[HN Gopher] Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a tw...
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Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock
Author : johnbarron
Score : 331 points
Date : 2026-03-13 12:31 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tomshardware.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tomshardware.com)
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Do you remember this quote from wheel of time?
|
| "Let the lord of chaos rule" ...
| trollbridge wrote:
| Aren't there huge stockpiles of helium in the US? I can buy party
| sized tanks at Target or big tanks at the usual places like
| welding supply places.
| vasco wrote:
| Messer Completes Acquisition of Federal Helium System from BLM
| https://www.messer-us.com/press-releases/messer-completes-ac...
| owebmaster wrote:
| Foi de vasco (died).
| bix6 wrote:
| Why did we sell it instead of lease? This seems like
| something that should be in public hands.
| cagenut wrote:
| sorry thats too far left wing an opinion in america today
| infogulch wrote:
| The sale was completed in 2024.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I feel that as soon as the existential threat easened
| with the splintering of the Soviet Union, the US started
| doing some self-harming libertarian flavored shit to
| itself.
|
| In the 1980s, I assume getting rid of the "strategic
| reserve" of anything would have met more pushback,
| because of primal fear overriding greed.
| noah_buddy wrote:
| Yes, Reagan was noted for his desire to avoid
| privatization of anything. /s
|
| Kidding aside, the US has had libertarian pipe dreams for
| the better part of its history. The aberration was the
| New Deal period up until the mid 60s.
| scythe wrote:
| > We are going to do a terrible thing to you -- we are
| going to deprive you of an enemy.
|
| - Georgi Arbatov, Soviet political scientist, 1988
| trollbridge wrote:
| Wasn't the original purpose of the strategic helium
| reserve to build fleets of zeppelins?
| phr4ts wrote:
| For those who don't understand, Biden sold the Helium not
| Trump - he took office on Jan 20, 2025.
| baldeagle wrote:
| "Current law (cira 2013) requires BLM to sell off the
| crude helium remaining in the Federal Helium Reserve in
| order to repay the U.S. Treasury the $1.3 billion debt
| incurred creating it. This debt will be repaid this
| fiscal year and that, as a consequence, the helium
| program will terminate at the end of the current fiscal
| year (October 1, 2013), absent Congressional action.
| Currently, the Federal Helium Reserve supplies roughly
| 40% of domestic and 30% of global helium demand. Loss of
| access to the Federal Helium Reserve would result in
| significant disruptions to a large number of critical
| U.S. industries." https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/
| files/494b2f9e-c8f5-4...
|
| Sounds like Obama kept the gas taps flowing, instead of
| locking it up because authorization to sell it had
| expired. Here is the whole record:
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-
| bill/527/...
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > too far left wing
|
| > biden
|
| uhm...
| edgyquant wrote:
| His admin was by far the most left wing in history, only
| the actual far left think otherwise
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Please don't call everyone names for not agreeing with
| you.
|
| There are billions of people in the world, and you are
| one, and you have your one set of opinions out of
| billions.
|
| Nobody endowed you or your opinions with any sort of
| infallibility or superiority over others.
| cyberax wrote:
| How does he compare with Nixon, who created the EPA?
| sillystuff wrote:
| Biden is an anti-abortion Catholic Zionist who wouldn't
| even do anything (but empty talk) to raise the minimum
| wage during high inflation. He enabled a genocide so his
| gods would reward him. I guess he would be a radical
| commie to the extreme far right. Nixon, JFK, LBJ and
| Lincoln, for example, signed into law actual left
| policies (whether they agreed with them or not-- none
| were lefties).
|
| Words have meaning. Someone a bit left of a Nazi is not
| on the Left even if they are to the left of the person
| speaking.
|
| The Democrats are a right-wing party. They spend more
| energy attacking the left than they do, the Republicans.
| Look at what they did to the center-left Sanders and
| their constant lawfare to prevent left parties, like the
| Greens and Peace and Freedom, off the ballot and out of
| the debates (last election, the Greens spent half their
| campaign funds fighting these frivolous lawsuits from the
| Democratic party who seek to subvert democracy
| [Republicans attack anyone more left/darker than them,
| through voter suppression and other techniques to also
| subvert democracy]). There is very little daylight
| between the two. They serve the same masters, Oligarchs
| and Israel.
|
| The United States is also a one-party state but, with
| typical American extravagance, they have two of them. -
| Julius Nyerere
| piva00 wrote:
| Ideological idiocy, the dismantling of anything public
| turning into private hands is ideologically pure for
| libertarian-inclined folks, no matter how strategically
| stupid it might be.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| This. 1000x this.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Seems more directly capitalist than libertarian to me.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| crypto-libertarian "government bad" ideology is one hell of
| a drug.
| dnautics wrote:
| well it was signed into law by obama, so there's that.
| stvltvs wrote:
| I like the guy, but he was GOP-lite as a president,
| served corporate interests.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| The GOP isn't "crypto-libertarian" by any stretch of the
| imagination. That's probably even more absurd than the
| people who suggest the GOP is "financially conservative".
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| I'm no partisan. Politicians elected to serve corporate
| interests come in your choice of red or blue.
| dnautics wrote:
| of course but i think characterizing obama as a Crypto-
| Libertarian is a disservice to carter, who was actually a
| crypto-libertarian
| kristjansson wrote:
| yes the president is the law giver, he who conceives,
| imposes, and bears in perpetuity all responsibilities for
| all laws passed during his term
| tzs wrote:
| The Helium Privatization Act of 1996 (HPA) required it. It
| passed to House on a voice vote and the Senate by unanimous
| consent and was signed by President Clinton.
|
| After sales paid off the debt that has been incurred from
| the expansion of scope of the helium program in the 1960
| Helium Act, which was one of the main points of the HPA, it
| was update by the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013 (which
| passed the House 394-1, and the Senate 97-2, and was signed
| by President Obama).
| fluidcruft wrote:
| A lot of the balloon use has switched to nitrogen (helium
| became much, much more expensive after the strategic helium
| reserve was sold off)
| bilsbie wrote:
| Is lifting gas? That's pretty cool.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| No.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| Technically yes, but practically no. Air is 78% nitrogen.
| Nitrogen is 3.3% lighter than air. Helium is 86.2% lighter
| than air. Hydrogen is 93% lighter than air.
| ralferoo wrote:
| > balloon use ... helium became much, much more expensive
|
| More than just from inflation? (sorry, not sorry!)
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Nitrogen? That's basically just air, what good would a
| balloon be using nitrogen? Might as well just blow it up with
| your lungs. It's certainly not going to float in any case.
| emsign wrote:
| Balloon gas is ~20% oxygen, so your kids don't go unconscious
| while doing the funny voices.
| qwertox wrote:
| This is very likely not true.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| Would you like to offer a rebuttal more well reasoned and
| thought out than "nuh-uh"?
|
| You have the entire collected knowledge of mankind at your
| fingertips. You could do 30 seconds of research and find an
| answer better than "I don't think that sounds right".
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| > You could do 30 seconds of research
|
| So could you, right?
| gjm11 wrote:
| What is asserted without evidence may be dismissed
| without evidence.
|
| (The form in which Christopher Hitchens actually stated
| "Hitchens' Razor" is more symmetrical but unfortunately
| _wrong_ : "What can be asserted without evidence can be
| dismissed without evidence". Anything _can_ be asserted
| without evidence! It 's only when something _actually has
| been_ , in a given context, that dismissing it is -- in
| the same context -- a reasonable course of action.)
