[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 : 669 points
Date : 2026-03-13 12:31 UTC (1 days 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 keep 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.
| piva00 wrote:
| Neoliberal capitalism is founded on absorbing parts of
| libertarian thinking. The "capitalism" moniker of today
| used by ideologues is coupled to the meaning of it given
| by neoliberals.
|
| It's been coopted, not necessarily capitalism means
| "everything should be private", the current flavour of
| capitalist ideology wants that but other versions of
| capitalism don't put that as a foundational Ideological
| tenet.
| 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:
| The thing there is the GOP _was_ financially conservative
| a few decades ago and it 's like nobody bothered to
| update the wiki.
| 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.
| joemi wrote:
| How much does that matter for party balloons, though?
| It's still buoyant.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| I feel like people really need to learn basic physics.
|
| The gas inside a standard party balloon is generally
| compressed 3% to inflate the balloon. This wipes out even
| the theoretical buoyancy of nitrogen. And trust me, there
| was never any practical buoyancy to begin with. You'd
| need a ridiculously large balloon in a room with
| impossibly still air and impossibly null thermal
| gradients to even measure the buoyancy of nitrogen vs
| air. The buoyancy of nitrogen vs air would never be
| perceptible to human senses in any real-world setting.
|
| It would be the same as just filling the balloon with
| air.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| A spherical balloon 20cm in radius is displacing 41g of
| air. Even ignoring compression (which I don't know enough
| to quantify the effects of, except that it will make the
| numbers more unfavourable), nitrogen's 3.3%-lighter gives
| you a budget of only 1.35g for the balloon. I believe
| balloons hare heavier than this, so the balloon will
| still sink (a little more slowly than an air-filled one,
| but I'm not sure how noticeable the difference will be).
| nerdsniper wrote:
| > which I don't know enough to quantify the effects of
|
| You probably do, actually! People constantly
| underestimate the grand utility of their basic education.
|
| At near-atmospheric pressure and typical ambient
| temperatures, the ideal gas equation (PV=nRT) from
| introductory physics works very well and indicates that a
| 3% overpressure would make gases 3% more dense (linear
| direct proportionality). At some threshold of high
| pressures/ low temperatures, you'd want to switch your
| equation of state (EOS) from ideal gas law to something
| else. Peng-Robinson would be a good choice for a non-
| polar gas like Nitrogen, if its >10-50 atm pressure
| and/or < -50C temperature.
|
| At 20 degC, 1.00atm to 3kPa gauge pressure, ideal gas law
| predicts nitrogen would increase in density by 2.9608%.
| Whereas Peng-Robinson predicts it would increase in
| density by ever-so-slightly more, 2.9623%. This is truly
| negligible, so better to use the simples EOS for
| explainability (which would be the ideal gas law).
| 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.
| nwallin wrote:
| AirGas prioritizes industrial users, in the case of
| helium, copper welding. Argon is perfectly good enough
| for almost all welding purposes, but copper is different
| because of its heat conductivity. The heat from the weld
| really wants to go anywhere else. Helium has
| substantially higher heat conductivity than argon, which
| allows the heat to flow from the electric arc into the
| metal faster, resulting in better welds.
|
| Obviously you can't have oxygen in welding gas; it would
| oxidize the shit out of everything.
|
| A little bit of oxygen in party balloon gas is
| beneficial. Some kid _will_ breathe it, and when they do,
| you didn 't want them to asphyxiate themselves.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Do you know if the other 20% is oxygen (as was claimed)
| or if it's air? I just think the latter seems cheaper and
| more likely.
| 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."
| deceptionatd wrote:
| Interesting bit from that article wrt to transport
| infrastructure:
|
| "most distributors simply stick to the industry standard
| transport of Grade 5. That is why for and [sic] end user
| of helium, a lower grade can cost more than the higher
| grades."
| 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.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| note for hospitals: doors into MRI rooms should open
| outside
| 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.
| bgnn wrote:
| 14 kelvin is not easy to achieve at scale + after that, you
| need to keep it pure.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Apparently 14 K cooling is not used even up to 5N or 6N
| purity, commercial large-scale sources use various other
| tricks to remove the other gases. They do cool the input
| gas down to liquid nitrogen temperatures as one of the
| first steps.
|
| My point is that there's "maximally efficient /
| profitable" versus "can be made available as an emergency
| alternative".
|
| Cooling to 14 K isn't the cheapest option, but it has
| very low complexity. You can "simply" pressurise the
| source gas, cool it to room temperature through an
| ordinary heat exchanger, then allow it to expand. The
| only issue is that if you do this naively, the expansion
| nozzle will get clogged with ice.
|
| Obviously, this wastes a lot of Helium, but we have
| _lots_ of it. If what 's needed is _high purity_ Helium,
| then throwing away even 90% to get 10% that 's 6N pure
| should be no problem for an industrial nation.
| danparsonson wrote:
| You can't just spin up such a facility in a few days or
| weeks though, surely? Even if the core of a process is
| relatively simple physically, you still need all the
| supporting infrastructure to make it happen.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Starting from an empty lot, no, it would take nearly a
| year.
|
| However, any air (or gas) liquefaction / separation plant
| that is already making purified industrial gases from air
| or other sources could be adapted in a matter of weeks or
| at most a couple of months.
| 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.
| hedora wrote:
| Today, I learned Helium does burn, and when it burns, it
| forms Carbon.
|
| https://www.britannica.com/science/chemical-
| element/Processe...
|
| Granted, the flare gas probably doesn't reach the
| prerequisite 100M-200M kelvin. I suspect high pressure is
| also required so the Helium stays close to the heat
| source.
| 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.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > That strategic helium reserve was from WWI, IIRC.
|
| That may have been when it opened but the current war
| machine has little use for dirigibles.
|
| > 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.
|
| Helium is produced within the earth by radioactive decay.
| It then gets trapped in the same pockets as natural gas,
| which is why it gets extracted along with the natural
| gas. But most natural gas doesn't undergo helium
| extraction. If we wanted more, we could do helium
| extraction on more of the natural gas. Not doing it
| releases significantly more into the atmosphere than was
| present in the reserve. But doing it is expensive so we
| only do it more if there is demand for more helium.
|
| The first mistake was the government hoarding that much
| of it to begin with. It doesn't make a lot of sense to
| pay a high cost for extraction in an earlier year and
| then pay a high cost for storage for an indefinite period
| of time if you're already discarding (i.e. not
| separating) most of it and could just extract more once
| you actually want it.
|
| The second mistake was unloading such a massive amount
| over a relatively short period of time, because then you
| crash the short-term price and cause people to waste the
| thing you spent a lot of money to extract.
| 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.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > First, providing the government with the ability to
| stabilize market prices in the short term when volatility
| strikes.
|
| Which is the thing they don't really even do, because
| their existence is not a secret, but then knowing of
| their existence discourages anyone else from setting up a
| reserve because they expect the government to unload
| right when they'd be trying to recover the costs of
| operating it. Then the market has less slack in it and
| the government has to tap into the reserve more
| frequently and in larger amounts, causing the reserve to
| be much more easily exhausted than you would intuitively
| expect because the whole world is now expecting you to
| bail them out when the time comes.
|
| Worse, it encourages companies to rely on its existence
| instead of making contingencies, and then if it does get
| exhausted or you get something that looks more like
| unexpectedly high demand than unexpectedly low supply,
| you now have an inadequate reserve _and_ a market full of
| people operating under the impression they would never
| have to deal with that.
|
| > Second, providing a supply of an essential resource to
| an essential industry in the event that external supplies
| are unexpectedly cut off temporarily.
|
| This isn't a different thing from the first thing. There
| being less supply is what causes the price to go up. But
| encouraging the market to take all the slack out causes
| there to be less supply.
|
| The basic problem is this: If the government keeps a
| moderate reserve, it's going to cause other people to not
| do that, and then it's going to run out and Cause
| Problems. If the government keeps an _enormous_ reserve,
| they 're going to cause the price to be higher even when
| nothing is wrong _and_ burn through a disproportionate
| amount of tax money doing it.
|
| > Supply shocks are bad.
|
| The correct answer to this is to diversify supply and be
| ready with substitutes, not government hoarding.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| People aren't as stupid as you appear to think. Yes,
| there are second (and third, forth, ...) order effects.
| Typically these sorts of systems will settle into an
| equilibrium. A reasonably competent government agency
| will account for that where necessary.
|
| It's strange. You object to the government here yet
| expect private industry to fill the same gap. Why do you
| believe private industry would navigate these issues
| better than a government agency would? Given the
| difference in incentives it doesn't make any sense.
|
| It's a good thing for the regulator to be able to step in
| at will rather than blindly hope that things go well.
| Industry is notoriously bad at making short term
| sacrifices for long term risk management. Would you
| rather the government force them to maintain their own
| reserves via regulation?
|
| > This isn't a different thing from the first thing.
| There being less supply is what causes the price to go
| up.
|
| No, the two are not at all the same. Rapid price
| fluctuations are one issue. Essential resources are an
| entirely separate problem. Volatility and starving to
| death both involve price movement but are otherwise very
| different things.
|
| > encouraging the market to take all the slack out causes
| there to be less supply.
|
| So if the reserve is run by the government it's removing
| slack and reducing supply, but when run by private
| industry ... ?
|
| No amount of regular slack is ever going to be able to
| compensate for a tail risk that blocks the import of an
| essential good. Take oil for example. No company is ever
| going to voluntarily warehouse enough to keep the entire
| US economy going for any significant amount of time. It's
| a crazy small tail risk and very expensive to
| counterbalance.
|
| Food is similar. No grocery store or wholesaler or
| whoever else is going to voluntarily stockpile enough to
| keep people from starving in the event of widespread crop
| failure or similarly devastating adverse environmental
| event.
|
| > If the government keeps an enormous reserve, they're
| going to cause the price to be higher even when nothing
| is wrong and burn through a disproportionate amount of
| tax money doing it.
|
| Why would that be? Filling and emptying shifts demand but
| doesn't create additional. Anyway you seem to be arguing
| that private industry should do this for themselves. So
| whatever the effects are they will be present either way.
|
| Why do you expect disproportionate expenditures? The cost
| is that of warehousing. The benefit is the entire economy
| running more smoothly which presumably increases taxes by
| quite a lot if money is all you're concerned with. It
| also just generally improves everyone's quality of life
| which I would hope is the entire purpose for the
| government to exist when you get down to it.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > You object to the government here yet expect private
| industry to fill the same gap. Why do you believe private
| industry would navigate these issues better than a
| government agency would? Given the difference in
| incentives it doesn't make any sense.
