Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taiwan as a piece of land has much more strategic importance than Ukraine. Ukraine's grain and terrain are the two things that are important about it from a utilitarian sense.
Ukraine as a piece of land was Russia's only warmwater port.
Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown
481–490 of 734 posts
Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown
#482We've reached or are approaching "peak tech". The other day we were discussing Pablo Azar, "Computer Saturation and the Productivity Slowdown" (Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics, October 6, 2022) [1] Simply reinventing systems and deliberately obsoleting stuff to create fake demand is over. The metaverse isn't hoing to happen. People are fatigued with tech. We're entering a different era in wh…
There is no such thing as "peak tech". There are simply alternating periods of faster and slower growth, and we are currently in the latter.
There absolutely is decline in tech, largely made by market demanded tradeoffs.
For example cell phones still sound worse than land lines did in the 90s. We just don't care, and don't have a choice anyway (even most landlines are ultimately going to interface with a digital connection).
Refrigerators have more gizmos than before, but one of the key features, reliability, is in decline.
Personal computers are increasing moving back to a client server model which is absolutely a step back from where we were a decade or more ago. When the services behind all the billion SaaS apps we consume disappear so will the tools themselves.
Market conditions have virtually eliminated software you own.
I suspect this trend will increase dramatically over the next decade where most of the devices and tools we use are objectively worse than what we're using today.
Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can't, not even remotely close any time in the next 20 years at least. Can you imagine what a landing beach would look like being pounded by drone spotted artillery? See war in Ukraine. Forget the approach, anti ship missiles, mines, sheer volume of logistics needed. Stepping on the landing beach is a suicide without absolutely astronomical advantage in air power and ability to suffer huge attrition, even then..…
China can just send cruise missiles to start and ignore beaches. A major power with 1.2 billion people can take an island of 20 million 80 miles away from its shores.
If they want to make a desert and call it peace, perhaps. Seems like a bad strategy to smash a crown jewel before you annex it.
Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed! I think there was maybe some real escalation around the time of Pelosi's visit (where Morris Chang was in attendance in her photo-op with Tsai), though, and it's hard not to see the moves in HK as threatening.
Chang is the leader Taiwan really needs, unfortunately he is unable to moderate Tsai. TSMC will eventually be a loser in the story that is currently being written
Yeah, I can't imagine he was happy with TSMC having to cancel all its sales to Huawei. But that wasn't really Tsai's fault; nobody is able to moderate the US, and the sanctions weren't a Taiwanese policy. I was thinking reunification was really the only path to saving TSMC, but if Chang agreed, he probably would've declined the invitation to the photo op; and obviously he knows more than I do about the issues.
Instead he says reunification would destroy TSMC because of how dependent it is on overseas suppliers.
Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown
#485Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown
#486Earlier quoted context omitted.
The massive war with China has left obvious key issues in chip fabrication. The reason or whatever for the ongoing war with china doesn't matter. Similar factories are being built in Germany by Infineon: https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/about-infineon/press/press-r... Samsung in Texas: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/samsung-plans-17-... Intel in Arizona: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/23/intel-is-spending-20…
If the US was really serious about microchips being critical infrastructure we'd want over production. We have more roads than makes sense, we should have more chips on-hand than our critical power and data infrastructure needs to be rebuilt in the event of a catastrophe.
Strategies like this are how you end up with warehouses full of rusting parts. Government-funded overproduction leads to stockpiling at the taxpayer's expense.
It's been done many times before (weapons, food, etc.) and always leads to the exact same result: garbage heaps and no available resources when they're actually needed.
Offering companies grants and favors to encourage building real, sustainable, on-shore businesses has a much higher likelihood of success.
Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
Braindead from an American perspective, it is also likely those policies have averted upwards of 4 million deaths.
Exactly. Tbh its constantly surprising why Americans view the CCPs zero-covid policy as a failure. Even the most pessimistic reports (based on actual facts, not tabloid-driven wishful thinking) acknowledges that China has avoided at least 2 million+ deaths through their zero covid policy. Is the right to life no longer a human right? Or have a lot of us so internalized anti-China propaganda that we're no longer able…
Sweden did not enforce any lockdowns and managed to have a lower death rate than France which enforced many punitive measures on its population.
I therefore hardly think your reports are true, or right.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-deat...
Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
Targeted layoffs might be the best thing long-term. From my limited perspective of having recently worked at Intel, they had a lot of dead weight. There was a lot of talent, but it was also diluted by a lot of management and bureaucracy. I honestly don't know if layoffs are an effective solution to this, but IMHO they could definitely benefit from lower headcount and greater urgency.
well-connected one-percent chick goes to work for Intel Security long enough to get health care for babies then quits. At the same time, competitive University grad-with-honors working class girl does protests and environmentalism, can't have children with no health care, ends up hanging out with lots and lots of other thirty year olds in the same boat, with debt. Just another day in America.
But what did they major in? Did the well connected person major in CS while the honors grad major in underwater basket weaving? We are in a free market system that is not perfect at evaluating talent but things like degree help provide signals to employers.
Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is the right to life no longer a human right? Ah yes, China, comes to the top of the list when I think of protectors of human life. One-child policies, welding people into their apartment buildings, corralling them into COSTCOs [1] like they're farm animals being loaded into a semi-truck. Such benevolence. > Or have a lot of us so internalized anti-China propaganda that we're no longer able to think logically? Nah,…
The fact remains that if US policies were implemented in China, it would mean the tacit acceptance of killing 4-5 million people.
It's not a fact, come on. Many countries that didn't choose to lock down their population did better. Actually, since vitamin D deficiency is a risk factor, it may have increased deaths and decreased the overall health of the population.
Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
A fab in Ohio, Oregon, or Arizona 10,000 km from China is safe from threats like cruise missiles that the proposed fab 1000 km from China in Japan or South Korea would not be. It's not so much that cruise missiles used on civilian targets in South Korea or Japan would not be a reason to start WW3, more that it would be less tempting.
All this talk of China invading Taiwan and attacking other countries in SE Asia is bonkers. Their economy would be cut off from the rest of the world in an instant. Their commercial fishing fleets would probably be driven back to port. It would take a matter of days until they had massive internal protests. Hungry people topple governments in hours.
Yes it is bonkers, indeed!
Yet, it is EXACTLY what Xi repeatedly said in his new-term-inauguration speech
The dictator of China has effectively declared, as publicly as possible, and very specifically, that he intends to invade Taiwan if it does not willingly abandon it's democracy and come under China's rule
He obviously thinks he can get away with doing so without consequences, including those you suggest.
Yet, leaders make such mistakes all the time. Putin just made one on 24-Feb-2022.
It is up to the western world to ensure that Xi sees that such an action would result in bad consequences for him, and deter him from his stated course.
But the fact that it is bonkers is no assurance whatsoever that it won't happen.