[HN Gopher] Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around ...
___________________________________________________________________
Lead time for new Intel NIC orders is quoted around 52 weeks
Author : walterbell
Score : 179 points
Date : 2021-10-05 10:55 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pcengines.ch)
(TXT) w3m dump (pcengines.ch)
| jeffbee wrote:
| What was the old lead time? I guess it was less than a year but
| the article doesn't mention it.
| jacob019 wrote:
| I bought one last year. They had hundreds in stock of several
| models. It shipped in a day or two.
| [deleted]
| stagger87 wrote:
| Parts have been going from no lead time to simply not
| available. The large lead times are probably a guess, as many
| parts are going on hard allocation and you have no idea who is
| going to squeeze in before you. Some IC manufacturers are
| saying things like "consider other parts for your design" due
| to these circumstances.
| swader999 wrote:
| Any truth to the rumour that semi truck drive train linkages are
| unavailable North America wide right now? That could exasperate
| things quickly.
| jhickok wrote:
| For what it's worth, my brother in law who drives semis had not
| heard of that. I think it might be a tall-tale.
| newbamboo wrote:
| No.
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| Modern trucks contain quite a lot of semiconductors though, so
| I expect they'll be affected in some way.
| [deleted]
| MisterTea wrote:
| Do you mean U-joints? Or the major components themselves such
| as transmission, driveshaft, axle, differential, brake
| chambers, etc?
| brk wrote:
| I think he means general availability of trucks and drivers.
| Not drivetrain components specifically.
| X-Istence wrote:
| No drivetrain components are becoming unavailable.
|
| https://www.jittruckparts.com/blog/post/3-takeaways-from-
| the... https://www.ccjdigital.com/maintenance/article/15066
| 337/truc...
| swader999 wrote:
| Yeah u joints
| whatshisface wrote:
| Smart business people will take this as a lesson about the
| dangers of zero-inventory manufacturing. Unscrupulous business
| people will continue running the business at high risk, knowing
| that they will probably be gone by the time a problem arises.
| Very smart leaders will use this as an opportunity to think about
| how to stop their companies from forgetting someone's involvement
| with a project or process during internal transfers or
| promotions; the leading route through which unscrupulous business
| people escape responsibility from secret risk.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Unscrupulous business people will continue running the
| business at high risk, knowing that they will probably be gone
| by the time a problem arises.
|
| Or they can just price gouge. Heads I win, tails you lose.
| wyager wrote:
| "Price gouging" is precisely the behavior that makes it
| economical to keep around extra stock in case of supply
| shocks. Negative public reaction to, and laws against, "price
| gouging" is the reason almost no business chooses to absorb
| the cost of keeping around an extra reserve.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > "Price gouging" is precisely the behavior that makes it
| economical to keep around extra stock in case of supply
| shocks.
|
| That idea doesn't hold a drop of water. If price gouging
| were legal, are you going to stockpile masks and sanitizer
| for a hundred years, so you're ready for the next gobal
| pandemic? Of course not: it's a dumb idea and you'd
| bankrupt yourself in storage fees and spoilage. Even an
| actual distributor wouldn't do that, given how short
| business time horizons are.
|
| What a smart price gouger would _actually_ do is watch the
| news closely and rush out to try to buy up as much as they
| can before the general public acts, then sit outside the
| store they bought them from and scalp the goods at an
| exorbitant markup. Then they can satisfy their greed
| _without_ wasting money on long term storage fees.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| > Smart business people will take this as a lesson about the
| dangers of zero-inventory manufacturing
|
| I disagree. Something entirely different is going on. Before
| the pandemic, onshoring of basic components started picking up
| (Trump's erratic behavior made planning really challenging) but
| the pandemic kicked it into overdrive (and Biden's policy plans
| will only increase it).
|
| I know people that are "Tier 3" manufactures - suppliers to the
| suppliers of the suppliers. They have more business than they
| can handle and are no longer willing to take on risk from
| sh*tty customers.
|
| JiT/0-inventory doesn't truly exist - somewhere you have to
| build enough stock to ensure smooth delivery during line
| changeovers, shift changes, machine repairs, and all the other
| completely normal minor "disruptions". It's invisible at the
| high levels of manufacturing because it's not on your loading
| dock.
|
| Smart business people will realize that supplier relationships
| are more important than ever. You have to screw them over less
| than the other guys or things get really choppy really fast.
| unixhero wrote:
| This is also driven by investor expectations. Not "business
| people".
| whatshisface wrote:
| A lot of this goes on inside departments where investors
| don't have any substantial insight.
| unixhero wrote:
| They do once a company gets additional funding and or when
| a company is bought. Investors tend to sit on the boards
| and yield significant power. You're not wrong, but I don't
| agree :)
| whatshisface wrote:
| I could be wrong but I don't imagine most of the
| manufacturing economy as being operated by companies that
| have due diligence done on them very often. Acquisitions
| happen but once a decade would be considered very often.
| Depending on the size of the company boards are often
| completely clueless about ground level details; I can
| hardly imagine someone on the board of P&G knowing a
| single thing about the supply chain risk of an individual
| SKU.
| rwmj wrote:
| Work laptop was quoted today as delivery in "up to" 24 weeks
| (with well-informed people saying it might well take that long).
|
| And I cannot find anyone with Raspberry Pi CM3+ compute modules
| with delivery before April 2022.
| yread wrote:
| indeed, I'm shopping for a laptop and Hp firefly 14 g8 has est.
| delivery mid march
| kogepathic wrote:
| I ordered an HP ProBook in April 2021 and I'm still waiting.
| The original delivery was scheduled for July, and that's been
| pushed back twice now.
|
| A few weeks ago they emailed me saying the AX200 is
| unavailable and my choice was Realtek WiFi, or cancel my
| order.
|
| I'm seriously wondering if they'll ever deliver. I might
| cancel my order if Ryzen 6000 is released before they manage
| to ship.
| yread wrote:
| I have 2 lenovos here to try them out. Carbon with ax201
| and p14s with realtek. The realtek is about twive slower
| with my wifi
| lbriner wrote:
| Honest question: How can everyone be short of chips? I
| understand that e.g. car makers reduced their orders and their
| capacity was given to other manufacturers so they are kind of
| screwed but surely since the overall capacity got increased
| (albeit by a relatively small amount) then _some_ manufacturers
| should have stuff.
|
| As far as I can see, pretty much everyone who uses electronics
| seems to be not just "a bit short" but royally screwed at the
| moment.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Well, bear in mind that you're only hearing about the people
| who're complaining and those will tend to be large
| manufacturers with significant production volumes. The little
| shops all over the place that bought a year's inventory are
| fine now but still anxiously wondering what will happen when
| inventory runs out.
|
| I just left my last job (engineering services) a couple
| months ago, but we were already warning new customers that
| they should be prepared to buy whatever inventory we could
| find if they wanted to be able to ship product by Christmas.
| aseipp wrote:
| In the abstract, it's sort of like asking "How can there
| still be traffic jams on road XYZ, when there's an open lane
| that was added recently?" The problem isn't the number of
| lanes, it's that fundamentally that mode of traffic (mass
| individiual transit) has capacity limitations, which when
| exceeded cause it to go into a "bad" state, after which
| recovery is difficult and arduous. Furthermore, just because
| you stop letting cars on the specific road doesn't mean the
| jam resolves instantly; you actually have to significantly
| reduce pressure over time before that can happen. And that
| jam causes cars to overflow into other roads, causing other
| problems. Just removing the "trigger" (too many oncoming
| cars) that caused the problem is not enough to recover from
| either the initial problems, or the side effects.
