6 ms·

It's not just the US government, it's many civilized governments doing these sort of things. And in this particular case this european is grateful for it becaus

by coretx 4y ago

It's not just the US government, it's many civilized governments doing these sort of things. And in this particular case this european is grateful for it because it is not about setting ceilings or hindering industry, it's about preventing the abuse of dual use goods. In other words; Not being fsckd by our own stuff. Other examples can be found here: https://www.wassenaar.org/app/uploads/2021/12/Public-Docs-Vol-II-2021-List-of-DU-Goods-and-Technologies-and-Munitions-List-Dec-2021.pdf https://www.wassenaar.org/app/uploads/2021/12/Public-Docs-Vo...

RF_Savage 4y ago
I hate it when I have to check if my hobby projects hit Wassenaar limits or not.
- LeifCarrotson 4y ago
  They often do! Hobby drones, GRBL hobby CNCs, hobby micrcontrollers and SBCs, open-source SDR projects, etc. will often exceed the performance of devices that were ITAR restricted a decade or two ago. And "a decade or two ago" is a generous expectation for lethargic legislative, regulatory, or judicial systems to evolve. Yes, in the 70s and 80s, it made sense to say that 5-axis NCs systems that can cut Inconel turboprops for ICBMs should be export controlled; those were multi-million-dollar flagships of the biggest and best manufacturers and were key to the country's military edge. Now you can get one shipped from China for a couple thousand dollars, with servo loop times, encoder and linear scale resolution, memory capacity, processor speed, axis counts, etc. that are better than the originals that cost a thousand times more half a century ago. Today, it's true that the A100 is a cutting edge, shockingly powerful, uniquely capable processor. You can do machine learning/computer vision projects with it that you can't do with any other technology. Eighty gigabytes! 256 GB/s per package! Almost 20 teraflops of FP32! Compared to the GPU in the desktop you bought 8 years ago, yes, these are huge. But if you plot interconnect bandwidth, memory size, core counts, price, and so on, and extrapolate forward... yeah, your little hobby Kubernetes cluster of 2030-era Raspberry Pi equivalents will probably be at a performance level that's export controlled.
concordDance 4y ago
What specifically is the downside of allowing export?
- cortic 4y ago
  I expect there is a real answer and a PR answer to this question; The PR answer has something to do with missile guidance and crypto currency. But the real answer i fear is that limiting import/export allows wars to start more easily.
InCityDreams 4y ago
>it's many civilized governments... China not civilized? And before human rights becomes the main talking point: Guantanamo.
- another_story 4y ago
  It's a gradient. How you throw things down on that is up to you. Guantanamo vs. reeducation and labor camps. Paying judges to help keep the local juvenile prison full vs. harvesting organs from prisoners. Suppression of free speech and the media vs. whatever we see on Twitter daily. Civilized or not is up to your perspective.
  - trasz 4y ago
    More like US prison system vs Chinese “camps”. One look at the numbers shows which of those is more oppressive. This includes things like slave labour: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-workers-low-wages-exploited https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-wo...
    - another_story 4y ago
      It's impossible to quantify oppressive. We don't know much about Chinese labor camps or re-education centers. Even if we did, how do you measure up acts done in these places against one another? Is making license plates for pennies in the US better or worse than making t-shirts in Xinjiang? Is being wrongfully thrown in prison due to a prejudice judge seeing your only skin color worse than being thrown into prison for being Muslim who refuses to shave their beard?
      - trasz 4y ago
        I agree it’s hard to quantify, and I agree US prisons aren’t really worse than Chinese ones. Rather, I believe they are roughly the same. Thus, condemning out one without even mentioning the other is simply dishonest. Especially when the condemning side is the competing perpetrator, as is usually the case with anti-Chinese propaganda.
RobertoG 4y ago
"civilized governments"? how that works?
- hulitu 4y ago
  I think they mean by "civilized governments" governments who don't have military officers as ministers. Nothing to do with civilization.
  - RobertoG 4y ago
    So, you think that the original intention was to say "civilian governments". You are very generous with your interpretations, I admire your optimism in how civilized comments in Internet are.
    - synu 4y ago
      Doing so is one of the guidelines here: > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Along with this one: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. They are all honestly pretty great: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - igravious 4y ago
      Nah. Your interpretation is undoubtedly correct. I've been on HN 12 years now and I've become used to the increase in Western chauvinism over the recent years – mostly all of it led by US sentiment. The implication above is that the US is part of the civilized world (colloquially called "The West") and that China (and presumably Russia, and Iran, and Venezuela, and Cuba, et al) are part of the uncivilized world. See, for instance, on this page where Hume speaks of civilized versus uncivilized forms of government: “This chapter examines Hume's conception of government. It considers three forms of government that Hume distinguishes: barbarous monarchy, civilized monarchy, and free government (with its two subdivisions, limited monarchy and republic).” So civilized is contrasted with barbarous. https://academic.oup.com/book/12307/chapter-abstract/161848244?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://academic.oup.com/book/12307/chapter-abstract/1618482... You'd think with SMIC demonstrating 7nm production ( as detailed in depth in this video by Asianometry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQGnwKBxAKk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQGnwKBxAKk ) you'd think that the US had gotten the hint that the tech cat is out of the bag – or the tech genie has escaped the lamp or whatever metaphor you prefer … A comparison of SMIC's 7nm process versus the competition: https://www.techinsights.com/blog/smic-7nm-truly-7nm-technology-how-it-compares-tsmc-7nm https://www.techinsights.com/blog/smic-7nm-truly-7nm-technol... My prediction is that SMIC joins TSMC, Intel, Global Foundries, and Samsung at the top tier of semiconductor manufacturing by 2030, along with an ecosystem of Chinese design and manufacturing companies. In doing so the West's stranglehold on other companies like Huawei will be over. If Russia can survive the punitive Western sanctions until then it'll no longer be hampered by lack of access to high-end Western technology.

by coretx 4y ago

RF_Savage 4y ago

I hate it when I have to check if my hobby projects hit Wassenaar limits or not.

