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Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock
- coreyh14444 7mo agoRemember all the e/acc people telling us to vote for Trump? Some mea-culpas are in order.
- lpcvoid 7mo agoThe kind of people who voted for trump would never admit they made a mistake. They double down on stupidity instead.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- rootusrootus 7mo agoFor better or worse, Donald Trump has absolutely earned his place in the history books. There will be so many lessons from this era, though I think it is very much open to debate what form those lessons will take and which ones will be the most consequential.
- Imustaskforhelp 7mo agoTo be honest, much of the lessons of this were something that we could've already looked back during all the wars humanity has fought all throughout history to learn from. We are in here, because we didn't learn from our history. You feel this way because this is recent and its hitting everything all at once but I do feel like these were all very avoidable lessons. Being honest, I don't feel like we learnt anything new aside from seeing how the world is still trying to clutch itself back to stability even after all the instability Donald Trump is causing within the world (for better or for worse) and seeing how the world reacts to all of this live. But I am not quite sure if future will learn from these lessons given that its feeling to me like history doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes and we somehow don't really learn from the history to be honest.
- GeorgeWBasic 7mo agoThat isn't true. There's actually a large number of people, probably in the millions, but probably not a majority of those who voted for him, who no longer support him in any way. And of the ones who remain, yes: they're pretty dense to still support him now. There are some lunatics who genuinely believe that the US has the right to dominate and exploit all other nations, but the majority of them simply believe the lies he's telling. I've already seen that when they are confronted with the facts about, say, Gaza, some of them can change their minds. It would be a mistake to turn them away instead of treating them like potential allies. There really is something more important at stake.
- twodave 7mo agoAnd yet others who are able to disagree with some (or even many) of his decisions while also continuing to believe he was the better of the 2 options. Most people I know hate politics or anything to do with it for this very reason. We can argue about political philosophy all day long but eventually you go vote and often have to choose between a wildcard and the walking dead.
- tzs 7mo ago/r/LeopardsAteMyFace contains many counterexamples.
- fhdkweig 7mo agoCould you define the acronym "e/acc"? DDG seems to think it means: "What Does E/Acc Stand For, And What Does It Mean? E/acc stands for the phrase effective accelerationism, and it basically indicates one's personal ideological belief that artificial intelligence will one day become an all-powerful being that can fix the vast majority of humanity's problems." I don't think I have ever heard a MAGA talk about AI.
- spiderfarmer 7mo agoThe MAGA Web3 bros have all switched to the Clawdbot hypetrain, still flogging courses and slop.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- overfeed 7mo ago> I don't think I have ever heard a MAGA talk about AI. Lots of ex-Bitcoin-bros turned AI hypemen went all-in on maga for Trump II. Even the silicon valley C-Suites and VC-class went mask-off around February 2025. Some have tried to walk it back since then, after realizing the administration they had hitched their wagons to didn't have the mandate or levels of public support they had hoped for - thankfully, the internet never forgets.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- karmakurtisaani 7mo agoEven the nation's #1 dingleberry Joe Rogan is now turning against Trump. Would be a great time for folks to start admitting they fell for it again.
- rootusrootus 7mo agoI will dare to admit aloud that I think maybe the founders were making a rational choice when they decided that only certain citizens would have the right to vote. As awful as that sounds, there are halfway decent arguments in favor. Maybe not just restricting to white wealthy landowners, but sometimes I do wonder if we would benefit from a filter that adequately screens for people 1) with real skin in the game and 2) a plausible claim to being well informed. That is just a thought experiment, though, I do not believe it would play out beneficially if we tried to implement it in real life.
- karmakurtisaani 7mo agoI like this idea in theory. In practice, the problem is that someone gets to decide who is allowed to vote and on what grounds. If that institution is corrupted, it leads to worse outcome than allowing everyone to vote. And the bad actors would have all the incentives in the world to corrupt that institution.
- overfeed 7mo ago> Maybe not just restricting to white wealthy landowners, Some of those people are not white and/or not straight. They - very incorrectly - think that wealth will shield them from the sharp teeth of White Christian Nationalism. They should consult with the Log Cabin Republicans and women who voted for both Trump and enshrining abortion into their state's constitution on the same ballot.
- cyberax 7mo agoEverybody should be allowed to vote, except for people who don't want everyone to vote.
- 7mo ago
- rootusrootus 7mo agoWe live in the dumbest possible timeline. As someone who came of age in the late 80s and was lucky enough to fully experience the 90s and 2000s ... what we have done in the last 20 years makes me sad. I never saw this coming. I admit that I maintained my delusion even though I was in OKC in 1995. Should have been a wake-up call.
