:12 +0000

Fertility rate of 0.80.. and I thought Japan, Italy, and my own country had problems. Note however that https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/south-korea-p... says 0.76, and last year was 0.75, so there's barely any change there. Catastrophically low birth rate, and maybe it's not so hard to figure out why.

New comment by Tor3 in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

Tor3 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 04:30:44 +0000

Japan's population is dropping like a stone. Since I first arrived here some years ago the population has gone down by several millions. Countries which have more immigration (like my native one, also with a low birth rate) manage to keep up the population size, and, equally important, manage to keep the median age somewhat lower (the median age in Japan is now above 50).

If immigration is not a solution, then I assume you mean that reversing the birth rate problem is the way to go. Can't disagree there, but how do you propose to do that? No country with a birth rate below 2 seems to have been able to come up with a way to "fix" that.

(The worldometer site makes it easy to look up and compare various countries: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/japan-populat...)

New comment by Tor3 in "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left"

Tor3 — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 07:37:23 +0000

That's correct - I've never used Chrome, I've used Chromium but not now. I'm using gmail with Vivaldi (chrome-based) and Firefox.

New comment by Tor3 in "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left"

Tor3 — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:28:53 +0000

Yes, that's annoying. I have no interest in connecting my phone number to accounts here and there.

Some firms go the other way.. I use the "Line" app for communication, and initially (many years ago) it was connected to your phone, which caused difficulties if you moved countries (among other things).

They have, however, now removed the connection to a phone number. Good.

New comment by Tor3 in "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left"

Tor3 — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:24:28 +0000

That starts to sound like "It's a nice email you have there.. too bad if something should happen to it.."