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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ya know we're doing a record emptying of the strategic oil reserves right now. Makes sense right?
Except we're giving it to oil companies for free, letting them sell at these very high prices with the promise that they refill the reserves with oil at some time in the future (when it's cheaper).
Absolutely perfectly corrupt, and American, way to go about it.
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).
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 59.5 ms ] thread"Let the lord of chaos rule" ...
In that respect they may be bombed by Iran but they have the same interests
This whole administration is such a fiasco.
I couldn't justify buying any of them today.
> 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.
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.
But, now we have a strategic bitcoin reserve.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/527
...well, you would be making a documentary instead.
Except we're giving it to oil companies for free, letting them sell at these very high prices with the promise that they refill the reserves with oil at some time in the future (when it's cheaper).
Absolutely perfectly corrupt, and American, way to go about it.
There you go, solved it.
If the seals can hold hydrogen, helium should be easy for them.
/s
Two birds, one stone baby! Just hopefully it doesn't get hit by a bird or something...
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/nitrogen-ammonia-a...
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?
This creates the flation