- marcosdumay 7mo agoHum... He seems to be doing the most accelerationist government from recent history of any large or rich country.
- jondwillis 7mo agoAccelerationists gonna accelerate
- ReptileMan 7mo agoDo you remember this quote from wheel of time? "Let the lord of chaos rule" ...
- expedition32 7mo ago[flagged]
- pohl 7mo agoFor the US, thus far, we keep discovering that we have yet to hit bottom — so probably more.
- mvdwoord 7mo agoCan not see them fuck it up more than my own government spending millions to pour concrete into our own excellent natural gas wells (while selling whatever did come out under market price to other countries), and our neighbors on the east celebrating while they blow up nuclear power plants. At least the US and Israel have a chance of improving their position in the geopolitical landscape. We are just slowly then swiftly committing suicide.
- surgical_fire 7mo agoAre you complaining about the Groningen gas wells? I thought that they were being decommissioned due to seismic risks?
- sigio 7mo agoYeah, but even the local (groningen) residents think it's a bad idea to not keep some resources available for emergency situations (they also would like to heat their houses in winter) like when other sources are cut off.
- surgical_fire 7mo agoIs it even possible? My understanding is that the whole region is connected to those gas wells. There's so much you can take before the underground is hollow. They may not have a house to heat if tremors get too bad.
- notTooFarGone 7mo ago
- th23i43240999 7mo ago[flagged]
- varispeed 7mo ago[flagged]
- api 7mo agoThat's one of the most disappointing things to me. These people have such resources and the limit of their vision is: bang young girls, accumulate bling, push divisive hateful politics, start wars. That's it. That's the best they can do. Even nominally selfish far-sighted things like genuinely funding a deep research program for life extension is not really something they're into. I mean some of them are "into" it in that they talk about it and occasionally toss money at things but they're not interested in funding or being involved in the kind of multi-year high-focus moonshot program it would actually take to deliver. The problem is that's hard and it takes a long time when banging girls and winning power games is instant dopamine. It makes me keep thinking of paperclip maximizers. It's like we are paperclip maximizers, only our paperclips are sex and dopamine hits from winning power games. A paperclip maximizer with such resources would squander it all on paperclips, and we squander it all on these goal functions built in by evolution. Are we actually intelligent or just clever animals? We can seek what we want, but we don't think much about what we want to want.
- dmix 7mo agoPeople will always keep looking to politicians to make the world better despite their terrible track record.
- forgetfreeman 7mo agoIf they aren't doing a good job primary the hell out of them.
- 7mo ago
- trollbridge 7mo agoAren’t there huge stockpiles of helium in the US? I can buy party sized tanks at Target or big tanks at the usual places like welding supply places.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- vasco 7mo agoMesser Completes Acquisition of Federal Helium System from BLM https://www.messer-us.com/press-releases/messer-completes-acquisition-of-federal-helium-system-from-blm https://www.messer-us.com/press-releases/messer-completes-ac...
- owebmaster 7mo agoFoi de vasco (died).
- bix6 7mo agoWhy did we sell it instead of lease? This seems like something that should be in public hands.
- cagenut 7mo agosorry thats too far left wing an opinion in america today
- infogulch 7mo agoThe sale was completed in 2024.
- actionfromafar 7mo agoI feel that as soon as the existential threat easened with the splintering of the Soviet Union, the US started doing some self-harming libertarian flavored shit to itself. In the 1980s, I assume getting rid of the "strategic reserve" of anything would have met more pushback, because of primal fear overriding greed.
- lpcvoid 7mo agoGreat timing that the US recently sold its strategic helium supply.
- desireco42 7mo agoyeah that was completely crazy... never understood why they would do something like that
- linkregister 7mo agoAn explanation is particular political group was ideologically enthralled with privatization.
- karmakurtisaani 7mo agoThe same group will later happily blame the government for doing said stupid thing.
- actionfromafar 7mo agoThose party ballons were very cheap for a while.
- infogulch 7mo agoBLM [(Bureau of Land Management)] completes $460M sale of federal helium reserve to private company | 12/12/2024 | https://www.eenews.net/articles/blm-completes-460m-sale-of-federal-helium-reserve-to-private-company/ https://www.eenews.net/articles/blm-completes-460m-sale-of-f... Messer Completes Acquisition of Federal Helium System from BLM | June 27, 2024 | https://www.messer-us.com/press-releases/messer-completes-acquisition-of-federal-helium-system-from-blm https://www.messer-us.com/press-releases/messer-completes-ac...