|
| Profit-seeking actors have the direct incentive to
| balance risks and rewards. It's popular to hate on
| speculators, but "build a storage facility so you can buy
| a commodity when it's cheap and sell whenever the price
| is high" as a means to make money is actually pretty
| legitimate. And then they have the right incentives to
| manage costs and keep realistic inventory levels because
| they're spending their own money instead of someone
| else's. Whereas the government's incentive is to give
| lucrative contracts to cronies or hoard a ridiculous
| amount of the commodity because they're spending someone
| else's money and get blamed if there's not enough but not
| if there's too much.
|
| There is also an advantage in diversity. Government tends
| to monoculture. How much does the price have to go up
| before the government starts unloading inventory? How
| much does the answer depend on politics? Things are
| better when instead of one essentially monopolist with a
| massive tank, you have a thousand independent entities
| with small ones, because then you get a smoother curve
| with less relationship to the election cycle. And you get
| different people trying to solve the problem in different
| ways. Speculators build tanks, entrepreneurs develop
| recycling systems, buyers make contingencies to use a
| substitute, but none of that happens if everyone is
| expecting the government to guarantee the price.
|
| > Industry is notoriously bad at making short term
| sacrifices for long term risk management.
|
| Middle managers in large bureaucracies are notoriously
| bad at this, because enormous conglomerates insulated
| from competition and subject to the principal-agent
| problem are not subject to a good set of incentives in
| _many_ ways. It 's why we're supposed to have antitrust
| laws.
|
| Markets as a whole are pretty good at it, because "price
| goes up when supply is low" is a predictable opportunity
| to make money.
|
| > Would you rather the government force them to maintain
| their own reserves via regulation?
|
| The whole point is to stop having the people who don't
| pay the cost of doing it be the ones who choose how much
| there should be and what kind.
|
| > Rapid price fluctuations are one issue. Essential
| resources are an entirely separate problem. Volatility
| and starving to death both involve price movement but are
| otherwise very different things.
|
| They're the same problem because the problem in both
| cases is supply less than demand and then you're left
| with the same question of how best to contend with that.
|
| Notice also that the government _doesn 't_ keep a multi-
| year supply of food and that doesn't seem to be any kind
| of a problem.
|
| > So if the reserve is run by the government it's
| removing slack and reducing supply, but when run by
| private industry ... ?
|
| When it's run by private industry it costs less, and more
| to the point costs the people who want the buffer instead
| of strangers without the bandwidth or domain knowledge to
| know if what's being done is cost effective or even
| necessary.
|
| > No amount of regular slack is ever going to be able to
| compensate for a tail risk that blocks the import of an
| essential good. Take oil for example. No company is ever
| going to voluntarily warehouse enough to keep the entire
| US economy going for any significant amount of time. It's
| a crazy small tail risk and very expensive to
| counterbalance.
|
| The US is a net _exporter_ of oil and oil is widely
| traded global commodity with significant price elasticity
| of demand, so you don 't get actual shortages unless you
| try something foolish like price controls. Instead people
| pay $4/gallon instead of $3 which causes the people who
| drive the most to switch to electric cars or hybrids,
| other suppliers to increase production, etc.
|
| > Why would that be? Filling and emptying shifts demand
| but doesn't create additional.
|
| Filling creates additional demand but if you're using a
| large enough reserve to be at low risk of ever running
| out then by design the emptying never fully happens.
|
| > Anyway you seem to be arguing that private industry
| should do this for themselves. So whatever the effects
| are they will be present either way.
|
| Private industry would size the reserve according to the
| risk instead of having the incentive to be excessively
| risk averse because they're spending someone else's
| money.
|
| > Why do you expect disproportionate expenditures? The
| cost is that of warehousing.
|
| Suppose you have a reserve which holds X amount and there
| is an average annual withdrawal and refilling of 0.5X,
| once every ten years you would use the full X amount, and
| once every 50 years you would use 5X if you had it.
|
| The 5X reserve requires five times as many tanks and
| requires you to eat the time value of money on five times
| as much of the commodity, but only gets used once every
| 50 years instead of being mostly used every year. It's
| not worth having; it's better to eat the higher prices
| that year than to pay even more to prevent them. There
| are some risks it costs less to buy insurance against
| than to mitigate. But risk-averse people spending someone
| else's money will be more inclined to do it anyway, or to
| build a 10X reserve "just to be sure".
|
| The government also uses government contractors which do
| not have a good record for cost efficiency.
| 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.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > Republicans believe
|
| So frustrating when every conversation leads to R vs D.
| Doubly so in this situation since both bills that got us
| to where we are today had overwhelming BIPARTISAN support
| and were signed into law by presidents Clinton and
| Obama...
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| If individual party members voted against the party line
| more often there would be less of this kind of discourse.
| But the reality is that we have a deeply entrenched
| deeply divided two-party system. There are very few
| politicians who don't toe one line or the other and
| endure. But in this case it's a core tenet of the
| republican party platform to eliminate the administrative
| state, including strategic investment and reserves.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
| 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.
| twodave wrote:
| And yet others who are able to disagree with some (or even
| many) of his decisions while also continuing to believe he
| was the better of the 2 options. Most people I know hate
| politics or anything to do with it for this very reason. We
| can argue about political philosophy all day long but
| eventually you go vote and often have to choose between a
| wildcard and the walking dead.
| 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.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| This makes me think the other comment in this thread
| about mandatory voting may be on point. Part of our
| problem is that not only can we elect petty dictators
| with less than 50% of the vote, we can do it with way
| less than 50% of the adult citizenry when people cannot
| be bothered to vote.
|
| Make voting mandatory, and require vote-by-mail. Or if
| that is too 'risky' then mandate a sufficient number of
| voting locations with a maximum travel distance from
| their voters (and maybe allow voters to go to any
| location convenient for them) and make it a paid federal
| holiday.
|
| Pipe dream, of course. One party is too strongly
| incentivized to suppress the vote. They could just
| moderate their positions somewhat to attract more
| centrists, but for some reason that has not occurred to
| them.
|
| In a sane world, we could compromise. I would hate to
| give up vote-by-mail, but as part of a grand compromise I
| would accept it. Empower the FEC to issue ID for voting
| (and only voting), give them the budget and mandate to go
| roving around the country periodically like the census
| and track down every last citizen and give them an ID.
| Then require that ID for in-person voting. Ostensibly
| this should also satisfy the GOP, but of course it won't,
| because it isn't actually about the ID.
| 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.
| erxam wrote:
| > Argentina is notoriously corrupt and suffers from an
| overly politically powerful military.
|
| Huh? If there's one thing that Argentina did correctly
| that no other Latin American country under military
| regimes in the past century did, it was breaking the
| political power of the military. Most members of the
| National Reorganization Process died in jail, the army
| was greatly downsized and culturally reprogrammed and it
| strengthened civilian institutions. It worked well until
| it didn't (and the breaking point happened before Milei,
| to be entirely clear).
|
| But the point is that the issue lies elsewhere. Do you
| think Australia won't lurch to the anti-liberal and anti-
| democratic side as soon as someone with the right combo
| of charisma and psychopathy arises?
|
| I know how it will happen. Nearly every single veto power
| group will give them a free pass. Naive humanist liberals
| will pontificate about the ideals of democracy and
| freedom to do whatever you want. Boring fence-sitters
| will legitimate their discourse and ideas under the veil
| of neutrality and objectivity. Those who worship Ba'al
| will seek to build a symbiotic relationship. And before
| you realize it, White Australia has risen up once again.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Do you think Australia won't lurch to the anti-liberal
| and anti-democratic side as soon as someone with the
| right combo of charisma and psychopathy arises?
|
| Indeed, all of our friendly western liberal democracies
| should not get too comfortable thinking this insanity
| won't come to them. Some of them already experience
| increasing amounts of it, and the rest could easily be in
| that position.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Kissinger was a war criminal with a huge amount of blood
| on his hands.
| erxam wrote:
| That's half of the point of the comparison (otherwise I'd
| have picked Einstein or some other cliche smart guy).
|
| The other half is that Kissinger was a smart and cunning
| piece of shit, and Trump is an absolute imbecile.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Trump is an absolute imbecile
|
| And thank god for that, at least. He is too stupid to
| make his petty policies more durable, instead relying on
| methods that are just as trivial to undo as they were to
| implement in the first place. We would be in a much worse
| place if he had the cunning of Kissinger.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > What's the best way to have a sane system?
|
| A start that would not require big changes to our
| existing system would be open primaries. That would
| incentivize moderate candidates. Or perhaps eliminate
| primaries altogether and go with a two-stage general
| election like some places have for their local elections.
| Everybody runs, then the top two run against each other
| (unless one got an outright majority in the first run).
| Skip the more elaborate instant-runoff styles of voting
| because that is too advanced for average people.
| erentz wrote:
| You have to couple that with their use of STV voting and
| lack of a presidential system.
| 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.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yes, part of the solution could be strongly curtailing
| how we apply the first amendment to political spending.
| Maybe elections should all be taxpayer funded, access to
| media guaranteed, etc. And if we do allow donations, it
| has to be something fairly trivial. Maximum $50 or
| something per person regardless of net worth.
|
| The unregulated, unlimited money situation we have now is
| a big part of 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.
| erxam wrote:
| It really depends on what stage of a regime's lifecycle
| you apply it at.
|
| Obviously it's not going to be as extreme and as simple
| as 'go shoot people house-to-house until you're powerful
| :D', but repression is much more often than not
| effective. Think of the Arab Spring, the 2018 color coup
| attempt in Nicaragua, etc.
|
| Hell, even if the incentives are completely misaligned,
| you can get away with it as long as you're strong and
| ruthless enough. The whole world thought Myanmar's
| military junta would implode and break under the weight
| of all the freedom fighters... and it's _still_ hanging
| around, not the worse for wear. If you 're willing to
| burn everything to the ground before you lose power, you
| can often raise the stakes to a level the other party
| simply can't afford.
|
| > Unless you aspire to the way of life in places like
| North Korea
|
| Here's the thing: the right-wingers _already aspire to
| that way of life_. They _will_ implement it. At this
| point, it 's not about whether I aspire to live like
| that, but about who's going to take the reins of power of
| that type of political structure.
|
| Better us than them.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Right but all those examples you're listing are what I
| was vaguely referencing when I referred to the incentives
| of such an approach when iterated. The resulting
| government won't inevitably implode (although it often
| will eventually) but it doesn't result in a particularly
| functional society either.
|
| > They will implement it.
|
| > Better us than them.
|
| Well sure, if you've already accepted defeat then I
| suppose that's the logical course of action. But that
| doesn't seem like a reasonable position to me given the
| available evidence.
