3 ms·

UFO-tier or semiconductor fab tier[0]. But even then there are very few physical and economical situations where you can say "let's deposit X number of atoms pe

by gary_0 3y ago

UFO-tier or semiconductor fab tier[0]. But even then there are very few physical and economical situations where you can say "let's deposit X number of atoms per square nanometer of substrate" and not get laughed at. [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4

b112 3y ago
That's silly. 15 years ago, China celebrated finally being able to domestically make a ball point pen. Why? Because the steel ball needs to be a perfect sphere, and no one in China could produce such finely honed materials prior to then. Computer chips were impossible 100 years ago, for many of the same reasons, and the chips we make today, impossible to manufacture 20 years ago. If something has value, and would this ever have value!!, trillions will be spent, over 20 years, making it cheap to do. And those improvements in manufacturing capabilities will spread through all otger industries, the entire ecosystem improving itself over and over. Because that's how it's worked, always. Put another way, if required, we'll do a solve. Because that's what we humans do.
- danbruc 3y ago
  I could not believe this, so I looked it up. What I found was that in 2015 some Chinese minister complained that Chinese ball point pens were not on par with respect to writing quality when compared with non-Chinese ones. In 2017 they had this worked out and that made headlines in the West. Maybe there is more to this which I could not find right away, but as of now I could not find any evidence that China could not produce ball point pens 15 years ago, only that the quality was not top notch until 5 years ago.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Ya, it’s a quality issue. Sort of like with jet turbines: China has no problem producing fast ones, but is not yet able to produce fast ones that don’t need to be overhauled every flight. Or semiconductors: it can produce modern sized chips, but the yields are not good enough to be economically competitive yet. But these are mostly a matter of going through the same 50 years of experimentation of materials and process that other countries did. For the balls in pens, I think there was one factory in Japan that did that very well, and they had no qualms about exporting them to China at reasonable prices, so China could make pens fine enough, just the ball used in n high quality ones (which, were the ones that would actually sell) used a ball imported from Japan. The minister was angry the pens weren’t 100% Chinese, rather than just 99% Chinese. One can easily imagine that there are many such components produced in China that other countries aren’t currently tooled to produce economically, so it’s not weird or very unprecedented that China wasn’t previously set up to make perfect balls for pens.
    - jryle70 3y ago
      Yes, basically the incentive wasn't there for China to make the pen ball, not that it was impossible. The same dynamic is in play with bringing back manufacturing to the US. China is the manufacturing center of the world because it's more cost effective to do so there than in other parts of the world, including setting up supply chains. If that incentive is diminished or gone then other places will emerge. It took 20 years for China to get there basically from scratch. It will take much less to rebuild the capabilities in previous manufacturing hubs.
- nathan_compton 3y ago
  What is silly is the uncritical belief that all problems are equally solvable. This seems to be a particular characteristic of software engineers, even though software engineering itself is replete with fundamentally difficult problems.
- tw1984 3y ago
  > That's silly. 15 years ago, China celebrated finally being able to domestically make a ball point pen. Why? > Because the steel ball needs to be a perfect sphere, and no one in China could produce such finely honed materials prior to then. This rumor has been refuted many times. It is not hard core science to produce such "finely honed material", no one bothered to make it because the total market volume is way too small for typical modern steelmakers. Only 100 tons of such "finely honed material" is consumed in China each year and it is declining for obvious reasons. There were heated debate in China for the particular matter - should China enter all such tiny specific segment to compete with every country. You don't need a smart brain to come to the right conclusion here. > If something has value, and would this ever have value!!, trillions will be spent, over 20 years, making it cheap to do. Obviously this is not the case. Americans are not building high speed rails, not because it doesn't bring in the so called value, it is because such investment would threat the interests of those airliners. How much the US invested in high speed rail in the last 20 years compared to its total $ spent on wars? It is also lagging on productions of EVs, maybe EVs don't bring in values? LOL > And those improvements in manufacturing capabilities will spread through all otger industries, the entire ecosystem improving itself over and over. until you get yourself de-industrialized and then it is over.
  - marcinzm 3y ago
    >not because it doesn't bring in the so called value It doesn't bring in so called value versus the investment assuming actual final costs of building such a system. Except the north east however the cost of buying land to build it there and revamping existing infra like stations is a massive. People keep wishing it did but a system that is slower (door to door) and less convenient (lack of local public transit) than airplanes isn't particularly good.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    "Americans are not building high speed rails, not because it doesn't bring in the so called value, it is because such investment would threat the interests of those airliners. How much the US invested in high speed rail in the last 20 years compared to its total $ spent on wars?" America is pretty bad at building other infrastructure, too. NY subway does not threaten interests of airlines, but its expansion is notoriously slow and expensive.