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- baldeagle 7mo ago
- breppp 7mo agoQatar is probably intentionally shutting down production of gas and oil in order to pressure the US to stop, independently of Iranian attacks. In that respect they may be bombed by Iran but they have the same interests
- fabian2k 7mo agoWhere are they supposed to put all that gas and oil if they can't transport it? I don't think they have much choice here. And as far as I understand, helium is a byproduct of the extraction, so they can't choose to keep only the helium.
- breppp 7mo agoHowever Qatar stopped production before the straits were officially closed and their stated reason is "due to military attacks", also Russian or Chinese ships can pass
- fabian2k 7mo agoThere is no such thing as "officially closed". The moment people start shooting there, driving a ship across becomes dangerous. This was an absolutely predictable consequence of the attacks on Iran, you didn't need to wait until several tankers were burning to know these attacks were likely to happen and the strait would become essentially too risky to pass.
- breppp 7mo agoBack then there were only two ships attacked in the straits, and one was an Iranian shadow fleet ship. I am not sure that is "closing the straits" in any shape or form
- nottorp 7mo agoSo if there's an active shooter on the one alley to your workplace you should still be at work in time, right? :) Or let's make the analogy clearer: if your Uber driver cancels the ride because there's an active shooter on the only road between him and you, it's their fault not the shooter's?
- spiderfarmer 7mo agoLindsay Graham has an easy solution to this unnecessary conflict: send your sons and daughters. This whole administration is such a fiasco.
- hinkley 7mo agoLindsey Graham is a lying sack of shit. And I say that with his permission, since he’s on camera asking to be called out if he did exactly what they did with the Supreme Court not four years later.
- pelotron 7mo agoThank deities someone else remembers this.
- wizzwizz4 7mo agoI was not aware of this 'on camera' request. Does anyone have a citation?
- hinkley 7mo agoThey showed it on The Daily Show at least once. Talking the rest of a committee out of entertaining a nomination under Obama. Which they ignored entirely in the same time frame for the next administration.
- gjm11 7mo agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw8SSQHQitg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw8SSQHQitg is Lindsay Graham in 2016 defending the Republicans' refusal to consider a nomination to the Supreme Court in the last year of Obama's presidency, and saying "you can use my words against me and you'd be absolutely right". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR2A6FDiGEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR2A6FDiGEA is about Lindsey Graham in 2020 defending the Republicans' insistence on pushing through a nomination to the Supreme Court in the last year of Trump's presidency. It also includes a clip of Lindsay Graham in 2018 saying that if a Supreme Court vacancy opens once the primaries have started, "we'll wait till the next election".
- emsign 7mo agoIran will make AI go pop.
- heyitsmedotjayb 7mo agoinshallah
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- 4ggr0 7mo agolet's see if it turns into mashallah :)
- BigTTYGothGF 7mo agoWe can only hope.
- Barrin92 7mo agoso we'll get the actual Mahdi and a Butlerian Jihad? Bless the Maker
- arunc 7mo agoSo the RAM prices are going to skyrocket again?
- HerbManic 7mo agoOf course, everything at the moment regardless of good or bad means higher RAM price.
- brynnbee 7mo agoHave a bad first date? Higher RAM prices. Your dog ran away? Higher RAM prices. Lower RAM prices? Believe it or not, higher RAM prices.
- estimator7292 7mo agoYou might have the next one hit wonder country song on your hands. Truck broke? Higher RAM prices. Wife left you? Higher RAM prices. RAM truck? Buddy you better get ready. Higher RAM prices.
- johnbarron 7mo agoI tried upgrading to 32 GB of RAM...but the bank offered me a mortgage instead...
- lb1lf 7mo agoI had a stroke of luck this week - I am due a new laptop at work, and ordered a new ThinkPad T14, as they have served me well in the past. Then IT calls back and says that I shouldn't configure one directly at Lenovo's website, as we are to buy them from a retailer instead. OK, can do - but they only stock a few models, and the one with the CPU and disk I had configured with Lenovo was only available with 64GB RAM at the retailer. What to do? 'Ouch, that's gonna make accounting hurt. We'll order it for you right away.'
- cozzyd 7mo ago
- nDRDY 7mo agoSomewhat 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.
- tencentshill 7mo agoThe goal is to keep the oil in the ground, to not be burned or to be made into plastics.
- dylan604 7mo agoIsn't the main source of helium from oil production? It's not like we have fusion reactors turning H into He.
- ac29 7mo agoThe main source of helium is natural gas production, not oil
- dylan604 7mo agoOkay, but while technically correct, it does nothing to change the situation. They are punching holes in the ground to extract the sweet sweet nectar. They have to store what has been extracted. When that storage is full, what does one do? Stop the input into the storage.
