Live data from Hacker News

A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

wsj.com

91–100 of 136 posts

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#91
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe we all have something to learn from Doomsday preppers. A little, but really just implementing the Toyota Production System properly. You'll never be perfectly prepared for everything, but a lot of the mess over the past 18 months of supply chain problems could have been avoided. In my personal life, I am NOT a prepper, but the way I stock my house, I had no issues with toilet paper, meat, or other weird short…

Didn't toyota pioneer the JIT system of logistics? But as with most such systems, others only implemented it partially and thus in a way that in the end creates problems.

They looked at it and thought: "They cut 90% of the costs. We can do one better and cut 100%!"

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't toyota pioneer the JIT system of logistics? But as with most such systems, others only implemented it partially and thus in a way that in the end creates problems.

They looked at it and thought: "They cut 90% of the costs. We can do one better and cut 100%!"

Which works until it doesn't. When it does they look at it as having improved what already exists (The toyota model) when it doesn't they blame the original one instead of their mangled implementation ("agile" anyone?)

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#93
post #24

Lol every time I see the word "feet" I'm reminded that this article isn't targeted to anyone but Americans, even when talking about manufacturing lines in Asia. My East Asian bias is showing but in all my experience I absolutely have never had to use those units in a serious professional context. Any time I see a technically-sounding article use units like "feet" and "football fields" I subconsciously find it very di…

The difference between 185 million ft^2 and whatever you pick doesn't matter. It may as well be in hectares or "multiples of some lake somewhere", it's a massive number. You have, and are probably using right now, a voice controlled computer that can convert anything to anything else, by just asking. Is it really worth typing this every time an American site uses American language? We all get it, Americans with their…

> You have, and are probably using right now, a voice controlled computer that can convert anything to anything else, by just asking.

There should be a browser plugin that automatically converts units behind the scenes.

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#94
post #24

Lol every time I see the word "feet" I'm reminded that this article isn't targeted to anyone but Americans, even when talking about manufacturing lines in Asia. My East Asian bias is showing but in all my experience I absolutely have never had to use those units in a serious professional context. Any time I see a technically-sounding article use units like "feet" and "football fields" I subconsciously find it very di…

The difference between 185 million ft^2 and whatever you pick doesn't matter. It may as well be in hectares or "multiples of some lake somewhere", it's a massive number. You have, and are probably using right now, a voice controlled computer that can convert anything to anything else, by just asking. Is it really worth typing this every time an American site uses American language? We all get it, Americans with their…

> We all get it, Americans with their imperial units, ha ha.

It's really very tired.

Americans don't even use Imperial units. We use United States Customary Units [1] which are more like siblings to Imperial units than offspring.

United States customary units have been based on familiar Metric units since the Mendenhall Order in 1893.

School children in the United States have studied the metric system for generations.

The United States was one of the original 17 signatories of the Metre Convention in 1875. As far as I can tell no commonwealth countries were early adopters.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#95
post #24

Lol every time I see the word "feet" I'm reminded that this article isn't targeted to anyone but Americans, even when talking about manufacturing lines in Asia. My East Asian bias is showing but in all my experience I absolutely have never had to use those units in a serious professional context. Any time I see a technically-sounding article use units like "feet" and "football fields" I subconsciously find it very di…

A meter seems to me linked to the human body just as much as the foot. "The metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle" That factor of ten is because we have ten fingers. There's no cosmic significance to ten or ten million. Or to the size of a line of longitude on our particular planet. And a meter is almost exactly a yard, or thr…

The use of the decimal system is kind of funny because for the longest time large parts of Europe used a 20 based system for a lot of common math. You can still see this in French, where 99 is spelled out as "four times twenty and nineteen". Even in English you can find the remains of the 20-based system, because of the way numbers are expressed: twenty-one, but not tenny-one or even one-teen; twenty-five but not onety-five but fifteen.

