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Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

tomshardware.com

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Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#241

Post by Onavo »

srik wrote: post #192
randerson wrote: post #150

I've developed a new fear of my 2025 desktop PC being damaged by a power surge or something, because it would cost at least $2K more to replace than I paid for it, assuming I can even find parts now. Compared to the rest of my adult life when I used to secretly pray for something to fail so I would have a reason to upgrade.

Living in developing countries taught me to never plugin expensive computers without a surge protector UPS.

Do you still need a UPS if you have one of those household (Powerwall style) battery packs? Also Apple switched mode power supplies are pretty well built.

But then again there's horror stories like

https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/1maegvb/i_burned...

Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#242

Post by gjm11 »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #180
hinkley wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lindsey Graham is a lying sack of shit. And I say that with his permission, since he’s on camera asking to be called out if he did exactly what they did with the Supreme Court not four years later.

I was not aware of this 'on camera' request. Does anyone have a citation?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw8SSQHQitg is Lindsay Graham in 2016 defending the Republicans' refusal to consider a nomination to the Supreme Court in the last year of Obama's presidency, and saying "you can use my words against me and you'd be absolutely right".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR2A6FDiGEA is about Lindsey Graham in 2020 defending the Republicans' insistence on pushing through a nomination to the Supreme Court in the last year of Trump's presidency. It also includes a clip of Lindsay Graham in 2018 saying that if a Supreme Court vacancy opens once the primaries have started, "we'll wait till the next election".

Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#243

Post by mkoubaa »

marcosdumay wrote: post #186
spiderfarmer wrote: post #43

Lindsay Graham has an easy solution to this unnecessary conflict: send your sons and daughters. This whole administration is such a fiasco.

I recommend anybody looking at the US land invasion proposal to do that with an altitude map of Iran on the side.

Even Alexander the Great's conquest of Persian was mostly a soft coup. That country is a fortress.

Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#244

Post by haunter »

realo wrote: post #239
haunter wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad I can’t play the games I want to play on them

Hint : GE Force Now ssshhhhh... do not tell anyone I told you...

It's horrible. Bad quality, bad latency, can't mod the games etc. And worse you have to pay for it when you already have a more than capable computer.

Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#245

Post by mkoubaa »

FpUser wrote: post #158
breppp wrote: post #20

Qatar is probably intentionally shutting down production of gas and oil in order to pressure the US to stop, independently of Iranian attacks. In that respect they may be bombed by Iran but they have the same interests

Even if this nonsense was true it is absolutely normal tactic used by the US when bombing is out of question. Use economic pressure by way of tariffs and sanctions until vassals are put in their place. So what's your problem

Don't reply to breppp it's an obvious spy/operative account.

Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#246

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #43

Lindsay Graham has an easy solution to this unnecessary conflict: send your sons and daughters. This whole administration is such a fiasco.

Wow, WILD to imply that Lindsey Graham is part of this admin. They hate each other. Trump worked with Graham and McConnell first term because Trump does have to work with the establishment but they despise him. He still has to work with Graham who has a little more Koch power now that McConnell is gone-but-not-gone.

I’ll always find it hilarious that progressives manage to hate the GOP and Trump at the same time for the same reasons.

Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#247

Post by lb1lf »

johnbarron wrote: post #230
arunc wrote: post #60

So the RAM prices are going to skyrocket again?

I tried upgrading to 32 GB of RAM...but the bank offered me a mortgage instead...

I had a stroke of luck this week - I am due a new laptop at work, and ordered a new ThinkPad T14, as they have served me well in the past.

Then IT calls back and says that I shouldn't configure one directly at Lenovo's website, as we are to buy them from a retailer instead.

OK, can do - but they only stock a few models, and the one with the CPU and disk I had configured with Lenovo was only available with 64GB RAM at the retailer. What to do?

'Ouch, that's gonna make accounting hurt. We'll order it for you right away.'

Re: Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

#250

Post by boredatoms »

throwup238 wrote: post #175
abeppu wrote: post #98

I remember hearing somewhere on this site that medical imaging got pretty good at building systems that recycle helium. Does chip manufacturing not do this or are the losses at their scale are still large enough that you need a substantial constant supply?

The big problem is purity. Fabs use grade 5 and 6 helium where contaminants are 1-10 parts per billion. The infrastructure to get it that pure becomes very specialized and any time the helium goes through a process it picks up so much contamination that recycling it would require the entire purifying and quality control infrastructure for pressure or temperature swing adsorption. Some fabs are starting to reuse heliu…

Do we have a process to make new helium from hydrogen?
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