| phatfish wrote:
| There are far more pressing changes needed, like reducing
| the impact of vote buying (reasonable spending limits for
| political campaigns, and the lobbying problem) and a voting
| system that doesn't inevitably reduce down to two sides.
|
| If people still elevate the worst candidate to POTUS after
| that, then blaming the voter might be in order.
| erentz wrote:
| The founders mistake was creating a presidential system.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I don't think the founders made a mistake. They
| understood the weaknesses in their system and were very
| open about the fact that it wouldn't always be smooth
| sailing. Thomas Jefferson famously said: "The tree of
| liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the
| blood of patriots and tyrants".
|
| Liberty isn't a constant state, but a dynamic cycle. Even
| 250 years ago, they knew that a guy like Donald Trump
| would come along.
| 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
| phatfish wrote:
| I thought Vance was the actual isolationist America first
| guy? Not Trump kind who's opinion changes based which
| authoritarian he last had a phone call with.
|
| In this specific case maybe Vance is least worst option.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Vance called Trump "America's Hitler", then ran as his
| VP.
|
| He's a windsock.
| GeorgeWBasic wrote:
| From all I've seen, he actually argued against this war
| prior to paying lip service to it. He'd be an
| improvement.
| 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.
| heisenbit wrote:
| Not just dangerous but uninsured...
| 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.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| HN guidelines link
| 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.
| scns wrote:
| The clips i saw of him talking looked like hard core brown
| nosing to me, pardon my french. He sat on Trumps table when
| Bad Bunnys' half time show was on the screens in Mar a Lago
| 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.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| so we'll get the actual Mahdi and a Butlerian Jihad? Bless the
| Maker
| 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.'
| cozzyd wrote:
| Yes I'm so glad I got a p14s with 64 GB of RAM in the fall
| 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.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Many of the other things (plastics esp) are byproducts
| after refining for fuel. If the fuel isn't consumed, the
| byproducts would become cost ineffective.
|
| Don't "worry" though. Oil consumption is going up not down.
|
| Just don't have kids.
| MOSI2 wrote:
| If the cure is as bad as the disease, then why intervene?
| 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.
| fix4fun wrote:
| Good to find another fan of asianometry channel ;)
|
| I agree, this story above would be a perfect for another
| asianometry document.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| What a horror story. Incredible detective work.
| 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
| potwinkle wrote:
| We usually take it from natural gas deposits instead.
| 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.
| wbl wrote:
| Ultrahigh density polyethylene isn't that exotic.
| hxorr wrote:
| What about microplastics?
| WJW wrote:
| What about them?
| _ache_ wrote:
| They are toxic.
| HenryMulligan wrote:
| Well, good thing you aren't drinking it then, because the
| complete lack of electrolytes would kill you far faster
| than the microplastics. Surely if they can chemically
| purify the water to chip-making standards they can filter
| out the microplastics (when they are done with it)? At
| least one can hope.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| I guess you watch asianometry?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3RzODSR3gk
| bob1029 wrote:
| No. I worked at Samsung Austin Semiconductor during a
| large UPW upgrade project many years ago.
| 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!
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| The SSD don't last forever, after about 3 to 4 years of
| daily use the drive/system should be replaced. At >5
| years, one could hit retention issues and corruption
| losses.
|
| Good excuse to upgrade though, as a $1500 recovery bill
| would not be cool. Best regards =3
| markdown wrote:
| Never used a computer less than 8yrs and never had an ssd
| have an issue in that time.
| silversmith wrote:
| This advice brought to you by the "change your oil every
| three months" crowd.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| I removed my anecdote and flash wear explanation, because
| of cranky folks like yourself.
|
| The corrosion inhibitors in petrol engine oil get fully
| depleted within about a year with most brands. One may
| certainly sell the machine before you see acidified
| lubricant related problems, but the motor will not reach
| its full operational lifespan (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve .)
|
| I do agree that anyone with a CVT style transmission
| likely won't have to worry, as that entire section will
| probably need replaced before you see significant
| hydrodynamic bearing damage.
|
| "Buy cheap, buy twice" as they say...
|
| ymmv, best of luck. =3
| xandrius wrote:
| As a side note, I absolutely cannot imagine being upset
| of having a machine lasting long.
|
| Sure it's nice the shiny new thing but has capitalism
| infiltrated people's mind that much? All my previous
| laptops died on me several times and became frankestein's
| monsters before I let them rest for a final time (to be
| often repurposed to other family/friends' machines).
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| With intermittent use one may get a lot more life out of
| the SSD than other users, but eventually flash will run
| out of spare-sectors and start to fail.
|
| Most M1 systems I saw use on-board BGA110 NAND flash, and
| thus maintenance/upgrades on the SSD are difficult. Most
| users don't have a hot air rework station or x-ray
| inspection machines to do this modification correctly.
|
| The MTBF statistics can move around a lot depending on
| the use-case, but eventually people will run out of luck
| (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_time_between_failures
| .)
|
| Not sure why people get upset by this fact, as not all
| Apple hardware models were built to be disposable. =3
| 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.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| Just a matter of time until Apple also increases the
| price...
| layer8 wrote:
| It's not the same, unless you are simultaneously also
| getting richer.
| eru wrote:
| Other electronics have gotten more expensive, yes. But
| other hobbies haven't.
| 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.
| oblio wrote:
| How good is Mac virtualization? Would it be doable to put
| an Ubuntu inside a VM and just run it full screen all the
| time?
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| Bought a used MacBook Air M2 past summer to run Asahi linux
| exclusively on it, the installation went hassle-free. One
| charge lasts 9+ hours easily, sometimes up to 12 hours.
| Thunderbolt, DP Alt Mode and TouchID would be nice to
| haves, but I'm super happy how everything runs. Thank you
| everyone on the Asahi team!
|
| I think the support for linux/arm64 is already very good in
| general, can't answer on pytorch though. The only app I'm
| really missing is Signal Desktop. The virtualization to run
| games is a noticeable performance hit and shows occasional
| glitches in the Steam overlay, but all my games run
| smoothly.
| 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.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| finally!!!
|
| Can't wait to try that and for the f1 stuff to come out.
| 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.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| You have to be joking, you don't own anything and enjoy
| your price hikes as people adopt it
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| What are you talking about? Geforce Now is specifically
| _only_ playable with games you own.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| No idea why you're down voted... I blissfully played
| cyberpunk 2077 for two years on GeforceNow. I still keep
| my membership even though I have a dedicated gaming pc
| now, for occasional laptop or living room pc use. It was
| beyond brilliant to play a hyper demanding game on a bare
| spec pc :-)
|
| Mind you,I have gigabit internet. I don't know what the
| experience would be like on other types of internet /
| worldwide.
| justin_dash wrote:
| Crossover[1] is surprisingly good for this purpose if you
| game occasionally and don't need FPS-level responsiveness.
| You also need 3rd party software like LinearMouse and Mos
| to make a mouse usable.
|
| [1]: https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover?srsltid=AfmBOor-
| 7wbD-o...
| 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.
| xandrius wrote:
| Alright so I 100% understand you, and now I know I'm not
| totally crazy.
|
| I think because I used to play on private servers, I
| don't have that long-standing connection to a group,
| which is probably what keeps many people still there. But
| yeah, I'd jump on a WoW 2 but the gameplay and quest
| system is so outdated that just doesn't give me good
| vibes anymore.
| SenHeng wrote:
| I don't know. I still fire up FF14 every couple of weeks
| for a few dungeon runs. No more social interactions with
| the various channels, I barely talk to my party even.
|
| I think it's just familiarity and not wanting to learn a
| whole new system when I'm looking to shut my brain down
| for a couple hours.
| elorant wrote:
| You pay an $1k extra just to get the model with 1TB disk. How
| is that a steal?
| thejazzman wrote:
| pro tip: don't
| eru wrote:
| Not really a steal, just that the price differences have
| narrowed.
| 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 :)
| rationalist wrote:
| You can find all types of people on the Internet, even
| some without noses :-)
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Don't worry about it =3
| hluska wrote:
| Why are you repeating yourself every two hours?
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Don't worry about it =3
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDdKiQNw80c
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| Can never unsee that now
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Don't worry about it =3
| layer8 wrote:
| I originally interpreted <3 that way.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Must have been awkward getting a text from some people =3
| gopher_space wrote:
| It's a woffly bunny face, imo.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Don't kink shame lol =3
|
| https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Harequin_Romance_Book_P
| ubl...
| 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?
| nerdsniper wrote:
| I work on embedded systems. I can often see whether my A/C
| or other appliances are running on my oscilloscope signals.
| They often affect the output of USB power supplies.
| eru wrote:
| Eh, if these surges are rare enough, then you are
| statistical better off just risking your 'expensive'
| hardware to a one in a trillion possibility rather than
| spending money on gear you don't need.
|
| Do you live in a bunker to protect against artillery
| shells?
| 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.
| kolinko wrote:
| Depends on how they are configured, I think in some regions
| (where power outages are very rare), they are wired to sync
| up with external network, and without external network they
| shut down as well.
| 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.
| mcv wrote:
| I've heard that before, that the US apparently loves
| above ground power lines. In NL it's only the long
| distance ones that are above ground. Even in most rural
| areas, I think everything is below ground.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Yes, we love them on account of our country having
| approximately 230 times the surface area and the
| Netherlands having approximately 13x the population
| density. We not only have vastly more line to run, but
| also many, many fewer people per square mile to absorb
| the costs. Underground line is _expensive_.
| nradov wrote:
| It turns out that the fires caused by above ground power
| lines are also quite expensive, at least in certain
| areas.
|
| https://www.firevictimtrust.com/
| pseudohadamard wrote:
| That explains rural areas but not urban areas. We've got
| above-ground in rural areas but pretty much all urban
| stuff is underground. We get maybe one power cut a year,
| usually for scheduled maintenance work, and no problems
| with surges and whatnot.
| mcv wrote:
| Grandparent was talking about the DC metro area and
| Silicon Valley. We're not exactly talking about Montana
| here.
| markdown wrote:
| > Lightning damage is mostly an issue if the last-mile
| power lines are above ground.
|
| So 99.99999% of the world.
| SauntSolaire wrote:
| But not where 99.99999% of the population lives.
| 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.
| pseudohadamard wrote:
| Have they ever paid out on one of those, or is it like
| CAs who offer liability protection for their certificates
| carefully set up in such a way that they never have to
| pay out.
| gruez wrote:
| >In surge prone areas
|
| What areas are surge prone?
| toss1 wrote:
| Areas with lots of thunderstorms. Also more rural areas
| with long power lines with few taps off for customers --
| the long runs are both exposed to many nearby strikes and
| accept induction well, and the few customers are fewer
| power sinks to dissipate the spike. So, you're more
| likely to get hit, and hit harder.
