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eric-hu

1,746 karma · joined June 30, 2011

hu dot eric at that google email service
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eric-hu··on ASML says it sold 'absolutely nothing' in Europe in 2026
> It's in the EU's interest to fabricate chips locally.

Is it though? I'd put forward that it's in the EU's interest to foster good international relationships. Countries can get away without domestic strategic industries if they can play nice with others.

eric-hu··on ASML says it sold 'absolutely nothing' in Europe in 2026
Large shopping malls would fail the air purity requirements for semiconductor manufacturing.

EUV lithography and etching rooms require ISO class 1 clean rooms. Those can have a maximum of 10 particles of size 0.1 microns per cubic meter.

While a shopping mall can get away with 2 - 4 air changes per hour, an ISO class 1 clean room requires 400-600 an hour, or about 10 a minute. Airflow needs to also be controlled: vertical and laminar. Every human entering the cleanroom needs to undergo an air shower with speeds of 60-90 mph to shear off loose skin flakes, hair and lint. This area needs to maintain constant positive air pressure to repel outside dust as humans move in and out.

In the EUV lithography systems, temperature control is measured in milliKelvins (0.001 C). If a wafer stage has a temperature variation of 0.05 C, the silicon expands by a few nanometers and the multimillion dollar batch is toast. Meanwhile in the same room, the EUV machine is generating extreme ultraviolet light using a plasma light source that gets to above 200,000 C. That's 40x hotter than the surface of the sun.

> I always thought of these as high-precision, not-too-high-volume processes

EUV rooms are churning out about 150 wafers an hour, 24/7. That sounds like not too high of a volume, but each wafer is about 500 cpus. So 75,000 cpus an hour.

eric-hu··on Rails World 2026 Opening Keynote [video]
Adding on to your point about attrition: if internal promotions in engineering are decided by your ability to be a force multiplier, to facilitate cross team collaboration, mentor and help others to skill up, how do any currently employed engineers demonstrate that with no one new to mentor or train? How do you collaborate when teammates work with AI tools more and coworkers less? Would they just have an easier time getting into a higher responsibility role looking elsewhere?
eric-hu··on AWS multiple services outage in us-east-1
Which cloud provider came out on top?
eric-hu··on It’s not mold, it’s calcium lactate (2018)
Thank you for sharing your experience!

This is something I’ve been curious about. Can you speak more about how you got into it? What kind of research did you do before getting started? Did you know anyone else who had done it before you got into it?

eric-hu··on Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri
Don’t forget the Touch Bars.
eric-hu··on Tesla offering insane perks as sales dry up
As long as you're dreaming, perhaps you should also include giving up all his equity in the company. He'd still profit handsomely off someone else running the company well with over 12% of shares.
eric-hu··on Eggs US – Price – Chart
I wouldn't be surprised if you were correct in your belief and that this became a case of Goodhart's Law when implemented in the egg industry.
eric-hu··on Is the world becoming uninsurable?
Where do we find an honorable captain in this day and age? And how do we get them into the captain's seat?
eric-hu··on Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to track driving behavior: lawsuit
While I align with your views on this matter, talking to people this way is how you drive them to entrench in the opposite view.
eric-hu··on Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab
This sounds like a complex procedure. Are there currently alternative packaging facilities that could do this work, if Taiwan were locked into kinetic war?
eric-hu··on Apple will soon receive 'made in America' chips from TSMC's Arizona fab
Those numbers match what comes up with a quick search:

https://www.extension.iastate.edu/grain/topics/EstimatesofTo...

That study uses 1,043.4 mpg for the fuel economy of a 100,000 dwt ship.

Videos of transportation ship engines are cool. Each cylinder is wide enough for a person to lay down inside it.

https://youtu.be/G0eMyA388bE

eric-hu··on Cheating Is All You Need
> I don't think we're near AGI, well any reasonable definition of it.

But wait just hear me out for a second! What if we've also sufficiently lowered the definition of "GI" at the same time...

eric-hu··on LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed
Grew up in LA. I don't recall wildfires in the winter, generally. There were Santa Ana Winds this past week though, and I'm pretty sure that's the cause. In the mountains near me, wind speeds were said to be 80-100 mph. They were probably lower where I am, but my neighbor's backyard canopy blew over the wall to my backyard. I helped them hoist it back over the wall today and we estimated it was about 100 lbs.