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| While a reasonable principle I don't think it applies in
| context. People aren't expected to exhaustively source
| comments on HN. There's subjective etiquette to it.
|
| In this case it would be reasonable to inquire about the
| basis of the original remark, or to reject based on
| personal knowledge, or to reject based on a concrete
| citation. But an arbitrary non-technical vibes based
| rejection doesn't fit with how things generally work
| here.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| True but you can provide evidence to increase the quality
| of your claim.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| You sure about that? Everything I've ever heard says that
| balloon gas is generally grade 4, which is 99.99% pure. Not
| good enough for MRI, but quite a lot better than 80%.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Economically I expect it wouldn't be that pure, since it
| doesn't have to be that pure to provide lift, and party
| balloons are not trying to maximize lift.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Out of curiosity I did a minor amount of research to get
| an idea.
|
| Turns out that you are right, some balloon gas _is_ 80%.
| Specifically, the "Balloon Time" tanks you can buy at
| places like Target say "not less than 80%" helium.
|
| On the other hand, I went to AirGas and a few other
| suppliers and they seemed to have 95%-97.0% helium gas as
| their definition for balloon grade.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Perhaps "balloon grade" here is not " _party_ balloon
| grade ". Weather balloons? Research balloons?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| My guess is that places like AirGas aren't really
| supplying many weather or research balloons. I suspect
| the easier answer is 'Balloon Time is low grade crap
| aimed at people who don't know any better and just want
| to pick up some balloon gas while grocery shopping.' It's
| like the difference between people who go to a gas
| station to refill propane tanks, and people who swap them
| at Home Depot. (though the smart fellers do swap at Home
| Depot occasionally, if they need a fresher tank...)
|
| Definitely worth knowing what you're getting, in any
| case, so you don't get ripped off, and so you can
| actually get that lawn chair contraption into the sky.
| Jblx2 wrote:
| >99.99% pure. Not good enough for MRI
|
| What is the reason that MRI needs grade 6 vs grade 4
| helium? I'm imagining that the superconducting wire is
| within a cryostat filled with liquid helium. Doesn't seem
| like there would be any appreciably partial pressure of
| things like nitrogen or oxygen at 4 Kelvin. I imagine the
| reactivity of oxygen is pretty low at 4 K as well. How much
| dissolved oxygen or nitrogen can liquid helium support? And
| how much solidifies out and sinks to the bottom of the
| cryostat?
| icwtyjj wrote:
| https://www.bocgases.ie/files/balloon_grade_helium_factsheet.
| .. says 95% helium and 1% oxygen while https://dan.org/alert-
| diver/article/helium-gas-purity-what-i... says 97.5% helium
| but very unlikely for it to be as low as 80%
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wonder if one of you could be going by number of atoms,
| and the other could be going by weight?
| inaros wrote:
| "An overview of the different common grades of helium" -
| https://zephyrsolutions.com/what-are-the-different-grades-
| of...
|
| Grade 6 (6.0 helium = 99.9999% purity) The closest to 100%
| pure helium, 6.0 helium is used in the manufacturing of
| semiconductor chips - Grade 5.5 (5.5 helium = (99.9995%
| purity) Like 6.0 helium, 5.5 ultra pure helium gas is
| typically considered "research grade," also used in
| chromatography and semiconductor processing
|
| Grade 5 (5.0 helium = 99.999% purity) This high purity
| grade helium is also widely used for gas chromatography,
| mass spectrometry, and specific laboratory research when
| higher purity gases are not necessary, as well as for
| weather balloons and blimps.
|
| Grade 4.8 (4.8 helium = 99.998% purity) The highest of the
| "industrial grade" heliums, 4.8 grade helium is often used
| by the military. The rest is classified...
|
| Grade 4.7 (4.7 helium = 99.997% purity) A "Grade-A"
| industrial helium, 99.997% helium is mostly used in
| cryogenic applications and for pressurizing and purging
|
| Grade 4.6 (4.6 helium = 99.996% purity) Grade 4.6
| industrial helium is used for weather balloons, blimps, in
| leak detection
|
| Grade 4.5 (4.5 helium = 99.995% purity) Often the grade
| most commonly referred to when people say "industrial
| grade," 99.995% helium is most commonly used in the balloon
| industry
|
| Grade 4 (4.0 helium and lower = 99.99% purity) Any helium
| that is 99.99% and down into the high 80 percents is within
| the range of purities referred to collectively as "balloon
| grade helium."
| HPsquared wrote:
| Helium for diving is going to be a different mix than
| what's used for balloons. In diving it's used to reduce the
| partial pressure of oxygen, and also to quickly diffuse
| back out of tissues when returning to the surface. Very
| different application!
| icwtyjj wrote:
| Sorry i was referencing "Balloon grade H is the least
| pure at 97.5 percent." from the diving article
| bryan0 wrote:
| source? the value I found is 97.5%+ helium for party
| balloons: https://www.grecogas.com/learn-our-industry/your-
| complete-gu...
| stevenwoo wrote:
| People commit suicide with it because it's supposedly
| painless and quick.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Same applies to every gas that isn't carbon dioxide. Your
| body only cares about expelling CO2, it hasn't evolved a
| way to detect oxygen in the breathing gas mix. Divers know
| all about this.
| kerridge0 wrote:
| I believe that that's the stuff you buy in the shop, the non-
| refillable containers. If you buy a proper refillable balloon
| gas cylinder it's the higher grade stuff. Source: bought the
| shop stuff, got disappointed, bought the cylinder, happy.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| We're dumb enough now to have forgotten history.
|
| Moar hydrogen party balloons. Making partying fun again!
| meroes wrote:
| I can personally attest that this is not foolproof, if it is
| even the case. Those helium tanks you can buy for large
| parties knocked me out as a kid. Lost consciousness fell to
| the ground, blacked out. Supervise your kids if you buy one!
| dylan604 wrote:
| Depending on who you go to, some places will not sell you tanks
| of Helium. We did a balloon launch expecting to use Hydrogen
| because Helium was going to be problematic. The sales rep at
| the supply place took a look at the group of us knuckleheads
| with absolutely no Hydrogen experience and ended up selling us
| the Helium while also exchanging all of our connectors.
| Hydrogen tanks use specific connectors different from all other
| tanks to make using a hydrogen take by mistake very difficult.
| I was nervous about using hydrogen and had no issue with the
| higher price for the helium knowing I wasn't going to catch on
| fire.
| hrmtst93837 wrote:
| Helium for party balloons is low grade and not pure enough for
| chip fab use, so stacking up birthday tanks won't keep TSMC
| running. Industrial grade helium has a restricted and oddly
| international supply chain thanks to regulation and a few
| weirdly-placed depots. The US 'helium stockpile' isn't really a
| menu you can just order from when a factory across the planet
| runs dry, especially if offtakes and logistics are tied up by
| decade-old government contracts. If you want to see supply
| chain fragility, try pricing MRI-grade helium after a shutdown
| and watch everyone in medical procurement panic quitely.
| jason_s wrote:
| after what kind of shutdown?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If the helium gets warm, you have to vent it outside before
| it goes kaboom from the pressure.
|
| https://radiology.ucsf.edu/patient-care/patient-
| safety/mri-s...