| gruez wrote:
| Sounds like if you're in an urban area with buried lines,
| you don't have to worry?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I would recommend a circuit surge protector in urban
| areas.
|
| Lightning getting through some structure and hitting the
| electric lines happens. Even when they are buried. It's
| less of a problem when the ground absorbs a lot of the
| power before it even get into copper, but it's even less
| of a problem if there's some cheap device that will burn
| and protect you from it.
| schiffern wrote:
| In urban areas you probably can just have the whole-house
| surge protector and skip the rest, since that protects
| all costly electronics not just a single device. With
| just a surge strip on the PC I'd say you're a tad under-
| protected, yeah.
|
| Incidentally whole-house surge protection is now required
| by code in new houses. Existing buildings aren't required
| to upgrade, but by my reasoning _what 's good for the
| goose is good for the gander_.
| toss1 wrote:
| No, just worry less about big lightning, but urban areas
| have many more sources of different types of spikes and
| line noise
| frrlpp wrote:
| Open aerial wiring can shortcircuit two phases, bringing
| a low impedance surge that can damage most electric and
| electronic equipment.
| hedora wrote:
| The California bay area, at least all the sides of it
| I've lived on. We currently have a whole house battery,
| whole house surge protector, a second surge protector,
| and a UPS between the router/nas/etc and PG&E.
|
| It's not good enough. At least the power stays on once
| the grid stops bouncing (or once I manage to log into the
| rebooting battery gateway computer to have it flip the
| "off grid" breaker, or go outside and flip the manual one
| by the meter).
| nradov wrote:
| Color me skeptical. I've lived in several different Bay
| Area cities for decades. There are usually a couple power
| outages per year but I've never experienced a surge
| strong enough to cause equipment damage.
| kelnos wrote:
| Huh, interesting. I've lived in the bay area for 22 years
| (first 6 of them in various places from SJ up the
| peninsula, remainder in SF), and I've never experienced
| damage to anything due to a power surge.
|
| Not saying you're lying, but I do wonder if your
| experience is typical.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| I've lived all over the peninsula, your experience is not
| normal.
|
| I had far more power outages during my late teenage years
| in suburban Dallas than I've ever had in the bay. That
| was due to a bad transformer in the neighborhood which
| took _years_ to replace, but once it was replaced
| everything was perfect. The moral of the story being: if
| your power is bad, it 's probably because some piece of
| mains infrastructure near you is broken.
|
| I had a string of annoying outages in 2023-2024, but it
| was all due to main service upgrades on my street, can't
| really complain about that.
| tempaccount5050 wrote:
| Are you in an area with a bad electrical grid or something?
| In 40+ years I've never had a single device get fried from
| a surge/storm. My "surge protector" power strips are from
| the 90s and probably don't even work.
| schiffern wrote:
| Not too bad, just rural. We used to lose stuff every 10
| years or so.
|
| One day The Big One came along and fried nearly
| everything. " _Once burned, twice shy_. "
|
| Hopefully someone can learn from my mistake and not have
| to do it post-mortem.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| This. Same timeframe and I've lived through both lots of
| lightning storms and in areas with lots of power
| failures. Some of them intermittent and essentially
| caused by transformers blowing up. Like earlier this
| winter, we had multiple storms where you'd hear a
| transformer blow up, in many cases even seeing the sky
| light up as well from it, power going out, couple
| seconds, power coming back, next transformer blowing out,
| rinse, repeat.
|
| On the other hand I've read about plenty of stories of
| the "cheap" UPSs you'd usually buy as a consumer (not to
| name any brands coz I've never had any) actually
| _causing_ such issues in the first place. Without any
| actual surges from the grid.
|
| That said, being totally not superstitious (for real, but
| someone's gonna "kill me" if they find out I wrote this
| and something dies from a surge...), now I guess I need
| to knock on wood like seventeen times ...
|
| I do use surge protectors when we're on generator power
| temporarily.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| The things people often call "transformers blowing up"
| are usually not transformers blowing up.
|
| Instead, it's usually just overhead wires that are too
| close or literally touching, often from influences like
| wind and ice. The electricity arcs between the wires,
| creating bright blue-white flashes that can be seen from
| far away, sometimes with instantaneous heat that makes
| hunks of metal wire evaporate explosively. It can be
| violent and loud, and repetitious as different parts of
| even a single run fail.
|
| Transformers can certainly blow up, but that's less
| common. They're (generally) filled with oil for cooling
| purposes, and they're massive things that tend to take
| time to get hot. A failed transformer can produce arcing
| and blue-white light, but if things are that hot then the
| oil is also ready to burn.
|
| And when the oil burns it isn't blue-white -- it burns
| with about the same yellow-orange color we saw the last
| time we accidentally flambeed dinner on the kitchen
| stove, or a Hollywood fireball.
|
| A bright flash without a fire is probably not a
| transformer.
|
| Here's a video of a transformer actually-exploding (note
| the prominent fireball):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFkfd31Wpng
|
| And here's a video of what someone describes as a
| transformer exploding, even though there are no
| transformers in the video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHVh0KwG_0k
| tharkun__ wrote:
| Haha, I hear you. But yes, it really is transformers
| blowing up sometimes. Sometimes it really is just
| branches blowing up the line, sure.
|
| A branch hitting a wire, happenes all the time here too.
| Lots of trees in this community. The video of a
| transformer you shared: that's not the transformer I'm
| talking about. That's at a transformer station.
|
| I'm talking transformer on a street pole. The kind that
| hangs right across the street from me. This kind:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/y3E7avUvj6I
|
| See it's the kind in your second video. It's a
| transformer. You just chose a narrower definition I
| suppose. It's a
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_transformer ;)
|
| And yes, I know it's transformers and not just wires (but
| also wires do happen definitely) coz I do walk the
| neighborhood regularly and I can tell when a transformer
| is new vs. old up there. Ours is old. The ones a few
| streets over sometimes are very new and I see the Hydro
| trucks go by the next day(s) to make them new ;)
|
| Again, like seventeen times knock on wood but the ones
| next to us have not actually blown up. But three streets
| over, seen the new ones. Literally last weekend, we had
| an ice storm come through and while no blowouts we could
| see or hear, the outage map showed plenty of failure.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Residental-scale transformers can and do explode. Shorts
| happen not-infrequently with freezing rain and ice storms
| especially causing issues - the internal oil gets
| displaced by the water, and the dirty water causes an
| internal short. It wipes out power to a few blocks here
| when it happens, but we get an outage due to it every
| year or two.
| pseudohadamard wrote:
| It's not just cheap UPSes, it's cheap surge protectors as
| well. They exist because the vendor can throw in a MOV
| costing a few cents and increase the price of the power
| strip by 50%, not because they're any good. MOVs are
| sacrificial components which have either degraded to
| uselessness by the time they're actually needed or, if
| they're still working, can explode or catch fire from the
| energy dissipated. Even if they don't, all they're doing
| is converting an x-kV spike on active into an around-x-kV
| spike on neutral or ground. If you want to do it
| properly, use a series tracking filter, not a "surge
| protector".
| tharkun__ wrote:
| No offense, but can you tell me how my 4.5 kW generator
| is gonna generate that kind of power surge?
| tlb wrote:
| One scenario: there's a short circuit somewhere, say rats
| chewing through insulation. This can cause a very high
| current through the short. A non-inverter 4500 watt 120
| volt generator might have 0.2 ohms coil resistance, so
| the short circuit current can hit 170 volts / 0.2 ohm =
| 850 amps. When the shorted branch's circuit breaker
| trips, the inductance in the generating windings wants to
| keep that 850 amps flowing for at least a few
| microseconds, and it gets distributed across everything
| else that's still connected. Depending on what else is
| connected (hopefully including some surge protectors) the
| peak voltage can get into many kilovolts.
|
| The circuit is something like this:
| voltage source -- parasitic inductor --+- circuit breaker
| -- short |
| +- circuit breaker -- your PC
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Definitely use quality surge protectors on expensive
| equipment connected to generators.
|
| PSA: UPSes and GFCI/GFI extension cords won't work
| properly when connected to a stand-alone generator with a
| bonded neutral. I've tried using enterprise UPSes on such
| generators, but they absolutely won't work. In such
| scenarios, debond the generator's ground from neutral,
| apply a very large warning label to it being debonded,
| and drive a massive ground rod electrode into the ground
| as close to the generator as possible and ground the
| neutral there. This does work and is much safer because
| there's a stable voltage reference source. It's more of a
| hassle but can be necessary for some off grid and
| temporary scenarios.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > In such scenarios, debond the generator's ground from
| neutral
|
| eeeeep. Please for the love of all that is holy, CONTACT
| AN ELECTRICIAN before messing around with that - or
| before creating a ground bond where none should be (i.e.
| TT grid [1]). You may end up endangering yourself if you
| do not exactly know what you are doing - in the case of
| TT, you get ground potential difference current from
| other parts of the grid flowing to ground via your
| generator's bond. Best case you're getting problems with
| electrochemical corrosion (including in your foundation),
| worst case enough current flows to turn your bond wire
| into a thermal fuse.
|
| Also, take great care if your grounding is provided via
| municipal water service, or if your original grounding
| rod has dried out to the point it's ineffective.
|
| Let me repeat: LET ELECTRICIANS DEAL WITH GROUNDING AND
| SURGE PROTECTION. Floating grounds and improper ground
| connections CAN BE LETHAL OR POSE A SERIOUS FIRE RISK.
|
| AND YES THAT INCLUDES "ISLAND" SCENARIOS OR EMERGENCY
| POWER INPUTS (e.g. via CEE plugs and transfer switches).
|
| [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/TT-System
| dboreham wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd leave something like this to an
| electrician. Or if so at least make that electrician be
| experienced in this field. I think you'd want an
| electrical engineer to be involved with the plan to some
| degree.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Electrical engineers don't know code requirements and
| wiring guidelines for household electrical wiring.
| They're absolutely not the correct default. Electricians
| with specialization in generator setups, sure, but an
| electrician engineer on average is likely going to be
| more uninformed on code requirements than an electrician.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Electrical engineers know the theory but lack the
| practical knowledge which grid form is used _at your
| specific address_ (yes, here in Germany we have a few
| towns where one half side of a street runs TT and the
| other one is already migrated to TN-C or TN-C-S).
|
| An electrician specializing in lightning protection,
| uninterruptible power installation or in radio
| installations can sort out all of that far better than an
| engineer can.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| That extra unbonded ground rod is the _worst thing you
| can possibly do_ to make your generator vulnerable to
| lightning strikes.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| GFCI works correctly either way. Their operating mode
| doesn't care at all about ground: Whether bonded, not
| bonded, or not even present (look, ma! only two wires!),
| they still perform the same way.
|
| They respond to an imbalance in current flow betwixt line
| and neutral. What goes out must return; if it doesn't,
| then switch off.
|
| Ground is not part of the equation at all.
