4 ms·

WTF does NIST need with $11B for fab work? Seems like empire-building without actual customers or purpose, at the expense of mere billions. DeAnza College in Cu

WTF does NIST need with $11B for fab work? Seems like empire-building without actual customers or purpose, at the expense of mere billions. DeAnza College in Cupertino, CA had ~$180M of fab-like gear and equipment donated that largely went idle and became obsolete. Large piles of money and "build it, they will come" aren't effective uses of said money when it comes to meeting actual needs.

osnium123 4y ago
Is the equipment still there at De Anza College? $180M worth of semiconductor equipment is a lot of equipment.
- 1letterunixname 4y ago
  (Across the street from Apple HQ.) I have no idea. It was an entire building full of disused lab after lab. Probably a tax write off for some billionaire. In terms of money wasted, that's a drop in the bucket. Stanford razed a donated $80M office complex on Arguello Way that was less than 8 years old. It's chicken-feed for academia swimming in what is massive wealth transfer from indebted students to them. It's not just Ivys swimming in cash.
  - iancmceachern 4y ago
    Our whole society is a Ponzi scheme
    - 1letterunixname 4y ago
      Essentially. And the poorest of Americans lack the balls to effectively stand up to abuse after abuse. Jan 6th was as stupid and misguided as the Unabomber. Most drown themselves in video games, drugs, smoking, sex, hopelessness victimhood, and conspiracy theories headed to misery and deaths of despair. A healthy society doesn't have the volume of suicidal and omnicidal individuals armed with weapons of war who decide to take out their frustrations and misgivings on random bystanders.
      - deadly_syn 4y ago
        Amen.
dangus 4y ago
I wish more people realized that $11 billion dollars isn’t a lot of money for the federal government. That’s $35 per capita. The government goes net positive on a lot of projects indirectly. All they have to do is generate $11 billion or more in new tax income sometime in the future for a project like this to be worth it. Alternatively, it has to protect $11 billion worth of national interests. Maintaining and expanding this type of national technology lead is worth way more than $11 billion.

osnium123 4y ago

Is the equipment still there at De Anza College? $180M worth of semiconductor equipment is a lot of equipment.

1letterunixname 4y ago
(Across the street from Apple HQ.) I have no idea. It was an entire building full of disused lab after lab. Probably a tax write off for some billionaire. In terms of money wasted, that's a drop in the bucket. Stanford razed a donated $80M office complex on Arguello Way that was less than 8 years old. It's chicken-feed for academia swimming in what is massive wealth transfer from indebted students to them. It's not just Ivys swimming in cash.
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  Our whole society is a Ponzi scheme
  - 1letterunixname 4y ago
    Essentially. And the poorest of Americans lack the balls to effectively stand up to abuse after abuse. Jan 6th was as stupid and misguided as the Unabomber. Most drown themselves in video games, drugs, smoking, sex, hopelessness victimhood, and conspiracy theories headed to misery and deaths of despair. A healthy society doesn't have the volume of suicidal and omnicidal individuals armed with weapons of war who decide to take out their frustrations and misgivings on random bystanders.
    - deadly_syn 4y ago
      Amen.

dangus 4y ago

I wish more people realized that $11 billion dollars isn’t a lot of money for the federal government. That’s $35 per capita. The government goes net positive on a lot of projects indirectly. All they have to do is generate $11 billion or more in new tax income sometime in the future for a project like this to be worth it. Alternatively, it has to protect $11 billion worth of national interests. Maintaining and expanding this type of national technology lead is worth way more than $11 billion.