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ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

reuters.com

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Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#171

Post by legulere »

harha wrote: post #54
jbverschoor wrote: post #21

Tech giants seem to have fire problems in Germany lately

What's the deal with moving to Berlin anyway? Infrastructure is pretty bad (try getting good internet or mobile reception, even as a business), as are labor and tax laws and the motivation of most employees is pretty low as a result (high security, limited mobility - need tenure to retain the security, low impact of actions - both under and over performing), additionally, everything is a bureaucratic nightmare, bette…

Taxes are low for businesses in Germany if you take the numerous possibilities to deduct things from your taxes into account (effectively lower than in the US). It's just taxes and levies for workers that are high. Tech workers cost way less than in the US. High security for workers also means that your workers won't pull stupid stunts to keep working in your place. Unions can actually worked with and have the companies success in mind.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#172

Post by avh02 »

harha wrote: post #54
jbverschoor wrote: post #21

Tech giants seem to have fire problems in Germany lately

What's the deal with moving to Berlin anyway? Infrastructure is pretty bad (try getting good internet or mobile reception, even as a business), as are labor and tax laws and the motivation of most employees is pretty low as a result (high security, limited mobility - need tenure to retain the security, low impact of actions - both under and over performing), additionally, everything is a bureaucratic nightmare, bette…

Relative to a first world country, it's true, the internet is bad. But at least in Berlin, if you want (as a company) to get good internet, it's possible, there are providers such as colt that have metropolitan fiber and will literally dig trenches to connect you.

On the labour and tax laws side, work life balance is a thing, presenteeism is not. Being comfortable living your actual life is important to people, and while the average person won't get exceptionally wealthy (software developers are well paid, but not exactly millionaires) they will at least enjoy their lives, along with a large portion of the rest of the population.

I can't speak for other people, but career progression is still a thing, aspirations to be better at what you do is possible without a carrot and stick.

Things are bureaucratic, i agree, but there is also some pragmatism to it you don't notice until you're in it.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#173

Post by throwawaylinux »

kragen wrote: post #164
throwawaylinux wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China was not solely responsible for solar panel cost/efficiency improvements of the past 10 years, so that's embellished. And yes they make vaccines and nuclear reactors like many countries do or have done. And I'll just repeat that I didn't say they produce or invent zero new things. For all their rhetoric, there is not matching output of new technologies in my opinion. Almost everywhere I look yes they often play…

Who else has reduced the cost of solar panel manufacturing over the past 10 years? As far as I can tell it's entirely, 100%, Chinese companies. But maybe you know something I don't. I don't know enough about smartphones, electric cars, conventional cars, reciprocating engines, jet engines, airliners, reusable rockets, or AI to comment on what the big innovations in the last few years are, where they came from, and wh…

Look I don't have time to try to answer all this now I'll try to get back to it but I would like to make clear that I am not talking about Chinese people or people of Chinese race or ancestry here. I'm talking about China the country. There are brilliant people of Chinese ancestry who are responsible for many such innovations, many papers and inventions you see coming from western academia and companies have the names of Chinese people associated.

And nor do I say China has done nothing. They just aren't the infinitely-resourced borg that will end up overtaking everyone in everything that people seem to take as a safe assumption.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#174

Post by MathCodeLove »

metabagel wrote: post #134
MathCodeLove wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can choose to buy from companies who only operate domestically Why don't you? Why is it unethical to save a penny for a stockholder yet it isn't unethical for you to save a penny by buying foreign produced goods? Sure, there are many specific brands unavailable domestically, but you can find some variation of everything you need locally. Even if there are exceptions to that, I would bet you rarely choose to purch…

It’s not possible for a single average consumer to support domestic industry on their narrow shoulders. It typically takes some sort of collective action, often in the form of government trade policy.

The collective is nothing but many individuals. While I'm not accusing you specifically of this, I feel as if these sort of responses are often used as a way to shirk the responsibility of taking any action for the causes one claims to support.