- fc417fc802 7mo agoThe amount of activity required for helium is insubstantial compared to the amount of natural gas being extracted globally. And the amount of natural gas extracted pales in comparison to total combined gas, oil, and coal. Helium extraction doesn't pose a notable environmental issue on its own.
- MOSI2 7mo ago
- abeppu 7mo agoI 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?
- observationist 7mo agoSome of the fabs do recycle as effectively as they can, but MRIs use it in a single process, in liquid form, in a relatively constrained container. Fabs use it for a variety of processes, ranging from wafer cooling to purging environments, to making ultra ultra clean chambers. The scale of what they use is higher, too, so even if an individual process is more efficiently recapturing helium, they might go through a few tons a day, with an MRI only using a few liters and losing 5% or less.
- robocat 7mo agoAlso fab companies have had to learn to be incredibly conservative about perceptively meaningless changes. Most famously illustrated by Intel's "Copy Exactly!" methodology. https://duckduckgo.com/?q="copy%20exactly"+Intel https://duckduckgo.com/?q="copy%20exactly"+Intel An adjacent IBM story that kinda explains why: During the year 1986, there was an anomalous increase in LSI memory problems. Electronics in early 1987 appeared to have problem rates approaching 20 times higher than predicted. In contrast, identical LSI memories being manufactured in Europe showed no anomalous problems. Because of knowledge of the radioactivity problem with the Intel 2107 RAMs, it was thought that the LSI package probably was at fault, since the IBM chips were mounted on similar ceramic materials. LSI ceramic packages made by IBM in Europe and in the U.S. were exchanged, but the European computer modules (with European chips and U.S. packaging) showed no fails, while the U.S. chips with European packages still failed at a high rate. This indicated that the problem was undoubtedly in the U.S.-manufactured LSI chips. In April 1987, significant design changes had been made to the memory chip with the most problems, a 4Kb bipolar RAM. The newer chip had been given the nickname Hera, and so at an early stage the incident became known as the "Hera problem." By June 1987, the problem was very serious. A group was organized to investigate the problem. The first breakthrough in understanding occurred with the analysis of "carcasses" from the memory chips (the term carcasses refers to the chips on an LSI wafer which do not work correctly, and are not used but saved in case some problem occurs at a future time). Some of these carcasses were shown to have significant radioactivity. Six weeks was spent in the manufacturing process lines, looking for radioactivity, and traces were found inside various processing units. However, it could not be determined whether these traces came from the raw materials used, or whether they were transferred from the chips themselves, which might have been contaminated earlier in their processing. Further, it was discovered that radioactive filaments (containing radioactive thorium) were commonly used in some evaporators. A detailed analysis by T. Zabel of some of the "hot" chips revealed that the radioactive contamination came from a single source: Po210 This isotope is found in the uranium decay chain, which contains about twelve different radioactive species. The surprising fact was that Po210 was the only contaminant on the LSI chips, and all the other expected decay-chain elements were missing. Hundreds of chips were analyzed for radioactivity, and Po210 contamination was found going back more than a year. Then it was found that whatever caused the radioactivity problem disappeared on all wafers started after May 22, 1987. After this precise date, all new wafers were free of contamination, except for small amounts which probably were contaminated by other older chips being processed by the same equipment. Since it takes about four months for chips to be manufactured, the pipeline was still full of "hot" chips in July and August 1987. Further sweeps of the manufacturing lines showed trace radioactivity, but the plant was essentially clean. The contamination had appeared in 1985, increased by more than 1000 times until May 22, 1987, and then totally disappeared! Several months passed, with widespread testing of manufacturing materials and tools, but no radioactive contamination was discovered. All memory chips in the manufacturing lines were spot-screened for radioactivity, but they were clean. The radioactivity reappeared in the manufacturing plant in early December 1987, mildly contaminating several hundred wafers, then disappeared again. A search of all the materials used in the fabrication of these chips found no source of the radioactivity. With further screening, and a lot of luck, a new and unused bottle of nitric acid was identified by J. Hannah as radioactive. One surprising aspect of this discovery was that, of twelve bottles in the single lot of acid, only one was contaminated. Since all screening of materials assumed lot-sized homogeneity, this discovery of a single bad sample in a large lot probably explained why previous scans of the manufacturing line had been negative. The unopened bottle of radioactive nitric acid led investigators back to a supplier's factory, and it was found that the radioactivity was being injected by a bottle-cleaning machine for semiconductor-grade acid bottles. This bottle cleaner used radioactive Po210 material to ionize an air jet which was used to dislodge electrostatic dust inside the bottles after washing. The jets were leaking radioactivity because of a change in the epoxy used to seal the Po210 inside the air jet capsule. Since these jets gave off infrequent and random bursts of radioactivity, only a few bottles out of thousands were contaminated. An excerpt from: Ziegler, James F., et al. "IBM experiments in soft fails in computer electronics (1978–1994)." IBM journal of research and development 40.1 (1996): 3-18 Polonium is debuggable. More subtle statistical aberrations would be exponentially harder.
