Post AxrdDXH8j4o179dAbg by andrew773@mastodon.online
(DIR) More posts by andrew773@mastodon.online
(DIR) Post #AxoUSZ0p4KDFmcD4mO by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-09-03T01:13:32Z
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Do any of you have a good source of financial news that isn't too right wing and explains things like the Intel deal? Or even just a really dry but not too technical source. The government bought a tenth of a company with left over CHIPS act money? But also Taiwan is in it too for some reason. I don't understand what they are even doing. Can the government buy a tenth of my cousin's sticker etsy shop for national security? I'm confused.
(DIR) Post #AxoUXfM0uwvQtqYSgK by chessert@mastodon.online
2025-09-03T01:14:26Z
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@futurebird Following, for reality.
(DIR) Post #AxoUYdNVkVm33riVLU by cinebox@masto.hackers.town
2025-09-03T01:14:38Z
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@futurebird only if stickers are critical components of the F-35
(DIR) Post #AxoUZupaLUAfToSXZY by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-09-03T01:14:50Z
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@cinebox Well as a matter of fact.
(DIR) Post #AxoUcokVPl3pUBT1e4 by nazokiyoubinbou@mastodon.social
2025-09-03T01:15:21Z
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@futurebird Presumably Taiwan is in on this because that's where all the chips are actually made and Intel was at least ten years away from being able to build anything here that could sufficiently reach that scale. (But at this rate I'm wondering if they can even do that if they don't fix their business issues and maybe give up this whole unified design to go with the more effective chiplet design.)
(DIR) Post #AxoUvLeBq3iyjKLhp2 by mikeolson@mastodon.social
2025-09-03T01:18:43Z
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@futurebird I oppose the deal, but this point of view is smart and interesting:https://stratechery.com/2025/u-s-intel/
(DIR) Post #AxoW5IPYpBfdXmoVrU by t60n3@mastodon.social
2025-09-03T01:31:43Z
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@futurebird This doesn't answer directly so apologies. I'm finishing reading Chip Wars by Chris Miller. Chips are made primarily in Taiwan & considered a national security interest as most military components contain chips, and the US doesn't have reliable manufacturing. There is a history in the feds getting financially involved in these industries. How the feds currently prove an industry is in the interest of national security is ┐('～`;)┌ ?Etsy stores should be safe for now.
(DIR) Post #AxoWGhgLD2BF6Z6Ofo by johnjolley@mas.to
2025-09-03T01:33:47Z
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@futurebird Seconding Marketplace https://www.marketplace.org/
(DIR) Post #AxoWxQfCMKFum7wOAK by graydon@canada.masto.host
2025-09-03T01:41:30Z
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@futurebird It was obvious very early (1970s) that there would only be a single chip manufacturer standing. (Everybody talks about Moore's Law, but the cost to create the fab doubles, too, not just the chip performance.)Intel figured they were the Lord's anointed and made repeated strategic errors: x86/Itanium (could be three), ignoring power efficiency, not making phone chips for Apple, relying on monopoly power/Wintel leverage for market share, and missing graphics processing.
(DIR) Post #AxoXCs8MVVDUJhwgzI by clayfoot@mastodon.social
2025-09-03T01:44:13Z
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@futurebird Yes, the government can do that, and it's not necessarily a bad idea. For example, in Trump's first term, there was a proposal to buy Gilead Sciences, give away their outrageously expensive Hepatitis C treatment, then sell off the rest of the company. As a generic drug, the savings to Medicare alone would have made it a good deal for the government. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/520430944
(DIR) Post #AxoXcABQXLLXXHRHSS by threeforks@mastodon.social
2025-09-03T01:48:51Z
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@futurebird This is a perfect example of why I love it here. Great question, then, drumroll, really great helpful on target answers. Yessiree, the people, not AI slop.
(DIR) Post #AxoY8hEhBPQXJVTs5A by graydon@canada.masto.host
2025-09-03T01:45:33Z
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@futurebird This has a bunch of consequences; the major one (anything not a phone is a niche device) is that Apple put billions upon billions into full vertical integration which funded TSMC for the half what wasn't "not in our strategic interests to deal with those monopolists at Intel" (any value of strategic you want, there); the result is that the one global chip foundry when the music stops for Moore's Law is NOT Intel.(It is that hard to do; the entire global economy can afford _one_.)
