Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking • Hacker News Board

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#411

Post by ksec » Fri, Feb 25, 2022, 1:00 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #368

protomyth wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US or Canada or Australia will be more than able to cover the Russian share by switching out crops if Wheat is more profitable given any shortages.

Especially since the US wastes so much agricultural land on maize that they force onto drivers as mandatory ethanol. (While keeping cheaper ethanol from Brazil out of the country with tariffs and regulation.) If push came to shove, they could drop this silly policy, and alleviate supply shortages.

>that they force onto drivers as mandatory ethanol.

Is that because of some clean energy policy?

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#412

Post by lotsofpulp » Fri, Feb 25, 2022, 1:39 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #388

lotsofpulp wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses also need to have customers. No clothes maker was forced to manufacture in poor countries, but the alternative was to simply stop existing since insufficient customers are willing to pay the price premium for purely American made clothes. Hence the only solution would have been legislation forcing domestic manufacturing.

You say it like it's a bad thing that textiles are manufactured in poor countries? As an example: Bangladesh has been on a multi-decade long streak of excellent economic growth. Mostly thanks to the textile industry. Regular people are better off. > In last decade, poverty dropped by around one third with significant improvement in human development index, literacy, life expectancy and per capita food consumption. Wi…

I think it is a good thing. Short of all the rich people in the world donating their wealth to poor people, I do not see any other way for the wealth transfer to happen other than labor price arbitrage.

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#413

Post by cjbgkagh » Fri, Feb 25, 2022, 1:40 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #376

cjbgkagh wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CIA Director Bill Burns predicted exactly this back in 2008 when George Bush declared Ukraine would eventually join NATO.

I guess they should have either made Ukraine join almost immediately, or never announced anything?

You can’t let countries with active conflicts enter NATO, you might as well declare war with Russia at that point. Russia was weaker back then so they may have resorted to nukes sooner.

NATO shouldn’t have expanded eastward, or the US should have left NATO. The West has been such utter fools in our negotiations with the world, being too powerful for too long has eroded diplomatic skill and left us ignoring the legitimate grievances of our adversaries and delivering one sided ultimatums.

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#414

Post by immmmmm » Fri, Feb 25, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

pastacacioepepe wrote: post #407

immmmmm wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should be talking about human lives. My Ukrainian colleague was terrified for his family today.

I think the "missiles on civilians" narrative has been exaggerated. There are up to 10 civilian casualties so far, so it would have been easier to die of covid or even pollution than bombs in Ukraine in the past 2 days.

report of a kindergarten being hit just now.

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#415

Post by consumer451 » Fri, Feb 25, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #357

consumer451 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My Ukrainian colleague was terrified for his family today. I am willing to host up to 10 Ukrainians at my farm in the very south west corner of Poland until further decisions can be made. Only 2 takers so far. Please email my username at gmail if this is interesting to your colleague or to anyone else reading this. Poland has dropped visa requirements. I can provide some initial legal assistance via a generous fami…

You are a good person. I’m about as far away as one could get from this situation, is there anything I could do to help?

I left Poland with my mom and $500 right as tanks started rolling, that was 41 years ago. I currently live alone in a giant farm house I was about to renovate for rental. This is the least I could do and it's actually easy. So far it is older folks coming. I look forward to learning some nice Ukrainian recipes from these people!

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#416

Post by protomyth » Fri, Feb 25, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #411

eru wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since the US wastes so much agricultural land on maize that they force onto drivers as mandatory ethanol. (While keeping cheaper ethanol from Brazil out of the country with tariffs and regulation.) If push came to shove, they could drop this silly policy, and alleviate supply shortages.

>that they force onto drivers as mandatory ethanol. Is that because of some clean energy policy?

Clean energy supposedly, but Iowa is the first primary state for Presidential elections. Guess who makes a lot of ethanol?

