391–400 of 453 posts
I worked at Samsung Austin Semiconductor for ten years as a software engineer. AMA. I very much love the people I worked with at SAS. It was one of the best experiences of my life and I'm very happy to see them expand like this. Wayne at Louie Mueller's BBQ had better add a few more pits, they're about to get a lot busier!
Indeed, they will likely be busier.
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The going deal is, if there’s a power failure, we’ll let you recoup your costs from the taxpayers even as you profiteer. The governor can be bought for a very affordable $1 million. Certainly the incentives are aligned to solve this problem! https://www.texasobserver.org/after-kelcy-warrens-energy-tra...
It remains to be seen if shifting the cost to taxpayers is harmful to the economy or not.
I worked at Samsung Austin Semiconductor for ten years as a software engineer. AMA. I very much love the people I worked with at SAS. It was one of the best experiences of my life and I'm very happy to see them expand like this. Wayne at Louie Mueller's BBQ had better add a few more pits, they're about to get a lot busier!
Louie Mueller was really great. Never been to Franklin's but I can't imagine it's too much better. Indeed, they will likely be busier.
Franklin's is a religious experience, imo. I went there several times with some SAS co-workers back in ~2013 when Aaron was still the cutter. Great times.
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> Interestingly enough Austin, TX appears to be rapidly approaching SF status as a tech hub and may soon surpass them. Uh, maybe it's time to take a drive through Austin, but that was a pretty sleepy little college town 10 years ago. Most of my family lives in the central Texas region (San Antonio, San Carlos, College Station), and I presently live in Mountain View. I have a hard time believing SF-scale infrastructur…
+1 for comparing wind tunnel capacity. Also TX has no dirigible hangars.
After the TX grid failure last winter, it's probably not a coincidence that Samsung's new facility will be near ERCOT's operation center in Taylor, which manages the TX grid, and will likely be the last load to shed when the grid's stressed. Used to work in the Austin fab, and the amount of money lost per minute in a power failure is mind boggling. The tax breaks Taylor offered ($314m) are not that different from wha…
The ERCOT campus has their own generation capability along with sitting between two distribution grids. Same with their DR site in Bastrop. In the case of a black start condition (grid totally down), ERCOT would need to come up first to coordinate the grid restoration. Taylor is an ideal place for a large manufacturing operation since it's close to major highways and railroads, not too far from Austin, and land is ve…
*was
I'm between Taylor and Austin (Bagdad Rd, Leander). 1 acre lots along this strip have gone from ~$115k a year ago, to some recent sales at ~325k.
Does anyone ever build anything in the big east/west coast cities anymore? Or even the east/west coast states anymore?
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There’s plenty of precedent for corruption with respect to tax incentives, see, e.g., what Foxconn did in Wisconsin: https://www.theverge.com/21507966/foxconn-empty-factories-wi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_in_Wisconsin?wprov=sft...
I'm sorry, am I missing some sort of evidence of corruption for the Samsung plant? Is that a serious accusation?
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That's a lot of what-ifs with the assumption of corruption. There is no fundamental reason why companies and the government can't cooperate for mutual benefit.
even if it's corrupt, although it's rare, sometimes corruption does serve the public interest, even if by total accident of competence.
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If the push comes to shove, a US carrier group parked in Taiwan's territorial waters makes any sea invasion impossible if it's willing to shoot at Chinese ships; you can't ship and land a million soldiers across a hostile sea, and China can't (at the moment) win the sea battle. It's debatable to what extent USA is willing to fight for that, but if it chooses to do so, then now and at least until 2030 USA has enough m…
In a full scale conflict, carrier group would be sunk by subs in the first 15 minutes. Those carrier groups are a relic of the past that only works against unsophisticated adversaries who do not have the largest submarine fleet in the world [1] or nukes. US military planners know this so any such things will be withdrawn shortly before shit is about to go down, or (more likely) never brought in in the first place. An…
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I guess I have to be explicit. For a $3K Laptop you are looking at M1 Pro or M1 Max, those would cost at least $50 to $100 more BOM cost. Excluding other factor. That translate to roughly $125 to $250 retail price increase at the same margin. For a labour of $20 to $30 increase per iPhone unit, would equate retail price increase of $50 to $75. Excluding other factors. Not to mention I seriously doubt labour would be…
There's not a whole hour of labor in each iPhone. Not even close. Humans just put together robot-assembled boards, screens, and so on. If this is re-shored, it wouldn't be that difficult for Apple to reduce manual labor even further than that, possibly to near zero. I've tried to repair an iPhone PCB once where an SMD resistor fell off. I couldn't do it, even though I have a hot air workstation and a bench microscope…
I was not aware that there were no employees in modern chip fabs. They must require some sort of maintenance cycle, how often do humans come to modern chip fabs?