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Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

reuters.com

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Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#121
post #37
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we saved some money by shuttering all our factories and outsourcing everything, so, who's to say what the right answer was. (/s)

"We saved some money" is how economics works in price competitive markets. This is a result of many players doing what keeps each one competitive, but without collaborating on what the large scale effects are down the road.

economists have a certain tendency to disregard tail events, which happen much more often than they think, as they don't follow the normal distribution. there's been a plethora of six sigma market movements in the past few years, and six sigma by definition should happen once every 3 million observations or so...

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were Taiwan, I’d be stationing troops at the facility as a dead man’s switch to destroy it if invaded.

No, that's what'd you'd do if you were the US because China is your rival. This is what you want from a foreign perspective. If I was Taiwan, or in other words a shareholder or OWNER of TSMC, I wouldn't want something I own being destroyed. I would rather fold into the new regime and keep my original ownership.

If China has to eat the cost of the TSMC being destroyed, it’s probably less likely to invade. China in a large part depends on TSMC whether it “owns” Taiwan or not.

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#123

90%! Did we really let ourselves become so reliant on Ukraine and Taiwan for computer chips? Taiwan being the next country most under threat. In fact, Reuters just reported that "Taiwan warns Chinese aircraft in its air defence zone" https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-reports-ni...

It is so disgusting to me that we allowed our oligarch class to de-industrialize our country and ship all of the jobs and everything we built overseas.

100 years of industrialization and worker movements gutted, abandoned, and disassembled with the help of our two-faced neo-liberal[0] government.

And for what? 40 years of profit for the 1%? And then encountering the fact that we have outsourced ourselves into a profound strategic weakness in the international markets.

0: As in: Both sides, globalization. Not as in Dem vs Republican.

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#124
post #38

90%! Did we really let ourselves become so reliant on Ukraine and Taiwan for computer chips? Taiwan being the next country most under threat. In fact, Reuters just reported that "Taiwan warns Chinese aircraft in its air defence zone" https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-reports-ni...

Are we in favor of economics/capitalism here or are we not? Because the economics literature is quite clear that international trade is beneficial to all involved. It's what we insist that developing countries focus on exports when loaning them money. For many years, Taiwan has been the poster child that we point to when trying to change the ways of Cuba or Venezuela. Are these principles so weak that we would allow…

This entire theory has been disproved by modern China essentially becoming a Singapore writ large with a very bustling economy not only tied to but pivotal to the international trade system, but managing to remain authoritarian without liberalizing much.

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#125
post #37
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we saved some money by shuttering all our factories and outsourcing everything, so, who's to say what the right answer was. (/s)

"We saved some money" is how economics works in price competitive markets. This is a result of many players doing what keeps each one competitive, but without collaborating on what the large scale effects are down the road.

Thats what we get told, but there is always strategic reasons with so much stuff which few people get to hear about.

On the news a while ago, the news was going on about how the UK is banning dual use goods, so this tells us some Govt dept has audited potentially every business and its goods and compiled a list of devices which can be considered multi use. You see this alot with chemicals, Glycerine, used as a cosmetic can also be used for bombmaking. I only found this out when I purchased a litre and then some internet forum started going on about how it can be used for bomb making.

Its why we dont get taught everything, not even in the news. Anyway oil prices have gone up which will push more people towards electric vehicles, and yet Russia has the largest oil reserves in the world, so no doubt they will benefit, because if another internet forum is to be believed, the Saudia's have all but exhausted their oil reserves which is one of the reasons for them IPO'ing their national oil producer.

Kind of explains why I also wasnt allowed an export licence for an app but also highlights who was behind it!

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#126
post #18

90%! Did we really let ourselves become so reliant on Ukraine and Taiwan for computer chips? Taiwan being the next country most under threat. In fact, Reuters just reported that "Taiwan warns Chinese aircraft in its air defence zone" https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-reports-ni...

But we saved some money by shuttering all our factories and outsourcing everything, so, who's to say what the right answer was. (/s)

Oh no. We didn't do that. They just beat us. We kept our fabs and we kept our fab engineers and we built and we built, but they just beat us.

This technology isn't easy. Notice how far China is behind despite massive investments. Sometimes we just don't have the tech. But it's okay, TSMC and friends will bring it here.

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#127
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, why does it still happen on a weekly basis?

Every time they do this Taiwan has to scramble their own jets in the air. So most likely it is to test Taiwan's response times and wear out their aircrafts. Each flight of those fighter jets adds to a maintenance cost on top of the fuel costs, which is disproportionately higher for Taiwan considering the size of the economy.

>So most likely it is to test Taiwan's response times and wear out their aircrafts

Rings a bell, Russians were doing it on Baltic sea for over a decade, and president of Estonia was called paranoiac

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#128
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t think Winnie the Pooh has big balls to attack Taiwan in recent future. Not disagreeing with you, but I think people generally incorrectly assume that a dictator with absolute power thinks and acts rationally.

Ironically, I think the above statement is irrational. Why does being a dictator automatically make you more irrational? Absolute power has no direct causal bearing on human intelligence. It does not make you more irrational or more rational. There are plenty of examples of good kings, bad kings, good emperors and bad emperors throughout history both for ancient china and plenty of other civilizations. Modern China,…

dictators are blind.

a single person does not have the mental nor technological capacity to run everything. they must delegate. the way dictarships work is the dictator's subordinates, friends, whatever, must live in constant fear of each other, so they are incentivized to lie (or at least omit truths) to the dictator. a benevolent dictatorship doesn't exist, because no benevolent person would survive the process of getting dictatorship.

decisions based on falsehoods may look irrational from the outside.

of course, putin may very well be getting plain crazy. certainly no shortage of normal civilian russians admit it off the record.

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#129
post #18

90%! Did we really let ourselves become so reliant on Ukraine and Taiwan for computer chips? Taiwan being the next country most under threat. In fact, Reuters just reported that "Taiwan warns Chinese aircraft in its air defence zone" https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-reports-ni...

But we saved some money by shuttering all our factories and outsourcing everything, so, who's to say what the right answer was. (/s)

I'm constantly thinking about this old HN comment, and how it applies not only to Agile but most of the modern JIT wisdom: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18448602

> You saved some sprints but invalidated the purpose of the project. Very agile.

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#130
post #37
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we saved some money by shuttering all our factories and outsourcing everything, so, who's to say what the right answer was. (/s)

"We saved some money" is how economics works in price competitive markets. This is a result of many players doing what keeps each one competitive, but without collaborating on what the large scale effects are down the road.

It's actually a result of the spineless geriatrics in the government not being willing or able to keep up with an evolving world. We see the same with climate change.
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