|
| People here are using all kinds of networking/hardware
| analogies and while generally I'm loathe to use those (they
| often reek of "All I have is a hammer"-syndrome), you _do_
| see these problems a lot in such designs. A good example is
| when something like a database goes down due to having too
| much load. Recovering from this failure often isn 't just a
| matter of going from "too much load" to "enough load to
| handle", you actually have to shed significantly more load
| than that to recover the system, because that initial failure
| might cause a cascade of failures that prevents that. This
| often manifests as a kind of ritual where a system admin
| pulls a big number of levers in the engine room all labeled
| "Do Not Touch" in just the right order to shed load and
| reboot things correctly. Real world supply chains are doing
| the same thing, but their actions are priced in and done
| months in advance. Logistics is a hell of a thing.
|
| I realize this is not a concrete answer about electronic
| supply chains (someone else can handle that) but rather a
| more abstract classification, but I think the general idea
| applies here.
| brink wrote:
| Whatever your opinion is about the lockdowns, there is one thing
| everyone should be able to agree on; they destabilize just about
| everything. I'm worried about people going hungry or not being
| able to heat their home this winter from the ripple effects.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Weird to blame the lockdowns when the real cause was the
| pandemic. It's not like everyone was going to continually
| working normally in crowded spaces with people dropping like
| flies in the hospitals. China especially was hit so incredibly
| badly in that first wave; it was always gonna go pear-shaped no
| matter what.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > when the real cause was the pandemic.
|
| No, the lockdowns were the cause not the pandemic. We didn't
| have to do lockdowns--they weren't on anybody's pandemic
| plans until March of 2020. Lockdowns and our reaction to
| Covid was entirely upon humans.
|
| > It's not like everyone was going to continually working
| normally in crowded spaces with people dropping like flies in
| the hospitals. China especially was hit so incredibly badly
| in that first wave
|
| Were they really though? Or was the hysteria in March off the
| charts?
| Factorium wrote:
| Life continued as normal in Sweden, Russia, Belarus... the
| pandemic 'response' was driven by the media and politicians.
| If there is surge of deaths in nursing homes (typically 50%
| of COVID deaths), it has no impact on the rest of the
| economy.
|
| Many of those same politicians later benefitted to tune of
| millions of dollars from advance knowledge of federal bank
| intervention in markets. If there was no lockdown, this
| opportunity would not have occurred. There was a clear
| conflict of interest.
|
| https://www.yahoo.com/news/fed-vice-chair-traded-
| stocks-1527...
|
| Its the same for individuals who bought into MRNA startups
| eg. BioNTech in 2019 - there's a clear financial motivation
| to promote disruptive lockdown, in order to position vaccines
| as the cure.
|
| https://trialsitenews.com/gates-earns-10x-on-biontech-in-
| jus...
|
| Its likely that lockdowns worsen COVID, because of the
| reduction in health from lower Vitamin D (staying inside),
| poorer diets, increased stress, and reduction of exposure of
| younger people (school cancellations, nightclub closures
| etc.) who usually form the bulk of the herd immunity
| population for seasonal respiratory viruses.
| tyrfing wrote:
| > If there was no lockdown, this opportunity would not have
| occurred. There was a clear conflict of interest.
|
| Your cited example is from before the WHO even declared a
| pandemic, and 1 day after the first case of community
| spread was reported in the US.
|
| > Life continued as normal in Sweden, Russia, Belarus... If
| there is surge of deaths in nursing homes (typically 50% of
| COVID deaths), it has no impact on the rest of the economy.
|
| Sweden GDP: -8.6% Q2 2020. Russia: -9.6 Q2 2020. Those are
| massive shifts to say "no impact".
|
| Lastly: lockdowns have mostly exempted industrial
| production like Intel and only required operational
| changes.
| [deleted]
| logicchains wrote:
| Indeed. Lockdowns were ineffective at reducing covid
| deaths; https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/P
| IIS2589-5... found that "Rapid border closures, full
| lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with
| COVID-19 mortality per million people.".
|
| Moreover Stats Canada found that in 2020 lockdowns led to
| more excess deaths in under 65s than covid, largely due to
| increased substance abuse:
| https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-
| quotidien/210712/dq210.... "Based on the newly updated
| provisional dataset released today from the Canadian Vital
| Statistics Death Database, from the end of March 2020 to
| the beginning of April 2021, an estimated 62,203 deaths
| were reported among Canadians aged 0 to 64. This represents
| 5,535 more deaths than expected were there no pandemic,
| after accounting for changes in the population such as
| aging. Over the same period, 1,380 COVID-19 deaths have
| been attributed to the same age group (those younger than
| 65), suggesting that the excess mortality is, in large
| part, related to other factors such as increases in the
| number deaths attributed to causes associated with
| substance use and misuse, including unintentional
| (accidental) poisonings and diseases and conditions related
| to alcohol consumption."
|
| Similarly, England saw 4635 non-covid excess deaths since
| July 2nd (compared to 4981 covid deaths):
| https://www.yahoo.com/news/analysis-thousands-more-usual-
| dyi....
| norenh wrote:
| >Life continued as normal in Sweden...
|
| Sweden had less formal lockdowns, but recommendations that
| was largely followed . Also limited opening hours for
| restaurants and closed events with live audience. Most
| workers stayed at home, traveling went down A LOT and
| people could not visit care homes etc. If you compare the
| effect on society it was largely the same as the rest of
| Scandinavia that did have slightly more formal lockdowns.
|
| Lots of companies (restaurants, cultural events like
| concerts, theatre etc.) had real economical issues and a
| lot of people became unemployed. Could be worse, but still
| it is misleading to say life continued as normal. A quick
| google show that unemployment in Sweden doubled during the
| pandemic and that is largely attributed to the measures
| that took place as a response to the pandemic.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > live audience
|
| Exactly. Last year I watched (over the internet) Sanna
| Nielsen sing _Stockholm in my heart_ to an empty field
| where there should have been an audience of thousands.
| Useful to have a bit of an awareness of foreign media to
| see what 's _actually_ happening, not what 's reported by
| delusionists on the internet.
|
| It was never true that there were no restrictions in
| Sweden, just less restrictions.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| That's the utility of high social trust; rules can be
| self enforced by suggestion, rather than by force.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Sweden assumed their population is composed of adults.
| When you treat people like adults, they usually are far
| more likely to act as adults.
| hcknwscommenter wrote:
| Your last paragraph demonstrates a number of profound and
| fundamental misunderstandings.
|
| First, herd immunity does not benefit from more bodies per
| se. You are portraying it as some sort of wall, where
| taking members out of the wall reduces the effectiveness.
| It is not like that at all. The proportion of previously
| exposed individuals required for herd immunity effects goes
| down as the frequency of potential spreading interactions
| goes down.
|
| Second, there is no correlation between lockdown and lower
| vitamin D.
|
| Third, we have clear data showing a profound reduction in
| the spread of other respiratory viruses (RSV, rhino,
| influenza). So, we have had many fewer deaths during
| lockdown that in previous years. A win, and yet you
| characterize it as a loss. Odd.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| Clear data? How many people get tested for influenza? How
| many people which had influenza got tested for covid and
| got a positive result? If I went to my doctor last
| winter, told him I have strong fever and cough, he'll
| either send me to get a PCR test for covid, or no test,
| just tell me it's probably covid and I should stay home
| and monitor symptoms. In such case most flu cases would
| just be assumed covid, and that's where the reduction is
| coming from.
| yibg wrote:
| You are just taking your assumptions and forming opinions
| based on them.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| We've been testing for flu all along.