These are gusty and dry winds coming from the desert, so I assume these fires spread from some manmade source.

> Does this suggest even bigger fires are to be expected in the summer this year when it is actually hot?

I would assume so, yes. Some insurers have been pulling out of CA in 2024.

eric-hu··on Diagnosing an Unusual WiFi Issue (2020)
This is a more recent feature. I’m not sure if such granular permissions were in macOS back in 2020 when this blog post was written.
eric-hu··on A Knife Forged in Fire
Amazing tips, thank you!
eric-hu··on A Knife Forged in Fire
I hosted a party one time at an Airbnb I was staying at. A friend invited his buddy who said he’d come and prepare something. His buddy brought a can that needed opening and when he found a can opener lacking, he took the rental provided chef’s knife and stabbed it into the can to cut through the top.

The knife did survive, but I spent a good amount of time bending the tip back to be mostly straight. I’m sure you could destroy a knife by repeating such a practice.

eric-hu··on A Knife Forged in Fire
How did you get into amateur blacksmithing? How much did it cost you to get started? Who do you make tools for?

Pardon all the questions but it’s a topic I’ve been curious about.

eric-hu··on FTC bans hidden junk fees in hotel, event ticket prices
How does this work? Do you provide the AGO with your name, phone and address? Subscription details?
eric-hu··on Intel’s board, and an example of when boards and short-termism fail
That’s a lot of money to you and me, but we’re not in the running for a CEO position at Intel. For the people who might be, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s peanuts.
eric-hu··on Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger
Re: fabs, Apple did by way of TSMC. Apple provided TSMC with massive amounts of cash in the 2010’s to fund new fabs. These were loans, but with very generous low interest terms that TSMC couldn’t have gotten elsewhere.

I think you’re correct that this was initially because Apple didn’t want to be at the behest of Samsung. But as Apple iterated on their mobile and tablet chips, they had the choice to bring them to their desktop and laptop lines or not to. They took that gamble and here we are today with non Intel Macs.

eric-hu··on Yi Peng 3 crossed both cables C-Lion 1 and BSC at times matching when they broke
I lived in Taiwan for a while and China does this to Taiwan often. Flying planes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, sailing warships through the strait. It’s portrayed in (US, TW) media as war preparations, but some locals assume it’s all bark with no bite. How are those Russian actions portrayed in Swedish media?
eric-hu··on Yi Peng 3 crossed both cables C-Lion 1 and BSC at times matching when they broke
This is really interesting how you’ve explained it.

In many professional fights the competitors start matches with light, quick jabs to probe their opponents defense.

This feels just like that now that you put it this way. I never connected those dots though.

eric-hu··on A cycling desk / Zwifting with a split keyboard
This is satire right?
eric-hu··on Trump wins presidency for second time
I’m also in tech. I’ve been looking for work for the last several months. Took some time off after my work contract ended last year.

I likely don’t count towards unemployment statistics. I don’t qualify for unemployment since I was a contractor before.

In my current job search, I’ve sent out more applications and had more interviews than the rest of my career. Granted, I found jobs more through connections than cold applying in the past. I’ve been tapping connections in this search too, though. It’s rough out there. I’ve contemplated taking an exit from tech and picking up a trade.

It sure feels surreal to me when I see reports of a strong economy.

eric-hu··on Trump wins presidency for second time
My civil war knowledge is limited. Are you aware of what happened to larger assets like cannons and warships?

I imagine today these would be far more of a deciding power than troops.

eric-hu··on Trump wins presidency for second time
> Funny that people constantly talk about how they're not voting for Trump, they're voting for the policies of the party etc. but then they can't apply the same rationale to the other side.

Different people, different sides. I guess the Republican Party did something very well here compared to Democrats, though I don’t know what or how.

eric-hu··on Will Plants Grow on the Moon?
I am curious about how regolith would act as a growing medium.
eric-hu··on Nuclear Fusion's New Idea: An Off-the-Shelf Stellarator
That’s news to me. How do these newer reactors do it? I thought nuclear reactors are slow to ramp up. Are they over producing thermal energy relative to the plants electricity output?
eric-hu··on Nuclear Fusion's New Idea: An Off-the-Shelf Stellarator
I believe nuclear isn’t an on demand energy source. It’s great for base load, but it doesn’t scale up or down quickly.
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