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22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

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Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#181

Post by digitallyfree »

tyingq wrote: post #73
phkahler wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are PLDs still a thing? They can implement most anything a really low density chip like this could.

Perhaps analog ICs would be a better market?

That's was what came to mind for me as well. For digital you simply can't beat the cost of a mass-produced FPGA over having custom silicon fabricated (at small scale). Not to mention the additional design costs, EDA tool licensing, etc.

Now for hardened applications, these large nodes have their uses. But that's a very niche case.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#182

Post by nicoburns »

yarky wrote: post #103
nicoburns wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and that's why we should be taxing the hell out of these companies. It's not just about raising revenue. It's about allowing other companies to compete with them.

What's the logic here? Do you somehow think that taxes will encourage innovation ? Anybody can compete, but apparently most of us choose not to. Who forces a young talent to settle for a job instead of taking the risk to innovate ? Maybe risk-taking for innovation is what could be the encouraged through taxation.

> Do you somehow think that taxes will encourage innovation ?

I think that taxing large companies more than small ones might. The bedrock of capitalism is competition, and that is significantly stifled if big players with large amounts of capital can simply buy out anything innovative.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#183

Post by brewdad »

whimsicalism wrote: post #173
nicoburns wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and that's why we should be taxing the hell out of these companies. It's not just about raising revenue. It's about allowing other companies to compete with them.

Why should I, as a young person, support a policy intentionally punishing companies for competing over my labor power just to make it so I have to work for petit-bourgeois small tech companies that can't pay as much?

Because that tax revenue has to come from somewhere. If it doesn't come from the corporations or the 1%, guess who gets the bill?

The 2-20%. Especially those who are W2 employees and have limited options for offsetting their taxable income.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#184

Post by hwers »

hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #180
erosenbe0 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of all the kids who might start working on automotive stuff at 8 years old, building race car parts or engines or go karts. Then imagine the best of the best of thousands of them with parental? resources to build out a great kit and tinker with a lot stuff. This guy is the semiconductor equivalent.

I'm very interested in his childhood education. I want my kid to start early on something he is interested in too but I don't really know how to do that. I know the general rules (expose him to a lot of stuffs, watch him do things, etc.) but don't know how to implement them properly. I myself wasted a lot of time in my childhood so I guess that's why I don't know how to do it properly.

You probably can't go wrong with giving your child resources that's too expensive for other children to be exposed to for some free future competitive advantage (which translates to adult success), as a general first heuristic.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#185

Post by futharkshill »

bpodgursky wrote: post #147
DebtDeflation wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a story as old as time. When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s and 1980s and the school held science fairs, the kids whose parents were scientists and engineers had the coolest fair-winning projects while the rest of the kids made baking soda and vinegar volcanoes or lemon batteries.

On the order of millions of kids have parents who know semiconductor engineers, and 1 of them ended up manufacturing chips in the garage. Please don't try to pick apart his accomplishments to make a point. He's still doing something that almost nobody with equivalent resources took the initiative to do.

Please see this https://www.indeed.com/career/semiconductor-engineer/salarie...

I promise you that there are not millions of kids. Your argument may still hold, but the was majority of children knows no one with this level of technical experience, let alone any programmers.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#186

Post by nicoburns »

whimsicalism wrote: post #173
nicoburns wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and that's why we should be taxing the hell out of these companies. It's not just about raising revenue. It's about allowing other companies to compete with them.

Why should I, as a young person, support a policy intentionally punishing companies for competing over my labor power just to make it so I have to work for petit-bourgeois small tech companies that can't pay as much?

Perhaps because you might want to live in a society where our economic activity is directed at activities which actually promote our collective wealth and wellbeing.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#187

Post by relaxing »

whimsicalism wrote: post #173
nicoburns wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and that's why we should be taxing the hell out of these companies. It's not just about raising revenue. It's about allowing other companies to compete with them.

Why should I, as a young person, support a policy intentionally punishing companies for competing over my labor power just to make it so I have to work for petit-bourgeois small tech companies that can't pay as much?

Because they’re no longer competing. They wield monopoly power that is anticompetitive, and it’s bad for everything else you value. (Assuming you value more than streaming media, two retailers, and ads.)

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#188

Post by jjoonathan »

halpert wrote: post #170
hiptobecubic wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be careful with the "if they do it it must be sensible" reasoning. There are a lot of reasons that modeling firms using homo-economicus and perfect markets doesn't pan out.

To me, this is a case to apply Occam’s razor. What is more likely, that this decades old, Dilbertesque criticism of management is true, yet somehow eluded the purview of shareholders? Or that businesses are being run in a relatively efficient manner given the current human condition?

Rules for Rulers is real.

It's not that management is dumb, it's that every layer of management is self-interested. Every hierarchy has to contend with principal agent problems. Organizations can do a better or worse job of it, but the incentives are always there and they lead to predictable inefficiencies which are frequently observed. Everyone knows this, but unless you know how to get someone to manage without self-interest, you aren't in a position to solve the problem. Nobody is. That's why it lingers.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#189

Post by nicoburns »

Fissionary wrote: post #122
nicoburns wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and that's why we should be taxing the hell out of these companies. It's not just about raising revenue. It's about allowing other companies to compete with them.

The idea of imposing punitive taxes on some companies, to level the playing field for everyone else, reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron". It wouldn't have the desired effect anyway, since employee salaries are tax-deductible. A better way to promote innovation might be through cultivating a spirit of entrepreneurship in young people, supporting startup accelerators, and handing out grants to promising c…

> A better way to promote innovation might be through cultivating a spirit of entrepreneurship in young people, supporting startup accelerators, and handing out grants to promising candidates like the one in the article.

Taxing large corporations seems like it would be an excellent way in which to fund such grants.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#190

Post by halpert »

jjoonathan wrote: post #188
halpert wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, this is a case to apply Occam’s razor. What is more likely, that this decades old, Dilbertesque criticism of management is true, yet somehow eluded the purview of shareholders? Or that businesses are being run in a relatively efficient manner given the current human condition?

Rules for Rulers is real. It's not that management is dumb, it's that every layer of management is self-interested. Every hierarchy has to contend with principal agent problems. Organizations can do a better or worse job of it, but the incentives are always there and they lead to predictable inefficiencies which are frequently observed. Everyone knows this, but unless you know how to get someone to manage without sel…

Is self-interested management really an inefficiency if it’s unavoidable? You don’t get to run a company in a vacuum. You have to run it within the bounds of human behavior. Saying that “if only all humans acted in some way against their nature, then the system would be more efficient” isn’t an effective management strategy.
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