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| If your close neighbours have surge protectors then you
| benefit little from installing your own.
| sgc wrote:
| Another perspective: we should install whole house surge
| protectors if we can afford them, not only for ourselves,
| but to help our neighbors - even if in reality the help
| is minimal and they need their own as well. In the best
| case scenario, if everybody in a neighborhood has them,
| each individual house will be more resistant to surges
| than if they were the only house with one (five houses
| with surge protectors nearby is a lot better than one) -
| everybody wins.
| dotancohen wrote:
| You might as well phrase that as "If your close
| neighbours have gotten vaccines then you benefit little
| from getting your own."
|
| We live in a society. Everybody chips in. And each surge
| protector adds to the robustness of the grid.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Eh. Most nice power strips are also surge protectors.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Why? If the voltage spikes on the grid (that's what I
| understand a power surge to mean), wouldn't even more of
| it end up in your house (that is: the grid voltage spike
| even higher) if the neighbors have equipment that doesn't
| let their devices consume some of that energy?
|
| Edit: wait, maybe I figured it out: those devices must be
| consuming the excess rather than blocking it. Is that it?
| noahbp wrote:
| When I lived in Costa Rica, I lost three surge protectors
| in a year to power surges. During one such power surge, I
| didn't notice that the red light indicating surge
| protection was already out, and a power surge fried my
| (knockoff) Macbook power adapter, leaving me without a
| way to work for a day.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| Not only should you get rid of them, but also they are a
| fire hazard.
|
| Also, do not accidentally plug surge protectors into each
| other, metal oxide varistors can star fires _without_
| meaningful surge conditions when you do so.
|
| I prefer to buy products without MOVs entirely due to the
| risk, with the exception of one, Tripp Lite Isobars; but
| I prefer to use series mode protectors such as Brickwall
| or SurgeX.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| > Not only should you get rid of them, but also they are
| a fire hazard.
|
| Are they not a fire hazard even when new? MOVs do tend to
| degrade with use (especially after they've gone
| conductive to snuff one or more surges). But AFAICT we
| can't really know, without potentially-destructive
| testing, whether a given MOV is in good shape -- whether
| installed last week, last year, or 30 years ago.
|
| > Also, do not accidentally plug surge protectors into
| each other, metal oxide varistors can star fires
| _without_ meaningful surge conditions when you do so.
|
| What is the mechanism that increases risk for MOV-sourced
| fires in this arrangement?
|
| I've also noticed that many of the power supplies I've
| taken apart (for very pedestrian consumer goods) have
| internal MOVs on their line input. Whatever the mechanism
| is that increases risk, isn't using _one_ external surge
| protector already doing that in these instances?
|
| > I prefer to buy products without MOVs entirely due to
| the risk, with the exception of one, Tripp Lite Isobars;
| but I prefer to use series mode protectors such as
| Brickwall or SurgeX.
|
| I prefer to avoid MOVs, too. Broadly-speaking, diodes
| seem like a better way to do it. (Transtector is another
| reputable brand that uses diodes.)
|
| ---
|
| That all said, I've noticed over the years that problems
| with dead (presumed-to-be-hit-by-a-power-surge)
| electronics tend to follow particular structures. And the
| reason for this seems related to grounding more than it
| is anything else.
|
| So when I find someone (a friend, a client, maybe someone
| online that I'm trying to help) complaining about
| repeated damage, I often ask about grounding. _Almost
| always_ , it turns out that they've got multiple
| grounding points for the electronics: The electric
| service has one ground rod, and the telephone/cable
| feet/satellite/whatever is connected to some other
| ground.
|
| This might be a dedicated rod, maybe a metal pipe;
| whatever it is, it is distinct from the main service
| ground. It happens all the time. (It is worth noting that
| the NEC prohibits this kind of configuration unless
| extraordinary effort is put forth. See 800.100(d), for
| example.)
|
| The way that MOVs -- and avalanche diodes alike -- behave
| combines with the fact that the earth is an imperfect
| conductor, such that having multiple ground points
| promotes _dynamic_ ground loops that can provide quite
| large potential -through- the electronics that we seek to
| protect.
|
| The problem appears suddenly, and repetitiously.
| Everything is fine, and then ZANG: The cable modem gets
| smoked along with the router it is connected to. So the
| modem goes back to Spectrum or wherever to get swapped,
| and the router gets replaced again, until the next time:
| ZANG.
|
| TV connected to satellite receiver, with coax incorrectly
| grounded? ZANG. Over and over again.
|
| I'd see it all the time when I was a kid back in the BBS
| days: The phone line was grounded improperly, and
| computer was the only thing that connected to both
| electricity and the telephone line. Some folks would go
| through several modems over the course of a summer, which
| was very expensive -- while most people had no problems
| at all. Next-door neighbors would have completely
| different failure rates.
|
| Structures with _correct_ grounding tend to do very well
| at avoiding these issues, and I 've fixed these
| conditions in subsequent years more times than I can
| count.
|
| (A coworker installed a phone system at a business once,
| wherein he made extensive use of Ditek surge suppressors
| -- on the incoming POTS lines, and on the power inputs.
| It blew up one day. So he called Ditek to try to get at
| least the cost of the phone system hardware covered. They
| asked him to draw up a map of how the building was
| grounded and send that over, so that's exactly what he
| did. When they saw his map, they very quickly identified
| a ground loop and denied the claim.)
| matthiasl wrote:
| "What is the mechanism that increases risk for MOV-
| sourced fires in this arrangement?"
|
| I wondered the same thing, and failed to find a
| satisfying explanation.
|
| I can find plenty of reports of MOV fires, especially in
| situations where there's a persistent over-voltage, e.g.
| a 120 V site actually having closer to 240 V due to a
| floating neutral. But I don't see how chained MOVs make
| that worse in general. This blog post has some nice
| photos:
|
| https://www.electrical-
| forensics.com/SurgeSuppressors/SurgeS...
| consp wrote:
| No clue about the actual reliability of this[1] article
| but the mechanism mentioned (new pathways due to changes
| in crystalline structure due to uneven heating) sounds
| possible.
|
| 1. https://incompliancemag.com/how-and-why-varistor-
| failure-occ...
|
| Reread your wondering and now conclude its about chained
| situations which this also does not answer.
| MrDresden wrote:
| Heavy industry can also cause these kinds of power surges
| to happen.
|
| Last year an aluminum smelter in Iceland had a
| transformer blow which caused a big power surge on parts
| of the very well developed national power grid. The surge
| caused damage to electronics in some households and
| companies near to the smelter.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I lost an audio mixer to a bad surge last year. I don't
| know whether it was additional load or just really bad
| fluctuations that damaged the device. Nothing else bit
| the dust, but the, digital board in this mixer got
| bricked.
| lucb1e wrote:
| How did you know it was a power surge? Not doubting your
| comment, just interested in knowing if this ever happened
| to me
| dboreham wrote:
| EE living in a rural location here: transient related
| failures do happen in my experience. Rare but they
| happen. And I've known of people who had everything in
| their house fried. For me it's just been a couple of
| Ethernet ports. Power strips don't provide much
| protection fwiw. Always worthwhile checking that your
| electrical service is properly grounded.
| SmirkingRevenge wrote:
| I had exactly one device fried in my life. This was when
| I lived in FL in 1999. Lightning took out my sweet new
| 56k modem. My PC was fine.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Not completely correct, nuanced, or comprehensive.
|
| Direct lighting strikes cannot be defended against without
| extreme costs. This type of risk is generally extremely
| unlikely except for certain niche use-cases like equipment
| or facilities on tall peaks.
|
| Transients from lightning (E2) nearby and distant nuclear
| detonations can be defended against, and often require
| additional protection of telco and internet entry points.
| Whole house type 1 SPD devices exist for residential
| applications. This is much more likely than direct
| lightning strikes, especially in certain areas and can be
| defended against for reasonable cost. The main issue of
| lacking it is the unseen, cumulative degradation of
| semiconductor components that lead to instantaneous or
| eventual failure, especially in high value devices like
| electrically-communicated motors in HVAC systems. There is
| no reasonable expectation of defense against a direct
| lightning strike even with type 1 SPD, and there are
| different types of lightning with vastly different amounts
| of energy. A positive strike direct hit will totally fry
| anything and everything.
|
| What generally isn't defended against at all in any
| infrastructure or system except some military equipment is
| H/NEMP E1 (short duration impulses) or E3 (E3a or E3b; long
| duration surges larger than lightning) such as from unusual
| space weather events or nuclear blasts.
| andylynch wrote:
| > Nothing (reasonable) can protect against direct lightning
| strikes
|
| This is one reason why you bury power cables.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Burying power cables doesn't help against direct
| lightning strikes. If lightning hits your house,
| underground power cables will do nothing.
| casey2 wrote:
| Living in California taught me this
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| I grew up in San Jose CA in the 80's and 90'd on a street
| with a perpetually bad transformer. We had UPSes on every
| computer and proper surge protectors on everything of value.
| 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.
| rationalist wrote:
| It sounds like it won't affect prices that much?
|
| > South Korean memory giant SK hynix has since said it had
| diversified supplies for helium and secured sufficient
| inventory. Meanwhile, TSMC said that it doesn't currently
| anticipate a notable impact following Ras Laffan going offline,
| but that it's monitoring the situation.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| It also just be the typical "don't scare the shareholders
| just yet" PR speak. Time will tell.
| xphos wrote:
| I mean you are talking about 30% of the world supply I don't
| think you can spin up the amount of equipment need to replace
| that in a few weeks.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I bought a PC in early 2021 IIRC. It was good for the time and
| a good deal for a high end PC. IIRC it was $2800 and had a 6900
| XTX. Last year I accidentally killed it. The CPU temps were
| higher than I'd like (~85C). the thermal grease can become hard
| and ineffective over time so I figured I'd replace it. Instead,
| it had become like cement and by twisting the AIO off, I
| snapped the socket on the motherboard.
|
| This was an expensive mistake as I both looked into buying a
| replacement motherboard and CPU but that quickly gets to the
| price of a new PC. Paying someone to rebuild my PC is expensive
| and I'm beyond the age of wanting to fully remove a motherboard
| and effectively rebuild my entire PC myself. So I didn't know
| what to do with it.
|
| Anyway, I ended up buying various alternatives like a NUC with
| 32GB of RAM, a laptop (with a 4080) and a Mac Mini. But I also
| ended up buying a new 9800X3D PC with a 5070Ti. Like I said, it
| was an expensive mistake.