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/01/11/ami
| d-c...
|
| > The drop occurred despite a sixfold increase in testing
| at public health labs, most of which checked for
| influenza A and B along with the coronavirus.
|
| > Clinical lab testing was slightly lower during the last
| quarter of 2020 as physicians ordered fewer flu tests
| because less of the illness was circulating.
| hcknwscommenter wrote:
| More profound misunderstanding. Influenza tests exists
| and are deployed at scale. In the US, I assure you that
| anyone in the hospital with a high fever of unknown
| origin is tested for several influenza variants. No one
| just "assumes" covid. That is total and complete
| nonsense. We have clear data on influenza
| hospitalizations (edit: and deaths) and the numbers are
| way way down.
| wyager wrote:
| > No one just "assumes" covid.
|
| There were many months where PCR tests were not available
| to hospitals and the CARES act gave hospitals extra money
| for covid cases, so hospitals obviously set the policy of
| "anyone with some covid symptoms is to be considered a
| covid case".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/hospital-payments-and-
| the-...
|
| > The CDC guidance says that officials should report
| deaths in which the patient tested positive for COVID-19
| -- or, if a test isn't available, "if the circumstances
| are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty."
| It further indicates that if a "definite diagnosis of
| COVID-19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely
| (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a
| reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to
| report COVID-19 on a death certificate as 'probable' or
| 'presumed.'"
|
| What else were they supposed to do in that scenario?
| wyager wrote:
| Sounds like you're agreeing with me?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "anyone with some covid symptoms" and "compelling within
| a reasonable degree of certainty" are not the same thing,
| no.
| stadium wrote:
| > Its likely that lockdowns worsen COVID
|
| Please stop spreading conspiracy theories as fact. It is
| literally killing people.
| Gwarzo wrote:
| In all fairness he presented this as "it's likely".
|
| Your own statement "conspiracy theories are killing
| people" is also a bit of a non fact.
|
| While the result of believing in conspiracy theories have
| no doubt lead to someones death, somewhere; presenting it
| as a serious problem whose root effect is "Death" is
| incredibly silly.
| kaibee wrote:
| The vast majority (95%+ afaik?) of deaths at this point
| is among the unvaccinated. Any reason to not get the
| vaccine is a 'conspiracy theory' unless you were
| literally directed not to by your doctor. You can
| literally measure the amount of people dying per day as a
| result of vaccine related conspiracy theories.
| typon wrote:
| Why is blatant misinformation and conspiracy theory allowed
| on HN?
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| HN used to attract people who value personal freedom and
| freedom of speech. Seems like not anymore, like other
| online societies it fell victim to 'curb liberties for
| greater good' philosophy. Unfortunately for them, almost
| every single authoritarian or even totalitarian system
| uses the same excuse.
| evgen wrote:
| > HN used to attract people who value personal freedom
| and freedom of speech
|
| It also used to attract far fewer idiots. Unfortunately,
| those days are long past. Now that HN actually has some
| (small) measureable influence in the industry we get
| brigading sock puppets, politically motivated nuts, and
| the dumpster-fire that is "weekend HN". Just consider the
| fact that a discussion that should be around the current
| nature of the supply chain and sourcing components is
| primarily composed of people arguing over lockdown.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Really? Been here long? Because HN has been a shit show
| the entire time. Like the valley itself, HN has always
| been a political battleground between the ancaps and the
| demsocs.
| CyanLite2 wrote:
| Informed people care about freedoms as much as you do.
| But all the conspiracy theory junk about ivermectin,
| lizard people, and microchipping in the vaccine is the
| modern day equivalent of yelling 'fire!' in a crowded
| theater.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| I feel it would be irresponsible of me not to point out how
| extreme your claims in the last paragraph are and that
| you've provided nothing to back that up even. As even the
| weakest rebuttal, I'd lke point out that by all metrics
| I've seen standard influenza infections and deaths were
| also down due to lockdown/COVID prevention methods which I
| think is a helpful indicator.
|
| Edit: by the time I clicked submit, multiple people had
| also responded to this, which makes me feel better about HN
| today.
| cedilla wrote:
| Life didn't continue in Sweden for about 14,000 people that
| died to COVID due to the lack of proper response, or
| hundreds of thousands with long COVID.
|
| Sweden had the best requisites to come out of the pandemic
| largely unscathed, like its neighbour Norway. Instead they
| decided to just let people get sick and die.
|
| edit: The nonsense about Vitamin D at the end is almost
| hilarious. We're talking about Sweden, right? The country
| on the Arctic Circle?
| nradov wrote:
| Vitamin D supplementation is common in Sweden. There is
| only a weak correlation between latitude and vitamin D
| levels. Hypovitaminosis D is a serious risk factor for
| COVID-19.
|
| https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| When I saw the time lapsed footage of a emergency hospital
| being built in Wuhan in only 10 days I turned to the wife and
| said there is some big $hit coming.
|
| Three weeks later we had 4 cases from Italian tourists - it
| all went pear shaped from there - 2.91M infected and 87,819
| deaths.
| symlinkk wrote:
| China was also welding people in their homes, I don't think
| they should be used as a barometer of how serious something
| is
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Entire city of Wuhan (11 million) and later the province
| of Hubei was placed on lockdown - that is 58 million
| people - it was very serious.
| egypturnash wrote:
| "Welding people into their homes" sure doesn't sound like
| something you do if you don't think things are _super
| fucking serious_ if you ask me.
| [deleted]
| vcxy wrote:
| I don't understand this comment. If you think it's not
| useful evidence of anything, then are you saying that
| welding people into their homes was equally likely if
| nothing was happening and it's just coincidence that they
| did it when they did?
| bserge wrote:
| It was the damn lockdowns, the idiotic response to the
| pandemic, and most importantly the time it went on for. Masks
| and distancing would've been enough after the first half a
| year ffs. But to be fair, we deserve it for running such a
| fragile system.
|
| And they should've just made vaccines mandatory, none of this
| bullshit soft encouragement while people can't cross borders.
|
| People weren't "dropping like flies", either, especially not
| those of working age. Less than 0.1% dead worldwide, the vast
| majority of which were over 65.
|
| Reminds me of that Reddit thread on psychosomatic death where
| people were sad their relatives suddenly died. Their 80-90
| year old relatives. I mean, fuck me, that's a good life lived
| right there. Another year or two doesn't make much of a
| difference. But that's unrelated to Covid, it's just the same
| type of weird fearful thinking.
| eljimmy wrote:
| It's true - China's numbers, unsurprisingly, really don't
| give light to how badly they were impacted. I remember
| reading about how they were building brand new hospitals to
| cope. Literally building a brand new hospital.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/31/pictures-china-builds-two-
| ho...
|
| Looking back on that, it's interesting to think about how
| that should have been a major warning sign of things to come
| for the rest of the world.
| fsslrisrchr wrote:
| That and that they closed their industrial heartland made
| me take COVID seriously at least a month earlier than
| anyone else.
|
| Not much I could do but wait, but at least I didnt find
| myself rushing for toilet paper (I learned during snowdays
| in GA that Americans rush for the milk and toilet paper in
| emergencies)
| antiSingularity wrote:
| They also released vidoes of people literally dropping in
| the street "with Covid".
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Or scenes where a white van stops and couple of folks in
| Hazmat suits jumps out and then proceed to drag infected
| people away.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Not quite "dragged", but this happened to a friend of
| mine.
|
| Her country was on the safe (no isolation) list when her
| plane landed in China, and she then boarded a long
| distance, overnight train.
|
| Her country then announced their first positive case.
|
| When she left the train, two men with hazmat suits and a
| van were on the platform to meet her. They took her to an
| isolation hotel room with an alarmed door. (Not an actual
| lock, as I understand, so she could leave if there were a
| fire. But an alarmed door.)
| fidesomnes wrote:
| > infected supposedly. snatch and grab is never done for
| anyones safety.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| > Literally building a brand new hospital.
|
| We built multiple temporary hospitals in the UK too. And
| albeit not so widely reported, temporary morgues.
|
| To be honest I assumed a whole bunch of countries were
| doing this...
| rataata_jr wrote:
| Temporary hospitals were a thing here in India as well.
| Marriage halls, schools and unis were repurposed to have
| lots of beds for covid patients.
| Retric wrote:
| Yes, the important bit was they where the canary in the
| coal mine for the pandemic.
|
| However, it's really difficult to be proactive here as
| avoiding an issues means people assume it isn't a
| problem. Shutdowns likely saved millions of lives in
| America but as people are only aware of the downsides
| they see not the horrors that where avoided.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The reporting on this has been very weird. UK news had
| massive coverage of deaths in Italy, then when it started
| hitting the UK hard, it went invisible.
|
| I'm not sure the UK emergency Nightingale hospitals were
| actually _used_, since (obviously) you can repurpose a
| building but you can't just find a few thousand
| healthcare staff at short notice.
