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22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

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Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#131

Post by kjkjadksj »

yterdy wrote: post #126
ccorcos wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m constantly surprised how tech folks seem to undervalue the suburbs.

Suburbs aren't defined by having personal space. That can be achieved in cities and small towns with in-fill development of high square-footage apartments, n-plexes, and townhouses, or collective workspaces. The suburbs that people complain about are car-centric and are generally underfunded in the long-term, putting significant burdens on municipal and state finances for things like infrastructure maintenance (roads…

Plenty of car centric suburbs do fine with the budget too. You got suburbs in california where homes are $2m. They aren’t hurting for road budget. High school class offerings in such a district might look downright collegiate from the additional funding the parents raise for the local school.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#132

Post by kjkjadksj »

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #114
OccamsMirror wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in Australia. Even rural is expensive.

I don’t quite get why Australia is so expensive. It’s basically all empty land (bigger than the EU and the population of the Netherlands). Shouldn’t it be dirt cheap?

Honestly the big stark difference between Australia and the US seems to be immigration. There might be a fundamental lack of a labor pool that might have been building out comparable infrastructure and housing supply that we see in similarly geographic sized US.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#133

Post by kjkjadksj »

reactordev wrote: post #67
ChainOfFools wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently moved into a four-bedroom home in a moderately desirable suburb of Los Angeles. I myself work in tech field and my spouse is university faculty. Our subdiv is a large tract of homes built 15-25 years ago, all in the mid six figures to just a hair over seven. At least three of the neighbors within sight of my own house are some sort of residential construction or property trade contractor. Two are public scho…

Most tradespeople I know can’t afford “hair over seven” figures for a home. Everyone in your neighborhood is house poor. They are banking on equity. They had a sizable upfront down payment. Like I said, all the tradespeople I know are struggling with lower 6, much less hair over 7.

But do you work in the trades in places where the median home is $800k? Trade wages are probably better in socal.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#134

Post by tjrgergw »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #6

Indeed. The hardest part these days is getting access to a garage.

Oh man such a funny joke. It's funny because it's true.

That said, as a European the meme of "they started in their garage" always sounded so American. Maybe that's what Europe is lacking in terms of entrepreneurship - garages.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#135

Post by tjrgergw »

trimethylpurine wrote: post #34
dleslie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most American suburbs are awful if you enjoy any sort of regular physical activity, and simply prefer to walk to the market instead of drive. They're amazing if you love sitting in traffic.

I'm in a suburb. Not an expensive one. Downtown is a 20 minute drive in light traffic. Within a 10 minute walk there are office buildings, grocery stores, shopping mall, gyms, parks, hiking and biking trails, etc. There are many cities to choose from; some are better planned than others. Based on your comment I would guess that you've opted to live in one of the "cool" cities in America.

Would you please share which city is this, that has everything within 10 minute walk in its suburbs?

I'm a European who's lived in an "American downtown" because I was told the suburbs are horrible, but what you're describing sounds great.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#136

Post by reactordev »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #133
reactordev wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most tradespeople I know can’t afford “hair over seven” figures for a home. Everyone in your neighborhood is house poor. They are banking on equity. They had a sizable upfront down payment. Like I said, all the tradespeople I know are struggling with lower 6, much less hair over 7.

But do you work in the trades in places where the median home is $800k? Trade wages are probably better in socal.

They do. Median home value here is $950k. All of my trades friends are house poor and asking family for assistance.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#137

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

Aerbil313 wrote: post #95
thalassophobia wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but more creative people would be making something new, even if most would use it for nothing. No matter the amount of additional innovators, the total would still be bigger than it is now.

Do you imply creative people are a special breed who are immune to attention engineering?

Excellent phrase, "attention engineering".

Related, somebody referred recently to the device that plays YouTube as the "depression box", because that's what it creates in short order: "I am incapable of anything but scrolling". Yup: "Depression box."

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#138

Post by reactordev »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #111
_visgean wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its about efficiency, a grocery store will require one large supply truck. Supplying everyone to their home requires way more people and energy.

Wouldn't delivery be more efficient than people not practiced at logistics delivering thinga to their homes back and forth themselves?

Possibly if that last mile delivery was carried out by people who were also practiced in logistics. This is never the case. It’s better for you to find a means of transportation to get your staples of living than to pay someone else to use any means of transportation to provide you your bananas.

The planet can’t take any more “conveniences” on our behalf. We need to find a more efficient way of delivering goods and getting our goods. Throwing your hands up and saying “I’ll just get everything delivered” is about the worst option you can do from a logistics perspective to reduce carbon.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#139

Post by xw3098 »

ip26 wrote: post #47
xw3098 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no way it’s lower cost. However what it could be is guaranteed line capacity and delivery dates. And if you’re doing small orders from a large foundry you don’t get that. Those things have value too and someone might be willing to pay a bit extra to get them. My main issue is semiconductor lines are fragile beasts that need constant tinkering. So if the system requires full time staff to keep running, that’s…

If a mask set is 50 million and you only need ten chips, these guys would only need to come in under 5 million per chip to win on cost.

We don’t know what node they’re targeting so this is all speculation but if it’s anything below say 22nm then that’s finFET, and there’s nothing low cost about finFET at prototype volumes.

If it’s not finFET then a non production mask set is much less than $50 million in 2023.

Also, keep in mind maskless lithography has been used commercially for roughly ten years now. And it’s been in Universities for significantly longer.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#140

Post by reactordev »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #116
jeffreygoesto wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse. The main damage is done building things and robots have a much higher total cost of being developed and built.

True to first order, not to second. Economy of scale making robots cheaper would dramatically improve economies and the environment. Simple example would be to reduce the scale up and install cost of clean energy.

If we had pick and pack robots and delivery drones that were powered by solar fields and alternative energy, I would say that’s about as close to carbon neutral logistics as we can get. Trucking and freight are still exorbitantly polluting but the heavy “last mile” pollution problem would be traded with increased overhead air traffic. The reality is: a self driving car with a delivery robot is probably going to be our answer in 2040.
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