|
| But I decided for no particular reason to upgrade the (already
| good) 32GB of DDR5-6000 to 64GB with a $200 kit of DDR5-6000.
| This was in July I think. I also upgraded my laptop to 64GB for
| no readily apparent reason.
|
| I recently checked and that $200 64GB kit now costs $950. SSDs
| are through the roof too but through complete accident I'm
| surrounded by about 5 PCs and a bunch of spare RAM. I don't see
| myself upgrading anytime soon.
|
| I will say that there are some good deals (relative to current
| pricing) for combos including CPU, motherboard and memory or
| even some pretty good prebuilts.
| smilbandit wrote:
| I got to get me some new surge protectors and not the cheapies.
| maybe a small ups.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Thankfully UPSes are still cheap. Get one before Sam buys the
| entire yearly production of cyberpower.
| 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
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Interesting. Do you know why it uses helium?
| bgnn wrote:
| This is an extremely pure form of He, not the stuff used by the
| divers. That's a completely different supply chain.
| 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.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| That's really the worst case scenario, that people who
| manipulate policy of the most powerful country just want
| everything burn.
| 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
| pwarner wrote:
| Big self own here
| MarkMarine wrote:
| It's almost shocking that people in an era of unlimited
| resources could see this was not renewable and important to
| hold, and that later in the era of limited resources, we
| decided to privatize this. It's so shortsighted, willfully
| ignorant.
|
| We're about to get a preview of the world after fossil fuel
| extraction and some of the knock on effects. Semi is one
| thing, wait till you can't get an MRI.
| whatsupdog wrote:
| They started selling in 1996:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Financialization of everything is so funny to me, because even
| I, who is extremely stupid when it comes to big money stuff,
| can see not having state capacity on important stuff is insane.
| By that, I mean hard resources, materials, THINGS.
| pas wrote:
| cost-benefit analysis of things is important, eventually
| putting a number on things (services, risks, infrastructure,
| stock and flows, health, life, wellbeing, noise, air quality,
| aesthetics, user experience, fairness, and so on ...)
|
| of course outright securitization, privatization, and other
| types of not-quite-unintentional ways of responsibility
| diffusion also should be put to the aforementioned analysis.
|
| (there's, after all, now a (new) label for economically
| sound, responsible, sustainable, human-centered stewardship:
| state capacity libertarianism - https://marginalrevolution.co
| m/marginalrevolution/2020/01/wh... because neoliberal became
| a swearword)
| supernova87a wrote:
| You know that it was basically sold to be able to claim a more
| responsible budget that year? Basically selling off of an asset
| to record higher revenue. Like selling your building fire
| extinguishers to claim that you were able to pay off your
| credit card bill, and who cares what those were originally
| meant for.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| Pay of the credit card bill?
|
| You mean pay the interests on it.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Government accounting operation on a strictly annual basis is
| ruinous.
| nickff wrote:
| It's not, but the 10-year projections are even worse,
| because they count on eternally 'temporary' things actually
| changing.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| In some fictional scenario, if a character were charged by some
| dark authority with the assignment of laying waste to the US
| economy, putting fools and lackeys in roles of responsibility
| for economic investment and oversight, of befouling public
| discourse to the point where only fictions are spoken, of
| corrupting the judiciary, and sabotaging international
| partnerships forged in over a century of unprecedented co-
| operation...
|
| ...well, you would be making a documentary instead.
| 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
| xuki wrote:
| Send it to the sun to get more helium!
| naruhodo wrote:
| Fill it with hydrogen and just squeeze really hard.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Fold it up and ship it.
| WJW wrote:
| Ship it through the Straight of Hormuz?
| whatsupdog wrote:
| I think bigger question is, how do you bring the blimp down
| without dumping out helium?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Airships have air bags inside. Same deals as submarines.
| They take in and out ambient stuff into the bags to control
| buoyancy.
| dotancohen wrote:
| What ambient stuff is available at the altitude where a
| zeppelin typically flies?
| Retr0id wrote:
| there is generally plenty of ambient air in the earth's
| atmosphere
| dotancohen wrote:
| And how can that ambient air be stuffed into bags to
| control buoyancy?
| Retr0id wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pump
| dotancohen wrote:
| An air pump will not compress the air such that it
| becomes dense enough to overcome the buoyancy of the
| helium. The idea is ridiculous.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Tell that to the airships I guess
| cenamus wrote:
| The stuff the Zeppelin/Blimp floats in
| dotancohen wrote:
| And how do you propose that stuff be stuffed into the
| bags to control buoyancy?
| numpad0 wrote:
| so balloons appear to have negative mass, it's actually
| just the result of having lower density than the air. the
| upward force balances out with the gravity where the
| lbs/in^3 figure of its entirety matches that of ambient
| air. it's exactly the same as how an empty tank
| underwater floats, and a water filled tank underwater
| sinks.
|
| or I guess one could say it's the bottom side getting
| more compressive load from air than the topside, given
| the observable effect, whatever floats our zep...
| 8note wrote:
| you could compress the helium into tanks?
| ultratalk wrote:
| Attach hooks to the bottom of the blimp and send a guy in a
| heavy sled with hooks on it, with helium balloons attached
| to it, to the bottom of the blimp. Attach the sled to the
| hooks on the blimp, then get the guy to pop all the sled's
| balloons. The blimp will land on the ground gently, if the
| math is right.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| Shoot it down with a F22.
| adamwong246 wrote:
| easy problem to solve- single use zepplins.
| fuddle wrote:
| An easy target for a drone!
| darknavi wrote:
| At least it'd be non-flammable helium!
| xg15 wrote:
| _The Hindenburg wants to know your location_
|
| Edit: oh right, know your chemistry...
| oefrha wrote:
| You do realize helium is a byproduct of LNG production and if
| you're not pumping gas you're not getting helium? It's not a
| transportation issue.
| fwipsy wrote:
| Yes, except for this one flaw it's a perfect plan which would
| have worked perfectly.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| I always thought the socially inept computer enthusiast who
| can't detect social cues was an anachronism by this point in
| history but then I started visiting hackernews.
| behehebd wrote:
| But that isn't even the issue. Drone attack on the plant that
| produces it. So even with the input materials. No dice for
| now.
| oefrha wrote:
| That's only one part of it. Even if the plant isn't
| attacked, they're not gonna be pumping gas when storage is
| full and LNG can't be shipped out.
| hedora wrote:
| Nonsense. Deploy the SLS. Use the hydrogen tanks.
|
| If the seals can hold hydrogen, helium should be easy for them.
|
| /s
| dotancohen wrote:
| If only the SLS seals would actually hold the hydrogen!
| adverbly wrote:
| Step 1B: load up all the tanker vessels carrying the oil onto
| the helium blimp
|
| Two birds, one stone baby! Just hopefully it doesn't get hit by
| a bird or something...
| behehebd wrote:
| What helium?
| 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?
| xuki wrote:
| I'm not sure in this instance, but for industrial plants,
| the expectation is for them to run 24/7/365 without
| disruption. They're not designed to be turned off and then
| on again. When you shut something down, how do you "reset"
| it to a clean state so production can start again? Think
| about all the existing stuff still in the pipes, residual,
| etc.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Aluminum smelters use the Hall-Heroult process, where
| alumina is dissolved in molten cryolite and reduced in
| massive "pots" which are large electrolytic cells. Each pot
| contains a carbon cathode lining that must be kept at
| around 950C during operation. If the pot cools down, the
| frozen electrolyte and solidified aluminum contract at
| different rates than the carbon and steel shell, cracking
| the lining.
|
| Once it's cracked, the pot has to be completely cleaned out
| and relined which takes weeks. A smelter usually has
| hundreds of pots so this alone takes a while as the liner
| and anything in it are basically frozen solid and need to
| be broken apart and torn out. Once relined the pots must be
| brought back up slowly and the chemistry balanced. The pots
| also draw a ton of power and are wired in series so they
| have to all be brought up slowly together (or in batches).
|
| That assumes it was a clean shutdown with nothing else
| clogged up in the system. "Cleaning" in smelting means that
| the hardware involved needs to be replaced because it fused
| to molten metal while cooling down.
| squigz wrote:
| How much of this process is cleaning up from the previous
| run and how much is purely for starting up the process
| again? Does it make sense to clean up the system as soon
| as you can after shutdown, in preparation for restart,
| whenever that may be?
| throwup238 wrote:
| It's one and the same. The sodium and other atoms from
| the molten cryolite intercalate into the carbon cathode
| structure and swell it by a few percent. Once in use, a
| cathode is held together by the steel shell and thermal
| equilibrium of the running pot. Once it cools the
| cracking is inevitable.
|
| You also can't fully drain a pot. You can siphon most of
| the aluminum and cryolite off but at those temperatures
| they behave like a proper liquid with surface tension and
| the metal wicks into the pot like solder instead of
| flowing with gravity.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| The system is just build for continuous usage and any
| shutdown does major damage.
|
| To keep it running at reduced capacity will likely be
| less expensive unless the war goes on for a very long
| time.
| ngcazz wrote:
| Fascinating, and what about the discarded hardware? Is it
| recyclable in any way?
| HenryMulligan wrote:
| I'm sure, like any metal at an industrial scale, it is
| profitably recyclable. But that is beside the point. This
| is akin to asking: "My car's engine just threw a rod and
| is seized. Is it recyclable?" Hopefully you see in this
| analogy that the car (engine) costs way, way more than
| the sum of its parts (the constituent metals).
| throwup238 wrote:
| Anything made of steel or aluminum is recyclable because
| they can just melt it down and easily separate the
| metals, but the carbon lining and anything nonmetal is
| basically slag afterwards. Aluminum, electrolyte, and
| random atoms seep in everywhere and destroy it.
|
| The smelting process I described above is actually the
| more expensive process to used to produce aluminum from
| raw bauxite. Recycling aluminum is cheaper and a
| significant fraction of the world's aluminum produced
| every year is from recycled feedstock (over two thirds in
| the US, last I checked). Same goes for steel and most
| other metals.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| forges are continuous processes - they stay hot while stuff
| goes in and out
|
| if you make it cold, you'll have to do whole startup
| sequence again
| 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.
| r721 wrote:
| Also sulfur: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-chokepoint-we-
| missed-sulfur-ho...
| hedora wrote:
| It's going to be 90-100F in California next week.
|
| Not sure how that impacts fertilizer demand, but it certainly
| screws up planting season.
|
| The ground will be dry in a week or two, and they're predicting
| the worst spring snowpack on record (after the wettest
| Christmas in Southern California on record).
