TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

I suppose I went a bit overboard (no pun intended). 1 KB implementation should be more than enough for their precision.

Maybe some code then, instead: https://www.dwitter.net/d/20446

What a load of bs. Yes private insurance will give you preferred treatment in non emergency / non critical cases but that’s about it. Private insurance is luxury for people who do not want to wait for non critical doctors appointments.

Source: me, capable of going private insurance but it’s a complete waste of money.

>Vaccines aren't distributed to countries one after another until each order is completed. Instead, the production is divided up and goes towards different orders

If I purchase an item before others, purchase by far the most quantities of that item, pay by far the most overall, and pay a considerable amount of money toward funding its development (shades of Kickstarter), I should expect that item before others.

By early June 2020 (https://web.archive.org/web/20200603171013/https://www.nytim...>) the Trump administration had already identified and was planning to sign the aforementioned huge contracts with Moderna, AstraZeneca, J&J, Merck, and Pfizer. (An 80% success rate is fantastic in drug discovery.) By that time the US had already paid $2.2 billion to three of the companies. (Also note the skepticism throughout that any vaccines could be delivered anywhere within the timeframe the administration was promising.)

By contrast, look at Canada as counterexample. Consider Maclean's desperate attempt to spin its procurement difficulties (https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/where-did-canadas-vaccin...>). If you look past the predictable eliding of the US's firstest-with-the-mostest contracts as an "export ban", the best the magazine can do is admit that

* all Canadian contracts with vaccine providers that actually delivered were signed between late July and late September

* all contracts were signed after the collapse of the CanSino deal, which Canada had loudly bragged about as proof of its savviness at obtaining vaccines ASAP and circumvent any US vaccine export ban (which, again, never happened), and which it has done its best since the collapse to pretend that the attempt to foil the perfidious Americans never ever existed

* the other contracts that the magazine cites as proof that CanSino wasn't the only basket Ottawa was putting all its eggs in are with VBI (Who?) and USask. They may or may not yet deliver effective vaccines, but it's all now a bit beside the point, eh?

>That's not true. The US government used the Defense Production Act to stop the exports of finished vaccines until some time ago.

I specifically said vaccines. The US did invoke the Defense Production Act for certain medical equipment, to further ensure that its vaccine contracts are fulfilled first (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-24/biden-use...>). But, let me quote (https://www.ft.com/content/82fa8fb4-a867-4005-b6c2-a79969139...>): "The DPA does not allow the administration to block exports overseas".

The US's vaccine contracts would be fulfilled first regardless (albeit possibly more slowly) without the DPA, because (as I said) the US was the first and paid the most. The US's Pfizer contract explicitly prohibited the company from exporting US-produced vaccine doses until March 31, but that was a moot point because the company only began to export US-produced doses at the end of April because it still had to fulfill said US contract first (https://www.barrons.com/articles/pfizer-to-export-u-s-made-v...>)

Right, but there is no concept of "financially successful" hospitals because no-one is paying for anything (success is measured in terms of input/output...the UK also does poorly here because we overpay massively for doctors, and underpay everyone else). The reason why medicine expenditure is low is because the system is managed for cost. Systems like Germany, US, Netherlands, Australia are more effective because there is a huge element of subsidy...the UK is about giving everyone the same defective product.

Also, the NHS is one of the only things on which there is almost no real political debate in the UK. The BMA is probably the most powerful lobbying group in British politics (and this isn't good, they are one of the more sources of stasis, they have opposed every change in health policy...they also opposed the introduction of the NHS). So the problem is the opposite: if anyone tries to reform the NHS is any way then the political opposition is instant (and the only way someone like Blair did reform at the edges, was to pay off doctors...which ended up costing massive amounts of money and leaving the system in a bigger hole). The main conservative force is the NHS itself...it isn't really radical, it is just a system that doesn't really work but Brits have this weird tribalism built up by tabloids telling people that someone is trying to privatize it (and btw, this is the conclusion of anyone with a brain...the NHS doesn't work well, the wealthy and middle-class need to subsidise the system more heavily but people want a Nordic size state with US taxes...and btw, what people don't understand is that we have US taxes with a public health system that is half the size of the US public health system...so we don't even do that properly). I also wouldn't call it "socialist" either, there is no real subsidy, US healthcare is way more redistributive, it is universal but lots of other healthcare systems in Europe achieve universality with large private systems...so universality really isn't the dealbreaker that people in the US think it is. But most people are die-hard NHS supporters, so it clearly isn't "socialist".

> But that's exactly what is happening. People are paid these insane salaries because they're either born American or got a green card.

Not really. Lots of people from everywhere in the World apply to Google for US (and German) positions. Most of them don't get the job. Google has offices everywhere in the world. If they want to hire you, they just hire you in your local country, and after 1 year you can transfer to the US without a green card.

> Do you think the 20 something hired at $200k+ in the Silicon Valley are worth 5 times the seniors devs at $40k in Thailand, Spain, Poland?

A 20 something hired by Google in Germany also makes 200k$. (160k EUR). For Google, these 20 something programming-competition winners and phds are worth more than most senior devs doing management with no programming, or cruft apps, etc.

Not all of these 20 something will end up making 600k at google though. But in Google they have the chance to develop into that.