(DIR) Post #AxoY8ibQ6PCNYH7X8q by graydon@canada.masto.host
2025-09-03T01:49:17Z
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@futurebird Taiwan (where TSMC's core bits are located) is in the path of a Chinese invasion. Having material control of the one global chip foundry is either a crushing PRC economic advantage or a global economic disaster (nobody has current/modern/cutting edge processor chips, for anything); for the US to get out of this position involves making Intel much more capable from a supply chain inside the US. (This isn't possible, the US economy is too small, but the empire can't admit that.)
(DIR) Post #AxoY8jpzViRrNkwgUa by graydon@canada.masto.host
2025-09-03T01:52:22Z
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@futurebird So, anyway; China has internal chip-making initiatives, the US public stake in Intel is part of the US internal chip-making initiative, the actual economic capability to do it is mostly Europe and Taiwan (and the rest of insular and peninsular Asia) being held up by the entire global economy, and it's painfully obvious (since about 1990) that chips are up there with oil as a necessary input to an effective military.Note that tariffs tend to break the necessary global integration.
(DIR) Post #AxoY8kqjkQdgWMInIG by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-09-03T01:54:33Z
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@graydon OK why are some liberals being weird and calling it "communism" I thought the CHIPS act was... fine. Like I wish it said something about mandated unions or something, but for what it's about it's fine. Isn't this trying to do the same thing in a kind of clumsy way?
(DIR) Post #AxoYWvmekL3RNmvCXw by graydon@canada.masto.host
2025-09-03T01:59:08Z
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@futurebird A lot of people who will say they are liberals are actually mammonites and have market idolatry axioms. Anything even resembling direct public production is a heresy and can't be tolerated. (Which is bad for everything, but never mind that now.)And yes, it is; the CHIPS Act was a bunch of policy wonks trying to maintain the imperial status quo in a least-aggravating way. This is a combination of incompetence, panic, and different panic recognising the same problem.
(DIR) Post #AxoZEaSjNcZHztQ0oa by burnitdown@beige.party
2025-09-03T02:06:57Z
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@futurebird @graydon it's consistent if you believe in the falsehood that social democrats are communists, and then consider any kind of social democratic "nationalising" to be "communist".
(DIR) Post #AxoZvZHBfLpYlpVvJg by puppethead@ieji.de
2025-09-03T02:14:44Z
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@futurebird @graydon In my mind the talking point of "investing" needs to be countered, because Trump is doing this to skim his cut and not to make Intel stronger. So I like to ask why this is different from "seizing the means of production" such as leftist governments do. It's branding language. But this can also be construed as fascism in the sense that government and business are merging (à la 1930s Italy).
(DIR) Post #AxoaXLaezwyzKQdXou by Shivaekul@infosec.exchange
2025-09-03T02:21:35Z
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@futurebird If you don't already subscribe to Matt Levine's Money Stuff newsletter, I highly recommend. Very smart, sane person covering finance. He has the background to get technical and understand things, and the writing skills to explain them well. Plus he sees how ridiculous many of the aspects of our financial system are, and so has an honest and amusing writing style. I don't always read his newsletter, but I never regret it when I do. I imagine he will write something on it.
(DIR) Post #Axocg48VSezRi5kkuO by Beachbum@mastodon.sdf.org
2025-09-03T02:45:27Z
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@futurebird It’s a socialist move for sure.
(DIR) Post #AxodJscHi7FhZ8fNy4 by lopta@mastodon.social
2025-09-03T02:52:44Z
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@futurebird Most of the world's really high-end chips are manufactured (not designed) by TSMC in Taiwan ...using machines from ASML in the Netherlands.
(DIR) Post #AxofF3YBpZOJwAZww4 by marymessall@mendeddrum.org
2025-09-03T03:14:00Z
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@futurebird I do have a source of financial news like what you're looking for: the Money Stuff newsletter by Matt Levin.He is good at explaining things and also has a sense of humor, or at least an appreciation for the absurd, which is critical in his line of work.https://mattlevine.co/work
(DIR) Post #AxofWPxvkFK0NathRY by alex02@cyberplace.social
2025-09-03T03:17:27Z
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@futurebird probably just a way to line their pockets.