It's a fair point to make, but doesn't mean that OP shouldn't be doing their part by buying domestically if they really hate that some products get manufactured in another country. If everyone who complained about this issue decides to only buy domestically the domestic market would be much stronger.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#175

Post by pasabagi »

hda2 wrote: post #74
whatshisface wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're leaving a few things off the list. Gasoline, steel, machine shops, chemical plants... by the time you added everything that could lead to crisis if it ran out or stopped working you'd be a proponent of the Juche Idea. ;)

Most countries I know of already consider power and basic manufacturing (chemical, construction) to be crucial, and do their best to secure their production or procurement. My argument is that semiconductor manufacturing must also be added to that list. A natural disaster or a war between two countries shouldn't lead to wide-spread famine or throw humanity back into the dark ages.

Would it be the dark ages, though? I don't think it would be so terrible if we were all thrown back to PDP 11's or something, and there's no way it could ever be anywhere near that drastic. Hardware advances are nice, but the main innovations in computers have been infrastructural and social (the internet, email, open source, etc).

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#176

Post by madengr »

baq wrote: post #139
jazzyjackson wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Found this on the wiki, quoting the rocket scientist John Drury Clark: > It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals—steel, copper, aluminum, etc.—because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride that protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminum keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no ch…

This is a quote from Ignition! - a very very very good book about liquid rocket fuels. PDF is available online after a quick google. A must read for anyone on HN - imagine what it’s like to be a rocket fuel hacker.

No post body was provided.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#177

Post by comboy »

hda2 wrote: post #62

Like water, food, and electricity, electronics have become an integral part of life. Every single country that can afford to bootstrap their own semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure should be scrambling to do so. This infrastructure doesn't have to be cutting edge. Even 90s-era tech should be enough to cover a country's basic needs in case of a global collapse or shortage. It's insane for humanity to continue p…

Most countries have 90s-era fabs [1]. That is not rocket science. But EUV is. And all new processors depend on it.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#178

Post by jbverschoor »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #42
jbverschoor wrote: post #21

Tech giants seem to have fire problems in Germany lately

I‘m not quite sure, which other incidents you are referring too, as the only recent one I can remember was on OHB a few days ago. News article (only in German): https://www.n-tv.de/regionales/niedersachsen-und-bremen/Bran...

AWS had a fire incident last summer

Tesla has a fire incident last year (claimed by leftists)

OVH had a fire incident last summer, but Strasbourg is actually France, who knew!

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#179

Post by thaumasiotes »

User23 wrote: post #58
kragen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes, yes. Interestingly these ridiculously reactive materials aren't the ones that tend to contaminate the environment most; they don't last long enough outside a carefully controlled lab. It's, surprisingly, the almost nontoxic materials like perchloroethylene that tend to cause big headaches, because they're unreactive enough to survive in the environment for many years.

Elemental fluorine is nasty toxic, but it doesn’t really pollute the environment because it’s too busy oxidizing the first thing it finds and forming a never gonna let you go bond.

Isn't it happy to form hydrogen fluoride when it meets something with hydrogen in it?

If that was a never-gonna-let-you-go bond, HF would be a much less nasty substance.

Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory

#180

Post by CookiesNCream23 »

I work in the industry and have worked in a fab. Here is some insight.

We are taught that fabs are not treated as factories but as hazardous chemical storage plants. On top of that, we work with high pressure and high power systems.

Fires have accounted for the most damage to fabs over the years; however, this situation is different.

The site is not a fab, it is a ASML manufacturing plant. This plant does not produce chips. It produces parts for the ASML machines. It makes the tables the wafer moves on and the frame the mask moves on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH6Urfqt_d4

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/mask

Downstream effects of this fire will reduce the uptime of the machines and the delivery of promised machines to our customers.

To plug ASML. Speaking as a new grad. If you are in hardware, physics, nanoscience, simulations. ASML is the best company to work at if you want to learn. I get exposure to maybe the most complex engineering system is the world. The scale, complexity, details, and just hardcore technology is mind-blowing. I am plugging ASML because it is not widely know and I would love if fellow engineers had the opportunity to work here. I absolutely love the work I do.

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