by gary_0 3y ago

b112 3y ago

That's silly. 15 years ago, China celebrated finally being able to domestically make a ball point pen. Why? Because the steel ball needs to be a perfect sphere, and no one in China could produce such finely honed materials prior to then. Computer chips were impossible 100 years ago, for many of the same reasons, and the chips we make today, impossible to manufacture 20 years ago. If something has value, and would this ever have value!!, trillions will be spent, over 20 years, making it cheap to do. And those improvements in manufacturing capabilities will spread through all otger industries, the entire ecosystem improving itself over and over. Because that's how it's worked, always. Put another way, if required, we'll do a solve. Because that's what we humans do.

danbruc 3y ago
I could not believe this, so I looked it up. What I found was that in 2015 some Chinese minister complained that Chinese ball point pens were not on par with respect to writing quality when compared with non-Chinese ones. In 2017 they had this worked out and that made headlines in the West. Maybe there is more to this which I could not find right away, but as of now I could not find any evidence that China could not produce ball point pens 15 years ago, only that the quality was not top notch until 5 years ago.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Ya, it’s a quality issue. Sort of like with jet turbines: China has no problem producing fast ones, but is not yet able to produce fast ones that don’t need to be overhauled every flight. Or semiconductors: it can produce modern sized chips, but the yields are not good enough to be economically competitive yet. But these are mostly a matter of going through the same 50 years of experimentation of materials and process that other countries did. For the balls in pens, I think there was one factory in Japan that did that very well, and they had no qualms about exporting them to China at reasonable prices, so China could make pens fine enough, just the ball used in n high quality ones (which, were the ones that would actually sell) used a ball imported from Japan. The minister was angry the pens weren’t 100% Chinese, rather than just 99% Chinese. One can easily imagine that there are many such components produced in China that other countries aren’t currently tooled to produce economically, so it’s not weird or very unprecedented that China wasn’t previously set up to make perfect balls for pens.
  - jryle70 3y ago
    Yes, basically the incentive wasn't there for China to make the pen ball, not that it was impossible. The same dynamic is in play with bringing back manufacturing to the US. China is the manufacturing center of the world because it's more cost effective to do so there than in other parts of the world, including setting up supply chains. If that incentive is diminished or gone then other places will emerge. It took 20 years for China to get there basically from scratch. It will take much less to rebuild the capabilities in previous manufacturing hubs.
nathan_compton 3y ago
What is silly is the uncritical belief that all problems are equally solvable. This seems to be a particular characteristic of software engineers, even though software engineering itself is replete with fundamentally difficult problems.
tw1984 3y ago
> That's silly. 15 years ago, China celebrated finally being able to domestically make a ball point pen. Why? > Because the steel ball needs to be a perfect sphere, and no one in China could produce such finely honed materials prior to then. This rumor has been refuted many times. It is not hard core science to produce such "finely honed material", no one bothered to make it because the total market volume is way too small for typical modern steelmakers. Only 100 tons of such "finely honed material" is consumed in China each year and it is declining for obvious reasons. There were heated debate in China for the particular matter - should China enter all such tiny specific segment to compete with every country. You don't need a smart brain to come to the right conclusion here. > If something has value, and would this ever have value!!, trillions will be spent, over 20 years, making it cheap to do. Obviously this is not the case. Americans are not building high speed rails, not because it doesn't bring in the so called value, it is because such investment would threat the interests of those airliners. How much the US invested in high speed rail in the last 20 years compared to its total $ spent on wars? It is also lagging on productions of EVs, maybe EVs don't bring in values? LOL > And those improvements in manufacturing capabilities will spread through all otger industries, the entire ecosystem improving itself over and over. until you get yourself de-industrialized and then it is over.
- marcinzm 3y ago
  >not because it doesn't bring in the so called value It doesn't bring in so called value versus the investment assuming actual final costs of building such a system. Except the north east however the cost of buying land to build it there and revamping existing infra like stations is a massive. People keep wishing it did but a system that is slower (door to door) and less convenient (lack of local public transit) than airplanes isn't particularly good.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  "Americans are not building high speed rails, not because it doesn't bring in the so called value, it is because such investment would threat the interests of those airliners. How much the US invested in high speed rail in the last 20 years compared to its total $ spent on wars?" America is pretty bad at building other infrastructure, too. NY subway does not threaten interests of airlines, but its expansion is notoriously slow and expensive.