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56327214
| makomk wrote:
| I don't think the Nightingales were used much, but that
| was mostly because the existing hospitals managed to free
| up more beds than originally anticipated and all the
| available staff ended up there. Naturally, the government
| got endless flack for this, as is often the case when a
| government puts measures into place for a contingency
| that doesn't come to pass. (Also, relying on freeing up
| beds may not have been a good decision in hindsight - one
| of the ways this was achieved was by aggressively kicking
| people with potential hospital-acquired Covid infections
| out into care homes full of people at high risk of dying
| if they caught Covid, with ugly consequences.)
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| > Naturally, the government got endless flack for this,
| as is often the case when a government puts measures into
| place for a contingency that doesn't come to pass.
|
| I'm not one to show much support for the current
| government but the negative (media) reaction to these
| hospitals not actually being needed was pretty short
| sighted.
|
| We should be thankful that the hospitals were there and
| even more thankful that they weren't needed.
|
| There were more obvious things for which to hold the
| government to account.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Yeah, NYC saw "temporary morgues" as well, in the form of
| refrigerated shipping containers. One of the more
| resonant memories of the pandemic from last year to me.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| This happened during the 1918 influenza pandemic as well.
| Rather, the overflow of casualties happened - not
| refrigerated shipping containers.
|
| Samples of sick people were recovered for researching
| that strain of influenza by locating large graves which
| had been created where it remained cold enough to
| preserve the bodies. Until I'd heard that and lived
| through last year, the gravity of it all totally eluded
| me. It takes a lot before people start burying the dead
| in trenches; it's perhaps second to the worst case in
| which we can't even manage that. A scenario common to war
| but nothing else I can think of.
|
| I've been so isolated from these kinds of circumstances
| for all of the pandemic, but I try to remind myself that
| it's exactly why lock downs and masks and all the hassle
| are actually completely reasonable. The alternative is
| incredibly dark, evidently.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| We had the Navy hospital boat and transformed the Javitz
| center (where Comic Con happens) to be hospitals.
|
| Both went virtually unused.
|
| [In NYC]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Not because we didn't need them, though.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/nyregion/ny-
| coronavirus-u...
|
| > On top of its strict rules preventing people infected
| with the virus from coming on board, the Navy is also
| refusing to treat a host of other conditions. Guidelines
| disseminated to hospitals included a list of 49 medical
| conditions that would exclude a patient from admittance
| to the ship.
|
| > Ambulances cannot take patients directly to the
| Comfort; they must first deliver patients to a city
| hospital for a lengthy evaluation -- including a test for
| the virus -- and then pick them up again for transport to
| the ship.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/why-nycs-largest-
| emergency-h...
|
| > But much to the frustration of healthcare workers,
| since that announcement, Javits has taken in nowhere near
| its capacity. As of April 7, the convention center had
| admitted only 66 patients. This was due in large part to
| the strict admission requirements. At first, a patient
| could only be transferred to Javits if they were
| convalescing, or in the recovery period. The fear was
| that Javits didn't have the ICU beds, operating rooms, or
| equipment necessary to handle patients who might relapse
| or need surgery because of an underlying condition.
| 8008135 wrote:
| Better to have it and not need it?
| wyager wrote:
| > Weird to blame the lockdowns when the real cause was the
| pandemic.
|
| The lockdowns were the actual proximate cause for most
| business disruptions.
|
| > It's not like everyone was going to continually working
| normally in crowded spaces with people dropping like flies in
| the hospitals.
|
| People who are employed are usually younger than 65 and
| therefore were never at significant demographic health risk
| from coronavirus.
| [deleted]
| antiSingularity wrote:
| You've got that mixed up. The reason that supply chains are
| in disarray are because of the enormous disruption caused by
| Covid restrictions and lockdowns, not because people were
| literally dying of Covid on the job.
|
| You could infer that if we hadn't acted the way we did, then
| what I described would have actually happened and things
| would be a lot worse. You could also infer that long-term and
| large-scale control of an airbourne respiratory virus through
| social means is ineffectual, and things would have been about
| the same anyway (from a death and disease standpoint).
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| I think the parent was more making the point that _however_
| we chose to deal with the pandemic, it was difficult to
| avoid disruption to the supply chain.
|
| I guess the potential nuance is, blaming it on "lock downs"
| gets vaguely political whereas blaming it on the root
| cause, the pandemic, puts emphasis on the wider point that
| any _actual pandemic_ of this magnitude is of course going
| to disrupt the worlds supply chain one way or another.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > I guess the potential nuance is, blaming it on "lock
| downs" gets vaguely political whereas blaming it on the
| root cause, the pandemic, puts emphasis on the wider
| point that any actual pandemic of this magnitude is of
| course going to disrupt the worlds supply chain one way
| or another.
|
| Thank you for phrasing so perfectly the exact point I was
| making. It feels disingenuous when people solely blame
| the reactions to a worldwide pandemic while ignoring that
| the worldwide pandemic was still gonna be happening
| regardless.
| antiSingularity wrote:
| Does blaming the declining mental and physical state of
| previously healthy people on "lockdowns" also get vaguely
| political? My wife and I did not come near to breakdowns
| as we tried to care for our young family through the
| lockdowns and restrictions because of Covid itself, I can
| tell you that much.
| antiSingularity wrote:
| In my opinion, blaming it on the pandemic is misleading,
| and hides the true cause of our problems. As I said,
| supply chains are disrupted because everyone was confined
| to their houses and completely changed their consumer and
| business spending habits. Referring to the title of this
| article, Intel NIC orders are not disrupted because all
| of the factory workers are dead of Covid. They are
| disrupted because supply and demand of all goods has
| radically changed, and our modern way of life depends on
| a very fragile balance of the flow of goods being
| maintained.
|
| As I also pointed out, we will also never know how much
| good we actually did. You can tell me it's "obvious" that
| it did, but there's no evidence to back that up.
| dboreham wrote:
| Periods of excess supply, and periods of shortage have
| characterized the semiconductor industry since the 1970s.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Even if the factory workers didn't die (some would, but
| most of them wouldn't have) there would still have been
| significant disruption if large parts of the workforce
| were off sick for several weeks.
| antiSingularity wrote:
| You mean, sick with that disease that's asymptomatic some
| huge proportion of the time? And has very little effect
| on most working-age people?
| nicoburns wrote:
| I'm 28, and I'd say a good proportion of my (similarly
| aged) friends in London (say half) have had covid bad
| enough that they were off work and doing very little for
| at least a week by this point. And not everyone of
| working age is that young (and the older people are often
| the most experienced). Relatives in their 40s and 50s
| have often had it worse for several weeks and only able
| to work for some of that time due to working from home.
| Fewer of them seem to have gotten it, but that only seems
| to be because they were more careful about isolating and
| got the vaccine sooner.
| [deleted]
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| How much this was due to organic behaviour changes in the
| population and how much was due to government regulations
| isn't clear to me at this point, only that it was both.