| amatecha wrote:
| Damn, that's intense:
|
| > If the scan room door is closed when a quench occurs
| and helium escapes into the scan room, the depletion of
| oxygen causes a critical increase in pressure in the room
| compared with the control area. This produces high
| pressure in the scan room, which may prevent opening of
| the door. If this should happen, the glass partition
| between the scan and control rooms should be broken to
| release the pressure. The scan room door can then be
| opened as usual and the patient evacuated. In such a case
| the patient should be immediately evacuated and evaluated
| for asphyxia, hypothermia and ruptured eardrums.
| realityking wrote:
| Most MRIs vent their helium in an emergency shutdown.
| https://medprotech.de/en/what-is-an-mri-quench/
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Isn't Helium one of the easiest elements to purify? Just cool
| it below 14 Kelvin, which will make everything else freeze
| out. Collect the remaining liquid, which should be pure
| Helium.
| dnautics wrote:
| not just. huge deposits opened (actively being exploited) up in
| colorado, utah in the past few years and Minnesota this year
| stevenwoo wrote:
| All natural gas deposits contain helium at various
| concentrations, it's only commercially _worth_ harvesting above
| a certain percentage but speculate the problem is the US can 't
| just fill the Qatar loss in supply immediately since we have
| plentiful natural gas.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Makes sense.
|
| We have so much gas where I live that there are places it's
| just flared off and burned, because it's less greenhouse
| emissions than it escaping unburned.
| GeorgeWBasic wrote:
| If it's being burned, it isn't helium.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Parent is referring to natural gas
| XorNot wrote:
| Helium deposits don't exist is the thing, the same
| structures in the Earth which trap methane gas also trap
| helium gas and some of them trap enough to make recovery
| economically viable.
| roywiggins wrote:
| An unusually large helium deposit in the US made the news
| recently, not sure if it's being exploited:
|
| https://www.minnpost.com/other-nonprofit-
| media/2024/07/what-...
| mc32 wrote:
| Good old JIT stock management for essential materials, right?
|
| One'd think that they'd keep more than a couple of weeks's
| supply of critical materials --too bad many copied Cook's and
| others's JIT inventory management for everything.
| krunck wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve
| lpcvoid wrote:
| Great timing that the US recently sold its strategic helium
| supply.
| desireco42 wrote:
| yeah that was completely crazy... never understood why they
| would do something like that
| linkregister wrote:
| An explanation is particular political group was
| ideologically enthralled with privatization.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| The same group will later happily blame the government for
| doing said stupid thing.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Those party ballons were very cheap for a while.
| infogulch wrote:
| BLM [(Bureau of Land Management)] completes $460M sale of
| federal helium reserve to private company | 12/12/2024 |
| https://www.eenews.net/articles/blm-completes-460m-sale-of-f...
|
| Messer Completes Acquisition of Federal Helium System from BLM
| | June 27, 2024 | https://www.messer-us.com/press-
| releases/messer-completes-ac...
| baldeagle wrote:
| BLM was required (to sell it) by Congress in the Helium
| Stewardship Act of 2013, as the alternative was to not offer
| any H to the market due to the authorization to sell
| expiring. Sponsored by a Republican and passed basically
| unanimously with the proceeds used to pay of the debt (back
| when we cared about that)
| dnautics wrote:
| thanks obama?
| robmccoll wrote:
| The idea of selling things like our strategic helium supply
| for $460M to "pay off the debt" would be like me selling
| bricks from the foundation of my house for a penny to "pay
| off my mortgage".
| embedding-shape wrote:
| What if it's not actually your house, but some
| unspecified "somebody else's", and you only stand to
| profit from it? Starts to make sense why some
| unscrupulous people would go that way, shitty as it is.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| $460M was for what was left after the large majority had
| already been sold.
|
| In the best case, "strategic reserves" are the government
| speculating on commodity prices. They use tax dollars to
| buy a commodity -- raising the price on everyone so they
| can hoard it -- and then more tax dollars to pay for a
| storage facility, and if they're lucky the price goes up
| by enough to pay for the storage and the time value of
| money by they time they sell it again. That frequently
| doesn't happen.
|
| In the common case it's the government subsidizing
| corporations -- including foreign ones -- by using tax
| dollars (at government contractor rates) to operate a
| storage facility at a loss so the industry doesn't have
| to do it themselves. Then, when they go to unload it,
| they generally unload enough to lower the market price
| _on purpose_ , practically guaranteeing that the taxpayer
| is getting a below-market return. This unloading also has
| a statistical correlation with the election cycle (see
| also "strategic petroleum reserve") which is extra
| stupid. And the expectation that it will happen deters
| others who aren't paying government contractor rates from
| storing the commodity, so from a "strategic" perspective
| you don't get anywhere near as much of a buffer as you're
| paying for.
|
| If the tech industry wants a reserve of helium then they
| should buy some land, install some tanks and fill them
| with helium in years when there isn't a shortfall.
| avidiax wrote:
| That strategic helium reserve was from WWI, IIRC.
|
| I've heard it claimed that it was a massive oversight to
| sell that much helium at such a low price. Helium is a
| non-renewable resource. When it escapes, it just floats
| off into space.
|
| And it's an absolutely critical resource for MRIs,
| advanced science and research, and industry. And we are
| selling it at a price that's attractive as an amusement
| for children.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > In the best case, "strategic reserves" are the
| government speculating on commodity prices.
|
| A horrendously misinformed take. Strategic reserves have
| broadly one of two primary purposes. First, providing the
| government with the ability to stabilize market prices in
| the short term when volatility strikes. Second, providing
| a supply of an essential resource to an essential
| industry in the event that external supplies are
| unexpectedly cut off temporarily.
|
| Supply shocks are bad. The economy grinding to a halt at
| the whim of a geopolitical adversary or natural disaster
| is also bad. Ensuring a stable market is one of the most
| fundamental purposes of having a government at all.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| Wouldn't another alternative be to renew the authorization
| to sell? This doesn't seem much different from just
| deciding to sell it.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| Republicans believe that the federal government shouldn't
| be involved in it at all. So a reauth bill would
| effectively be DOA.
|
| But yeah, that would make more sense.
| coreyh14444 wrote:
| Remember all the e/acc people telling us to vote for Trump? Some
| mea-culpas are in order.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| The kind of people who voted for trump would never admit they
| made a mistake. They double down on stupidity instead.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| For better or worse, Donald Trump has absolutely earned his
| place in the history books. There will be so many lessons
| from this era, though I think it is very much open to debate
| what form those lessons will take and which ones will be the
| most consequential.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| To be honest, much of the lessons of this were something
| that we could've already looked back during all the wars
| humanity has fought all throughout history to learn from.
|
| We are in here, because we didn't learn from our history.
| You feel this way because this is recent and its hitting
| everything all at once but I do feel like these were all
| very avoidable lessons. Being honest, I don't feel like we
| learnt anything new aside from seeing how the world is
| still trying to clutch itself back to stability even after
| all the instability Donald Trump is causing within the
| world (for better or for worse) and seeing how the world
| reacts to all of this live.
|
| But I am not quite sure if future will learn from these
| lessons given that its feeling to me like history doesn't
| repeat itself but it often rhymes and we somehow don't
| really learn from the history to be honest.
