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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Note: design and licensing is a far cry for semiconductor fabbing, and not every country can do the latter.

    Most countries depend ridiculously much on TSMC (from Taiwan), while TSMC depends ridiculously much on instruments from ASML (from the Netherlands). Grossly simplified, getting where those two currently are takes a decade, and by that time they’ll be a decade ahead (unless they get lazy).

    As far as I recall, Samsung (South Korea) can fabricate large quantities of semiconductors on their own (but several times less than TSMC). Then come several Chinese companies, one in the US and one in Israel. Beyond that, there’s very small fish. The only European foundry worth mentioning (X-Fab) has dropped out of the top 10.



  • Indeed, forums are almost gone. In particular, I miss one forum about science fiction, one about aeromodelism, one about electric vehicles (another still exists) and one about anarchism. An interesting hold-out in the country where I live, is a military forum, where rules say that respectful discussion is the only kind of discussion accepted - ironically, the military forum has a peaceful atmosphere. But it could come crashing down much easier than a social media company.

    As for why forums disappeared - I think that people became too convenient. They wanted zero expense (hosting a forum incurs some expenses and needs a bit of time and attention), and wanted all their discussion in one place. Advertisers wanted a place where masses could be manipulated. Social media companies wanted people to interact more (read: pick more heated arguments) and see more ads - and built their environments accordingly. Not for the public good.

    I think the most urgent job is getting rid of algorithmically steered social media - sites where one can’t know why something appears on one’s feed.