Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks • Hacker News Board

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#201

Post by tablespoon » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:48 PM UTC

wyager wrote: post #158

tablespoon wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unscrupulous business people will continue running the business at high risk, knowing that they will probably be gone by the time a problem arises. Or they can just price gouge. Heads I win, tails you lose.

“Price gouging” is precisely the behavior that makes it economical to keep around extra stock in case of supply shocks. Negative public reaction to, and laws against, “price gouging” is the reason almost no business chooses to absorb the cost of keeping around an extra reserve.

> “Price gouging” is precisely the behavior that makes it economical to keep around extra stock in case of supply shocks.

That idea doesn't hold a drop of water. If price gouging were legal, are you going to stockpile masks and sanitizer for a hundred years, so you're ready for the next gobal pandemic? Of course not: it's a dumb idea and you'd bankrupt yourself in storage fees and spoilage. Even an actual distributor wouldn't do that, given how short business time horizons are.

What a smart price gouger would actually do is 1) make what they would have made otherwise, except collect higher profits, or 2) watch the news closely and rush out to try to buy up as much as they can before the general public acts, then sit outside the store they bought them from and scalp the goods at an exorbitant markup. Then they can satisfy their greed without wasting money on long term storage fees.

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#202

Post by spookthesunset » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:49 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #5

brink wrote: post #2

Whatever your opinion is about the lockdowns, there is one thing everyone should be able to agree on; they destabilize just about everything. I'm worried about people going hungry or not being able to heat their home this winter from the ripple effects.

Weird to blame the lockdowns when the real cause was the pandemic. It's not like everyone was going to continually working normally in crowded spaces with people dropping like flies in the hospitals. China especially was hit so incredibly badly in that first wave; it was always gonna go pear-shaped no matter what.

> when the real cause was the pandemic.

No, the lockdowns were the cause not the pandemic. We didn't have to do lockdowns--they weren't on anybody's pandemic plans until March of 2020. Lockdowns and our reaction to Covid was entirely upon humans.

> It's not like everyone was going to continually working normally in crowded spaces with people dropping like flies in the hospitals. China especially was hit so incredibly badly in that first wave

Were they really though? Or was the hysteria in March off the charts?

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#203

Post by bsder » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 12:36 AM UTC

gumby wrote: post #104

mrtksn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing that argument every single time and keep wondering, isn’t there reason to implement JIT? Something like cost benefits outweigh the resilience risks? It’s not like people start dying on the streets, simply things are getting expensive and hard to get during disturbances. Are there calculations demonstrating that JIT the risks of optimization are more harmful than helpful in the long run?

JIT assumes a steady state, so squeezes all the buffering out of the system. But buffers are useful. > It’s not like people start dying on the streets Well, that’s a good example: there was a huge rise in need for masks and other protective gear about 20 months ago and the supply chain couldn’t handle it. That was why people were encouraged to use makeshift cloth masks, to leave the surgical masks and respirators for…

> Well, that’s a good example: there was a huge rise in need for masks and other protective gear about 20 months ago and the supply chain couldn’t handle it.

I'm going to bump you just a little on this because your point is mostly right.

In the US, there were manufacturers ready to add extra shifts for producing masks, but nobody would cut them the check.

The point of JIT is also so that when something goes wrong in inventory you don't get saddled with a bunch of waste. The problem is that means that you need quick, accurate decision making for when the inventory situation does go wrong.

In this instance, all the players who could cut a check for masks were all paralyzed by their systems for various reasons (bidding/disclosure requirements, political ideology, etc.).

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#204

Post by mhb » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 2:36 AM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #200

caylus wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's still a shortage, but it just doesn't hit rich people as hard. It sounds like you're assuming that increases in price don't increase quantity supplied. While this may be true in some contexts (e.g. completely unexpected global crisis), there are many cases in which it does: - In a local crisis, an increase in price encourages shipping in goods from areas not in crisis. Why would someone take the risk of shippi…

> - In a local crisis, an increase in price encourages shipping in goods from areas not in crisis. Why would someone take the risk of shipping for the same price they can get elsewhere? One reason is that people don't operate exclusively in the market paradigm, but free market economics makes the (false) simplifying assumption that they do. > - As the GP mentioned, the ability to raise prices provides an incentive fo…

You're arguing both that people respond to price signals and that they don't. Regardless of your dismissals, it is perfectly obvious that higher prices provide an incentive to supply more.

Anyway, what better way are you proposing to distribute goods?