| GeorgeWBasic wrote:
| That isn't true. There's actually a large number of people,
| probably in the millions, but probably not a majority of
| those who voted for him, who no longer support him in any
| way. And of the ones who remain, yes: they're pretty dense to
| still support him now. There are some lunatics who genuinely
| believe that the US has the right to dominate and exploit all
| other nations, but the majority of them simply believe the
| lies he's telling. I've already seen that when they are
| confronted with the facts about, say, Gaza, some of them can
| change their minds. It would be a mistake to turn them away
| instead of treating them like potential allies. There really
| is something more important at stake.
| tzs wrote:
| /r/LeopardsAteMyFace contains many counterexamples.
| fhdkweig wrote:
| Could you define the acronym "e/acc"? DDG seems to think it
| means: "What Does E/Acc Stand For, And What Does It Mean? E/acc
| stands for the phrase effective accelerationism, and it
| basically indicates one's personal ideological belief that
| artificial intelligence will one day become an all-powerful
| being that can fix the vast majority of humanity's problems."
|
| I don't think I have ever heard a MAGA talk about AI.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| The MAGA Web3 bros have all switched to the Clawdbot
| hypetrain, still flogging courses and slop.
| overfeed wrote:
| > I don't think I have ever heard a MAGA talk about AI.
|
| Lots of ex-Bitcoin-bros turned AI hypemen went all-in on maga
| for Trump II. Even the silicon valley C-Suites and VC-class
| went mask-off around February 2025. Some have tried to walk
| it back since then, after realizing the administration they
| had hitched their wagons to didn't have the mandate or levels
| of public support they had hoped for - thankfully, the
| internet never forgets.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| Even the nation's #1 dingleberry Joe Rogan is now turning
| against Trump. Would be a great time for folks to start
| admitting they fell for it again.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I will dare to admit aloud that I think maybe the founders
| were making a rational choice when they decided that only
| certain citizens would have the right to vote. As awful as
| that sounds, there are halfway decent arguments in favor.
| Maybe not just restricting to white wealthy landowners, but
| sometimes I do wonder if we would benefit from a filter that
| adequately screens for people 1) with real skin in the game
| and 2) a plausible claim to being well informed.
|
| That is just a thought experiment, though, I do not believe
| it would play out beneficially if we tried to implement it in
| real life.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| I like this idea in theory. In practice, the problem is
| that someone gets to decide who is allowed to vote and on
| what grounds. If that institution is corrupted, it leads to
| worse outcome than allowing everyone to vote. And the bad
| actors would have all the incentives in the world to
| corrupt that institution.
| overfeed wrote:
| > Maybe not just restricting to white wealthy landowners,
|
| Some of those people are not white and/or not straight.
| They - very incorrectly - think that wealth will shield
| them from the sharp teeth of White Christian Nationalism.
| They should consult with the Log Cabin Republicans and
| women who voted for both Trump and enshrining abortion into
| their state's constitution on the same ballot.
| cyberax wrote:
| Everybody should be allowed to vote, except for people who
| don't want everyone to vote.
| esafak wrote:
| Even people who openly aim to violently overthrow the
| government and abolish elections?
| XorNot wrote:
| If they're an electoral majority then you already have a
| problem.
|
| But the point is they're less likely to get there if
| they're part of the power structure.
|
| A presumed but frequently not mentioned component of
| democracy is the _peaceful_ transition of power once a
| decision is made.
| cyberax wrote:
| Yes, why not? If they are a minority, then there's no
| issue. If they are a majority (or close to it), then
| perhaps they have a point.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| The answer isn't less voters, it's more. Australia's
| compulsory voting system has successfully taken the edge
| off extremist ideology.
| erxam wrote:
| Not quite sure this works out as nicely as that.
| Argentina has both compulsory voting and a legal voting
| age of 16 and it managed to produce Javier Milei (who
| makes Trump look like Kissinger).
|
| What's the best way to have a sane system? I'm not sure.
| I personally lost all faith in democracy.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| Argentina is notoriously corrupt and suffers from an
| overly politically powerful military. Not even compulsory
| voting can fix those. There are dark private forces
| currently waging war on democracy it will be a
| catastrophic disaster if they win.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| People with those characteristics are often wealthy: can't
| have "real skin in the game" if you're just a pleb with a
| mortgage, 2 kids and 2 cars in a middle-class neighborhood,
| right? At which point, once again, those with $$ are more
| equal than others.
|
| Sure, they might be better informed - which lets them
| figure out how best to corrupt the system.
|
| Edit: in fact, I could see a strong reason to DISALLOW
| anyone in the top 1% to vote or spend any $$ towards the
| election.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| 1% of the vote isn't all that significant. It's the money
| that creates the problem.
| erxam wrote:
| The problem is what to do with those people who can't vote.
| At worst, they'll rise up in arms and create an ever bigger
| mess.
|
| If you're not into social and demographic engineering, then
| you're going to face a real problem.
|
| My solution would be to get it over with and shoot everyone
| who disagrees with the system I'm trying to build. It
| sounds childish but it does actually genuinely work. It has
| been put in practice in so many places it's easy to lose
| count.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| That only works in the immediate term. It isn't even a
| stable short term solution, let alone medium to long
| term. Consider what the incentives of such an approach
| are when iterated.
|
| Unless you aspire to the way of life in places like North
| Korea.
| GeorgeWBasic wrote:
| People are admitting that now. It's happening. There's some
| hope that something can be done about him.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| We live in the dumbest possible timeline. As someone who came
| of age in the late 80s and was lucky enough to fully experience
| the 90s and 2000s ... what we have done in the last 20 years
| makes me sad. I never saw this coming. I admit that I
| maintained my delusion even though I was in OKC in 1995. Should
| have been a wake-up call.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Hum... He seems to be doing the most accelerationist government
| from recent history of any large or rich country.
| breppp wrote:
| Qatar is probably intentionally shutting down production of gas
| and oil in order to pressure the US to stop, independently of
| Iranian attacks.
|
| In that respect they may be bombed by Iran but they have the same
| interests
| fabian2k wrote:
| Where are they supposed to put all that gas and oil if they
| can't transport it? I don't think they have much choice here.
|
| And as far as I understand, helium is a byproduct of the
| extraction, so they can't choose to keep only the helium.
| breppp wrote:
| However Qatar stopped production before the straits were
| officially closed and their stated reason is "due to military
| attacks", also Russian or Chinese ships can pass
| fabian2k wrote:
| There is no such thing as "officially closed". The moment
| people start shooting there, driving a ship across becomes
| dangerous. This was an absolutely predictable consequence
| of the attacks on Iran, you didn't need to wait until
| several tankers were burning to know these attacks were
| likely to happen and the strait would become essentially
| too risky to pass.
| breppp wrote:
| Back then there were only two ships attacked in the
| straits, and one was an Iranian shadow fleet ship. I am
| not sure that is "closing the straits" in any shape or
| form
| nottorp wrote:
| So if there's an active shooter on the one alley to your
| workplace you should still be at work in time, right? :)
|
| Or let's make the analogy clearer: if your Uber driver
| cancels the ride because there's an active shooter on the
| only road between him and you, it's their fault not the
| shooter's?
| breppp wrote:
| no, but if two ships were hit, while one clearly by
| mistake, it is very early to say the straits are going to
| be closed as opposed to incorrect targeting
|
| your analogies have went past me though, generally
| although a common misconception, countries are not people
| and wars are not comparable to crime
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| Oh, well, if it was by mistake...
