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

tomshardware.com

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

#581

Post by manarth »

imperialdrive wrote: post #423
hedora wrote: 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.

Entry level Dell servers that used to cost 1,700 US are now going for 17,000!!! I'm talking absolute basics with 16GB of memory etc. Wild times.

Citation please?

    > £2,751.70
      PowerEdge R260
      Xeon® 6315P 2.8GHz
      1x16GB DIMM
      2x2TB HDD SATA
https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/dell-poweredge-servers/sr/se...

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

#582

Post by pas »

_heimdall wrote: post #551
PowerElectronix wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 magaz…

there are frequent claims by semi-crackpots that the hedonic adjustment of inflation calculation is hiding a lot of inflation.

there was the famous shadowstats site, but it seems it shut down, or at least stopped publishing new stuff in 2023 publicly. (probably reverting to a good old affinity scam [5])

(fun trivia, noticed by a reddit user 11 years ago, that even though the guy claimed high inflation but the subscription fee remained the same over 10 years, and in the last post it was also "six months at $89.00".) and there are many posts [3][4] explaining why these alternate measures are very unlikely to be more correct than either the BLS' CPI or the BEA's PCE.

...

the BLS does a lot of work to have useful numbers for a lot of goods and services [0], down to computer parts [1]

and there are a lot of things that usually are now more fancy (and more expensive, of course), but don't have value adjustment in the list. (Matt Yglesias writes about the spa-ification of services, everything is nicer, fancier, from movie theater seats to barber shops, yet there's no adjustment for "haircuts and other personal care services"[2])

[0] https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/home.htm

[1] https://www.bls.gov/mxp/publications/additional-publications...

[2] sorry, behind a paywall https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-spa-fication-of-everything

[3] https://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2015/03/31/deconstruc...

[4] https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/inflation-is-up-but-the-inflat...

[5] https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con

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

#583

Post by heresie-dabord »

sillystuff wrote: post #254

The US just finished divesting itself from its strategic helium reserve in 2024 due to the "Helium Stewardship Act of 2013"[1] But, now we have a strategic bitcoin reserve. [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/527

In some fictional scenario, if a character were charged by some dark authority with the assignment of laying waste to the US economy, putting fools and lackeys in roles of responsibility for economic investment and oversight, of befouling public discourse to the point where only fictions are spoken, of corrupting the judiciary, and sabotaging international partnerships forged in over a century of unprecedented co-operation...

...well, you would be making a documentary instead.

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

#584

Post by HenryMulligan »

_ache_ wrote: post #568
hxorr wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about microplastics?

They are toxic.

Well, good thing you aren't drinking it then, because the complete lack of electrolytes would kill you far faster than the microplastics. Surely if they can chemically purify the water to chip-making standards they can filter out the microplastics (when they are done with it)? At least one can hope.

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

#585

Post by scns »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #246
spiderfarmer wrote: post #43

Lindsay Graham has an easy solution to this unnecessary conflict: send your sons and daughters. This whole administration is such a fiasco.

Wow, WILD to imply that Lindsey Graham is part of this admin. They hate each other. Trump worked with Graham and McConnell first term because Trump does have to work with the establishment but they despise him. He still has to work with Graham who has a little more Koch power now that McConnell is gone-but-not-gone. I’ll always find it hilarious that progressives manage to hate the GOP and Trump at the same time for…

The clips i saw of him talking looked like hard core brown nosing to me, pardon my french. He sat on Trumps table when Bad Bunnys' half time show was on the screens in Mar a Lago too.

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

#586

Post by dotancohen »

Retr0id wrote: post #468
dotancohen wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What ambient stuff is available at the altitude where a zeppelin typically flies?

there is generally plenty of ambient air in the earth's atmosphere

And how can that ambient air be stuffed into bags to control buoyancy?

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

#587

Post by dotancohen »

cenamus wrote: post #482
dotancohen wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What ambient stuff is available at the altitude where a zeppelin typically flies?

The stuff the Zeppelin/Blimp floats in

And how do you propose that stuff be stuffed into the bags to control buoyancy?

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

#588

Post by andylynch »

schiffern wrote: post #282
srik wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Commercial uses layered surge protectors (Type I, II, and III), which is also recommended for other users but rarely followed. In surge prone areas, at a minimum I would have good quality whole-house surge protector (eg Siemens 140 or Eaton 108), and a good quality surge protector strip for any computer/TV/phone charger. I also put surge protectors in front of expensive white goods like the fridge, washer/dryer, dish…

> Nothing (reasonable) can protect against direct lightning strikes

This is one reason why you bury power cables.

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

#589

Post by nickff »

pjc50 wrote: post #512
supernova87a wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that it was basically sold to be able to claim a more responsible budget that year? Basically selling off of an asset to record higher revenue. Like selling your building fire extinguishers to claim that you were able to pay off your credit card bill, and who cares what those were originally meant for.

Government accounting operation on a strictly annual basis is ruinous.

It’s not, but the 10-year projections are even worse, because they count on eternally ‘temporary’ things actually changing.

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

#590

Post by nickff »

manarth wrote: post #574
energy123 wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should make different inflation baskets, representative of the bottom quartile, the median person, and the upper quartile. The bottom quartile has a large % of the CPI basket composed of housing rent, for example. The upper quartile has 0% of the CPI basket composed of rents. This should be doable quite easily, it's not like the spending habits of different socioeconomic groups are a secret.

I guess the typical inflation basket doesn't include rental income , which the upper-quartile are rather more likely to have than the lower quartile. Wonder how that might impact figures if residual/passive income were included?

Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) is about spending on consumer goods, and not about wage or investment income.
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