baybal2

I am doing these Type-C hubs, and other small stuff peripherals for a living.

My suggestion, don't look stuff retail, and don't look big brands, even Dell.

Pretty much any "brand business" had zero RnD. Their only feedback channel is the RMA rate. If it gets too bad, they just change the supplier.

Instead, I really suggest going the other way. Smaller makers have no money for big marketing, nor buying ready designs, so they hire people, and let them work until they make something sellable.

House brands often have better QC, because they are already very constrained by their pricing, and RMA will kill them. Thus, they have incentive to spend few extra thousand dollars in engineer work hours than to deal with $100k in returns themselves.

Though, I myself had misfortune buying broken RTL8153 based ethernet NICs. Mismatched coupling capacitors, PCB shorts, possibly broken firmwares.

40%-30% people who do EE in China are just above the Arduino level.

Chinese engineering companies can make good hardware if you pay them, and give time to fix self induced issues coming from rushed development schedules, but in that case, they are not really that ahead from any other EE companies around the world.

On what codec settings?. IMO h256 and AV1 are extremely close depending on individual, and still experimental, codec tweaks.

MP3 coding was near garbage at 128kbps, but over the years the codec community managed to make 128kbps significantly better audibly without changing the format

Next gen h256 coders will likely copy whatever non-bitstream optimisation they can from AV1 coders, and they will be a near match again.

I wrote this many times, the lowest blood price for subduing Russia is a NATO-wide airborne operation to behead Russian government, and a mother of all airlifts.

You fight a mafia state the way you fight a mafia, by simultaneously dismembering, and beheading it.

To completely subdue Russia, NATO has an option to do first strike nuclear attack with half of its combined arsenal along the lines I wrote above.

Russia is a hypercentralised state beyond imagination. Russia will cease its existence as a state if Moscow region is taken out, and the most limited counterforce attrition is ensured.

Few know, but Islamabad is also began its existence as a 100% planned city. Pakistan invited C. A. Doxiadis to do the planning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinos_Apostolou_Doxiadi... . He was considered to be of Corbusier's calibre if not more, at the time.

Faisalabad was planned back in British time. And the now infamous Model Town, as the name suggests, too.

Dhaka, and Karachi were also supposed to get plans at around late sixties, but we all know how it went...

Diodiaxis left Karachi plan half finished when 1971 happened, and Dhaka had an initial burst of orderly development for a few years, but it was cut short after Mujib was murdered, and 20 years of instability followed.

Karachi, and Dhaka now are prime examples of "urban hells" in the world.

Unlucky owner of a radioactive passport now.

Both leading battery swap standards in India are from Taiwan. One is GoGoRo as you said, and another is Ionex.

Ionex based scooters usually have more in the roadgoing department, and GoGoRo more in internet/app features.

GoGoRo is founded by a Taiwanese guy who worked for a famous company in America, thus he is using his fame to get big money from financial funds. Manufacturing is mostly OEM.

Ionex is made by an established player — Kymco (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDNKQ18-QYY,) and has more firm standing in the industry. They have their own parts, and share service centres with their petrol scooters. The later is a very big thing in India, and South Asia in general.

The biggest impediment for both turned out to be India road. Taiwanese scooters with tiny wheels don't fare well anywhere outside of big cities.

Rural Indians really prefer classic motorcycles — cheap, repairable, no exotic parts. The "app" things doesn't sell at all either. The only useful function for many on smart scooters is a theft alarm + GPS.

A lot of Western employees left the company, or relocated because it's harder, and harder for a Westerner to live there with each passing year, 100% true.

Most of them delivered their value as being an interface with the extensive developer community who jumped on "better than nothing developer support" from a chip company.

Now, however, their Chinese clients outnumber, and outsize Western customers.

Quorum is established at the start of the SC meeting, after that, absention means abstention

The 15 years USA spent running after imaginary boogeymen sowed the seeds of what we are dealing with today.

