Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I go to “shop all” in the refrigerators section of Home Depot’s site and look at the count next to the filter for “smart” features - Only 97 out of 798 refrigerators they sell have smart features.
That was, at one time, true for "smart TVs" as well.
The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
71–80 of 741 posts
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you still have a shortage, right? People still want microchips. In ideal conditions, the price will stabilize at the level where every chip gets sold, but nobody who wants to pay that price has to wait in line for too long. But if you reach that point, you still have a whole lot of buyers who still want a microchip, but who are unable to pay for them at those elevated prices - i.e a shortage. With fuel, you can r…
The idea is that if you need it bad enough, you can find one at the higher price. If prices didn’t go up, you wouldn’t be able to find one at any price. Some of the people who would want a chip at $x don’t want it at $x*2, and will just never buy one unless the price drops. If the price never drops because supply is never increased, then they will simply never purchase it.
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get the best drying if the machine washes, drains for a bit, then starts drying after that. If I were to do this it would take 4 trips to the washing machine because they didn't think to make it tick over from even washing to drying.
What we've learned here is you need to buy a new washing machine, or maybe before that, read carefully the manual of the one you have. Thinking you can dry your clothes better than the people who engineered the entire machine and wrote its programs is honestly cracking me up. Do you think the vendors were like "you know what, we don't need this washing machine to dry well". Even more, what kind of a marketing campaig…
And thanks, I'll just spend this months rent on a new washing machine.
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#74I run into this in Factorio all the time
It's fascinating: because Factorio is deterministic, I always build out one massive, consolidated chip factory and distribute chips to other factories from there. But as we see here, in the real world, with droughts and pandemics, this is a risky strategy.
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#75Why is there a shortage rather than a price hike, similar to what would happen with fuel? Long term contracts?
There are sophisticated financial markets for trading fuel, but not for chips. In such a market, firms are incentivised to buy when they anticipate demand will rise (or supply will fall), which increases the price. Then after the price has risen (the demand has materialised), they sell. This distributes the consumption of the underlying resource more evenly across time, making shortages less likely.
Fuel (or really, oil) is a single commodity that everybody is after. If the price is low, and you're anticipating a shortage in the near future, you can buy now and sell later for a higher price. That's as simple as a market can get. buy low, sell high, whilst gambling on future price rises.
However, ICs are not a single commodity - you can't take whatever the foundry is putting out and slam it in place of whatever you actually needed. Each circuit is specific to its application. Sure, you could take a similar chip and rework your product to use the new chip instead of the old, but that isn't how a foundry works. They sell capacity.
Each company that wants their chips made will (or should) have done their forecasting for demand in the short-medium term. The problem is that those term limits have lapsed at a time when manufacturing is in a crunch. So now everybody needs new chips made, and nobody has the capacity to make them all.
Those that can rework their products to use similar chips that are already available should be doing so to maintain business. Those that can't do that, or are unwilling to do that, are paying through the nose to pay off other foundry customers to take their slots. meanwhile, there aren't enough chips to continue product manufacturing, so that's on hold until the new chips come out of the foundry and then everything can resume.
Prices will rise to cover the lull in production. And then businesses will see that people are willing to pay that amount, and so prices will not go back down.
If that isn't a more complicated financial market than oil, then I have no idea what is.
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many products like water boilers, ovens or toasters can be built more robust without digital chips. I would argue we would see a overall quality improvement from having a bad chip shortage.
I would be careful to conflate internet connected trash with enough ARM cores and LoC to make your brain melt with the likes of a well placed humble microcontroller.. the mechanical or analogue components they replaced were usually far more temperamental, bulky, expensive and bad at their job. There are exceptional environments like in nuclear power, but for most purposes integrated electronics have improved reliabil…
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I go to “shop all” in the refrigerators section of Home Depot’s site and look at the count next to the filter for “smart” features - Only 97 out of 798 refrigerators they sell have smart features.
That was, at one time, true for "smart TVs" as well.
- Historically, the TV has been used for playing media transmitted on radio waves, so an internet connected TV isn't a big surprise.
- Television media formats seem to completely shift every decade or 2, so people are very used to buying something they'll throw away soon.
- People usually take their televisions around with them when they move houses, but not appliances. Transfering "smart" things between owners is generally a pain and a security hazard.
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#78For years I've been asking: Why does my toothbrush have to connect to bluetooth? Why does my refrigerator twitter? These were always useless mis-features and we can hope some of them can get pared down now with the shortage. Bring back old style dumb appliances!
Why does my toothbrush have to connect to bluetooth?
Why does my refrigerator twitter?
Analytics etc; to get "relevant" ads. That's all this IoT and data syphoning etc is mostly about.How often do you brush your teeth? What toothpaste do you use? Maybe your dentist needs to know that or, at least, someone from some (big) (tech) company doing data science about it for whatever reason (mostly to show you ads).
Knowledge is power.
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Connected devices are a good thing - i.e. I should be able to make the washing machine scriptable from my computer, but I bet these solutions are always crap because they are implemented in a hurry by engineers who don't understand either the hardware or software well enough to make it work, so you end up with quasi-useless boss-pleasers like we have now.
You're the first person I've ever seen who says they want a connected washing machine. I'm curious: what will your washing machine script do?
Re: The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
What we've learned here is you need to buy a new washing machine, or maybe before that, read carefully the manual of the one you have. Thinking you can dry your clothes better than the people who engineered the entire machine and wrote its programs is honestly cracking me up. Do you think the vendors were like "you know what, we don't need this washing machine to dry well". Even more, what kind of a marketing campaig…
Well they decided not to have any modes that automatically dry after washing at all so I'm going with yes. And thanks, I'll just spend this months rent on a new washing machine.
And yeah, uhmm... most washing machines can run drying after washing. You just took your specific model's issue, and decided to generalize it to "must be scriptable". Which is really a giant leap to make. To recap:
1. Your specific model can't dry after washing.
2. Your specific model can't be scripted either.
3. Other models can dry after washing.
4. Other models have no scripting.
Ergo whatever you do, you're buying a new washing machine. And your problem doesn't require scripting.