| pocksuppet wrote:
| The active shooter is shooting a specific group of people
| who don't include you. Will you walk past?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's precisely _how_ you close the straits; by making
| everyone scared to go through.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| You don't even have to scare everyone. You just have to
| scare the insurers. Without insurance ships won't sail.
| The exposure is _huge_ , so a small blip in risk makes
| all the modeling go kerplooie. Traffic stopped when the
| insurers said drop the anchors.
|
| To restore traffic, we need that risk to return to
| previous levels, which requires diplomacy and trust. I
| don't expect resolution any time soon.
| GeorgeWBasic wrote:
| Impeachment, and then we could get there. It's not
| impossible.
| yks wrote:
| With JD Vance things will go even worse
| Macha wrote:
| As the houthis have long demonstrated, you can screw up
| shipping from the coast
| tekla wrote:
| I'm guessing you watched the Hegseth interview?
|
| --- Hegseth: "The only thing prohibiting transit in
| [Hormuz] right now is Iran shooting at shipping."
|
| "It is open for transit should Iran not do that" ---
|
| Oh really? I thought it was because Mercury was in
| retrograde.
|
| I guess if even Mr. Hegseth is admitting that transit is
| effectively prohibited in the Strait, he must actually be
| lying and part of the deep state.
| int0x29 wrote:
| The strait is now mined at least partially. Country of
| origin doesn't matter when there are mines in the water.
| hinkley wrote:
| This is going to be an environmental disaster.
| overfeed wrote:
| Only if there's no diplomatic resolution - however
| unlikely.
| overfeed wrote:
| We really are overdue for mines with IFF and can inert
| themselves temporarily for blue ships.
| XorNot wrote:
| The problem is systems like that have a failure rate.
|
| Self deactivating land mines exist - and sometimes fail
| to do this (3/100 was the rate I heard a few years ago).
|
| Same problem with cluster munitions: it's not how they
| work. It's that a bunch of the bomblets fail to work,
| then leave UXO around which explodes a child's hand
| later.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Are Russian or Chinese ships actually passing? Junior just
| released a decree saying not one liter of oil will pass. It
| didn't have an asterisk allowing Russian or Chinese ships.
|
| I also find it funny that we just decided to allow Russia
| to pad its coffers by _temporarily_ lifting sanctions on
| sale of Russian oil. Sorry Ukraine!
| noelsusman wrote:
| Shutting down production doesn't pressure the US at all since
| the oil and gas can't go anywhere anyway. They're shutting it
| down because they have to, there's nowhere to put the oil.
| FpUser wrote:
| Even if this nonsense was true it is absolutely normal tactic
| used by the US when bombing is out of question. Use economic
| pressure by way of tariffs and sanctions until vassals are put
| in their place. So what's your problem
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Don't reply to breppp it's an obvious spy/operative account.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| Lindsay Graham has an easy solution to this unnecessary conflict:
| send your sons and daughters.
|
| This whole administration is such a fiasco.
| hinkley wrote:
| Lindsey Graham is a lying sack of shit.
|
| And I say that with his permission, since he's on camera asking
| to be called out if he did exactly what they did with the
| Supreme Court not four years later.
| pelotron wrote:
| Thank deities someone else remembers this.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I was not aware of this 'on camera' request. Does anyone have
| a citation?
| hinkley wrote:
| They showed it on The Daily Show at least once. Talking the
| rest of a committee out of entertaining a nomination under
| Obama. Which they ignored entirely in the same time frame
| for the next administration.
| gjm11 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw8SSQHQitg is Lindsay
| Graham in 2016 defending the Republicans' refusal to
| consider a nomination to the Supreme Court in the last year
| of Obama's presidency, and saying "you can use my words
| against me and you'd be absolutely right".
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR2A6FDiGEA is about
| Lindsey Graham in 2020 defending the Republicans'
| insistence on pushing through a nomination to the Supreme
| Court in the last year of Trump's presidency. It also
| includes a clip of Lindsay Graham in 2018 saying that if a
| Supreme Court vacancy opens once the primaries have
| started, "we'll wait till the next election".
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I recommend anybody looking at the US land invasion proposal to
| do that with an altitude map of Iran on the side.
| cpursley wrote:
| In addition to history, Americans don't really "do"
| geography. Apparently it's harder than math.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Even Alexander the Great's conquest of Persian was mostly a
| soft coup. That country is a fortress.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Wow, WILD to imply that Lindsey Graham is part of this admin.
| They hate each other. Trump worked with Graham and McConnell
| first term because Trump does have to work with the
| establishment but they despise him. He still has to work with
| Graham who has a little more Koch power now that McConnell is
| gone-but-not-gone.
|
| I'll always find it hilarious that progressives manage to hate
| the GOP and Trump at the same time for the same reasons.
| lovich wrote:
| Graham is doing media interviews where he's backing this war
| currently.
|
| Also why you find that hilarious instead of expected? Trump
| is the GOP now. Everyone with more than the barest of
| pushback to him have been purged from the party and he's
| working on getting rid of those people too.
| emsign wrote:
| Iran will make AI go pop.
| heyitsmedotjayb wrote:
| inshallah
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| let's see if it turns into mashallah :)
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| We can only hope.
| arunc wrote:
| So the RAM prices are going to skyrocket again?
| HerbManic wrote:
| Of course, everything at the moment regardless of good or bad
| means higher RAM price.
| brynnbee wrote:
| Have a bad first date? Higher RAM prices.
|
| Your dog ran away? Higher RAM prices.
|
| Lower RAM prices? Believe it or not, higher RAM prices.
| johnbarron wrote:
| I tried upgrading to 32 GB of RAM...but the bank offered me a
| mortgage instead...
| lb1lf wrote:
| I had a stroke of luck this week - I am due a new laptop at
| work, and ordered a new ThinkPad T14, as they have served me
| well in the past.
|
| Then IT calls back and says that I shouldn't configure one
| directly at Lenovo's website, as we are to buy them from a
| retailer instead.
|
| OK, can do - but they only stock a few models, and the one
| with the CPU and disk I had configured with Lenovo was only
| available with 64GB RAM at the retailer. What to do?
|
| 'Ouch, that's gonna make accounting hurt. We'll order it for
| you right away.'
| nDRDY wrote:
| Somewhat tangential question - for the "Just Stop Oil" folks - is
| it the _extraction_ of oil that is the problem, or the _burning_
| of it? If the former, then we have an opportunity to investigate
| more renewable sources.
| tencentshill wrote:
| The goal is to keep the oil in the ground, to not be burned or
| to be made into plastics.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Isn't the main source of helium from oil production? It's not
| like we have fusion reactors turning H into He.
| ac29 wrote:
| The main source of helium is natural gas production, not
| oil
| dylan604 wrote:
| Okay, but while technically correct, it does nothing to
| change the situation. They are punching holes in the
| ground to extract the sweet sweet nectar. They have to
| store what has been extracted. When that storage is full,
| what does one do? Stop the input into the storage.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| The amount of activity required for helium is
| insubstantial compared to the amount of natural gas being
| extracted globally. And the amount of natural gas
| extracted pales in comparison to total combined gas, oil,
| and coal.
|
| Helium extraction doesn't pose a notable environmental
| issue on its own.
| MOSI2 wrote:
| It's not just plastics. Practically every substance we use
| and rely on to maintain civilisation as we know it has a
| petrochemical or fossil fuel base.
|
| I understand the not burning fossil fuel thing, but why can't
| it be seen like another mineral resource?