(DIR) Post #AxofdmQ2f6ku2pYaZM by paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange
2025-09-03T03:18:46Z
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@futurebirdcan't speak to the financial news but "eminent domain" is a sufficiently loosely described power of the federal government, which is presumably how they forced Intel to sell.
(DIR) Post #AxoheJc3Rr30txYhjk by bkuhn@fedi.copyleft.org
2025-09-03T03:41:17Z
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@futurebird It's generally dangerous from a policy perspective to have government for-profit investments, because typically the government takes more downside & less upside than the average investor would. Consider for example the government bail-outs of the big banks in the late 2000s.It's not that government/industry partnerships are guaranteed to line pockets of the wealthy,it's just that corruption usually takes it that way.& one rarely knows if you did right until a decade later…🤷…my 2¢
(DIR) Post #AxokMZpugse3rsH4fA by MargaretSefton@writing.exchange
2025-09-03T04:11:41Z
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@futurebird You might appreciate this. I listened to it this morning....https://youtu.be/cqGPJz8O5TM?si=Cuj5VGOMkSKrOXdW
(DIR) Post #AxokPpTuyj4lG9XMQK by PrinceOfDenmark@mas.to
2025-09-03T04:12:18Z
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@futurebird I’m enjoying Paul Krugman’s Substack, but he writes about what he wants when he wants and isn’t trying to be the source of all info. Good explainers of things like how we perpetuate wealth inequality, though.Also enjoying The Economist, which is only right-wing if you consider its free market stance right wing (& in my opinion it’s not). They benefit from not being US-based IMHO, too.As for the US taking a permanent stake in key companies, seems Putinesque to me.
(DIR) Post #AxozmuandmQ15GDjXM by RunRichRun@mastodon.social
2025-09-03T07:04:30Z
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@futurebirdKeep an eye out for useful biz writing/reporting from NPR — esp. some Marketplace features. Minnesota Public Radio economics contributor Chris Farrell is good (but not regularly featured):https://www.mprnews.org/people/chris-farrellhttps://www.marketplace.org/Andrew Ross Sorkin is featured in a lot of places (I read him, but you can also watch or listen):https://www.andrewrosssorkin.com/Also the Economist."Right wing" is in the eye of the beholder, as long as you avoid Fox or worse!Paywalls everywhere...
(DIR) Post #Axp7SnNrX2QOZI5WC0 by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2025-09-03T08:30:31Z
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@futurebird @graydon Mostly because the majority of people in the USA have no idea what words like ‘communism’, ‘capitalism’, ‘democracy’ and ‘republic’ mean.The USSR was probably a communist state for about a week (being generous), but was held up for decades to the USA as an example of what communism looked like (whether a stable communist state with more than about 500 people in it is possible remains an open question). The biggest difference between the economies in the USSR and the western world was that the USSR was a centrally managed economy, whereas the rest of the world relied on markets.In a centrally managed economy, a single controller is responsible for creating a plan for economic output and defining what factories should be built, what skills people need to be taught, what supply chains look like, and so on. In a pure market economy, all of these decisions are local and you rely on emergent properties to generate a globally efficient system.In theory, a centrally managed economy can be more efficient because it can avoid duplication of effort. In practice, it suffers from incomplete information and is slow to adapt (most attempts to build one have involved famines. It turns out they’re a really bad idea). Conversely, markets are staggeringly good at optimisation, but will often end up optimising for the wrong thing, and tend towards monopolies.Both models are pretty bad in their pure forms. In practice, most countries now adopt some hybrid approaches. China is the closest to a centrally planned economy (all companies are partly state owned and the state intervenes in markets a lot), whereas the USA has traditionally been the closest to a pure market economy (though not actually very close). Interventions in markets come in a variety of forms. The most common form in the USA is for the government to act as a guaranteed customer for some product. In the EU, it tends to be weighted more towards regulation or nationalising critical industries. In China it tends to be a lot more direct. All use various forms of direct and indirect subsidies.It is quite misleading to call any of these ‘communism’. A communist society could (theoretically) exist at either extreme, with worker-owned cooperatives using markets to