| Sweden and Denmark have ended all covid state restrictions
| afaik - anyone has data on how that affected productivity?
| ihsw wrote:
| The implication that government policy has an effect on
| individual choices is a fallacy -- assertions that
| lockdowns destroyed productivity (it didn't) are false and
| assertions that relieving lockdowns restored productivity
| (it didn't) are also false.
|
| Individuals will behave in their best interest regardless
| of external factors like unelected and unaccountable
| bureaucrats.
| ipqk wrote:
| Before the official lockdown happened in NYC, the city was
| basically already deserted. Virtually no one on trains that
| didn't have to be, and restaurants/bars nearly empty. It was
| going to happen regardless of government intervention.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the hardcore red states in the US would have
| simply soaked up the 0.7% IFR and moved on. That might not
| have helped with semiconductors, but there would probably
| still be meat and potatoes.
| elzbardico wrote:
| The IFR for covid is also heavily stratified by age. The
| latest best estimate from the CDC put it at 0.6% IFR for
| the general population, but at 0.05% for the 18-49 years
| group.
|
| I am still not completely convinced that the choice of
| blanket lockdowns instead of focused protection of risky
| groups didn't make things worse by prolonging the pandemic,
| a.k.a. "flattening the curve".
|
| Old people are not very mobile by nature, and had we kept
| the economy working, but with government assistance, we
| would probably be able to improve the social distancing of
| the elder and the obese for as much as we needed. The rest
| of the population could live their life as usual, with
| minimal consequence, and the virus would peter out when it
| find it difficult to find new host without immunity.
|
| Instead we lockdown indiscriminately, and opened up
| indiscriminately and probably sooner then the ideal,
| because you simply can't keep thing lockdown for the whole
| society for long: Your resources are going to exhaust some
| day.
| r00fus wrote:
| Sure they'd have soaked up the loss but I strongly doubt a
| collapsing healthcare system would have resulted in not
| much "moved on". Delta isn't 0.7 IFR. But even a high IFR
| doesn't calculate how many hospital/ICU beds are used by
| infected but not (yet) dead.
| lettergram wrote:
| From the beginning it was known this would push 130 million
| people nearly to starvation
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/22/africa/coronavirus-famine...
| barney54 wrote:
| The energy situation in Europe and Asia is already ugly. The
| Indians only have about 4 days of coal at their powerplants,
| China has already had blackouts, and in Europe the price of
| natural gas is the equivalent of oil at $200 a barrel.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I disagree, the system has been unstable for years, this was
| just the first Black Swan that happened to land and sent it
| crashing to the ground. This was always going to happen. Taleb
| et al have been warning about the fragility of our systems for
| decades now and that JIT and long supply chains have made
| things even worse.
|
| You're taking the wrong lesson from lockdowns.
| mhandley wrote:
| It may well be that this was the pandemic we needed - really
| bad, but not so bad as to be catastrophic. When the next
| pandemic comes along, we'll be a lot better at fast vaccine
| production and lab testing, more prepared for how to lock
| down early and effectively, and understand better how to keep
| an economy running in lockdown. And the supply chain, when it
| eventually recovers and has time to breath again, will
| realize the value of building in more slack, shorter supply
| chains, etc. In the end though, while a lot could have been
| done much better, society generally has survived this
| disruption surprisingly well so far. Will it survive a worse
| future pandemic or larger disruption? I guess that depends on
| how well the lessons from this one are learned.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Lockdowns are not the whole story, just a major contributing
| factor. Other factors:
|
| - China energy shortages forcing rolling blackouts.
|
| - Long standing under investment in older chip fab
| manufacturing (eg. auto industry).
|
| - Long standing under investment in US port infrastructure,
| causing unprecedented shipping backlogs.
|
| - Copper foil shortage due to over reliance on Chinese sources.
|
| - Covid negative impact on childcare, both informal and formal,
| requiring formerly working parents to now opt for unemployment
| or lower incomes.
| newbamboo wrote:
| - inflation
| analog31 wrote:
| People would have locked themselves down. My work group bailed
| a week before the lockdowns began. Of course some people would
| have locked down by dying. It was really a choice of an
| organized lockdown or a disorganized one.
| heisenbit wrote:
| We were running an over-optimized system on fumes. Such is the
| nature of long periods of high stability with no oversight
| governance enforcing robustness. Any disruption would have had
| self amplifying and propagating consequences.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Blaming lockdowns isn't the full story. Demand for electronics
| is way, way up. Everything from people being bored at home to
| extra stimulus dollars has put extra demand on everything
| electronic.
|
| The effect is amplified as companies are panic-buying every
| part they might possibly need for the next few years.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| > Demand for electronics is way, way up. Everything from
| people being bored at home to extra stimulus dollars has put
| extra demand on everything electronic.
|
| Yep this is a really good point, and not so widely
| understood. A compounding effect of increased demand and
| extremely limited supply...
| bgorman wrote:
| Demand for electronics being up is directly correlated to
| lockdowns. PCs had been a declining sector for years before
| covid lockdowns.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Demand for cars is way up, too, which isn't expected in
| lockdown conditions.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Sure it is, you couldn't (or still can't) safely carpool
| or take public transit so you need a personal vehicle.
| Simultaneously people are ordering record amounts of food
| delivery causing a surge in car based employment greater
| than was seen with Uber and Lyft of yore.
| newbamboo wrote:
| - inflation
| switch007 wrote:
| Really? With governments saying avoid public transport
| and encouraging people to work remotely which caused a
| huge number of people to move to the countryside where
| public transport is largely non existent therefore
| requiring cars.
| dagw wrote:
| Plus, with airplanes and international travel being off
| limits, the number of people going on road trips for
| their vacations has no doubt greatly increased.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| Demand for GPUs at least is probably just as much if not
| more due to the crypto bull run that took place.
| newbamboo wrote:
| - inflation
| r00fus wrote:
| > The effect is amplified as companies are panic-buying every
| part they might possibly need for the next few years.
|
| I wonder how much commodities speculation are screwing up the
| availability...
| the-dude wrote:
| Manufacturers were anticipating lower demand due to COVID
| effects, not lockdowns per se.
|
| It is not like life would have continued uninterrupted without
| lockdowns.
| goalieca wrote:
| Every economic forecast I read in April 2020 assumed things
| would be open by q3/q4 last year.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Sounds like that forecast was wrong then. Also, you
| should've been looking at the forecasts from
| epidemiologists, not economists. Viruses don't care about
| what economists want.
| tenpies wrote:
| Unfortunately - and as we can continue to see - there is
| nothing stopping scientists from being political mouth
| pieces. "Trust the science" comes with a huge asterisk:
| only the science of the approved scientific speaker by
| the approved political party and only of the approved
| narrative.
|
| The scientists that spoke out against this were quickly
| shunned, the wagons circled, and when evidence became to
| crushing to hold the narrative, history was simply re-
| written via gaslighting.
|
| With economists at least we know they will regularly be
| wrong and that you will openly see differing schools of
| thought on even the most foundational of issues.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Which was pretty stupid given that public health
| professionals (and indeed people here on HN) were
| forecasting the pandemic lasting a minimum of 18 months
| from around that time when it became clear that it wasn't
| going to be contained to China.
| goalieca wrote:
| They were using the model forecasts from the health
| community. We all knew it would become endemic but it was
| hard to forecast lockdowns would continue for so long.
| szundi wrote:
| This. And then when people started buy more cars instead of
| less, the automotive industry squeezed out all silicon for
| themselves with their contracts and power. Here we are from
| other industries without a single chip, while the car
| manufacturers probably are sitting on 2 years of supplies
| now.
| silksowed wrote:
| how much of this is due to the monopolization of manufacturing to
| a the few most efficient players? concentrated efficiency and
| concentrated risk?