|
| Maybe someone else can use the fertilizer?
| _heimdall wrote:
| Sulfur as well, crude coming out of middle east countries is
| quite sour and produces a lot of sulfur as a byproduct of
| refinement.
| pocksuppet wrote:
| Will this crash the AI bubble?
| behehebd wrote:
| AI creates the stag
|
| This creates the flation
| 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.
| happyopossum wrote:
| The point is it doesn't take giant tankers going through the
| Strait of Hormuz to move this volume. It could be handled by
| tanker trucks going to Suez....
| deceptionatd wrote:
| This has nothing to do with transport. Iranian drone
| strikes disabled a Qatari helium _production_ facility.
| paulsutter wrote:
| You should be able to make a killing placing commodity
| bets right now, because you have such crystal clear
| vision for the causal chain currently underway
|
| What are your top positions? You will never need to work
| again!
| jmyeet wrote:
| This situation would be laughable if the consequences weren't so
| dire.
|
| I have problems adequately stating just how incompetent and ill-
| thought out this entire misadventure was. I say this because
| everything that's happened has been completely foreseeable _and
| foreseen_ , including the ability of Iran to retaliate by closing
| the Strait of Hormuz.
|
| This has been something many militaries around the world have
| planned scenarios for. Word has it any warnings from allies, the
| NSC and the Joint Chiefs were just completely ignored. And those
| estimates probably underestimated how numerous and effective
| Iranian SRBMs and Shahed drones are.
|
| Beyond direct impacts on crude oil, refined oil products and
| natural gas, there are secondary effects such as ~30 of the
| world's fertilizer goes through the Strait. Helium from Qatar is
| an issue but at least there are other sources for Helium, being
| pretty much any natural gas well so equipped to capture helium.
|
| We are the bad guys.
| cleandreams wrote:
| Not just many foreign militaries. Our military. General Dan
| Caine by report advised Trump about the negative consequences
| of this action. MAGA elected a fantasist and narcissist and we
| will all bear the consequences. I was no fan of Kamala but the
| appalling limitations of Trump are of a different order and it
| is a disgrace that our voters by majority elected him.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| Who are the good guys?
| cowanon2222 wrote:
| Sometimes there isn't a good guy, just a bad guy and a worse
| guy.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| Do you think the US is worse than Iran?
| jmyeet wrote:
| By any metric, yes, the US has killed more people and
| caused more harm than Iran by orders of magnitude.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > I say this because everything that's happened has been
| completely foreseeable and foreseen, including the ability of
| Iran to retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz.
|
| Yup. Even illiterate could tell just looking at the damn map.
| Gotta wonder if somebody on top is trying to undermine own
| country...
| luzejian wrote:
| Freight rate volatility is one of the most underappreciated risks
| in physical product businesses. During the 2021-2022 shipping
| crisis, ocean freight from China to the US West Coast hit $20k+
| per container -- a 10x jump that wiped margins for importers who
| hadn't hedged. Air freight as a backup is worth keeping in your
| model even if you never use it; knowing your break-even point at
| air rates tells you a lot about product viability.
| awesomeMilou wrote:
| How would you model your business like this? Like what tools /
| literature can you recommend?
| hedora wrote:
| There was a lot written about this in the 1990s during the
| rise of globalization and just in time supply chains.
|
| Basically, you build a big warehouse and keep it full when
| prices are below projection.
|
| This is equivalent to investing capital at a negative
| interest rate, so it's not done anymore. Instead, the system
| is designed to pass supply shocks on to the consumer when
| possible.
|
| I've noticed the local grocery stores have started replacing
| shelf price tags with little computers so they can reprice
| food in real time. (And hire fewer stock people),
|
| Anyway, the keyword you want is "just in time supply chain".
| znnajdla wrote:
| > This is equivalent to investing capital at a negative
| interest rate, so it's not done anymore.
|
| Stupidity of financializing everything. There's no amount
| of money in the world that can quantify the safety of
| having critical items like food in supply. You can't eat
| money. If everyone builds "just in time" supply chains the
| world collapses after a single shock.
| klysm wrote:
| Yes but think of the shareholders! And that doesn't show
| up nicely on a spreadsheet does it?
| pas wrote:
| but there's finite resources. cost-benefit analysis still
| makes sense. there are things that consumers can easily
| substitute.
|
| for example meat is a high-quality but luxury source of
| protein, as in it's expensive, but people like it a lot
| so they pay a lot for it, see beef prices, but except
| specific allergies everyone can switch to poultry, fish,
| or plant-based protein sources easily, as in anyone
| people who prepare food at home can easily prepare a
| different one, restaurants can switch too, etc.
|
| but there are products with very fragile supply-chains,
| like baby formula (breast milk is not always
| available/possible), but there are not a lot of domestic
| producers, and there's some typical political meddling
| with it (since it's critical there's a lot of subsidy for
| it, and since it's quality controlled it's not easy to
| enter the market, since it's FDA controlled you can't
| just import it), yet there's no mandatory stockpiling. it
| would push up the price. how much? who knows. depending
| on how perishable the product, how much would it cost to
| warehouse it. should this be done with public money?
| should this be one more regulatory burden? yet more cost-
| benefit questions.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_infant_f
| orm...
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Excel normally
|
| You type in a normal profit and loss account, prior year
| might work, forecast is better. Then you see how your freight
| cost changes from sea to air by getting a quote from your
| freight company of choice. If it is 5% more then change the
| freight line in your p&l to be 5% higher. Are you still
| profitable?
| pg_bot wrote:
| It's a good time to be Messer.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/us-just-sold-heli...
| staplung wrote:
| Can someone explain why _helium_ is used for these purposes, as
| opposed to some other noble gas? I think there 's more argon
| (it's about 1% of the atmosphere) than helium so is helium
| somehow special, or is it just cheaper, despite being rarer and
| non-renewable?
| nine_k wrote:
| Helium has the second highest [1] specific heat capacity (after
| hydrogen); it's significantly higher than that of even water.
| It's damn efficient at cooling or heating. With that, it's
| chemically inert, unlike hydrogen or ammonia. There's no
| reasonable substitute.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_specific_heat_capacit...
| (Sort by the third column.)
| generuso wrote:
| Heat capacity is irrelevant -- argon and helium have exactly
| the same heat capacity per liter of gas, which would be the
| figure of merit in this context.
|
| Heat conductivity, on the other hand, is an order of
| magnitude higher for helium, compared to argon, because its
| atoms are moving faster due to their lower mass.
|
| When the gas is used for cooling, heat conductivity is
| important because it determines the conductivity through the
| boundary layer near surface, where the velocity of the flow
| drops to zero at the surface itself, and all the heat
| transport is through conduction rather than advection.
| Panoramix wrote:
| It's about the thermal conductivity.
|
| Helium has 150mW/m _K vs Argon ~18mW /m_K so you can't
| replace it.
|
| The only alternatives to Helium are Neon, which is 3x worse
| and much more expensive, and hydrogen. However, hydrogen is
| flammable so it's a very bad idea to use it in a fab which
| has extremely poisonous gases and needs a cleanroom
| environment. A fire would ruin your whole factory and kill
| your engineers.
| hedora wrote:
| In related news, diesel is $7/gallon, and peets coffee is $25/lb,
| and computers (hardware and cloud) are up 25-50%.
|
| The official numbers claim 3% inflation. Does anyone actually
| believe that? We were seeing 30% YoY before Iran here in
| California.
|
| The discrepancy is so large, I'm wondering if there's an official
| explanation or some reasonable explanation, or if they're just
| not bothering anymore.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > We were seeing 30% YoY before Iran here in California.
|
| We didn't even see that across the board during the height of
| Covid-flation. What metrics are you using to get that number?
| hedora wrote:
| Food, fuel, utilities, insurance, electronics, services and
| digital goods.
| imperialdrive wrote:
| Entry level Dell servers that used to cost 1,700 US are now
| going for 17,000!!! I'm talking absolute basics with 16GB of
| memory etc. Wild times.
| manarth wrote:
| Citation please? > PS2,751.70
| PowerEdge R260 Xeon(r) 6315P 2.8GHz
| 1x16GB DIMM 2x2TB HDD SATA
|
| https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/dell-poweredge-
| servers/sr/se...
| dyauspitr wrote:
| This administration is America slitting its wrists.
| Gud wrote:
| More like randomly shooting itself causing non-lethal
| injuries, but in aggregate, enough blood loss to die.
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| As randomly as number 17.
| largbae wrote:
| Diesel is $5 in the Southeast, what kind of supply chain issue
| could cause 40% diff? Should we hire some tanker trucks and arb
| this?
| joering2 wrote:
| None. But you don't put a non refined cruide oil in your
| diesel, it not only has to be refined but DELIVERED to your
| country. Depending where that country is, delivery could be
| even 60% of the final price. And when, you know, tankers with
| oil explode due to drone attacks, you will see quick large
| spikes in pump price.
|
| EDIT: also, oil is a commodity traded worldwide, and downside
| of this is the price of oil is directed by future contracts
| bet on said oil. In other words, if enough people assume
| there will be future upticks related to raising cost of
| transportation insurance, they buy more futures. If they buy
| more of this virtual contract on price going up (called
| "long") then eventually real price of oil catches up. Sure,
| this is upside down, but markets live in this setup for many
| years now where tail wags the dog.
| erikerikson wrote:
| Check taxes
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Most oil production and refining capacity is east of the
| Rockies and transported to major population centers using
| pipelines. The Rockies, Sierra Nevada, etc. make pipelines
| much more cost prohibitive since you have to pump it over the
| mountains; trains and trucks are a lot more expensive to use
| for transport; and tankers would have to use the Panama
| Canal, which besides being a much longer distance also has
| usage fees.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I dug up walmart ads from 8 and 16 years ago. In the first 8
| years, a case of pepsi went up 5%. In the last 8 years, it went
| up 200%. Make of that what you will.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| Drinking more water would be healthy for most americans.
