Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

asia.nikkei.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 620 posts

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#561

Post by quantumBerry »

spdionis wrote: post #502
quantumBerry wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could, but governments have a hard enough time sharply reducing drug use, and that has something tangible to search for and find. Trying to find some bits in the ether or even worse guess whether someone is memorizing a seed phrase is nigh impossible to prove or extinguish. Mining will be carried out wherever someone could get away with it, which is basically any western country where it is legal and any 3rd world…

I'd assume some of these massive energy-hungry mining facilities would be fairly hard to hide.

Bitcoin's survival is not predicated on centralized mining facilities.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#562

Post by btoiled »

Hjfrf wrote: post #373
raisedbyninjas wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof of work cryptos are a pox on society. That said they are some of the most location neutral energy consumers. This allows mining farms to be located adjacent to hydro dams or wind farms to get the cheapest energy and use energy that would otherwise be lost in transmission. 1TW is around 20% of global energy production. This is enough of a factor to impact manufacturing of renewable energy equipment. It allows th…

Location-neutral also means sitting directly on top of coal mines. If somebody's mining bitcoin they're clearly not interested in ethics in the first place.

Supporting MMT that directly causes massive inequality in the society is super ethical I guess.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#563

Post by btoiled »

boudin wrote: post #415
Consultant32452 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridding the world of centrally planned currency isn’t shits and giggles. We’re in the midst of the largest wealth transfer in history. Trillions are being given to the wealthy while the poor see their purchasing power wither away. I’m not certain we’ll successfully escape their depraved clutches, but wasting a little electricity is worth the chance.

How are crypto currencies changing that?

Fixed issuance.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#564

Post by tehjoker »

paulmd wrote: post #511
rat87 wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Manufacturing economy" was a meme sold to gullible nostalgic masses Work is work, money is money. There's nothing fundamentally more important about manufacturing then other types of jobs. The US still has tons of manufacturing but unsurprisingly its on the backs of much fewer jobs, many of which require more education and specialization then manufacturing economy of old used to supply

> There's nothing fundamentally more important about manufacturing then other types of jobs. the idea that manufacturing is the only work that matters is especially bizarre on a social media website for tech workers . microsoft or oracle or any number of other software products absolutely deliver value to customers just as much as a machine stamping out parts, those companies couldn't work without that software just…

Custom machine logic is a kind of manufacturing and the people doing the production are for the most part the engineers.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#565

Post by btoiled »

nootropicat wrote: post #187
cletus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this but it's even worse than that. Estimates on Bitcoin energy usage put it at over 1TW now. I believe it was comparable to the energy consumption of Argentina. Advocates will defend this by saying most energy usage is renewable. This conjures the image of someone with a bunch of solar panels but the reality is that it's primarily hydro power because that's the cheapest. Thing is, in regions with cheap…

Mining is definitely renewable UNfriendly. Hardware is too expensive to turn it down at night, or when winds are weak. It's 24/7 constant demand, the worst possible for solar/wind. It's indeed location independent, but that's more compatible with previously uneconomical fossil fuels (eg. methane in locations where transferring it out isn't economical).

No, it will spur renewable development:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/green-energy-sustainable-futu...

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#566

Post by btoiled »

jdprgm wrote: post #275
cletus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this but it's even worse than that. Estimates on Bitcoin energy usage put it at over 1TW now. I believe it was comparable to the energy consumption of Argentina. Advocates will defend this by saying most energy usage is renewable. This conjures the image of someone with a bunch of solar panels but the reality is that it's primarily hydro power because that's the cheapest. Thing is, in regions with cheap…

> I really wonder what happens to Bitcoin (or any PoW coin) when it no longer becomes economical to mine new coins. Does all the computing power just move on to the next coin? We will find out exactly this relatively soon when Ethereum moves to Eth2 and Proof of Stake.

We’ve been expecting that relatively soon move for some years now. So any day now.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#567

Post by shadilay »

bitcurious wrote: post #346
_huayra_ wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: is it possible to make a cryptocurrency that does not rely on some real-world scarce resource (e.g. chips, electricity, drive space)? This seems to be a cornerstone of what makes any crypto valuable in the first place (scarcity), and as long as that scarcity has real-world consequences, it seems like it would have the same result. Chia claimed to "Save the world from proof-of-work wastage", but it wo…

>Chia claimed to "Save the world from proof-of-work wastage", but it would just turn a GPU crunch into a HDD crunch. Chia actually hasn't resulted in an HDD crunch. The economics of it are such that further investing in HDD storage isn't profitable, yet already Chia is the most decentralized and resilient crypto. I say resilient because price collapsed but allocated storage hasn't.

I still can't find deals on large HDD's ever since the Chia thing started, so it's definitely had an effect.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#568

Post by beervirus »

neb_b wrote: post #226
f32jhnjk33jj wrote: post #174

Thank you cryptominers for everything you did for the mankind, especially huge GPU prices and insane air pollution caused by your mining farms.

Also, thank you for providing fast and cheap remittance payments to poorer countries.

>poorer countries

That's a funny way of spelling "ransomware criminals."

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#569

Post by rjbwork »

xxs wrote: post #299
rjbwork wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In this model crypto is like ... an emergent antipattern of networked civilization, where the network starts to waste every economic resource that it can "see" and provably waste. Exactly. As I've said to a number of people I've discussed crypto with, I'm happy to advocate for making PoW systems illegal. They'll happily gobble up a Dyson sphere of energy and a solar system of hardware in service of running a payment…

Isn't PoS just limiting the amount of work done based on the share of the total 'wealth'?

I think that's right. Like I said I reserve judgement until they're more prevalent and I've learned more about them. I have read that Ethereum's PoS implementation will use <1% of it's current PoW energy.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#570

Post by fukmbas »

ayngg wrote: post #517
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #32

Supply shortage is another way of saying demand excess. I don’t see much evidence that TSMC ever really slowed production, at least for their most advanced processes that are in high demand. This is yet another way we’re all forced to pay the price for cryptocurrency. As long as GPUs are profitable for mining, they will be purchased and put to work. The saddest part is that each additional GPU added to the mining net…

The state of cryptocurrencies is nothing more than a visible symptom of larger systemic issues that have clearly gotten out of control. It would be much more beneficial to try and understand why the market has decided to consider it valuable in spite of everything you have said rather than just blame and dismiss it based on its impact. We aren't paying the price for cryptocurrency, we are paying the price for policy…

Yeah exactly. It's not going anywhere at this point and only becomes more attractive to lazy investors
Post reply on HN