distribute resources between them, or by coordinating directly via representatives or direct input to drive a centrally planned system. A capitalist society requires some form of markets, but markets have a number of failure modes and are not self-sustaining (without intervention, markets tend towards monopolies, which are a form of central control without any accountability) and so capitalist societies end up somewhere in the middle (pure capitalist societies decay towards feudalism without regulation).If you need a label, Mussolini had one: He described the merger of corporations and government as ‘fascism’ (and thought it was a good idea).That said, a 10% stake in a company is a long way from the merger of corporations and government. Most countries are realising that almost all modern infrastructure depends on computing and having a supply of processors that a potentially hostile government can’t control is important. The CHIPS act was largely propping up Intel. They have been staggeringly badly managed for 15-20 years, and without them it’s not clear how much chip manufacturing would be done in the USA (the DoD owns a fab for really critical things, but it’s a very old process).If anything, it was quite surprising that the CHIPS act invested so much in Intel without taking any ownership. It’s not unusual for a government bailout of an industry to come with that kind of condition. The British government, for example, ended up owning a bank after the 2008 financial crisis. Typically in a mostly capitalist society, the goal is to get the company into a state where you can sell it and recoup the cost of the initial subsidy. In some cases, it will never be profitable but its existence improves the rest of the economy and generates more tax revenue than the company’s losses (public transport typically falls into this category) and so it makes sense for it to remain in public ownership.
(DIR) Post #Axp87tLUGsVAvmZbF2 by tricotfeelya@woof.group
2025-09-03T08:37:58Z
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@futurebird Try the GroundNews app. It’s a news aggregator that generally gives you a range of sources, left, center and right about each targeted subject. In aggregates from a huge number of sites, left, middle, right. I constantly find sources I never knew existed Even though some of them are blatantly biased. Among other things, it shows whether left or right news organizations are not paying correct attention to a story. it’s pretty cool!
(DIR) Post #AxpRm8LjnutuB4aoSm by gleick@mas.to
2025-09-03T12:18:07Z
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@futurebird I think these are excellent basic questions that any financial reporter should be asking. And they aren’t. Instead we get a blithe normalization of extraordinary executive actions that are probably illegal and certainly aberrant.
(DIR) Post #AxpXWENYDeiDy7F0U4 by ajn142@infosec.exchange
2025-09-03T13:22:30Z
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@futurebird I liked this article on the topic:https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/intel-details-everything-that-could-go-wrong-with-us-taking-a-10-stake/
(DIR) Post #AxpdOW7WyK6UOxS8Ei by benh@mastodon.scot
2025-09-03T14:28:20Z
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@futurebird I found this helpful https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/29/intel_trump_deal_fab_selling_penalty/
(DIR) Post #AxpzN4WcHdWFWAu0p6 by adrinux@social.vivaldi.net
2025-09-03T18:34:33Z
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@futurebird standard bailout of a company in trouble, a company that is strategically important, but described in Trumps usual whacko nonsensical terms.Regurgitated from opinion I heard on the FT economics podcast (I think).
(DIR) Post #Axq6LmBHhTBS0xFnEW by avirr@sfba.social
2025-09-03T19:52:47Z
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@futurebird i have learned so much from https://www.marketplace.org
(DIR) Post #AxqeG3zzwB5hyoQEe8 by EmmanuelLoria@mastodon.social
2025-09-04T02:12:43Z
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@futurebird Haha if Etsy shops were considered national security, a lot of sticker sellers would be very rich by now 😅 While the government might not invest, there are smart ways to scale and boost visibility. I help Etsy sellers do exactly that—turning creative shops into consistent sales engines
(DIR) Post #AxrdDXH8j4o179dAbg by andrew773@mastodon.online
2025-09-04T13:35:44Z
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@futurebird I definitely think Marketplace is worth following. I'd add Planet Money and Freakenomics to similar types of shows. However Lever News covered the topic today and I highly recommend it over those. I'd add American Prospect and Organized Money as places to keep an eye on for financial news. https://www.levernews.com/comrade-trump-seizes-the-means-of-production/