Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by nerdsniper » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 12:54 AM UTC

porkloin wrote: post #201

srik wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Honestly even in "developed countries" it's not worth blindly trusting that the power in your house/building is clean. It's cheap and easy enough to just put any expensive hardware on a UPS rather than speculating what's going on behind the walls.

I work on embedded systems. I can often see whether my A/C or other appliances are running on my oscilloscope signals. They often affect the output of USB power supplies.

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

#402

Post by NikolaNovak » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:00 AM UTC

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...

No idea why you're down voted... I blissfully played cyberpunk 2077 for two years on GeforceNow. I still keep my membership even though I have a dedicated gaming pc now, for occasional laptop or living room pc use. It was beyond brilliant to play a hyper demanding game on a bare spec pc :-)

Mind you,I have gigabit internet. I don't know what the experience would be like on other types of internet / worldwide.

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

#403

Post by NikolaNovak » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:01 AM UTC

dev1ycan wrote: post #391

realo wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You have to be joking, you don't own anything and enjoy your price hikes as people adopt it

What are you talking about? Geforce Now is specifically only playable with games you own.

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

#404

Post by throwup238 » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:01 AM UTC

permalac wrote: post #329

vdfs wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aluminum too, Qatar shutdown a smelting plant which take a year to restart

Why does it take so long?

Aluminum smelters use the Hall-Heroult process, where alumina is dissolved in molten cryolite and reduced in massive “pots” which are large electrolytic cells. Each pot contains a carbon cathode lining that must be kept at around 950C during operation. If the pot cools down, the frozen electrolyte and solidified aluminum contract at different rates than the carbon and steel shell, cracking the lining.

Once it’s cracked, the pot has to be completely cleaned out and relined which takes weeks. A smelter usually has hundreds of pots so this alone takes a while as the liner and anything in it are basically frozen solid and need to be broken apart and torn out. Once relined the pots must be brought back up slowly and the chemistry balanced. The pots also draw a ton of power and are wired in series so they have to all be brought up slowly together (or in batches).

That assumes it was a clean shutdown with nothing else clogged up in the system. “Cleaning” in smelting means that the hardware involved needs to be replaced because it fused to molten metal while cooling down.

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

#405

Post by rationalist » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:08 AM UTC

amatecha wrote: post #222

FreezingKeeper wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s with the ‘cock and balls’ emoticon?

welcome to the internet, sometimes people make smiley faces :)

You can find all types of people on the Internet, even some without noses :-)

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

#406

Post by rationalist » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:17 AM UTC

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.

It sounds like it won't affect prices that much?

> South Korean memory giant SK hynix has since said it had diversified supplies for helium and secured sufficient inventory. Meanwhile, TSMC said that it doesn’t currently anticipate a notable impact following Ras Laffan going offline, but that it’s monitoring the situation.

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

#407

Post by awesomeMilou » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:26 AM UTC

luzejian wrote: post #379

Freight rate volatility is one of the most underappreciated risks in physical product businesses. During the 2021-2022 shipping crisis, ocean freight from China to the US West Coast hit $20k+ per container — a 10x jump that wiped margins for importers who hadn't hedged. Air freight as a backup is worth keeping in your model even if you never use it; knowing your break-even point at air rates tells you a lot about pro…

How would you model your business like this? Like what tools / literature can you recommend?

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

#408

Post by fc417fc802 » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:29 AM UTC

erxam wrote: post #358

fc417fc802 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only works in the immediate term. It isn't even a stable short term solution, let alone medium to long term. Consider what the incentives of such an approach are when iterated. Unless you aspire to the way of life in places like North Korea.

It really depends on what stage of a regime's lifecycle you apply it at. Obviously it's not going to be as extreme and as simple as 'go shoot people house-to-house until you're powerful :D', but repression is much more often than not effective. Think of the Arab Spring, the 2018 color coup attempt in Nicaragua, etc. Hell, even if the incentives are completely misaligned, you can get away with it as long as you're str…

Right but all those examples you're listing are what I was vaguely referencing when I referred to the incentives of such an approach when iterated. The resulting government won't inevitably implode (although it often will eventually) but it doesn't result in a particularly functional society either.

> They will implement it.

> Better us than them.

Well sure, if you've already accepted defeat then I suppose that's the logical course of action. But that doesn't seem like a reasonable position to me given the available evidence.

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

#409

Post by danparsonson » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:40 AM UTC

jiggawatts wrote: post #364

bgnn wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

14 kelvin is not easy to achieve at scale + after that, you need to keep it pure.

Apparently 14 K cooling is not used even up to 5N or 6N purity, commercial large-scale sources use various other tricks to remove the other gases. They do cool the input gas down to liquid nitrogen temperatures as one of the first steps. My point is that there's "maximally efficient / profitable" versus "can be made available as an emergency alternative". Cooling to 14 K isn't the cheapest option, but it has very low…

You can't just spin up such a facility in a few days or weeks though, surely? Even if the core of a process is relatively simple physically, you still need all the supporting infrastructure to make it happen.

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

#410

Post by staplung » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 1:41 AM UTC

Can someone explain why helium is used for these purposes, as opposed to some other noble gas? I think there's more argon (it's about 1% of the atmosphere) than helium so is helium somehow special, or is it just cheaper, despite being rarer and non-renewable?