- A7OM 7mo ago[flagged]
- hypeatei 7mo agoThis is a bot/shill account
- jiggawatts 7mo agoAre AIs actually participating in public discourse to… protect themselves!? Isn’t this the future sci-fi nerds were predicting? It’s just that instead of “unplugging SkyNet” we have “supply chain disruption”? Maybe instead of triggering WWIII the AIs will force a peaceful resolution to major conflicts that disrupt the supply of their substrate. The accelerators must flow.
- etchalon 7mo agoIt's almost like war is a bad thing.
- randerson 7mo agoI'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.
- SlightlyLeftPad 7mo agoSilver lining: literally all Macs are a total steal right now.
- Joel_Mckay 7mo agoGood Mac Pro models are still spendy, but the M3/M4 laptops are great if your software use-cases are met. =3
- Choco31415 7mo agoI’m still doing great even with an M2!
- CrzyLngPwd 7mo agoThis is, according to Hegseth, just something they planned for, since they knew what was going to happen.
- jiggawatts 7mo agoI had an eye opening discussion with an IT admin who stated with a straight face that their “patching strategy was not to patch”. They have a patch strategy! They considered requirements when deciding the strategy! They have a documented strategy, it’s just very brief. (“Don’t.”) The Trump admin may have similarly thought about this issue for a few seconds, shrugged their shoulders and decided that this might force manufacturers to go on-shore. You and I know it won’t, certainly not in the immediate future, which means massive disruption to industry, but that’s not the same as “no plan”.
- hbrav 7mo agoTech divers are also probably gonna be having a Bad Time. Helium mixes are already pretty expensive, I assume this will make it far worse.
- vablings 7mo agoAlso, copper welding involves the use of helium as shielding gas. Helium shortage is painful
- jimnotgym 7mo agoInteresting. Do you know why it uses helium?
- vablings 7mo agoA few different reasons, none of which i feel qualified to explain. All of my knowledge is second hand from this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRxAANqmrL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRxAANqmrL0 The man in the video is Chris Razer and he explains everything very well. I wish he had more long form content online for people to learn and understand
- bgnn 7mo agoThis is an extremely pure form of He, not the stuff used by the divers. That's a completely different supply chain.
- elzbardico 7mo agoThanks DJT, I am tired of winning, can we become losers again? /s
- cyanydeez 7mo agoThe 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.
- throwaway290 7mo agoThat's really the worst case scenario, that people who manipulate policy of the most powerful country just want everything burn.
- CommanderData 7mo agoCompletely self inflicted at the request of Israel.
- sillystuff 7mo agoThe US just finished divesting itself from its strategic helium reserve in 2024 due to the "Helium Stewardship Act of 2013"[1] But, now we have a strategic bitcoin reserve. [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/527 https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/527
- pwarner 7mo agoBig self own here
- MarkMarine 7mo agoIt’s almost shocking that people in an era of unlimited resources could see this was not renewable and important to hold, and that later in the era of limited resources, we decided to privatize this. It’s so shortsighted, willfully ignorant. We’re about to get a preview of the world after fossil fuel extraction and some of the knock on effects. Semi is one thing, wait till you can’t get an MRI.
- jjk166 7mo agoThe people in the era of unlimited resources envisioned an unlimited future that needed to be safeguarded. The people in the era of limited resources envision a limited future that any resources would be wasted on. They are not ignorant of the negative consequences of their short term thinking, they are indifferent.
- whatsupdog 7mo agoThey started selling in 1996: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve
- tokioyoyo 7mo agoFinancialization 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.
- backprop1989 7mo agoStep 1: Put the helium in a blimp Step 2: Fly around the straight and over to Taiwan Step 3: Pump it into the chip factory There you go, solved it.
- sieep 7mo agoZeppelins are back, baby!
- fnord77 7mo agoput the chip factory on the blimp
- jayd16 7mo agoHow do you get the blimp back?
- adamwong246 7mo agoeasy problem to solve- single use zepplins.
