Live data from Hacker News

Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

tomshardware.com

321–330 of 499 posts

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'brain drain' (as you refer to it) stems from intelligent/motivated grads in the US for the last two decades (at least) pursuing more lucrative fields like finance and adtech (re: Google, Facebook). Or some pursue management route (attending big MBA schools and switching to management roles where they climb corporate ladder). In other words, there are not a lot of college/grad students who want to pursue traditio…

It's not even brain drain, America's dominance came from the fact that for nearly a century the brightest people in the world were willing to give up everything to come here. That is no longer the case. Today's Einstein probably isn't going to immigrate here.

Today's Einstein ARE immigrating to US for such positions as finance, adtech and management, ones that explicitly produce no physical artifact.

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#322
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the main problem with hiring chip factory workers in Arizona was the factory just didnt pay enough for the long hours demanded. I looked up the median salary and its only 50k so I'm assuming it's not crazy skilled labor (e.g. brain drain). Taiwanese workers just seem more willing to do it.

Cost of living can be a lot lower in Taiwan, if your property is already paid off. Unfortunately housing is super overpriced, due to the Asian mentality resulting in high property ownership. Real estate is always the monkey wrench in the gears of capitalism because of high necessity yet limited supply.

> Real estate is always the monkey wrench in the gears of capitalism because of high necessity yet limited supply.

This only happens when the government becomes captured by land owners to constrain the supply, since otherwise you can build up. But governments getting captured by land owners happens a lot.

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even brain drain, America's dominance came from the fact that for nearly a century the brightest people in the world were willing to give up everything to come here. That is no longer the case. Today's Einstein probably isn't going to immigrate here.

The US didn't win World War 2, break the sound barrier, or put a man on the Moon only or primarily due to immigrant workers. We scoured the country's public school system for the sharpest young minds, sent them to institutions of higher learning with rigorous curricula, and found them positions in industry, government, or the military which made good use of their talent. Fetishizing the "nation of immigrants" narrati…

Unless your ancestors crossed the Bering Strait ten thousand years ago, calling yourself "native born" doesn't mean a thing.

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's parasitic, not productive. A tick can contain a lot of blood, doesn't mean it produced that blood.

Ticks do not require the consent of the host to drink blood. Things like Google and Facebook cannot be parasitic, every dollar gained is a voluntary exchange with no threats. People choose to use Google and gain something from doing so.

Yep if the host agreed to die, then the market is a success. We've discovered the most efficient outcome – sucking the customer dry until they die! Thank you to the free market for delivering us this efficient result.

Remember kids – thousands dying from lack of healthcare isn't a bug of the system, it's a feature. This has been determined as necessary, nay even beneficial, by market forces that can never be wrong.

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#325
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least a few evil people attack once in a while thus proving some defense is needed so they they are not completely unproductive/useless. Much as I wish they were not needed.

what evil ppl? what attack?

Putin is attacking Ukraine right now. There have been various coups and attempted coups around the world. Nigeria and South Korea both come to mind.

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#326

- Over 50% of the workers flew in from Taiwan to work on this plant and make these chips. - The chips still need to fly back to Taiwan to be packaged as there are no facilities here with such a capability. Made in america is a hard sell. But at least showing the glaring STEM field gap in the U.S. is a start to finally addressing the brain drain.

Having a STEM degree isn’t a substitute for real world experience in a production facility.

Clustering is a feedback loop where production creates people with experience in production, something needs to kickstart that process.

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#327
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More automation. Given the chemicals involved in fab work in general I expect this fab is very automated just for safety reasons and so very few employees are needed. Thus the cost of labor isn't a significant factor.

>Thus the cost of labor isn't a significant factor. It is. Semi fabs aren't fire-and-forget. You need highly skilled people to constantly check and tweak all the operations in a feedback loop 24/7 and every hour of downtime due to any issue means millions lost. You hire the right people to minimize that downtime while also keeping the costs in check. It's a delicate balance.

True, but compared to the amount of production I would guess these are only a few people.

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#328
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would someone pursue a route that's harder AND pays less AND has far fewer jobs available?

And has less cultural cachet.

I disagree. From what I've seen, the lower level you go, the more advanced it is seen by other developers. As the copypasta goes:

At the beginning, there was Purusha. From his face, born was the Brahmin, the priestly caste, the tooling creator, one who develops programming languages, compilers and standard libraries.

From the arms of the Purusha, Kshatriya, the warrior caste, was born. Kshatriya is the developer of systems software; operating systems, database engines, graphics drivers and high performance networked servers.

Then comes the Vaishya, the merchant caste, the Application developer, who was born from the knees of Purusha. From the feet of Purusha, the fourth varnā, Shudrā, the system administrator, was born. Shudrā serves the above three Varnās, his works range from administrating computers in bureaucratic organizations to replying to support requests.

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#329
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone I know that was in EE falls into two camps basically: 1. Became web developers 2. Work in Defense or some other regulated industry that has protections from being outsourced to China

Is there a somber write-up anywhere as to the future of EE in the West?

Limited to non existent jobs. Not much else to say, the jobs like so many others have been exported. Taiwan and China being the electronics and manufacturing centers means design has steadily moved as well. Ask any board house in the west how things are going, the ones that are left that is.

Re: Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab

#330
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately housing is super overpriced, due to the Asian mentality resulting in high property ownership. I have no clue what this means and in countries like Japan, housing is a depreciating asset vs. an investment, so…?

More so in the Chinese-speaking world and South Korea because the industrialization/urbanization is more recent, so there's rising demand in the urban areas with high population growth, resulting in high prices. Japan's urbanization stopped long ago, and it's not taking in immigrants fast enough, so the urban areas have stopped growing. The mentality refers to East Asia's deep agrarian root that places high value on…

  1. Japan's urbanization stopped long ago,   
  2. and it's not taking in immigrants fast enough,   
  3. so the urban areas have stopped growing.
it's just my gut feeling but feels like each of these three statement can be individually debunked...
Post reply on HN