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#205

Post by bryarsdj » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 3:41 AM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #193

culpable_pickle wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Datagram_Protocol would like a word

UDP is almost always used with buffers, error correction codes, and other measures to deal with imperfection

Yes, but I think UDP is still a good counter example for this analogy. Buffers can be detrimental to udp traffic for real-time use cases (eg VOIP). Here your trade off is quality (in voice this is jitter) versus latency. Typically you want to make this choice of buffer size at the receiving end only, and keep buffers elsewhere as small as possible - routers which store and forward, network card buffers,OS buffers etc, can add up to lots of bloat.

So for VOIP "JIT" is a good thing and your "Inventory" levels need to be tuned at the receiver.

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#206

Post by tablespoon » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 4:21 AM UTC

mhb wrote: post #204

tablespoon wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - In a local crisis, an increase in price encourages shipping in goods from areas not in crisis. Why would someone take the risk of shipping for the same price they can get elsewhere? One reason is that people don't operate exclusively in the market paradigm, but free market economics makes the (false) simplifying assumption that they do. > - As the GP mentioned, the ability to raise prices provides an incentive fo…

You're arguing both that people respond to price signals and that they don't. Regardless of your dismissals, it is perfectly obvious that higher prices provide an incentive to supply more. Anyway, what better way are you proposing to distribute goods?

> You're arguing both that people respond to price signals and that they don't.

Actually, I'm arguing that classical free market economics doesn't lead to the best (or even good) results over all scales. IMHO, advocacy for price gouging is sort of like insisting on using classical mechanics to model quantum-scale phenomena. Price gouging is properly understood as a market failure, in that some people respond to the price signals by doing socially counterproductive stuff (and the supposed socially productive stuff is mostly a chimera in that context).

> Anyway, what better way are you proposing to distribute goods?

Your question assumes I'd give one answer, when my point is it depends on context. In some cases that's dogmatic free market economics, in other cases it's literal central planning, but in most cases it's something in between. One thing is clear, though: crisis shortages are not the place for dogmatic free market economics.

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#207

Post by rasz » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 5:45 AM UTC

lbriner wrote: post #126

formerly_proven wrote: post #4

Currently working on a new design for a client, it's quite a pain. Lots of things, even mundane things like connectors and such are out of stock / low stock and usually quite a bit more expensive.

How are non-ICs in short-supply? Did I miss a whole story about supply chain problems or is it literally that overall demand has maxed out overall supply and most people don't have the means to increase production?

We had parts shortages for a couple years now.

https://www.arrow.com/en/research-and-events/articles/capaci...

covid exacerbated the problem

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#208

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 3:05 PM UTC

kennywinker wrote: post #179

makomk wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not using just in time manufacturing might help with short-term disruptions, but we're approaching the two year point on the pandemic and the associated global disruptions and it's just not realistic to keep enough stock in for that long. The current generation of stuff like CPUs and GPUs hasn't even been released and in production for that long...

My understanding is that the 1st order disruption is long-over. The factories and ports are all back online, etc. two years out all that’s left is the ripple effects of the original ~6 month disturbance. It’s just that those ripples are amplified by the way the supply chain operates (just in time).

[deleted]

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#209

Post by wyager » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #185

wyager wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you’re agreeing with me?

"anyone with some covid symptoms" and "compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty" are not the same thing, no.

One is lawyerese for the other.

Re: Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks

#210

Post by wyager » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #201

wyager wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Price gouging” is precisely the behavior that makes it economical to keep around extra stock in case of supply shocks. Negative public reaction to, and laws against, “price gouging” is the reason almost no business chooses to absorb the cost of keeping around an extra reserve.

> “Price gouging” is precisely the behavior that makes it economical to keep around extra stock in case of supply shocks. That idea doesn't hold a drop of water. If price gouging were legal, are you going to stockpile masks and sanitizer for a hundred years, so you're ready for the next gobal pandemic? Of course not: it's a dumb idea and you'd bankrupt yourself in storage fees and spoilage. Even an actual distributor…

> If price gouging were legal, are you going to stockpile masks and sanitizer for a hundred years, so you're ready for the next gobal pandemic?

You’re not understanding the play here. All you need to do slightly increase the amount you keep in stock and reduce JIT delivery dependence. This increases your capital expenses a few percent and only pays off if you can occasionally make big money by drawing on your extra stock.

You also seem to misunderstand the law - it’s not illegal anywhere in the US (afaik) for random people to stockpile and resell goods. It doesn’t matter, because that’s not really a viable distribution strategy. It is illegal in many states for stores to suddenly raise prices, and stores are the institutions who would actually be equipped to absorb demand shocks.