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| Sure, but did water remain at the same price or got
| cheaper?
| dgoldstein0 wrote:
| so every inflation number has to be understood by following (a)
| when is it measuring and (b) what is it measuring. For when: a
| lot of economic data is lagging indicators, e.g. last quarter -
| and inflation is usually % more year over year, whereas a lot
| of people seem to care about inflation on the 2-5 year time
| frame instead of just 1 year. For the what - we'd have to dig
| into whether it's national averages, state averages, or local;
| what percentage of the measurement is rent vs housing prices vs
| groceries (and what grocery items) vs clothing vs computers vs
| utilities etc etc. It's very likely that the idealized basket
| of goods that they are measuring the cost of doesn't actually
| match your expenses or even the average household expenses for
| your area. Or possibly even, for the whole country.
|
| The meta problem is that price data - assuming we can even
| reliably observe it - is super high dimensional, and we're
| trying to reduce it all to a single number.
| PowerElectronix wrote:
| CPI is kept artificially down by claiming that items that
| increase a lot in value are sudendly "higher quality" so that
| their price is adjusted down to equalize for "quality".
|
| They will just take those items off the basket, put in
| different ones and claim that those are better quality so the
| actual price increase is in line with expectations.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I wish I could find the analysis now, but someone proved this
| out by comparing magazine prices to CPI's calculation of
| magazine prices.
|
| I believe they uses Time as the example because the covers
| are archived and have the price printed right on them.
|
| They went back a few decades and the inflation difference was
| quite large. I want to say the real sticker price change was
| multiple times higher than CPI's claim of magazine prices,
| but I can't remember the exact numbers.
| pas wrote:
| there are frequent claims by semi-crackpots that the
| hedonic adjustment of inflation calculation is hiding a lot
| of inflation.
|
| there was the famous shadowstats site, but it seems it shut
| down, or at least stopped publishing new stuff in 2023
| publicly. (probably reverting to a good old affinity scam
| [5])
|
| (fun trivia, noticed by a reddit user 11 years ago, that
| even though the guy claimed high inflation but the
| subscription fee remained the same over 10 years, and in
| the last post it was also "six months at $89.00".) and
| there are many posts [3][4] explaining why these alternate
| measures are very unlikely to be more correct than either
| the BLS' CPI or the BEA's PCE.
|
| ...
|
| the BLS does a lot of work to have useful numbers for a lot
| of goods and services [0], down to computer parts [1]
|
| and there are a lot of things that usually are now more
| fancy (and more expensive, of course), but don't have value
| adjustment in the list. (Matt Yglesias writes about the
| spa-ification of services, everything is nicer, fancier,
| from movie theater seats to barber shops, yet there's no
| adjustment for "haircuts and other personal care
| services"[2])
|
| [0] https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/home.htm
|
| [1] https://www.bls.gov/mxp/publications/additional-
| publications...
|
| [2] sorry, behind a paywall
| https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-spa-fication-of-everything
|
| [3] https://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2015/03/31/decon
| struc...
|
| [4] https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/inflation-is-up-but-the-
| inflat...
|
| [5] https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con
| manarth wrote:
| I can understand a certain amount of switching in the basket
| - e.g. a washing machine or dishwasher was once a "luxury
| good" in a market such as USA, but is now (for the most part)
| an everyone-appliance.
|
| Interesting to consider the alternative case though, an
| "everyone basket item" becoming a "luxury good".
|
| Democracy, maybe? But I don't think they've put that in the
| CPI basket - yet! :-P
| PowerElectronix wrote:
| It's more like, refrigerators are now way more expensive,
| but because they are also more comlonly equipped with led
| fixtures and have more style (no joking here, they somehow
| are measuring style as a metric) then it's all good and
| they have actually just increased around 2% with respect yo
| the base model (that cost like a third in dollars back in
| 1995)
| pas wrote:
| FYI everyone can check the model used for hedonic
| adjustment for fridges
|
| style is important, because stylish things are more in
| demand (that's why they are considered stylish), and the
| abstract property of style by definition is a "value
| quality" that doesn't affect the temperature keeping
| properties, whereas things like are there drawers or
| shelves does (as cold air is kept better by drawers - but
| of course they are less convenient)
|
| that said, the style here seems to be simply a catch-all
| term for the organization of the inside, and the access
| methods (eg. doors).
|
| https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/fridges.htm
|
| ... interestingly there's no parameter for noise or
| energy efficiency. (I was happy to pay a bit more for a
| really quiet one.)
| pas wrote:
| the category is still in the basket (washers and dryers)
| but there's a model to compare an old washing machine with
| a new modern fancy one
|
| https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/clothes-
| washers.h...
| Lewton wrote:
| Some of the cpi data is synthetic, based on best guess, the
| ratio of synthetic data has gone up sharply
| https://www.apolloacademy.com/the-quality-of-the-cpi-data-co...
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| The explanation is that the world economy has been controlledly
| flown into terrain, nearing the day when those who used to
| express their cognitive dissonance by issuing cuckoo signs
| towards _conspiracy theorists_ , finally own nothing and are
| happy making cuckoo signs in front of their rented mirrors.
| energy123 wrote:
| We should make different inflation baskets, representative of
| the bottom quartile, the median person, and the upper quartile.
|
| The bottom quartile has a large % of the CPI basket composed of
| housing rent, for example.
|
| The upper quartile has 0% of the CPI basket composed of rents.
|
| This should be doable quite easily, it's not like the spending
| habits of different socioeconomic groups are a secret.
| manarth wrote:
| I guess the typical inflation basket doesn't include rental
| _income_ , which the upper-quartile are rather more likely to
| have than the lower quartile.
|
| Wonder how that might impact figures if residual/passive
| income were included?
| nickff wrote:
| Consumer _Price_ Inflation (CPI) is about spending on
| consumer goods, and not about wage or investment income.
| energy123 wrote:
| A separate index could be independently useful: The
| amount you gain/lose just from existing, so spending +
| capital gains + ...
|
| It's not a fully baked idea, but something like this.
| manarth wrote:
| Consumer Price _Index_ (inflation /deflation being the
| change in CPI), but I get your point, thanks
| jondwillis wrote:
| Accelerationists gonna accelerate
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I feel like people in these comments and commentators in general
| are just kind of ignoring the fact that the US produces more
| helium than Qatar, and in fact more helium than the entire Middle
| East combined, nearly 50% of the global total. The sale of the
| "helium reserve" is (mostly) irrelevant as well, because there's
| massive domestic helium production. https://www.wmi.badw.de/the-
| institute/helium-liquefaction-pl...
|
| I get that the current situation is stupid, but can we at least
| be accurate? Qatar is FAR from the only source of helium. (And
| yes, helium of any type can be purified to high levels. That's
| also not just a Qatar thing.)
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| > South Korea is among the most exposed countries, which,
| according to the Korea International Trade Association, imported
| 64.7% of its helium from Qatar in 2025. The country relies
| heavily on helium imports to cool silicon wafers during
| fabrication and is understood to have no viable substitute.
|
| I assume the helium is enclosed in a a chip's hermetically sealed
| package, if it were just for cooling _wafers_ I don 't understand
| why it can't reuse the helium?
| foodevl wrote:
| It's not enclosed in the final product. It is used during
| manufacturing. For example, you mechanically compress helium to
| get liquid helium, then when it depressurizes back to ambient
| pressure, it's -269 C, which is pretty close to "as cold as
| possible", and colder than any alternatives.
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| why can't this happen in a closed loop, using helium as the
| working fluid?
| naasking wrote:
| I assume purity matters. It probably picks up a lot of
| contaminants during use, and chip manufacturing is pretty
| sensitive to contaminants.
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| you can put He in a closed loop system and still use it for
| cooling, by using it as the thermodynamic working fluid, and
| then selecting any other fluid as the heat carrier?
| naasking wrote:
| That's not clear actually. It's been awhile since I watched
| the video on the ASML EUV system for etching wafers, but
| from my recollection, the UV light ablates away layers of
| wafers and so particles of silicon presumably contaminate
| the noble gas that's flowing over it. I don't think a
| closed loop is possible in the existing setups.
| isodev wrote:
| So turning our backs on globalisation was a mistake after all.
| Everyone needs everyone to work well together. So much winning.
|
| My PC was due for an upgrade this year (still using a video card
| from 2019)... so I really hope this keeps working for another ...
| 5 ?! years
| loeg wrote:
| My graphics card is from 2016; you'll be fine.
| SilverSlash wrote:
| Umm, I think you have it reversed. A helium plant in Qatar
| shutting down causing problems to US chip consumers is
| precisely _because_ of globalization.
| isodev wrote:
| So what, you expect 195 countries to develop a copy of
| everything just so they can hate the other 194?
|
| Connection and collaboration is always the better way
| forward.
| SilverSlash wrote:
| It's amazing how pretty much every reply to my original
| comment has failed to comprehend that I was not criticizing
| globalization. Whether it's even possible to get to where
| we are without it is also debatable.
|
| But the question you're asking me is meaningless, because
| the premise is wrong. My original reply was true and
| entirely independent of my or anyone else's opinion of
| whether globalization is good/bad.
| behehebd wrote:
| Your comment was technically true but I don't get the
| point of it.
| naasking wrote:
| Redundancy is not "hate", it's robustness against failure.
| Complex, interconnected supply chains are fragile. If
| you're building an online storage API, you would (I hope)
| consider it deeply irresponsible not to setup plenty of
| followers of the main system for redundancy and automatic
| fail over. The idea that supply chains should not do this,
| or that any such suggestions are emotionally driven
| decisions is extremely bizarre.
|
| Yes, this may increase costs slightly because robustness
| necessarily has a cost associated with it.
| jopsen wrote:
| It's hard to imagine chip supply chain could be commercially
| viable without globalization.
|
| One could probably argue that giving up globalization means
| fewer and less capable products.
| SilverSlash wrote:
| Good, we agree :)
| pjc50 wrote:
| You can have a 1960s isolated all in country production line
| if you're happy with the products of the 1960s.
| naasking wrote:
| It's a little weird that you seem to think that humans
| can't make technological progress without globalization.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Globalization is not going anywhere. Without it you're
| basically going to be Cuba 2.0
| zkmon wrote:
| I understand oil part. But why everything else can only be
| manufactured in these desert regions of the world?
| poilcn wrote:
| Gas.It is needed in lots of processes. It's very difficult and
| extremely expensive to transport gas. So the best solution is
| to use it at the place it's extracted.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Helium is actually a gas byproduct. It's naturally mixed in
| with the well gas.
| steven_noble wrote:
| "Helium production"? I'm assuming they're not running a fusion
| reactor...
| kzrdude wrote:
| We can try the same with "oil production"
| einpoklum wrote:
| South Korea should be pressuring the US to cut it out with the
| unprovoked and unjustified attack on Iran. Both because of the
| Hormuz straights situation, and because next time, Trump or some
| other genius US administration might decide to pull some kind of
| similar stunt somewhere even closer to SK, putting it in more
| serious danger, despite of its objections, and of intl. treaties,
| and of basic common sense etc.
|
| ... but I'm not holding my breath.
| danielovichdk wrote:
| Who cares about chips ?
|
| These fucking yankee and zionist morons just keep pushing it.
|
| Go Iran
| globemaster99 wrote:
| Thanks for the American clowns and their terrorism, now the
| working class people of the rest of the world have to deal with
| one more head ache.
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