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

tomshardware.com

631–640 of 675 posts

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

#631
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's being burned, it isn't helium.

Helium deposits don't exist is the thing, the same structures in the Earth which trap methane gas also trap helium gas and some of them trap enough to make recovery economically viable.

And that helium comes from Alpha decay of Uranium and Thorium.

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

#632
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.

CPI is personal (renting vs home ownership), very hard to have a good definition for (expenses tracked and weights), and more useful over short windows because the standard of living changes.

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

#633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can put He in a closed loop system and still use it for cooling, by using it as the thermodynamic working fluid, and then selecting any other fluid as the heat carrier?

That's not clear actually. It's been awhile since I watched the video on the ASML EUV system for etching wafers, but from my recollection, the UV light ablates away layers of wafers and so particles of silicon presumably contaminate the noble gas that's flowing over it. I don't think a closed loop is possible in the existing setups.

thats what I am questioning, wouldn't another gas be feasible?

I do know that some parts and components actually do have helium enclosed in the part package (can or so, not the shipping packaging!)

I'm getting mixed signals: its for the phase transition temperature, its for cleaning, ...

is EUV actually ablating layers of wafer? I thought the EUV was for patterning photoresist, you make it sound like ASML eliminated photoresist?

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

#634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your close neighbours have surge protectors then you benefit little from installing your own.

You might as well phrase that as "If your close neighbours have gotten vaccines then you benefit little from getting your own." We live in a society. Everybody chips in. And each surge protector adds to the robustness of the grid.

Yes, that puts it down perfectly. That’s why some don’t ever see the benefit of installing their surge protector whereas others install one way too small for their situation and find them useless anyway.

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

#635
post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your close neighbours have surge protectors then you benefit little from installing your own.

Why? If the voltage spikes on the grid (that's what I understand a power surge to mean), wouldn't even more of it end up in your house (that is: the grid voltage spike even higher) if the neighbors have equipment that doesn't let their devices consume some of that energy? Edit: wait, maybe I figured it out: those devices must be consuming the excess rather than blocking it. Is that it?

Yes, energy dissipates. Although one still needs to look out for the distance from the neighbours as your ground can be different from your neighbours ground potential.

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

#636
post #486

So turning our backs on globalisation was a mistake after all. Everyone needs everyone to work well together. So much winning. My PC was due for an upgrade this year (still using a video card from 2019)… so I really hope this keeps working for another … 5 ?! years

We're getting some moderately expensive and painful lessons about how hard it would be to deglobalize.

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

#637
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…

It happens. The power company was very unhappy with my boss for destroying one of their transformers. The thing is while circuit breakers react very quickly to extreme overcurrent situations (shorts) they're much slower to react to loads which are only a bit over the limit, and if short enough won't react at all. Very common with heavy motors.

And that's exactly what the problem was--we had a whole bunch of really heavy motors. Getting ready to start for the day you flip on the switches and the big machines start to spin. The transformer on the pole was rated higher than the main breaker for the plant--but the transformer apparently was more sensitive to the temporary loads. Once the problem was identified it was resolved by staging it, instead of flipping them all on they were flipped on over 5 minutes.

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

#638
post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you in an area with a bad electrical grid or something? In 40+ years I've never had a single device get fried from a surge/storm. My "surge protector" power strips are from the 90s and probably don't even work.

When I lived in Costa Rica, I lost three surge protectors in a year to power surges. During one such power surge, I didn't notice that the red light indicating surge protection was already out, and a power surge fried my (knockoff) Macbook power adapter, leaving me without a way to work for a day.

There's no real indicator on those things.

It's a 10 cent component that would require a $10k machine (this is old data) to do a non-destructive test.

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

#639
post #257
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even people who openly aim to violently overthrow the government and abolish elections?

If they're an electoral majority then you already have a problem. But the point is they're less likely to get there if they're part of the power structure. A presumed but frequently not mentioned component of democracy is the peaceful transition of power once a decision is made.

Transition of power (peaceful or not) is not a necessary component of democracy. Nor are leaders (elected or not), representation, or power structures such as centralization of power. Pure democracy is also incredibly inefficient at scale.

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

#640

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

Ya know we're doing a record emptying of the strategic oil reserves right now. Makes sense right?

Except we're giving it to oil companies for free, letting them sell at these very high prices with the promise that they refill the reserves with oil at some time in the future (when it's cheaper).

Absolutely perfectly corrupt, and American, way to go about it.

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