| scardycat wrote:
| Just in time manufacturing contributes a lot to this shortage. We
| rely so much on integrated supply chain logistics, the pandemic
| clearly brought in to focus the "optimizations" of JIT
| manufacturing. The lack of local supply pools as buffer is so
| short sighted.
| dv_dt wrote:
| It's not clear to me that any of the proposed causes are singly
| driving the shortages. The closest analogy in my mind is that
| our global production and logistics system is suffering from
| multiple shifting bottlenecks with secondary induced
| inefficiencies. Those new inefficiencies include JIT buffer
| exhaustion, related slowdowns, capacity reduction, priority
| inversions and resource contention.
| slg wrote:
| I don't know much about how supply chains function so I am
| wondering how is just in time manufacturing still to blame when
| the chip shortage has been ongoing for over a year? Wouldn't
| everyone have burned through their inventory at this point?
| [deleted]
| captainmuon wrote:
| The idea is not that they should have had a stock for
| multiple years of demand. Rather, if you have a warehouse and
| are able to _build_ a bit of stock, you can ramp up much
| faster.
|
| The actual closings due to lockdown were only a couple of
| weeks in most industries. What really hurt imho was that
| orders were cancelled, production capability was scaled back,
| but demand came back faster than expected.
| slg wrote:
| It makes sense why it would ease the initial shock from
| shutdowns, but how would it help with the cancelled orders
| and scaled back production? It seems like it would just
| stretch out the shock over a longer period of time. Would
| that actually stop the disruptions because it seems like
| they would eventually burn through all the inventory
| eventually because of that?
| dannyw wrote:
| It takes two years to ramp up more fab capacity.
| makomk wrote:
| Not using just in time manufacturing might help with short-term
| disruptions, but we're approaching the two year point on the
| pandemic and the associated global disruptions and it's just
| not realistic to keep enough stock in for that long. The
| current generation of stuff like CPUs and GPUs hasn't even been
| released and in production for that long...
| dwild wrote:
| Well to be fair, it's not 2 years of stock that would be
| needed, as there was still some production that was happening
| during theses 2 years.
| kennywinker wrote:
| My understanding is that the 1st order disruption is long-
| over. The factories and ports are all back online, etc. two
| years out all that's left is the ripple effects of the
| original ~6 month disturbance. It's just that those ripples
| are amplified by the way the supply chain operates (just in
| time).
| makomk wrote:
| The first-order disruption definitely isn't long over -
| important manufacturing locations like Vietnam and Malaysia
| were in lockdown until as recently a week or two ago, and I
| don't think things are back to operating normally there yet
| Parts of China might still actually be under lockdown right
| now.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Is lockdown really effecting manufacturing in those
| places? Because when we had "lockdown" where I live that
| meant no fun, not no work - but of course everywhere has
| done it differently
| brewdad wrote:
| So we are at the hoarding toilet paper stage of the crisis?
| Everyone is ordering as much as they can, so effectively no
| one actually gets their order filled.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| bullwhip effect, this stuff has been known for decades. Our
| entire global economy depends on ideal conditions to function
| properly
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect
| ericbarrett wrote:
| I agree, but if a manufacturer has the means (physical and
| budgetary) to store a significant supply of components, they
| can order larger quantities with longer lead times, so they
| would still be more resilient in extended shortage
| situations.
| vkou wrote:
| This is great for that particular supplier, but an order
| for a larger quantity will just squeeze the inventory of
| every other supplier even more.
|
| The problem is that we are trying to squeeze blood out of a
| rock. Demand exceeds supply, and it takes years to scale
| supply up. It doesn't matter if we are using JIT or not,
| the suppliers for the bottlenecks have all been working at
| 100% since essentially the start of the pandemic.
| genericone wrote:
| Extended shortage situations account for
| fires/earthquakes/tsunamis/singularities, short events with
| long-term but predictable downstream effects. Extended
| shortage planning doesn't account for 2 year-long
| political-struggles, which requires something more like
| war-time planning, spending, and the inevitable waste from
| stockpiling.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I keep seeing that argument every single time and keep
| wondering, isn't there reason to implement JIT? Something like
| cost benefits outweigh the resilience risks?
|
| It's not like people start dying on the streets, simply things
| are getting expensive and hard to get during disturbances.
|
| Are there calculations demonstrating that JIT the risks of
| optimization are more harmful than helpful in the long run?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I don't think anybody actually did the math on this though.
| It's more like "I get a fat bonus if I decrease inventory
| without a significant effect to sales over the next 3
| quarters" so as long as the near-term risk is worth it, it
| gets done.
|
| [edit]
|
| There's also the "If I don't implement JIT, I'll get replaced
| with someone who will" effect in a lot of cases too.
| Guest42 wrote:
| That's the impression I get, not so much JIT but rather
| limiting supply budgets as much as possible. A lot of
| companies tout Toyota as the pinnacle of manufacturing
| without realizing that they are not Toyota and there was
| more to Toyota's success than JIT.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| JIT is a boogeyman in some cases. Ultimately it doesn't make
| sense to stockpile parts most of the time for financial and
| other reasons. If Intel had a warehouse of 1Gb chips, they
| would have a disincentive to invest in 10Gb, for example.
|
| The dysfunction is the accounting games that companies are
| incentivized to keep stuff off of their books. Every company
| wants to look like a software company and avoid stuff like
| inventory. Some of this is absurd - many companies don't
| "own" property, for example, they lease through entities that
| are sometimes only nominally separate.
|
| Sometimes companies will outsource processes and fulfillment
| to layers of other entities, each of which do the same thing.
| Disruptions cascade - I had one issue last year where a
| supplier's supplier had issues getting boxes, and a two week
| delay there delayed downstream fulfillment by 6 weeks. All
| because the people who ship the end product couldn't deliver,
| and the "principal" outsourced the actual management of the
| process to a third party. If the principal controlled it,
| they would have gotten it done, as they were punished
| severely by the contract penalties. They bet on everything
| working out ok and lost.
| laumars wrote:
| Ironically the biggest two IT companies in the world, Apple
| and Amazon, are ones that go out of their way to control
| the entire supply chain.
| Naga wrote:
| The problem JIT is solving is that raw materials inventory
| ties up capital (it costs money), and having warehouses of
| materials is money sitting that could be used for different
| purposes (capital expenditures, salaries, dividends, etc).
| Then, if for some reason the raw materials aren't worthwhile
| anymore (spoilage, tech change, etc), you've wasted money on
| something that needs to be disposed of. In theory, the goal
| would be to have no inventory at all.
|
| JIT is a firm level decision, not a society level. It's up to
| each firm to decide how much of something they are buying.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I keep seeing that argument every single time and keep
| wondering, isn't there reason to implement JIT? Something
| like cost benefits outweigh the resilience risks?
|
| Just think about evolution: species specialize for short(er)
| term benefits, but then conditions change and a lot of those
| specialists go extinct.
|
| JIT is specializing for an extremely reliable and undisrupted
| supply chain.
| gumby wrote:
| JIT assumes a steady state, so squeezes all the buffering out
| of the system. But buffers are useful.
|
| > It's not like people start dying on the streets
|
| Well, that's a good example: there was a huge rise in need
| for masks and other protective gear about 20 months ago and
| the supply chain couldn't handle it. That was why people were
| encouraged to use makeshift cloth masks, to leave the
| surgical masks and respirators for medical personnel who had
| the greatest exposure.
|
| Eliminating buffering cuts cost and can lead to lower prices
| as well. But at best it merely pushes the buffer elsewhere.
|
| Another way of looking at it: leaving seatbelts out of cars
| would save money and really, most cars are not involved in
| accidents so are they really needed? Pass the savings on to
| the customer!