There are many aspects to this folly, but most bad were:

1. Okaying what Russia, and China were doing

2. Wasting trillions on completely pointless war

3. Squandered overnight the enormous goodwill USA carried from successful 199X

4. Stalled the wheel of democratisation around the world

As an ethnic Chinese who been in, and out of China every year since childhood, I'd yes, it's very superficial. I do not feel he lived in China for long enough outside of the insular expat bubble.

Chinese Americans have self-invented insecurities about being "identity-less," but Chinese in China have very real insecurities about being "identity-less"

This "identity searching" crowd looks very strange to me. Besides us speaking languages of the same linguistic family, is as easily different as India, and UK. For me, who spent nearly all childhood in Russia, and whose parents were separate from China for 5, and 4 generations, Chinese Americans do still feel more similarly wired than mainlanders today, which are their own completely brand new type of people.

It's very similar with my experience meeting overseas Russians from immigration waves from before 1917 in America. For some reason, to me they felt "more Russian" after 4-5 generations in the US than people whom I knew back home.

> 1. I visited a prison in Jiangxi to discuss a potential prisoner safety solution. In a meeting with the vice-warden, he tacitly mentioned how Adidas shoes were being made in the prison that he was running. We quickly pulled out of that project. I haven’t bought Adidas- or Nike-branded shoes since.

This gave me a chuckle. I don't know what to get off people like him. In China I've seen a lot of very strange Western types who scream "there is no Democracy in America!," and then ran to China out of all places to find a big surprise.

Non-fluoropolymer high temperature super low outgassing plastics, and plastic parts used in semi equipment for example. That's an expertise that simply never existed in the West, and will have to be built from scratch, taking precious years.

What matters is not revenue, but physical manufacturing, and where it is.

The global industry today is paralysed by lack of nothing more than few cent microcontrollers.

As I said above, restoring working of existing fabs will require rebuilding the entire Asian supply chain for chemicals, spare parts, consumables, and services.

LAM, KLA, Advanced Materials, ASML — their tools are 50%+ foreign parts, and materials.

It may look so from the West. Big name equipment like steppers, and deposition tools come from the West, but a lion share of everything else is a product of the local supply chain.

Without that, setting up new fabs elsewhere is not possible.

Because some globally single source consumable are too locally produced, you cannot talk of even resuming production at existing fabs.

Fellows funded by some suspicious foundations in the West arguing for "we will coax TSMC to build a fab in America, and then we can betray them" are pushing an exact line as Beijing.

First, they are not engineers, and have no idea how the industry functions. Fabs will stall within weeks after running out of consumables from Taiwan.

Second, America cannot "weather the storm." There will be absolutely no arrangement possible how the US can regain access to semi once this is over in any way.

Normally UAE is the most timid gulf country in front of Saudi influence.

Kuwaitis, Bahrainis, and even Qataris are still holding the Saudi line now.

Taiwan, and Asian semi ecosystem at large is unique, and irreplaceable, and not only TSMC as such.

The fall of Taiwan will be:

1. Loss of unique, black box knowhow which people never put into any patents

2. Loss of single source consumables - a lot of chemical industry, metallurgy, plastic, machinery all exclusively used only by semi industry

3. Loss of 80% of world's semi workforce, both brains, and hands

4. Loss of services companies, and big part of the ecosystem supporting the fabs, like semiconductor logistics

5. Loss of unique semi equipment makers, not on the level of losing the crown jewel (steppers,) but nevertheless making it instantly impossible to build any new fab line until a replacement is redeveloped from scratch. People who say that Taiwan is not big in semi tool making don't have an idea.

So if you completely erase this part of the world, the maximum the world can hope for within 5 years is just to restore functioning of a single pre-existing fab per country.

All its outputs will be no doubt be only used for defence electronics.

In other words Facebook, Amazon, Google, and all tech industry all bye bye. Modern "disposable electronics" barely lasts 2-3 years.

South Korea, or Japan will be there first, and they will demand The King's Ransom for fab access.

The first new fabs built from scratch will only be possible to make in 7-9 years term, using eighties era technology, and that is if the war will end quickly.

Check the about page.

> Farnam Street

> Founded and led by Shane Parrish, Farnam Street is run by a small but exceptional team.

I am on the same page with you.

