DickParasite posted:

Yes and this is why you horde vintage porno mags.

In the post-EMP wasteland who do you think the people will turn to for their needs?

Incitatus posted:

your brain is the most powerful computer

Incitatus posted:

your brain is the most powerful computer

Devils Affricate posted:

I've actually been wondering, wouldn't it be possible to load the most important/expensive parts of the fab onto ships and move them to another location? Obviously it would be difficult and expensive to do this safely, but surely not as difficult and expensive as building brand new equipment from scratch, right?

quote:

"The most difficult thing about wafer manufacturing is not technology," he said. "The most difficult thing is personnel management. Americans are the worst at this, because Americans are the most difficult to manage."

In contrast, Taiwanese engineers follow orders without question. Another TSMC engineer said that when given several projects, some Americans struggled and occasionally turned down new assignments rather than working harder or longer to finish them all.

Taima posted:

I wish Americans were interested, as a cohort, is learning literally anything, ever, because no one here really understands the scale and accomplishment of what has been done at TSMC and Foxconn et al. These are monuments to human ingenuity and hard work that could arguably never be recreated in the west for a bunch of reasons.

Disco Pope posted:

Counterpoint: my laptop didn't go through a phase of taking quasi-legal horse medicine from neon packets in the 2010s.

Piss Creep posted:

I hope I get to live on a post-US world before I die.

Bula Vinaka posted:

It might be all over once the 4090 Ti comes out

Piss Creep posted:

I hope I get to live on a post-US world before I die.

GundamHealer posted:

Taima posted:

That's a solid question and I can try to offer a perspective here.

I'm sure some of the tech can be expatriated to the USA, but that's only part of the problem; the high-end productive capacity that exists in the East between Taiwan and China is arguably irreplicable from a human resource standpoint.

It's not just TSMC that's like that. The pipeline that exists to mass produce extremely high tech items like iphones couldn't be effectively moved in a similar way. The human know-how and resources represented by these manufacturing facilities exist nowhere in the world, and the work ethic of the people involved would largely be considered immoral in the west.

TSMC has come up with major issues in the west with their attempts at expanding capacity because people in the USA just don't give nearly enough of a poo poo to learn and work hard enough to match eastern processes. We are lacking in technical know-how, and especially the sheer number of technically inclined people that exist in places like Shenzhen.

Meanwhile in America the highest aspiration is to never work another day in your life if you could. Which makes sense, gently caress work, but you get situations like this all the time:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/02/22/tsmc-managers-think-americans-dont-work-hard-enough

In the West, factory work of this nature is seen as difficult and undesirable (because it is) which means the manpower available for factory work is highly uneducated. The entire concept of high-skill factory work is almost a complete non starter in the West at this point. And even if they did exist, the costs would be astronomical.

TSMC and other Chinese entities like Foxconn would be somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible to reproduce in the West and even if they were, couldn't be done at anywhere near the same cost basis.

I wish Americans were interested, as a cohort, is learning literally anything, ever, because no one here really understands the scale and accomplishment of what has been done at TSMC and Foxconn et al. These are monuments to human ingenuity and hard work that could arguably never be recreated in the west for a bunch of reasons.

I'm not even sure they could recreate these firms if they burned down tomorrow. Everything is so much more expensive these days; the bones of Chinese manufacturing were built on a sea of cheap labor and inputs that don't really exist anymore in an increasingly hosed up world, and most people would consider the running of especially Shenzhen to be morally bankrupt by American standards.

On top of that, China/Taiwan are ever-transitioning towards a more financially rich society and it has been jacking up wages and input costs in the region massively. Africa and similar nations are becoming the new China from a cost perspective but they have their own problems and will take a long time to get up to China's level (if that's even possible).

I don't know. People constantly underestimate how incredible, scary, ingenious, exploitative, and unique these endeavors are, broadly. If we lose them, it could be a generational loss. Maybe that's good; you could easily argue that workers in these scenarios are being highly exploited, often times. But the loss to the technical capability represented by these titanic firms would be felt.

Deki posted:

We're building next gen chip fabs in the US as a hedge against this.

It would suck and make electronics more expensive for a bit, but I don't think it's a crippling thing.

god please help me posted:

I will activate the cabbage-shaped jade to defeat Xi.

Taima posted:

That's a solid question and I can try to offer a perspective here.

I'm sure some of the tech can be expatriated to the USA, but that's only part of the problem; the high-end productive capacity that exists in the East between Taiwan and China is arguably irreplicable from a human resource standpoint.

It's not just TSMC that's like that. The pipeline that exists to mass produce extremely high tech items like iphones couldn't be effectively moved in a similar way. The human know-how and resources represented by these manufacturing facilities exist nowhere in the world, and the work ethic of the people involved would largely be considered immoral in the west.

TSMC has come up with major issues in the west with their attempts at expanding capacity because people in the USA just don't give nearly enough of a poo poo to learn and work hard enough to match eastern processes. We are lacking in technical know-how, and especially the sheer number of technically inclined people that exist in places like Shenzhen.

Meanwhile in America the highest aspiration is to never work another day in your life if you could. Which makes sense, gently caress work, but you get situations like this all the time:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/02/22/tsmc-managers-think-americans-dont-work-hard-enough

snergle posted:

the same foxxconn who has to install suicide nets so their slaves workers dont jump off the building? tsmc is being insulted in this post by being compared to them. foxxconn is a sweat shop making electronics. you dont even get to leave you have to live in their dorms.

Devils Affricate posted:

Sure, but in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, those pipelines between the two countries are going to shut down anyway. TSMC isn't going to be shipping in parts from Shenzhen while PRC bombs are dropping on Taipei. Also I'm sure that in this same situation a lot of the TSMC personnel would be highly interested in vacating Taiwan for the sake of their own safety, and following the TSMC equipment wherever it may go would be a way to not only avoid danger but also preserve their careers in the process. Moving the whole operation to the US would obviously be a huge undertaking, both in terms of cultural differences and physical distance, but what about Japan? AFAIK Japan and Taiwan are pretty buddy-buddy, lots of cross tourism and cultural exchange.