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

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

#551
post #417

In related news, diesel is $7/gallon, and peets coffee is $25/lb, and computers (hardware and cloud) are up 25-50%. The official numbers claim 3% inflation. Does anyone actually believe that? We were seeing 30% YoY before Iran here in California. The discrepancy is so large, I’m wondering if there’s an official explanation or some reasonable explanation, or if they’re just not bothering anymore.

CPI is kept artificially down by claiming that items that increase a lot in value are sudendly "higher quality" so that their price is adjusted down to equalize for "quality". They will just take those items off the basket, put in different ones and claim that those are better quality so the actual price increase is in line with expectations.

I wish I could find the analysis now, but someone proved this out by comparing magazine prices to CPI's calculation of magazine prices.

I believe they uses Time as the example because the covers are archived and have the price printed right on them.

They went back a few decades and the inflation difference was quite large. I want to say the real sticker price change was multiple times higher than CPI's claim of magazine prices, but I can't remember the exact numbers.

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

#552
post #271

It is not just oil and helium supply chains, it is nitrogen fertilizers also, and in a season when they are needed the most: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/nitrogen-ammonia-a...

Sulfur as well, crude coming out of middle east countries is quite sour and produces a lot of sulfur as a byproduct of refinement.

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

#554
post #415

Step 1: Put the helium in a blimp Step 2: Fly around the straight and over to Taiwan Step 3: Pump it into the chip factory There you go, solved it.

You do realize helium is a byproduct of LNG production and if you’re not pumping gas you’re not getting helium? It’s not a transportation issue.

But that isn't even the issue. Drone attack on the plant that produces it. So even with the input materials. No dice for now.

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

#555
post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what, you expect 195 countries to develop a copy of everything just so they can hate the other 194? Connection and collaboration is always the better way forward.

It's amazing how pretty much every reply to my original comment has failed to comprehend that I was not criticizing globalization. Whether it's even possible to get to where we are without it is also debatable. But the question you're asking me is meaningless, because the premise is wrong. My original reply was true and entirely independent of my or anyone else's opinion of whether globalization is good/bad.

Your comment was technically true but I don't get the point of it.

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

#557
post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Same timeframe and I've lived through both lots of lightning storms and in areas with lots of power failures. Some of them intermittent and essentially caused by transformers blowing up. Like earlier this winter, we had multiple storms where you'd hear a transformer blow up, in many cases even seeing the sky light up as well from it, power going out, couple seconds, power coming back, next transformer blowing o…

The things people often call "transformers blowing up" are usually not transformers blowing up. Instead, it's usually just overhead wires that are too close or literally touching, often from influences like wind and ice. The electricity arcs between the wires, creating bright blue-white flashes that can be seen from far away, sometimes with instantaneous heat that makes hunks of metal wire evaporate explosively. It c…

Residental-scale transformers can and do explode. Shorts happen not-infrequently with freezing rain and ice storms especially causing issues - the internal oil gets displaced by the water, and the dirty water causes an internal short. It wipes out power to a few blocks here when it happens, but we get an outage due to it every year or two.

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

#559
post #417

In related news, diesel is $7/gallon, and peets coffee is $25/lb, and computers (hardware and cloud) are up 25-50%. The official numbers claim 3% inflation. Does anyone actually believe that? We were seeing 30% YoY before Iran here in California. The discrepancy is so large, I’m wondering if there’s an official explanation or some reasonable explanation, or if they’re just not bothering anymore.

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