The foot is directly based on a person's body part (which caused major issues when bordering jurisdictions used different sizes for a "foot"). The denomination used for meters is a lot more disconnected, its basis focused on the planet instead of on a body part. The choice for the decimal system is much more akin to the choice of 3/12/8/10 in the imperial system.

You can also quickly run into issues if you assume a meter is almost exactly a meter, there's a 9% difference there. The difference can quickly add up, and plenty of international orders have been messed up that way. The distances are similar enough that they serve the same use in day to day expressions, but they're certainly not "almost exactly" the same.

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#96
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between 185 million ft^2 and whatever you pick doesn't matter. It may as well be in hectares or "multiples of some lake somewhere", it's a massive number. You have, and are probably using right now, a voice controlled computer that can convert anything to anything else, by just asking. Is it really worth typing this every time an American site uses American language? We all get it, Americans with their…

> We all get it, Americans with their imperial units, ha ha. It's really very tired. Americans don't even use Imperial units. We use United States Customary Units [1] which are more like siblings to Imperial units than offspring. United States customary units have been based on familiar Metric units since the Mendenhall Order in 1893 . School children in the United States have studied the metric system for generation…

> We use United States Customary Units

Actually no, not for potential difference, current, resistance, impedance, luminosity, amount-ofsubstance …

For those you use the SI units.

Its just length, mass, (plus force and torque).

Not far to go.

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#97
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We all get it, Americans with their imperial units, ha ha. It's really very tired. Americans don't even use Imperial units. We use United States Customary Units [1] which are more like siblings to Imperial units than offspring. United States customary units have been based on familiar Metric units since the Mendenhall Order in 1893 . School children in the United States have studied the metric system for generation…

> We use United States Customary Units Actually no, not for potential difference, current, resistance, impedance, luminosity, amount-ofsubstance … For those you use the SI units. Its just length, mass, (plus force and torque). Not far to go.

The United States does not use "Imperial" units. We use some Customary Units that are defined in terms of SI units and share names with some Imperial units.

The point is that saying "The United States uses Imperial Units" is, generously, ignorant.

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#98
post #34

>Now major chip companies are resorting to unusual tactics. They are placing orders far in advance and prepaying so that substrate companies have ample cash to build more factories. Some are committing to buying the entire supply of new production lines to give their suppliers confidence to invest. If the chip makers are investing this much money into the substrate businesses, why aren't they just purchasing some of…

The chip companies also know that they will definitely buy electricity in the future, yet they are not buying power plants. In a sense, buying the future substrate production is just a future substrate contract. Do you know how building a power plant is financed today? Basically someone buys 10 years of gas futures, sells 10 years of equivalent electricity futures, and uses the profit (since electricity is more expen…

Any source, extra info or further insight on that last bit?

Comes to mind: "Be the change you want to see in the world, and get paid for it"

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#99
post #24

Lol every time I see the word "feet" I'm reminded that this article isn't targeted to anyone but Americans, even when talking about manufacturing lines in Asia. My East Asian bias is showing but in all my experience I absolutely have never had to use those units in a serious professional context. Any time I see a technically-sounding article use units like "feet" and "football fields" I subconsciously find it very di…

[deleted]

Re: A big hurdle to fixing the chip shortage: substrates

#100
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> now innocent pigs have to suffer for society's failures. They were going to be killed no matter what. I don't think it matters much to the pig what happens after it's dead.

Although we are conducting a perverted form of nature, there is nothing wrong with eating animals. The problem is the poor treatment of the animals and eating too much meat in general. When you abuse animals for nothing then you are basically killing for sport.

I don't agree. If humans needed to eat animals to survive then it might be reasonable to argue that killing animals for any reason other than food is wrong. Because then you could argue that you are inflicting the minimal possible amount of suffering.

But since humans don't need to eat animals, I don't see much difference ethnically between killing them because they taste good vs for no reason. If anything, that seems to be more about welfare of the human psyche than welfare of the animals.

Post reply on HN