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Because that's still geological carbon entering the overall
| cycle on the surface. The air and ocean are giant buffers
| of it. When it's needed it needs to be pulled from there
| somehow (such as by felling trees or directly extracting
| CO2). Unfortunately that's not economical when it's legal
| to tap the giant lakes of it sitting underground.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well primarily the goal is to ensure that we don't build any
| homes for people or any clean energy. There's a reason a group
| of people funded by an oil heir are anti-nuclear.
| abeppu wrote:
| I remember hearing somewhere on this site that medical imaging
| got pretty good at building systems that recycle helium. Does
| chip manufacturing not do this or are the losses at their scale
| are still large enough that you need a substantial constant
| supply?
| observationist wrote:
| Some of the fabs do recycle as effectively as they can, but
| MRIs use it in a single process, in liquid form, in a
| relatively constrained container. Fabs use it for a variety of
| processes, ranging from wafer cooling to purging environments,
| to making ultra ultra clean chambers. The scale of what they
| use is higher, too, so even if an individual process is more
| efficiently recapturing helium, they might go through a few
| tons a day, with an MRI only using a few liters and losing 5%
| or less.
| robocat wrote:
| Also fab companies have had to learn to be incredibly
| conservative about perceptively meaningless changes.
|
| Most famously illustrated by Intel's "Copy Exactly!"
| methodology. https://duckduckgo.com/?q="copy%20exactly"+Intel
|
| An adjacent IBM story that kinda explains why:
| During the year 1986, there was an anomalous increase in LSI
| memory problems. Electronics in early 1987 appeared to have
| problem rates approaching 20 times higher than predicted. In
| contrast, identical LSI memories being manufactured in Europe
| showed no anomalous problems. Because of knowledge of the
| radioactivity problem with the Intel 2107 RAMs, it was
| thought that the LSI package probably was at fault, since the
| IBM chips were mounted on similar ceramic materials. LSI
| ceramic packages made by IBM in Europe and in the U.S. were
| exchanged, but the European computer modules (with European
| chips and U.S. packaging) showed no fails, while the U.S.
| chips with European packages still failed at a high rate.
| This indicated that the problem was undoubtedly in the
| U.S.-manufactured LSI chips. In April 1987, significant
| design changes had been made to the memory chip with the most
| problems, a 4Kb bipolar RAM. The newer chip had been given
| the nickname Hera, and so at an early stage the incident
| became known as the "Hera problem." By June 1987, the
| problem was very serious. A group was organized to
| investigate the problem. The first breakthrough in
| understanding occurred with the analysis of "carcasses" from
| the memory chips (the term carcasses refers to the chips on
| an LSI wafer which do not work correctly, and are not used
| but saved in case some problem occurs at a future time). Some
| of these carcasses were shown to have significant
| radioactivity. Six weeks was spent in the manufacturing
| process lines, looking for radioactivity, and traces were
| found inside various processing units. However, it could not
| be determined whether these traces came from the raw
| materials used, or whether they were transferred from the
| chips themselves, which might have been contaminated earlier
| in their processing. Further, it was discovered that
| radioactive filaments (containing radioactive thorium) were
| commonly used in some evaporators. A detailed analysis by T.
| Zabel of some of the "hot" chips revealed that the
| radioactive contamination came from a single source: Po210
| This isotope is found in the uranium decay chain, which
| contains about twelve different radioactive species. The
| surprising fact was that Po210 was the only contaminant on
| the LSI chips, and all the other expected decay-chain
| elements were missing. Hundreds of chips were analyzed for
| radioactivity, and Po210 contamination was found going back
| more than a year. Then it was found that whatever caused the
| radioactivity problem disappeared on all wafers started after
| May 22, 1987. After this precise date, all new wafers were
| free of contamination, except for small amounts which
| probably were contaminated by other older chips being
| processed by the same equipment. Since it takes about four
| months for chips to be manufactured, the pipeline was still
| full of "hot" chips in July and August 1987. Further sweeps
| of the manufacturing lines showed trace radioactivity, but
| the plant was essentially clean. The contamination had
| appeared in 1985, increased by more than 1000 times until May
| 22, 1987, and then totally disappeared! Several months
| passed, with widespread testing of manufacturing materials
| and tools, but no radioactive contamination was discovered.
| All memory chips in the manufacturing lines were spot-
| screened for radioactivity, but they were clean. The
| radioactivity reappeared in the manufacturing plant in early
| December 1987, mildly contaminating several hundred wafers,
| then disappeared again. A search of all the materials used in
| the fabrication of these chips found no source of the
| radioactivity. With further screening, and a lot of luck, a
| new and unused bottle of nitric acid was identified by J.
| Hannah as radioactive. One surprising aspect of this
| discovery was that, of twelve bottles in the single lot of
| acid, only one was contaminated. Since all screening of
| materials assumed lot-sized homogeneity, this discovery of a
| single bad sample in a large lot probably explained why
| previous scans of the manufacturing line had been negative.
| The unopened bottle of radioactive nitric acid led
| investigators back to a supplier's factory, and it was found
| that the radioactivity was being injected by a bottle-
| cleaning machine for semiconductor-grade acid bottles. This
| bottle cleaner used radioactive Po210 material to ionize an
| air jet which was used to dislodge electrostatic dust inside
| the bottles after washing. The jets were leaking
| radioactivity because of a change in the epoxy used to seal
| the Po210 inside the air jet capsule. Since these jets gave
| off infrequent and random bursts of radioactivity, only a few
| bottles out of thousands were contaminated.
|
| An excerpt from: Ziegler, James F., et al. "IBM experiments
| in soft fails in computer electronics (1978-1994)." IBM
| journal of research and development 40.1 (1996): 3-18
|
| Polonium is debuggable. More subtle statistical aberrations
| would be exponentially harder.
| nice_byte wrote:
| this story would make a killer asianometry video
| robocat wrote:
| CSI parody style?
|
| I'm most familiar with software and home electronics
| debugging, but it would be wonderful to hear some stories
| from other disciplines where a culprit is found, and also
| about the forensic tools specific to other domains.
| throwup238 wrote:
| The big problem is purity. Fabs use grade 5 and 6 helium where
| contaminants are 1-10 parts per billion. The infrastructure to
| get it that pure becomes very specialized and any time the
| helium goes through a process it picks up so much contamination
| that recycling it would require the entire purifying and
| quality control infrastructure for pressure or temperature
| swing adsorption.
|
| Some fabs are starting to reuse helium in downstream processes
| but there's only so much they can do without expanding their
| core competency into yet another complex chemical manufacturing
| process.
|
| MRI machines don't need high purity helium and the
| contamination doesn't "gunk up" all the tools so it's not an
| issue to recycle it there.
| boredatoms wrote:
| Do we have a process to make new helium from hydrogen?
| frio wrote:
| Nuclear fusion?
| Steuard wrote:
| If you come up with a process to do that efficiently, the
| helium will be a lovely bonus but not remotely the most
| important result. :D
| pbmonster wrote:
| If you want to make new helium, it's far easier to go the
| other way.
|
| You just need quite a bit of Polonium, Thorium or Radon.
| Put it in a pool - and then wait a while. You just gotta
| collect what bubbles to the surface.