LeifCarrotson 4y ago
They often do! Hobby drones, GRBL hobby CNCs, hobby micrcontrollers and SBCs, open-source SDR projects, etc. will often exceed the performance of devices that were ITAR restricted a decade or two ago. And "a decade or two ago" is a generous expectation for lethargic legislative, regulatory, or judicial systems to evolve. Yes, in the 70s and 80s, it made sense to say that 5-axis NCs systems that can cut Inconel turboprops for ICBMs should be export controlled; those were multi-million-dollar flagships of the biggest and best manufacturers and were key to the country's military edge. Now you can get one shipped from China for a couple thousand dollars, with servo loop times, encoder and linear scale resolution, memory capacity, processor speed, axis counts, etc. that are better than the originals that cost a thousand times more half a century ago. Today, it's true that the A100 is a cutting edge, shockingly powerful, uniquely capable processor. You can do machine learning/computer vision projects with it that you can't do with any other technology. Eighty gigabytes! 256 GB/s per package! Almost 20 teraflops of FP32! Compared to the GPU in the desktop you bought 8 years ago, yes, these are huge. But if you plot interconnect bandwidth, memory size, core counts, price, and so on, and extrapolate forward... yeah, your little hobby Kubernetes cluster of 2030-era Raspberry Pi equivalents will probably be at a performance level that's export controlled.

concordDance 4y ago

What specifically is the downside of allowing export?

cortic 4y ago
I expect there is a real answer and a PR answer to this question; The PR answer has something to do with missile guidance and crypto currency. But the real answer i fear is that limiting import/export allows wars to start more easily.

InCityDreams 4y ago

>it's many civilized governments... China not civilized? And before human rights becomes the main talking point: Guantanamo.

another_story 4y ago
It's a gradient. How you throw things down on that is up to you. Guantanamo vs. reeducation and labor camps. Paying judges to help keep the local juvenile prison full vs. harvesting organs from prisoners. Suppression of free speech and the media vs. whatever we see on Twitter daily. Civilized or not is up to your perspective.
- trasz 4y ago
  More like US prison system vs Chinese “camps”. One look at the numbers shows which of those is more oppressive. This includes things like slave labour: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-workers-low-wages-exploited https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-wo...
  - another_story 4y ago
    It's impossible to quantify oppressive. We don't know much about Chinese labor camps or re-education centers. Even if we did, how do you measure up acts done in these places against one another? Is making license plates for pennies in the US better or worse than making t-shirts in Xinjiang? Is being wrongfully thrown in prison due to a prejudice judge seeing your only skin color worse than being thrown into prison for being Muslim who refuses to shave their beard?
    - trasz 4y ago
      I agree it’s hard to quantify, and I agree US prisons aren’t really worse than Chinese ones. Rather, I believe they are roughly the same. Thus, condemning out one without even mentioning the other is simply dishonest. Especially when the condemning side is the competing perpetrator, as is usually the case with anti-Chinese propaganda.

RobertoG 4y ago

"civilized governments"? how that works?

hulitu 4y ago
I think they mean by "civilized governments" governments who don't have military officers as ministers. Nothing to do with civilization.
- RobertoG 4y ago
  So, you think that the original intention was to say "civilian governments". You are very generous with your interpretations, I admire your optimism in how civilized comments in Internet are.
  - synu 4y ago
    Doing so is one of the guidelines here: > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Along with this one: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. They are all honestly pretty great: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - igravious 4y ago
    Nah. Your interpretation is undoubtedly correct. I've been on HN 12 years now and I've become used to the increase in Western chauvinism over the recent years – mostly all of it led by US sentiment. The implication above is that the US is part of the civilized world (colloquially called "The West") and that China (and presumably Russia, and Iran, and Venezuela, and Cuba, et al) are part of the uncivilized world. See, for instance, on this page where Hume speaks of civilized versus uncivilized forms of government: “This chapter examines Hume's conception of government. It considers three forms of government that Hume distinguishes: barbarous monarchy, civilized monarchy, and free government (with its two subdivisions, limited monarchy and republic).” So civilized is contrasted with barbarous. https://academic.oup.com/book/12307/chapter-abstract/161848244?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://academic.oup.com/book/12307/chapter-abstract/1618482... You'd think with SMIC demonstrating 7nm production ( as detailed in depth in this video by Asianometry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQGnwKBxAKk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQGnwKBxAKk ) you'd think that the US had gotten the hint that the tech cat is out of the bag – or the tech genie has escaped the lamp or whatever metaphor you prefer … A comparison of SMIC's 7nm process versus the competition: https://www.techinsights.com/blog/smic-7nm-truly-7nm-technology-how-it-compares-tsmc-7nm https://www.techinsights.com/blog/smic-7nm-truly-7nm-technol... My prediction is that SMIC joins TSMC, Intel, Global Foundries, and Samsung at the top tier of semiconductor manufacturing by 2030, along with an ecosystem of Chinese design and manufacturing companies. In doing so the West's stranglehold on other companies like Huawei will be over. If Russia can survive the punitive Western sanctions until then it'll no longer be hampered by lack of access to high-end Western technology.