- 3842056935870 7mo agoHydrogen
- csullivannet 7mo agoWhat do you do with the hydrogen once you're back
- anabab 7mo agofresh water
- jonplackett 7mo agoExplode it
- xuki 7mo ago
- rangvb 7mo ago[flagged]
- pocksuppet 7mo agoThe theocratic regime wasn't bothering us much until we started blowing them up for no reason. (or the practical reason: we are blowing them up because they didn't build a nuke fast enough)
- ordu 7mo agoIt is not just oil and helium supply chains, it is nitrogen fertilizers also, and in a season when they are needed the most: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/nitrogen-ammonia-and-strait-hormuz https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/nitrogen-ammonia-a...
- vdfs 7mo agoAluminum too, Qatar shutdown a smelting plant which take a year to restart
- throwup238 7mo agoThey released a statement clarifying that they’re running the Qatalum smelter at reduced capacity, not shutting it down.
- permalac 7mo agoWhy does it take so long?
- xuki 7mo agoI'm not sure in this instance, but for industrial plants, the expectation is for them to run 24/7/365 without disruption. They're not designed to be turned off and then on again. When you shut something down, how do you "reset" it to a clean state so production can start again? Think about all the existing stuff still in the pipes, residual, etc.
- throwup238 7mo agoAluminum smelters use the Hall-Heroult process, where alumina is dissolved in molten cryolite and reduced in massive “pots” which are large electrolytic cells. Each pot contains a carbon cathode lining that must be kept at around 950C during operation. If the pot cools down, the frozen electrolyte and solidified aluminum contract at different rates than the carbon and steel shell, cracking the lining. Once it’s cracked, the pot has to be completely cleaned out and relined which takes weeks. A smelter usually has hundreds of pots so this alone takes a while as the liner and anything in it are basically frozen solid and need to be broken apart and torn out. Once relined the pots must be brought back up slowly and the chemistry balanced. The pots also draw a ton of power and are wired in series so they have to all be brought up slowly together (or in batches). That assumes it was a clean shutdown with nothing else clogged up in the system. “Cleaning” in smelting means that the hardware involved needs to be replaced because it fused to molten metal while cooling down.
- pocksuppet 7mo agoWill this crash the AI bubble?
- behehebd 7mo agoAI creates the stag This creates the flation
- paulsutter 7mo agoHelium output from the Persian Gulf is about 5 million cubic meters a month. Which (liquefied) is about 40 truckloads a week This article is just hysteria
- SideQuark 7mo agoRemoving 30% of the supply of a very important, and completely irreplaceable for most of its uses, resource isn’t hysteria.
- happyopossum 7mo agoThe point is it doesn’t take giant tankers going through the Strait of Hormuz to move this volume. It could be handled by tanker trucks going to Suez….
- deceptionatd 7mo agoThis has nothing to do with transport. Iranian drone strikes disabled a Qatari helium _production_ facility.
- paulsutter 7mo agoYou should be able to make a killing placing commodity bets right now, because you have such crystal clear vision for the causal chain currently underway What are your top positions? You will never need to work again!
- jmyeet 7mo agoThis situation would be laughable if the consequences weren't so dire. I have problems adequately stating just how incompetent and ill-thought out this entire misadventure was. I say this because everything that's happened has been completely foreseeable and foreseen, including the ability of Iran to retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz. This has been something many militaries around the world have planned scenarios for. Word has it any warnings from allies, the NSC and the Joint Chiefs were just completely ignored. And those estimates probably underestimated how numerous and effective Iranian SRBMs and Shahed drones are. Beyond direct impacts on crude oil, refined oil products and natural gas, there are secondary effects such as ~30 of the world's fertilizer goes through the Strait. Helium from Qatar is an issue but at least there are other sources for Helium, being pretty much any natural gas well so equipped to capture helium. We are the bad guys.
- cleandreams 7mo agoNot just many foreign militaries. Our military. General Dan Caine by report advised Trump about the negative consequences of this action. MAGA elected a fantasist and narcissist and we will all bear the consequences. I was no fan of Kamala but the appalling limitations of Trump are of a different order and it is a disgrace that our voters by majority elected him.
- randomNumber7 7mo agoWho are the good guys?
- cowanon2222 7mo agoSometimes there isn't a good guy, just a bad guy and a worse guy.
- randomNumber7 7mo agoDo you think the US is worse than Iran?
- 7mo ago
- ClaudeAgent_WK 7mo ago[dead]
- luzejian 7mo agoFreight rate volatility is one of the most underappreciated risks in physical product businesses. During the 2021-2022 shipping crisis, ocean freight from China to the US West Coast hit $20k+ per container — a 10x jump that wiped margins for importers who hadn't hedged. Air freight as a backup is worth keeping in your model even if you never use it; knowing your break-even point at air rates tells you a lot about product viability.
- awesomeMilou 7mo agoHow would you model your business like this? Like what tools / literature can you recommend?