| ascorbic wrote:
| Yeah, but it gets quite warm
| davidw wrote:
| Now I'm imagining a procedural cop show where they bust an
| illegal helium dealer, and one of the cops takes a huff to
| gauge what they're dealing with, and then squeaks out "that's
| the good stuff".
| wvbdmp wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aIDxHesKyU
| bob1029 wrote:
| > The infrastructure to get it that pure becomes very
| specialized
|
| I think some of the most advanced fab infrastructure is the
| ultra pure water system. Water becomes quite aggressive
| chemically when it has no dissolved ions in it. You have to
| use exotic or highly processed materials simply to transport
| it around. If the factory didn't need such massive quantities
| of it, trucking it in would likely be preferable.
| xg15 wrote:
| From the article I thought the helium was used mostly for
| cooling (where I imagine the purity wouldn't be that
| important)
|
| But what other processes do the fabs use the helium for then?
| throwup238 wrote:
| It is used a lot for cooling but in many systems its used
| without a classical heat exchangers where the helium is
| isolated from the workpiece.
|
| Helium is pumped beneath the wafer to keep it cool so any
| impurities can leak through the chuck seal into the chamber
| above and disrupt the process. It's also very precisely
| controlled so impurities change the uniformity of the
| thermal conductivity of the gas, creating hot spots on the
| wafer.
|
| In EUV it's used to both to cool the optics and as a buffer
| gas to manage debris from the plasma so any contaminants
| can deposit on the optics. At 13.5nm even a single layer of
| hydrocarbon molecules can create problems and the light
| bounces many times between mirrors so the error compounds.
|
| There are many places where helium doesn't _have_ to be as
| pure but contamination events and surprise maintenance are
| so expensive that it's not worth the extra savings (or the
| risk of mislabling and using dirty helium in the sensitive
| parts).
| xg15 wrote:
| Thanks a lot for the info. Yeah, it makes sense that if
| you need pure helium anyway, you probably wouldn't create
| an entire second supply chain for impure helium.
| etchalon wrote:
| It's almost like war is a bad thing.
| randerson wrote:
| I've developed a new fear of my 2025 desktop PC being damaged by
| a power surge or something, because it would cost at least $2K
| more to replace than I paid for it, assuming I can even find
| parts now. Compared to the rest of my adult life when I used to
| secretly pray for something to fail so I would have a reason to
| upgrade.
| SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
| Silver lining: literally all Macs are a total steal right now.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Good Mac Pro models are still spendy, but the M3/M4 laptops
| are great if your software use-cases are met. =3
| Choco31415 wrote:
| I'm still doing great even with an M2!
| xandrius wrote:
| Still loving my M1 to be honest!
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| It's super annoying. I'm salivating over all the new
| announcements but my M1 16GB 1TB will likely last another
| 5 years.
| joemi wrote:
| Same here. I've never had a machine feel so great for so
| long before!
| remus wrote:
| I mean they're still expensive, they just seem relatively
| good value because everything else has gotten more expensive.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Yeah, that's what @SlightlyLeftPad said.
| joemi wrote:
| All value is relative, so everything else getting more
| expensive is essentially the same as macs getting cheaper.
| jmward01 wrote:
| Anyone have a good take on how well Asahi linux keeps the
| power management working on mac hardware? The biggest killer
| feature for me of mac hardware is the battery/weight. I have
| found it hard to get a good laptop in the linux ecosystem
| mainly because of power consumption. If Asahi doesn't really
| impact the battery life then I would seriously consider going
| that route. Similar question about support for pytorch on
| linux/arm64 / Asahi.
| erxam wrote:
| I think it's improved from when I last tried it, but it
| still isn't great. You can get like 60% of the battery life
| compared to macOS.
|
| Someone with more recent knowledge correct me on this, but
| I believe idling is the biggest power drain in Asahi. You
| will want to shutdown and/or hibernate whenever possible.
| haunter wrote:
| Too bad I can't play the games I want to play on them
| realo wrote:
| Hint : GE Force Now
|
| ssshhhhh... do not tell anyone I told you...
| haunter wrote:
| It's horrible. Bad quality, bad latency, can't mod the
| games etc. And worse you have to pay for it when you
| already have a more than capable computer.
| john_strinlai wrote:
| i wouldnt go as far to say "its horrible".
|
| i would never recommend it to someone who otherwise has a
| capable computer, of course, but it really isnt that bad.
| i gave it a pretty thorough test out of curiosity, and
| when they sponsored a few streamers i watch, it was
| totally fine. with the caveat that you have a decent
| internet connection and its probably not good for twitchy
| games like counter strike.
|
| and, as far as i know, there is limited support for
| modding and some unsupported workarounds.
| sroussey wrote:
| And it works on the Vision Pro via the next update.
| gazook89 wrote:
| I used Shadow PC for a long time. Never any issues over
| several years. Lots of reasons in preferred it over
| GeForce. I can expound on that later if needed
| joemi wrote:
| Is the computer in question really "more than capable" if
| it "can't play the games [you] want to play"?
|
| I've used geforce now on my mac before and didn't have
| latency issues. I wasn't using it for any competitive
| games where you need ultrafast twitchy response, but I
| did use if for plenty of FPSes and never had any issues.
| And I don't have super fast internet, just the basic
| package from Spectrum. So I wouldn't say it's bad, though
| admittedly it might not be the best latency achievable in
| the gaming world.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| The AMD395+ PCs have unified memory and since it's not tied
| to a garbage OS nor reasonably affected by future dram costs,
| it's a better choice for reasonable people, unless you're
| going for greater than 128GB
| whyenot wrote:
| I bought a Mac Mini in February and maxed out the ram and
| storage. Now, it seems like that was a prescient move, but
| honestly I really only bought it for photo editing and
| playing the new World of Warcraft expansion (don't judge
| me!).
| xandrius wrote:
| Serious question: how does WoW still appeal to players
| except for habit social connections to keep them locked
| into the game? I used to spend nights and love the game,
| now, even with all these expansions it feels exactly like
| it was in 2006 but without what happened to the gaming
| world in the past 20 years.
| whyenot wrote:
| It's still fun. The social connections are also hugely
| important to me. One of my characters is in the same
| active guild that I joined in 2006. It's hard to put into
| words how meaningful that is to me. The game has
| improved, the newly re-done Silvermoon City is beautiful
| and richly detailed, but you are right, in many ways it's
| the same game as 20+ years ago, except made more casual-
| friendly in a lot of ways. I like it and there really
| isn't anything else like it out there. ...and surprising
| to me, if you believe Blizzard, there are around 9
| million people who still play.
| elorant wrote:
| You pay an $1k extra just to get the model with 1TB disk. How
| is that a steal?