Western elites associate themselves with Randist idea of natural right, or natural virtue, and very questionable take on the rationalistm.

When you let these people "rationalise," and "develop flexibility" long enough, they can be forced into rationalising just anything, including fascism. The new new creed of Harward degree totalitarianism apologists in the spotlight today is a great example of this.

The West got stuck in this very questionable mental framework, and is running in circles. The decision makers talk themselves unto death for very petty, hollow arguments, so strong is this "elite conditioning."

In reality, there is little for them to really choose. It's either right, common sense, and sound, or it is this "trying to rationalise." It's morally hollow people trying to find out smart ways to not being pointed on as such basically.

Cheapest micros hovered around 10 cents mark before the semiconductor crisis.

Some Padauk micros go for single cents.

A Taiwanese factory northwest of Dhaka https://www.youngoptics.com/ makes the lion share of molds for plastic lenses worldwide.

YoungOptics used to make them for Sony too. I don't know if it's still the case today.

It was President Biden who said it openly "we know Russia will invade Ukraine," the intel I believe Putin leaked purposefully to probe US response, and then said that "there will be no US boots on the ground" before the invasion has even started.

This reassured Russian political establishment of not only US military not doing anything, but also about US political establishment being comfortable with that.

Indicating that you know a credible threat is coming well ahead of time, and then doing nothing all that time is a terrible diplomatic move, which signalled Putin of US already "coming to terms with the inevitable."

You never state your red lines.

NATO provides eyes, and Ukrainian air defence provides the missile launch without revealing its position.

By the time the Russian pilot hears the first beep, an Ukrainian SAM would already been travking know of his flight path few minutes prior.

I still retain connections with my high school mates. A lot of them have parent in military, seamen, and frontier men.

The news of Putin's fiasco is spreading like wildfire among DOSes, ship crews, and in army barracks.

The navy been traditionally the most disciplined service branch of the military because ships almost always have actual officers to command, vs. NCOs in the army.

I can't preclude the possibility of a mutiny brewing there right now, as news of ships crews (yes, not even marine infantry, but actual ship crews, 3 star lieutenants) being forced into trains going to Ukraine came.

Germany is the country with most expensive electricity in Europe, and gas deals from this mafia is a near instant cash.

This will be followed by Putin having to spend the next 40% of its military on keeping order within Russia. If he will use nukes, he will obviously not be able to do so (NATO nuclear retaliation will destroy at least 50% of remaining Russian military.)

Even if Putin will stay in power, sending military to police innumerable Russian cities, and towns will take him off the list of potential threats for next decade at least.

Use the time won to remilitarise the West.

It boggles my mind why Turkey keeps being ignored in this discourse. They have army big enough, modern, and powerful to alone defeat all Russian force in Ukraine.

Remember, such luxuries are for missileers only. An average Russian barrack may not have constant electricity, heating, and Running water even today.

Stuck in the mud, forests, without food, fuel, and comms. Russia is already mobilising its reserves from all the way back as Vladivostok (7000km away,) which means they had a very, very, very serious, life-threatening reason to do so.

We can also conclude that Russia didn't commit its fancy new weapons to the assault, making the claim that most of them exist only on paper, and to appear on parades so more stronger.

The state or Russian military hasn't changed at large since the Second Chechnya War, except now they lack military veterans from Soviet era.

Russia is blessed by only having NATO as its only adversary, and this gives them ability to concentrate on Ukraine.

If we had a hostile to Russia regime at least in Belarus, Georgia, or Kazakhstan, they would've gone for landgrab in Russia WITHOUT HESITATION now given just how weak is the Russian conventional military. People die, and go, cities fall, and are built again, but borders stay for centuries. This would've been a once in a century opportunity for them.

Kazakhstan can return to being a nuclear state overnight if they capture Orenburg. 50% of Russian nuclear potential is a taxi ride away from Kazakhstan border.

So far one thing is universally confirmed, launch officers get autonomy when "Contact is lost, and Moscow is confirmed destroyed." How much destroyed is counted as destroyed? Nobody knows, probably because officers themselves don't know, and don't delve into such scenario.