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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

#661

Post by jcalvinowens »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #646
jcalvinowens wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That extra unbonded ground rod is the worst thing you can possibly do to make your generator vulnerable to lightning strikes.

That's an extreme edge-case and a strawman. Anyone operating temporary equipment on a generator during a severe storm will obviously unplug sensitive stuff to not take unnecessary chances regardless of safety precautions already in place. Ground rods are required in certain situations according to the NEC. Ground rods are for lightning protection, transient surges (over voltage), and induced surges; not for short pro…

You can unplug everything and open all the switches, but a nearby lightning strike will still fry your generator through that unbounded ground rod. Lightning ground potential is very eager to take the shortcut to your other ground rods through a few millimeters of insulation and open switches on the path through your generator and house wiring, when the alternative might be tens of meters of dirt :)

I don't care what the NEC doesn't say, NFPA 780 says you have to bond all ground rods.

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

#662

Post by mrguyorama »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #374
fc417fc802 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GOP isn't "crypto-libertarian" by any stretch of the imagination. That's probably even more absurd than the people who suggest the GOP is "financially conservative".

The thing there is the GOP was financially conservative a few decades ago and it's like nobody bothered to update the wiki.

They'll ride it forever. My dad still insists "Protecting the environment is conservative, look at the EPA made by Nixon" as if there hasn't been clear and deliberate anti-environmental policy since then.

After 30 years of empirical reality demonstrating that if you want a government that is responsible with money, you must vote democrat, Donald Trump was still voted in because "He's good for the economy"

He is not.

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

#663

Post by estimator7292 »

8note wrote: post #481
whatsupdog wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think bigger question is, how do you bring the blimp down without dumping out helium?

you could compress the helium into tanks?

This. Buoyancy is related to volume. Reduce the gas volume, increase its (relative) density, bouyancy goes down, ship goes down.

Same way submarines adjust dive depth without dumping air overboard.

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

#664

Post by estimator7292 »

brynnbee wrote: post #328
HerbManic wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, everything at the moment regardless of good or bad means higher RAM price.

Have a bad first date? Higher RAM prices. Your dog ran away? Higher RAM prices. Lower RAM prices? Believe it or not, higher RAM prices.

You might have the next one hit wonder country song on your hands.

Truck broke? Higher RAM prices.

Wife left you? Higher RAM prices.

RAM truck? Buddy you better get ready. Higher RAM prices.

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

#665

Post by joemi »

nerdsniper wrote: post #475
joemi wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much does that matter for party balloons, though? It's still buoyant.

I feel like people really need to learn basic physics. The gas inside a standard party balloon is generally compressed 3% to inflate the balloon. This wipes out even the theoretical buoyancy of nitrogen. And trust me, there was never any practical buoyancy to begin with. You’d need a ridiculously large balloon in a room with impossibly still air and impossibly null thermal gradients to even measure the buoyancy of ni…

> I feel like people really need to learn basic physics.

I'm 20+ years out of college and I asked a question specifically because I was unsure. Give me a break. I'm sorry if "party balloon buoyancy physics" wasn't the part of my college classes that stuck with me.

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

#666

Post by forgetfreeman »

dmix wrote: post #94
forgetfreeman wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they aren't doing a good job primary the hell out of them.

Where you get the exciting opportunity to choose between the next set of huckster lawyers and shallow ideologues.

There is the undocumented 3rd option of actually running for office oneself if you're (correctly) certain no quality candidate will be produced for the position.

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

#667

Post by jjk166 »

MarkMarine wrote: post #434
pwarner wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big self own here

It’s almost shocking that people in an era of unlimited resources could see this was not renewable and important to hold, and that later in the era of limited resources, we decided to privatize this. It’s so shortsighted, willfully ignorant. We’re about to get a preview of the world after fossil fuel extraction and some of the knock on effects. Semi is one thing, wait till you can’t get an MRI.

The people in the era of unlimited resources envisioned an unlimited future that needed to be safeguarded. The people in the era of limited resources envision a limited future that any resources would be wasted on. They are not ignorant of the negative consequences of their short term thinking, they are indifferent.

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

#668

Post by jjk166 »

SilverSlash wrote: post #496
isodev wrote: 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

Umm, I think you have it reversed. A helium plant in Qatar shutting down causing problems to US chip consumers is precisely because of globalization.

Pretty sure the helium plant is in Qatar because the helium is in Qatar, not because of globalization.

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

#669

Post by SideQuark »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #508
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.

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.

This is oft repeated nonsense you can disprove yourself. Make a reasonable basket of goods, write down current prices. Look up ads for those goods over time, write down prices. Compute inflation. Check BLS inflation. If there were even a tiny error “artificially down” it shows up as exponentially (in the literal mathematical sense) divergent values.

Your claim is false.

Also there is/was many other groups computing inflation such as MITs Billion Prices Project, lots of hedge funds, etc., and none have found much if any discrepancy between official BLS numbers and other methodologies.

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

#670

Post by account42 »

kelipso wrote: post #259
srik wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Lightning can mess you up in every country lol. Had to replace a PSU because of that, thankfully it was just that and minor damage to GPU.

Lightning in the first place its much much less common in some countries. Add to that under ground residential power lines and adequate lightning rods and it's not something most people here have to worry about.
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