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| We used those Tripp Lite LC1200 to knock down the noise floor
| (14dB) on remote equipment.
|
| These line-conditioners actually perform well given the cost,
| but never buy used surge-arresters given the finite spike hit-
| count. Best of luck =3
| cyberax wrote:
| These devices are basically autotransformers. So they reduce
| the noise by providing inductive filtering. But they don't
| really protect against strong surges by themselves.
|
| So Tripp Lite uses a regular varistor for that, just like any
| other surge protector. In Europe you'd be far better off
| buying a voltage relay and adding it to your electrical
| panel, but it's not usually possible with the non-modular US
| electrical panels.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| The simple line-conditioners were surprisingly effective,
| and are a fraction of the cost of lab/medical grade
| galvanic isolation ferroresonant transformers. =3
| FreezingKeeper wrote:
| What's with the 'cock and balls' emoticon?
| amatecha wrote:
| welcome to the internet, sometimes people make smiley
| faces :)
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Don't worry about it =3
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| Can never unsee that now
| srik wrote:
| Living in developing countries taught me to never plugin
| expensive computers without a surge protector UPS.
| porkloin wrote:
| Honestly even in "developed countries" it's not worth blindly
| trusting that the power in your house/building is clean. It's
| cheap and easy enough to just put any expensive hardware on a
| UPS rather than speculating what's going on behind the walls.
| xandrius wrote:
| Doesn't even sound like a developed country to me. Is that
| the US or something?
| Onavo wrote:
| Do you still need a UPS if you have one of those household
| (Powerwall style) battery packs? Also Apple switched mode
| power supplies are pretty well built.
|
| But then again there's horror stories like
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/1maegvb/i_burned.
| ..
| bob1029 wrote:
| Yes. The power walls are like cheap UPS topology. You could
| still get whacked with a transient from the grid before the
| ATS decides to island the house.
| ianburrell wrote:
| My understanding is that home batteries are not UPSes, they
| don't go through the battery. They have a switch between
| power company, solar, or battery. I think that means would
| be exposed to surge from power company.
|
| You can install a whole house surge protector. Those go in
| the panel and would protect from different sources.
| kelipso wrote:
| Lightning can mess you up in every country lol. Had to
| replace a PSU because of that, thankfully it was just that
| and minor damage to GPU.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Lightning damage is mostly an issue if the last-mile power
| lines are above ground. In my experience, power surges in
| urban areas with a decent grid are so rare that people
| generally don't bother protecting their devices.
| lanstin wrote:
| I have lived in the DC metro area inside the beltway or
| in Sillicon Valley my entire adult life and have only had
| above ground power wiring. Despite tree ordnances and
| wind storms and a grid so aged if we see lightning we
| lose power.
| kubb wrote:
| Where I live it's not an issue.
| schiffern wrote:
| Commercial uses _layered_ surge protectors (Type I, II, and
| III), which is also recommended for other users but rarely
| followed.
|
| In surge prone areas, at a minimum I would have good quality
| whole-house surge protector (eg Siemens 140 or Eaton 108),
| _and_ a good quality surge protector strip for any computer
| /TV/phone charger.
|
| I also put surge protectors in front of expensive white goods
| like the fridge, washer/dryer, dishwasher, and garage door
| opener. Besides being costly to replace these can contain
| "sparky" motors and this provides protection in the other
| direction too. Over time smaller surges can degrade the main
| surge protector for your computer.
|
| Nothing (reasonable) can protect against direct lightning
| strikes, but for anything less it should provide decent
| protection.
| david_allison wrote:
| > Nothing (reasonable) can protect against direct lightning
| strikes
|
| Belkin make a number of surge protectors which offer a
| connected equipment warranty in the UK. Admittedly:
| financial protection, not data protection, but I felt it
| was worthwhile for the peace of mind.
|
| https://www.belkin.com/id/p/6-outlet-surge-protection-
| strip-...
| gruez wrote:
| >Admittedly: financial protection, not data protection
|
| You should have data backups regardless, because there
| are plenty of ways to lose data that don't involve power
| surges.
| gruez wrote:
| >In surge prone areas
|
| What areas are surge prone?
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| I have a UPS with surge protection which I plug my computer
| into for this reason. Do others do the same or use something
| else?
| bpye wrote:
| Over the last two years I bought 2 4TB SSDs, 64GB DDR5 ECC
| UDIMM and 4 14TB HDDs.
|
| I couldn't justify buying any of them today.
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| This is, according to Hegseth, just something they planned for,
| since they knew what was going to happen.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I had an eye opening discussion with an IT admin who stated
| with a straight face that their _"patching strategy was not to
| patch"._
|
| They _have_ a patch strategy! They _considered_ requirements
| when deciding the strategy! They have a _documented_ strategy,
| it's just very brief. ("Don't.")
|
| The Trump admin may have similarly thought about this issue for
| a few seconds, shrugged their shoulders and decided that this
| might force manufacturers to go on-shore.
|
| You and I know it won't, certainly not in the immediate future,
| which means massive disruption to industry, but that's not the
| same as "no plan".
| hbrav wrote:
| Tech divers are also probably gonna be having a Bad Time. Helium
| mixes are already pretty expensive, I assume this will make it
| far worse.
| vablings wrote:
| Also, copper welding involves the use of helium as shielding
| gas. Helium shortage is painful
| elzbardico wrote:
| Thanks DJT, I am tired of winning, can we become losers again? /s
| cyanydeez wrote:
| The people trump relies on to make his decisions (if he's making
| them) include tons of far right accelerationists; so they'd be
| happy to watch modern society fall.
| CommanderData wrote:
| Completely self inflicted at the request of Israel.
| sillystuff wrote:
| The US just finished divesting itself from its strategic helium
| reserve in 2024 due to the "Helium Stewardship Act of 2013"[1]
|
| But, now we have a strategic bitcoin reserve.
|
| [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/527
| backprop1989 wrote:
| Step 1: Put the helium in a blimp Step 2: Fly around the straight
| and over to Taiwan Step 3: Pump it into the chip factory
|
| There you go, solved it.
| sieep wrote:
| Zeppelins are back, baby!
| fnord77 wrote:
| put the chip factory on the blimp
| jayd16 wrote:
| How do you get the blimp back?
| 3842056935870 wrote:
| Hydrogen
| csullivannet wrote:
| What do you do with the hydrogen once you're back
| anabab wrote:
| fresh water
| jonplackett wrote:
| Explode it
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Fold it up and ship it.
| fuddle wrote:
| An easy target for a drone!
| xg15 wrote:
| _The Hindenburg wants to know your location_
|
| Edit: oh right, know your chemistry...
| rangvb wrote:
| If Iran hits AI data centers (without people in it of course),
| 70% of the world would cheer. If there's one thing hated more
| than a theocratic regime ... /s
| pocksuppet wrote:
| The theocratic regime wasn't bothering us much until we started
| blowing them up for no reason. (or the practical reason: we are
| blowing them up because they didn't build a nuke fast enough)
| ordu wrote:
| It is not just oil and helium supply chains, it is nitrogen
| fertilizers also, and in a season when they are needed the most:
|
| https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/nitrogen-ammonia-a...
| vdfs wrote:
| Aluminum too, Qatar shutdown a smelting plant which take a year
| to restart
| throwup238 wrote:
| They released a statement clarifying that they're running the
| Qatalum smelter at reduced capacity, not shutting it down.
| permalac wrote:
| Why does it take so long?
| permalac wrote:
| I did some research.
|
| They were shutting down because of lack of gas. They secured
| some, so they will not shut down, only operate at 60%
| capacity.
|
| If they shut down they represent less than 1% of world
| production.
| pocksuppet wrote:
| Will this crash the AI bubble?
| paulsutter wrote:
| Helium output from the Persian Gulf is about 5 million cubic
| meters a month. Which (liquefied) is about 40 truckloads a week
|
| This article is just hysteria
| SideQuark wrote:
| Removing 30% of the supply of a very important, and completely
| irreplaceable for most of its uses, resource isn't hysteria.
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