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#417

Post by MisterTea » Fri, Feb 25, 2022, 3:49 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #275

MisterTea wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you need to build a lot of equipment. Cryogenic distillation of air is a solved problem. There are plenty of plants already in operation all over the globe meaning there only needs to be modification to existing plants to further collect and crack the remaining 0.1% of air. I'm sure this is not hard to do with existing cryoplants. If we already have the capacity then why are we without Neon production is a good que…

People don't understand why semiconductor argon, and neon can't be substituted by argon, and neon used in welding. It's very hard to purify noble gasses, as they are almost completely chemically inert, and chemistry needed to make, say, same argon, to form compounds with anything else is something needing very special equipment, and know how. Welding grade argon is dirt cheap, 99.999% argon is very expensive, and 99.…

> and neon used in welding.

I've worked in a specialty welding shop that did laser and electron beam and never saw or heard of neon used for welding. It is beyond prohibitivly expensive. Even helium is awesome for welding but so expensive that we only used it for specialty jobs that were very low volume and high margin and high risk (e.g. prototypes).

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#418

Post by bastardoperator » Fri, Feb 25, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

deltaonefour wrote: post #346

bastardoperator wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History is pretty clear, go check it out. Nobody wants to be ruled by a single individual that operates with impunity.

>You like to argue, but no one seems to agree with you. I'm not offended I do like to argue. A better way to put it, is I like to talk to people and convince people on a viewpoint I truly believe in while at the same time I'm open to learning as well. Whether someone agrees with me or not doesn't correlate with whether I'm right. That is the point. And I am right and you are wrong. You view international politics fro…

The fact that you asked such a silly question about dictators and than refuse to learn from any of the multiple answers shows that you are not open to honest or intellectual debate. You care more about being "right" which is why you deleted your original comment and have been stuck replying to people for almost a day while the rest of us have moved on.

I think you're wrong, I think you're angry, I think you're arguing in bad faith, and I believe multiple people/instances have been provided and you have yet to prove anything other than insolence when it comes to being "right".

Honestly, I don't even think you know what you're arguing anymore because you're all over the place. I never called China evil or Putin crazy so why are you putting words in my mouth that I never claimed? The original question is what makes dictators more irrational. If you can't understand the many answers you recieved, that is your problem, not mine. I'm going to bid you a farewell, have a wonderful day.

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#419

Post by daniel-cussen » Fri, Feb 25, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #367

daniel-cussen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny I was talking to precisely a steelmaker about imports and exporters some time ago: "The American is no patriot, if steel is 30% cheaper in Japan, he will buy it there rather than at home." It looks like, in fact, these Ukranians, also in the steel industry, might actually be doing something patriotic--like people all over the world, America too--and keep the surely very tricky and specific technology to th…

> So, apparently the reason neon comes from Ukraine is some pretty smart Ukrainians wanted it that way, for the good of Ukraine, and specifically for Ukrainian sovereignty to matter to the rest of the world. Nope. See the other comments here, that explain that the Soviet Union overinvested in this technology because they wanted to build weapons with it. It would probably have been better for the people of the Soviet…

You seem to be right, it was a military-industrial move by the Soviet Union to counter the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars). Having read a briefing describing the rocket involved, it Star Wars was cutting-edge 2060's technology that happened to be possible in the 80's due to a long list of edge cases.

Well in the end, those neon producers harmed capitalism as intended.

Re: Ukraine is a major producer of neon gas, critical for lasers used in chipmaking

#420

Post by baybal2 » Fri, Feb 25, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

MisterTea wrote: post #417

baybal2 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't understand why semiconductor argon, and neon can't be substituted by argon, and neon used in welding. It's very hard to purify noble gasses, as they are almost completely chemically inert, and chemistry needed to make, say, same argon, to form compounds with anything else is something needing very special equipment, and know how. Welding grade argon is dirt cheap, 99.999% argon is very expensive, and 99.…

> and neon used in welding. I've worked in a specialty welding shop that did laser and electron beam and never saw or heard of neon used for welding. It is beyond prohibitivly expensive. Even helium is awesome for welding but so expensive that we only used it for specialty jobs that were very low volume and high margin and high risk (e.g. prototypes).

Excuse me, I only meant argon