121–130 of 257 posts
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If you can't learn a new tool then you're just a tool yourself.
Engineers dancing around the fundamental constraints of reality deserve a bit more respect than folks complaining about learning the latest JS-of-the-month, all of which follow basic comp sci patterns.
They're either smart or they're not. Which one is it?
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The real question is how unprofitable will it be to remain dependent on Taiwan in the face of the inevitable conflict coming with China. US and Europe based fabs could literally lose money and require subsidies and still net out as less expensive.
I wouldn't talk of a conflict with China as inevitable. Competition is fine but no one in their right mind should wish for military conflict with China, it would be a tragedy for humanity.
while China invading Taiwan is not a guarantee, it is certainly highly probable. this risk should be taken into account by the us government
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One of the interesting lessons of the past few years is that supply chain lead times are a thing and policy doesn't just happen because central planning says it should. So, if there is a bubble in the chip supply pipeline, auto manufacture doesn't happen. If there is undersupply of precursor chemicals it takes a while to make vaccines at scale... What you are talking about makes me think of the very long lead product…
>One of the interesting lessons of the past few years is that supply chain lead times are a thing and policy doesn't just happen because central planning says it should. I would say exactly the opposite, the vaccines were made quite quickly and there weren't major supply issues. The Defense Production Act (er... central planning as you put it) was used to say what was going to happen when with money to back it up and…
Unfortunately, US industrial vertical integration now includes foundations placed in global low-labor-cost countries.
The crash vaccine manufacturing scaling program was possible because we were rich enough to throw mountains of money (of which we have the most) at any international supply problems.
If the Atlantic or Pacific had been hostile to commercial shipping, or countries hadn't cooperated, it would have had a very different result.
> We are decimating (and then some) Russia's military by giving away second tier equipment to Ukraine, and the amount we're giving away is basically an afterthought. A one-time superpower is scraping the bottom of the barrel for equipment fighting against largely NATO supplied spare equipment.
"We" are not. Ukrainians are dying and holding their own against a much larger country, with the help of NATO surplus equipment.
20,000-50,000 Ukrainians now have at least one limb amputated as a result of the war. [0] [1]
And Russia's military is not being decimated. It's holding its own with an elastic defense, that's making progress difficult and costly for a Ukrainian army that's trained halfway between Soviet mass doctrine and Western maneuver warfare.
At some point the Ukrainians will hopefully manage to exhaust Russia's logistics sufficient to break through their defense, but that's in no way a sure thing.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-ukraine-a-surge-in-amputatio...
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/19/ukraines-amputee...
Judging by all the construction I see at the fabs around me, the people I see moving in to get the new jobs working at the fabs or related businesses, I'd say its pretty real to me and those around me. https://www.ti.com/about-ti/company/ti-at-a-glance/manufactu... https://news.ti.com/blog/2022/09/29/tis-new-300-millimeter-w... https://dallasinnovates.com/finisar-considers-3-billion-semi... https://www.dallasnews.com…
I've been thinking about moving out to that area. Building these fabs will do amazing things for the local community & economy. It is also likely the most resilient part of the TX power grid...
A roommate of mine once quipped on something: 'that's like saying my crap smells better than yours'.
Feel free to correct me, I'm not an expert, but Texas runs its own state-only independent grid, it got completely pants in the ice storm a few years ago, and at the time a lot of articles said the Texas grid is fundamentally less resilient that other power companies. Is any of that wrong?
However, Texas is loaded with sun/desert and I believe a ton of wind resources, so it has that going for it for next-generation industry.
https://archive.is/jmpBa
Thanks, but can't get past captcha. 12ft.io blocked it and archive.ph doesn't work on my browser due ri ssl error. Anyone know other sites?
For days now Firefox gets stuck in an infinite loop of captchas for all of the archive links posted to HN. Nothing changed at my end.
Surprisingly few people engage with the main points of the article. It is pointed out how much money are spent, but the article is about how profitable those fabs will be. The author is conservative in judgments, but they ask a few questions worth considering, mainly: are the fabs big and efficient enough to offset the slower build, which is also more expensive, for lower volumes of production.
Profitability on the fab level is the wrong metric. Producing semiconductors, like producing vaccines, has large positive externalities. It enables basically the entire rest of the economy to function. These fabs could lose billions, kept alive by government subsidies, and still be a great deal for the country as a whole.
Judging by all the construction I see at the fabs around me, the people I see moving in to get the new jobs working at the fabs or related businesses, I'd say its pretty real to me and those around me. https://www.ti.com/about-ti/company/ti-at-a-glance/manufactu... https://news.ti.com/blog/2022/09/29/tis-new-300-millimeter-w... https://dallasinnovates.com/finisar-considers-3-billion-semi... https://www.dallasnews.com…
The political valence of this could be significant next year. This is a lot of high paying, high-demand jobs in multiple sectors of the economy from just one of 3 major pillars of the administration's agenda.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been thinking about moving out to that area. Building these fabs will do amazing things for the local community & economy. It is also likely the most resilient part of the TX power grid...
"the most resilient part of TX power grid" A roommate of mine once quipped on something: 'that's like saying my crap smells better than yours'. Feel free to correct me, I'm not an expert, but Texas runs its own state-only independent grid, it got completely pants in the ice storm a few years ago, and at the time a lot of articles said the Texas grid is fundamentally less resilient that other power companies. Is any o…
Surprisingly, you got to thank George Bush for that
He made renewable wind and solar energy a major part of his energy policy when he was Govenor of TX. [0].
In 1999, he passed a law mandating Texas to get 2,000 megawatts of electricity from renewable energy by 2009. This helped spurt the entire renewable industry in TX
[0] - https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/08/29/70295/george-w-b...