| mrtksn wrote:
| I know the benefits of having a buffer but do we need
| buffers everywhere? As in your example, wouldn't be much
| better to have a buffer in the hospitals(or maybe some kind
| of regional emergency organisations) as a precaution for an
| outbreak instead of advocating for buffers across the
| textile industry?
|
| I like the way you put it, JIT simply pushes the buffer
| elsewhere. However, this seems like a very good thing to
| have because those who cannot afford running out of
| something can do a buffer themselves instead of blindly
| everyone keeps buffering.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I know the benefits of having a buffer but do we need
| buffers everywhere? As in your example, wouldn't be much
| better to have a buffer in the hospitals(or maybe some
| kind of regional emergency organisations) as a precaution
| for an outbreak instead of advocating for buffers across
| the textile industry?
|
| The problem with that specific kind of stockpile buffer
| is that it can become quickly depleted. No mask stockpile
| would have been sufficient for the COVID pandemic.
|
| From my layman's perspective, you need stockpiles _and_
| excess production capacity to weather a supply shock. It
| 's sort of like backup power in a data center: you have
| UPS batteries (stockpiled power) to fill the gap until
| the generators (extra production capacity) can come
| online.
| mhb wrote:
| You also need the ability to raise prices when there are
| shortages in order to encourage buffering. Unfortunately,
| the people who like anti-price gouging laws appear to
| prefer shortages and misallocation of goods.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > You also need the ability to raise prices when there
| are shortages in order to encourage buffering.
|
| No, but I can see how someone would some to that
| conclusion by thinking narrowly in terms of pop free
| market dogma.
|
| > Unfortunately, the people who like anti-price gouging
| laws appear to prefer shortages and misallocation of
| goods.
|
| Price gouging is actually a worse misallocation of goods.
| It's _still a shortage_ , but it just doesn't hit rich
| people as hard. If you have food stockpiles to barely
| feed everyone through winter, it's not a proper
| allocation to let the market price food so richer people
| can feast and some poor people starve to death.
|
| Price gouging introduces a lot of (especially short term)
| inefficiencies as greedy parasites make profit-seeking
| decisions based on their greed and not social need.
|
| Markets work very well in some contexts, but it's a
| mistake to think they work best in all contexts. Crisis
| shortages are not one of the contexts where they work
| well.
| caylus wrote:
| > It's still a shortage, but it just doesn't hit rich
| people as hard.
|
| It sounds like you're assuming that increases in price
| don't increase quantity supplied. While this may be true
| in some contexts (e.g. completely unexpected global
| crisis), there are many cases in which it does:
|
| - In a local crisis, an increase in price encourages
| shipping in goods from areas not in crisis. Why would
| someone take the risk of shipping for the same price they
| can get elsewhere?
|
| - As the GP mentioned, the ability to raise prices
| provides an incentive for stockpiling goods. Why would
| someone incur the expense of maintaining a stockpile in
| exchange for no benefit in a case where the stockpile is
| needed?
|
| I'd also argue that it's very unlikely for price
| increases to render all basic necessities impossible to
| afford, even for poor people. Consider water - even for
| someone living in poverty what percent of their budget
| would you guess is allocated to water? Maybe 5%? So even
| a doubling of the price of water (for context, price
| gouging laws typically restrict price increases to around
| 10%) would only increase that to 10%, leaving plenty of
| room for them to reallocate not-as-essential parts of
| their budget. For food perhaps the original percent is
| higher, but there's much more opportunity to substitute
| cheaper foods in a crisis situation.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > - In a local crisis, an increase in price encourages
| shipping in goods from areas not in crisis. Why would
| someone take the risk of shipping for the same price they
| can get elsewhere?
|
| One reason is that people don't operate exclusively in
| the market paradigm, but free market economics makes the
| (false) simplifying assumption that they do.
|
| > - As the GP mentioned, the ability to raise prices
| provides an incentive for stockpiling goods. Why would
| someone incur the expense of maintaining a stockpile in
| exchange for no benefit in a case where the stockpile is
| needed?
|
| If you think about that actual scenario, that makes no
| sense as a business decision. People aren't going to pay
| the costs of stockpiling something in the off chance they
| can benefit from price gouging during an unpredictable
| crisis.
|
| What really happens is parasites try to drain the supply
| chain so they can flip the goods at a price-gouging
| markup. You saw this during the pandemic: dudes driving
| around buying all the hand sanitizers and masks they
| could, then keeping them in their garage away from where
| they were needed, hoping to make a big personal profit.
| All they did was exacerbate the shortages.
| lisper wrote:
| It's a value judgement. You can optimize for the normal case
| at the cost of disruptions when the unusual happens, or you
| can optimize for the unusual case at the cost of inefficiency
| when things are normal. But you can't do both.
| unilynx wrote:
| Well only a decade ago Moore's law ensured that keeping any
| amount of stock on CPUs/GPU/memory would cost you a lot of
| money, as that would depreciate _fast_. JIT was a good idea
| until it wasn 't
| whatshisface wrote:
| The Moore's law argument does not apply to low performance
| embedded chips which are whatever the engineers want them
| to be, but _must_ be exactly what the engineers wanted them
| to be. The chips themselves were often the same between
| different models of the product, but even though demand for
| them was a very predictable function of the number of
| products made, and stable over time (pursuant to the
| stability of demand for the product), everyone 's inventory
| consisted of whatever was in the box that was being carried
| from the loading dock to the pick and place machine.
| [deleted]
| q-big wrote:
| > Well only a decade ago Moore's law ensured that keeping
| any amount of stock on CPUs/GPU/memory would cost you a lot
| of money, as that would depreciate _fast_.
|
| This clearly holded for PC components, but rather not for,
| say, microcontrollers for conservatively developed products
| with a much longer service life and/or duration of sell.
|
| Consider, for example, a stock of microcontrollers for an
| industrial machinery that
|
| * will be used for 20 years by the customers,
|
| * will be sold for the next 10 years,
|
| * after these 10 years, for the remaining lifetime of the
| machine, the customer will still be able to buy spare
| parts.
| cannabis_sam wrote:
| If computer network technology had been built on the same
| shortsighted business logic we would never have had the
| internet..
|
| Imagine a link-layer protocol without any buffers, no
| retransmissions or any kind of resilience, built on the most
| optimistic estimates; that's essentially what the "business
| world" has built with their irrational philosophy based around
| "the market"..
| culpable_pickle wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Datagram_Protocol would
| like a word
| sudosysgen wrote:
| UDP is almost _always_ used with buffers, error correction
| codes, and other measures to deal with imperfection
| dv_dt wrote:
| While there are users for UDP, I would guess that TCP
| accounts for more traffic by choice. Of course there are
| sometimes problems associated with too much buffer too.
| cannabis_sam wrote:
| Ouch, thanks for the pushback!
|
| But isn't it called tcp/ip for a reason?
| MandieD wrote:
| Do you use a VPN to connect your corporate laptop to your
| employer's network from home? Do you use Wireguard, or
| its easier-to-use derivative, Tailescale, to connect any
| of your devices? Do you use any form of VOIP (Voice over
| IP)?
|
| (Edited because I forgot the big one) Have you ever used
| a name and not an IP address to connect to something on
| the internet?
|
| Congratulations! You're a UDP user!
| cannabis_sam wrote:
| Yes! I absolutely use UDP!
|
| I once built a prototype network stack on top of a udp
| library that simulated a physical network layer..
|
| Doesn't change the fact that tcp/ip was the network stack
| that enabled the internet.
|
| But I was trying to sidestep that tangent by mentioning
| link layer protocols in my second paragraph.
| stragies wrote:
| Some people I talk to have started repurposing cheap previous-gen
| Android TV QuadCore ARM SBCs for the embedded (mostly headless)
| projects they previously used NUCs and PIs in. They are available
| at moderate quantity with short delay at under 25EUR a pop.