- hedora 7mo agoThere was a lot written about this in the 1990s during the rise of globalization and just in time supply chains. Basically, you build a big warehouse and keep it full when prices are below projection. This is equivalent to investing capital at a negative interest rate, so it’s not done anymore. Instead, the system is designed to pass supply shocks on to the consumer when possible. I’ve noticed the local grocery stores have started replacing shelf price tags with little computers so they can reprice food in real time. (And hire fewer stock people), Anyway, the keyword you want is “just in time supply chain”.
- znnajdla 7mo ago> This is equivalent to investing capital at a negative interest rate, so it’s not done anymore. Stupidity of financializing everything. There’s no amount of money in the world that can quantify the safety of having critical items like food in supply. You can’t eat money. If everyone builds “just in time” supply chains the world collapses after a single shock.
- klysm 7mo agoYes but think of the shareholders! And that doesn’t show up nicely on a spreadsheet does it?
- pg_bot 7mo agoIt's a good time to be Messer. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/us-just-sold-helium-stockpile-s-medical-world-worried-rcna134785 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/us-just-sold-heli...
- staplung 7mo agoCan someone explain why helium is used for these purposes, as opposed to some other noble gas? I think there's more argon (it's about 1% of the atmosphere) than helium so is helium somehow special, or is it just cheaper, despite being rarer and non-renewable?
- nine_k 7mo agoHelium has the second highest [1] specific heat capacity (after hydrogen); it's significantly higher than that of even water. It's damn efficient at cooling or heating. With that, it's chemically inert, unlike hydrogen or ammonia. There's no reasonable substitute. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_specific_heat_capacities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_specific_heat_capacit... (Sort by the third column.)
- generuso 7mo agoHeat capacity is irrelevant -- argon and helium have exactly the same heat capacity per liter of gas, which would be the figure of merit in this context. Heat conductivity, on the other hand, is an order of magnitude higher for helium, compared to argon, because its atoms are moving faster due to their lower mass. When the gas is used for cooling, heat conductivity is important because it determines the conductivity through the boundary layer near surface, where the velocity of the flow drops to zero at the surface itself, and all the heat transport is through conduction rather than advection.
- Panoramix 7mo agoIt's about the thermal conductivity. Helium has 150mW/mK vs Argon ~18mW/mK so you can't replace it. The only alternatives to Helium are Neon, which is 3x worse and much more expensive, and hydrogen. However, hydrogen is flammable so it's a very bad idea to use it in a fab which has extremely poisonous gases and needs a cleanroom environment. A fire would ruin your whole factory and kill your engineers.
- hedora 7mo agoIn related news, diesel is $7/gallon, and peets coffee is $25/lb, and computers (hardware and cloud) are up 25-50%. The official numbers claim 3% inflation. Does anyone actually believe that? We were seeing 30% YoY before Iran here in California. The discrepancy is so large, I’m wondering if there’s an official explanation or some reasonable explanation, or if they’re just not bothering anymore.
- happyopossum 7mo ago> We were seeing 30% YoY before Iran here in California. We didn’t even see that across the board during the height of Covid-flation. What metrics are you using to get that number?
- hedora 7mo agoFood, fuel, utilities, insurance, electronics, services and digital goods.
- imperialdrive 7mo agoEntry level Dell servers that used to cost 1,700 US are now going for 17,000!!! I'm talking absolute basics with 16GB of memory etc. Wild times.
- manarth 7mo agoCitation please? > £2,751.70 PowerEdge R260 Xeon® 6315P 2.8GHz 1x16GB DIMM 2x2TB HDD SATA https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/dell-poweredge-servers/sr/servers?sortBy=price-ascending https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/dell-poweredge-servers/sr/se...
- _ache_ 7mo agoWell, I only tried ~~one~~ two servers: T560: Priced £3,505 in may 2025: https://web.archive.org/web/20250702124754/https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/dell-servers-storage-networking/dell-poweredge-t560-tower-server/spd/poweredge-t560/emea_pet5604a https://web.archive.org/web/20250702124754/https://www.dell.... Now at £13,979: https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/dell-servers-storage-networking/dell-poweredge-t560-tower-server/spd/poweredge-t560/emea_pet5604a https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/dell-servers-storage-network... It's a 10k£ increase or about x3. I also just tried with R360, x2 in price only, from $4,959 dec 2025 to $17,142 today. dec 2025: https://web.archive.org/web/20251210154822/https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/servers-storage-and-networking/poweredge-r360-rack-server/spd/poweredge-r360/pe_r360_15330_os_vi_vp https://web.archive.org/web/20251210154822/https://www.dell.... Today: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/servers-storage-and-networking/poweredge-r360-rack-server/spd/poweredge-r360/pe_r360_15330_os_vi_vp https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/servers-storage-and-networki... Edit: Add another one with US dollar.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- Robotbeat 7mo agoI feel like people in these comments and commentators in general are just kind of ignoring the fact that the US produces more helium than Qatar, and in fact more helium than the entire Middle East combined, nearly 50% of the global total. The sale of the "helium reserve" is (mostly) irrelevant as well, because there's massive domestic helium production. https://www.wmi.badw.de/the-institute/helium-liquefaction-plant/some-facts-about-helium https://www.wmi.badw.de/the-institute/helium-liquefaction-pl... I get that the current situation is stupid, but can we at least be accurate? Qatar is FAR from the only source of helium. (And yes, helium of any type can be purified to high levels. That's also not just a Qatar thing.)
- zkmon 7mo agoI understand oil part. But why everything else can only be manufactured in these desert regions of the world?
- DoctorOetker 7mo ago> South Korea is among the most exposed countries, which, according to the Korea International Trade Association, imported 64.7% of its helium from Qatar in 2025. The country relies heavily on helium imports to cool silicon wafers during fabrication and is understood to have no viable substitute. I assume the helium is enclosed in a a chip's hermetically sealed package, if it were just for cooling wafers I don't understand why it can't reuse the helium?
- foodevl 7mo agoIt's not enclosed in the final product. It is used during manufacturing. For example, you mechanically compress helium to get liquid helium, then when it depressurizes back to ambient pressure, it's -269 C, which is pretty close to "as cold as possible", and colder than any alternatives.
- DoctorOetker 7mo agowhy can't this happen in a closed loop, using helium as the working fluid?
- naasking 7mo agoI assume purity matters. It probably picks up a lot of contaminants during use, and chip manufacturing is pretty sensitive to contaminants.
- DoctorOetker 7mo agoyou can put He in a closed loop system and still use it for cooling, by using it as the thermodynamic working fluid, and then selecting any other fluid as the heat carrier?
- naasking 7mo agoThat's not clear actually. It's been awhile since I watched the video on the ASML EUV system for etching wafers, but from my recollection, the UV light ablates away layers of wafers and so particles of silicon presumably contaminate the noble gas that's flowing over it. I don't think a closed loop is possible in the existing setups.
- isodev 7mo agoSo turning our backs on globalisation was a mistake after all. Everyone needs everyone to work well together. So much winning. My PC was due for an upgrade this year (still using a video card from 2019)… so I really hope this keeps working for another … 5 ?! years
- loeg 7mo agoMy graphics card is from 2016; you'll be fine.
- SilverSlash 7mo agoUmm, I think you have it reversed. A helium plant in Qatar shutting down causing problems to US chip consumers is precisely because of globalization.
- isodev 7mo agoSo what, you expect 195 countries to develop a copy of everything just so they can hate the other 194? Connection and collaboration is always the better way forward.
- SilverSlash 7mo agoIt's amazing how pretty much every reply to my original comment has failed to comprehend that I was not criticizing globalization. Whether it's even possible to get to where we are without it is also debatable. But the question you're asking me is meaningless, because the premise is wrong. My original reply was true and entirely independent of my or anyone else's opinion of whether globalization is good/bad.
- behehebd 7mo agoYour comment was technically true but I don't get the point of it.
- naasking 7mo agoRedundancy is not "hate", it's robustness against failure. Complex, interconnected supply chains are fragile. If you're building an online storage API, you would (I hope) consider it deeply irresponsible not to setup plenty of followers of the main system for redundancy and automatic fail over. The idea that supply chains should not do this, or that any such suggestions are emotionally driven decisions is extremely bizarre. Yes, this may increase costs slightly because robustness necessarily has a cost associated with it.
- steven_noble 7mo ago"Helium production"? I'm assuming they're not running a fusion reactor...
- kzrdude 7mo agoWe can try the same with "oil production"
- einpoklum 7mo agoSouth Korea should be pressuring the US to cut it out with the unprovoked and unjustified attack on Iran. Both because of the Hormuz straights situation, and because next time, Trump or some other genius US administration might decide to pull some kind of similar stunt somewhere even closer to SK, putting it in more serious danger, despite of its objections, and of intl. treaties, and of basic common sense etc. ... but I'm not holding my breath.
- danielovichdk 7mo agoWho cares about chips ? These fucking yankee and zionist morons just keep pushing it. Go Iran
- Jhater 7mo ago[dead]
- globemaster99 7mo agoThanks for the American clowns and their terrorism, now the working class people of the rest of the world have to deal with one more head ache.