| nimbius wrote:
| somewhat related, but can anyone tell me why PCEngines
| specifically use Intel nics in their ALIX systems? surely realtek
| and other players have caught up to them by now for the
| performance envelope of the board.
| dannyw wrote:
| Try using a realtek NIC on a BSD system and see how many days
| before your networking softlocks.
|
| Also some distros just don't include the drivers. I had to
| build the realtek 2.5gbe drivers from source, on an unnetworked
| system, last month! Latest ubuntu distro.
| stragies wrote:
| Afaik, the Intel Network cards are more like dedicated CPUs,
| that can run various "programs", one of which is "standard,
| fully-transparent network card".
|
| If signed with the right key, some can run entire stacks, such
| as iSCSI, FCoE and others. The Multiport ones can do switching,
| filtering, and some basic routing in hardware. The "other"
| operating system is totally unencumbered by this.
|
| This is routinely used by e.g. Intel AMT/ME, which programs the
| network card to reroute some destination ports to (in this case
| internal) recipients (the ME-processor).
|
| That feature is what makes out-of-band management possible for
| people having added the right keys to ME, or knowing one of the
| preinstalled ones.
|
| And as a HW-Vendor you never know; maybe your client might one
| day want to use these "offloading" features. Maybe he just
| doesn't know it yet...
|
| So when the good offer from Intel comes in, you go for it.
| detaro wrote:
| Driver support and stability.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Currently working on a new design for a client, it's quite a
| pain. Lots of things, even mundane things like connectors and
| such are out of stock / low stock and usually quite a bit more
| expensive.
| lbriner wrote:
| How are non-ICs in short-supply? Did I miss a whole story about
| supply chain problems or is it literally that overall demand
| has maxed out overall supply and most people don't have the
| means to increase production?
| X-Istence wrote:
| If you look at the various ports, the ships are waiting to
| enter so that they can offload.
|
| There's a lack of shipping options available to get items to
| the US in the first place, that means that various bits and
| bobs necessary to manufacture a widget aren't available
| because they are stuck in a shipping container somewhere
| around the world and there is no available space to put it on
| a ship.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| Yep outside of a few industries that have specific supply
| constraints (like semiconductors) the broad shortages are
| mostly due to the ports. They have zero room to absorb the
| additional demand thanks to the longshoreman unions having
| blocked all opportunities for automation and efficiency
| improvements over the past couple decades, so a record
| number of ships are waiting at anchor for many days if not
| weeks outside of major US ports.
| unglaublich wrote:
| Blaming failures on unions and employees' rights is a
| traditional excuse for US companies it seems.
| qiqitori wrote:
| I was looking to buy parallel EEPROMs (DIP) a couple days ago
| and found they were pretty expensive and mostly unavailable. I
| was wondering if that's because this type of IC is rather niche
| these days, or whether it's due to what's called the "chip
| shortage".
|
| If anyone knows or has an educated opinion, please let me
| know...
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Price gouging in most cases, supported by difficulties in
| transportation and customs. I work in manufacturing (not IT
| products) and this is what we see. Chip shortage is real, but
| not every single type of chip.
| MisterTea wrote:
| In DIP packages? I purchased a few EEPROMS and Flash parts
| from Digikey recently to fix a old industrial laser. I spent
| like $5 on the EEproms and something like $2.50 for the
| equivalent flash parts. I was trying to see if I could
| migrate the machine to flash as the parts were pin compatible
| and the laser uses battery backed SRAM for storage. Worked
| perfectly.
| joezydeco wrote:
| It's a niche part and you shouldn't be surprised if it's
| discontinued soon. Think about migrating your design.
|
| I'm starting to see end-of-life notices for a lot of parts
| that I wouldn't normally see at their age, but if they're low
| runners that would totally make sense.
|
| If you see lead times longer than a year, that's your early
| warning.
| Qub3d wrote:
| I imagine one end result of this supply squeeze is that a
| lot of bespoke or legacy parts will be finally removed from
| designs that have up until now been "good enough". To cite
| the most common example, vehicle manufacturers' most common
| supply pain-point is ICs built on a ~200nm process, which
| was state of the art between 1996-2000.
|
| I understand it makes sense to move slower for chips
| embedded in long-life devices, and they need additional
| validation; however, at some point if lead times are long
| enough and prices stay high it becomes reasonable to start
| that extended validation process on newer chips.
|
| This would hopefully mean consumers start seeing
| infotainment with much better performance in the second
| half of 2022, and this lines up with industry expectations
| of when the squeeze will lift.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > To cite the most common example, vehicle manufacturers'
| most common supply pain-point is ICs built on a ~200nm
| process, which was state of the art between 1996-2000.
|
| I'm a total layman, but that might be misunderstanding
| "state of the art." Larger feature sizes may be _better_
| for their applications if they allow the parts to be more
| reliable.
| [deleted]
| Qub3d wrote:
| I meant the node itself was state of the art. The
| application reliability is important, but in practice
| will be balanced against cost of goods -- just like how
| consumer PCs use non-ECC memory and try to handle it in
| software (or just decide occasional crashes are
| acceptable), there would likely be additional failure
| compensation added in other areas to adjust for otherwise
| cheaper parts on a smaller process node.
|
| And if you think a car company wouldn't use a less-
| reliable part because of safety concerns, look at the
| Pinto: Ford _knew_ it had a tendency to, erm, explode,
| but calculated _paying off lawsuits_ would be cheaper
| than fixing the problem. [1]
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost%E2%80%
| 93benefi...
| formerly_proven wrote:
| There are one to two multimedia SoCs in a car. There are
| hundreds to thousands of mixed-signal and power ASICs in
| a car. Those are on large nodes, not because they're
| outdated, but because that's what you use for power and
| mixed signal. TSMC N7 is _great_ for that 2 GHz ARM quad-
| core SoC, but garbage when you need to drive a piezo fuel
| valve.
| joezydeco wrote:
| Infotainment systems have multiple-year lead times and
| validating a PCB change can run just as long. Unless
| you're Tesla.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Probably because such ICs are rather niche indeed. Any way of
| re-architecting your system to use an SPI flash chip? If
| anything else fails, you could go the extreme route and get a
| microcontroller to "translate"...
| camtarn wrote:
| Yep, similarly. We work with PLCs where the manufacturer
| normally has fairly deep stocks of all the PLC CPUs, expansion
| cards, etc - guaranteed part availability is one of the big
| selling points of using PLCs. Some things are still available
| but others are completely out, to the point where we're
| considering completely redesigning some of our smaller
| experimental projects around e.g. Raspberry Pis.
|
| What we do when RPis stop being available is yet to be seen...
| chakspak wrote:
| I think that's already started to happen. I had to buy the
| Essentials kit this week because a standalone Pi was not
| available from any distributor, with lead times of up to a
| year.
| vanattab wrote:
| https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/20/raspberry_pi_supply_e.
| ..
|
| rpi4 are already getting hard to find.
| stragies wrote:
| Repurposeable QuadCore ARM SOCs are fairly easy to find in
| the form of previous-gen Android TV Boxes, for fractions of
| the price of the RPI4. Some are weaker, some are slightly
| stronger, but in many embedded situation these do well
| enough.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Had few surplus STM32 reels. Ebayed them for a few thousand
| bucks.
|
| I can only imagined how much money did the people who envisaged
| the shortage early enough got from hoarding chips.
| Aissen wrote:
| Yes, you design for what you can order instead of ordering
| what's in your design.
| stagger87 wrote:
| Parts are going from in-stock to multi-year lead times within
| a single design iteration. uC's/passives/FPGAs/etc.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-10-05 23:02 UTC)