Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock (tomshardware.com)

Commercial uses layered surge protectors (Type I, II, and III), which is also recommended for other users but rarely followed.

In surge prone areas, at a minimum I would have good quality whole-house surge protector (eg Siemens 140 or Eaton 108), and a good quality surge protector strip for any computer/TV/phone charger.

I also put surge protectors in front of expensive white goods like the fridge, washer/dryer, dishwasher, and garage door opener. Besides being costly to replace these can contain "sparky" motors and this provides protection in the other direction too. Over time smaller surges can degrade the main surge protector for your computer.

Nothing (reasonable) can protect against direct lightning strikes, but for anything less it should provide decent protection.

Lightning can mess you up in every country lol. Had to replace a PSU because of that, thankfully it was just that and minor damage to GPU.

Honestly even in "developed countries" it's not worth blindly trusting that the power in your house/building is clean. It's cheap and easy enough to just put any expensive hardware on a UPS rather than speculating what's going on behind the walls.

Do you still need a UPS if you have one of those household (Powerwall style) battery packs? Also Apple switched mode power supplies are pretty well built.

But then again there's horror stories like

https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/1maegvb/i_burned...

Living in California taught me this

Anyone have a good take on how well Asahi linux keeps the power management working on mac hardware? The biggest killer feature for me of mac hardware is the battery/weight. I have found it hard to get a good laptop in the linux ecosystem mainly because of power consumption. If Asahi doesn't really impact the battery life then I would seriously consider going that route. Similar question about support for pytorch on linux/arm64 / Asahi.

Too bad I can’t play the games I want to play on them

I bought a Mac Mini in February and maxed out the ram and storage. Now, it seems like that was a prescient move, but honestly I really only bought it for photo editing and playing the new World of Warcraft expansion (don't judge me!).

You pay an $1k extra just to get the model with 1TB disk. How is that a steal?

I mean they're still expensive, they just seem relatively good value because everything else has gotten more expensive.

Not really a steal, just that the price differences have narrowed.

Good Mac Pro models are still spendy, but the M3/M4 laptops are great if your software use-cases are met. =3

The AMD395+ PCs have unified memory and since it's not tied to a garbage OS nor reasonably affected by future dram costs, it's a better choice for reasonable people, unless you're going for greater than 128GB

It also just be the typical “don’t scare the shareholders just yet” PR speak. Time will tell.

These devices are basically autotransformers. So they reduce the noise by providing inductive filtering. But they don't really protect against strong surges by themselves.

So Tripp Lite uses a regular varistor for that, just like any other surge protector. In Europe you'd be far better off buying a voltage relay and adding it to your electrical panel, but it's not usually possible with the non-modular US electrical panels.

Pay of the credit card bill?

You mean pay the interests on it.

It’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.

Check taxes

None. But you don't put a non refined cruide oil in your diesel, it not only has to be refined but DELIVERED to your country. Depending where that country is, delivery could be even 60% of the final price. And when, you know, tankers with oil explode due to drone attacks, you will see quick large spikes in pump price.

EDIT: also, oil is a commodity traded worldwide, and downside of this is the price of oil is directed by future contracts bet on said oil. In other words, if enough people assume there will be future upticks related to raising cost of transportation insurance, they buy more futures. If they buy more of this virtual contract on price going up (called "long") then eventually real price of oil catches up. Sure, this is upside down, but markets live in this setup for many years now where tail wags the dog.

Food, fuel, utilities, insurance, electronics, services and digital goods.

They released a statement clarifying that they’re running the Qatalum smelter at reduced capacity, not shutting it down.

Why does it take so long?

I did some research.

They were shutting down because of lack of gas. They secured some, so they will not shut down, only operate at 60% capacity.

If they shut down they represent less than 1% of world production.

Fold it up and ship it.

I think bigger question is, how do you bring the blimp down without dumping out helium?

Hydrogen

At least it'd be non-flammable helium!

I always thought the socially inept computer enthusiast who can't detect social cues was an anachronism by this point in history but then I started visiting hackernews.

Yes, except for this one flaw it's a perfect plan which would have worked perfectly.

If only the SLS seals would actually hold the hydrogen!

There 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”.

Now I'm imagining a procedural cop show where they bust an illegal helium dealer, and one of the cops takes a huff to gauge what they're dealing with, and then squeaks out "that's the good stuff".

> The infrastructure to get it that pure becomes very specialized

I think some of the most advanced fab infrastructure is the ultra pure water system. Water becomes quite aggressive chemically when it has no dissolved ions in it. You have to use exotic or highly processed materials simply to transport it around. If the factory didn't need such massive quantities of it, trucking it in would likely be preferable.

From the article I thought the helium was used mostly for cooling (where I imagine the purity wouldn't be that important)

But what other processes do the fabs use the helium for then?

Do we have a process to make new helium from hydrogen?

Also 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

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.

Polonium is debuggable. More subtle statistical aberrations would be exponentially harder.

Heat 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.

Have a bad first date? Higher RAM prices.

Your dog ran away? Higher RAM prices.

Lower RAM prices? Believe it or not, higher RAM prices.

I 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.'

Isn't Helium one of the easiest elements to purify? Just cool it below 14 Kelvin, which will make everything else freeze out. Collect the remaining liquid, which should be pure Helium.

after what kind of shutdown?

An unusually large helium deposit in the US made the news recently, not sure if it's being exploited:

https://www.minnpost.com/other-nonprofit-media/2024/07/what-...

Makes sense.

We have so much gas where I live that there are places it’s just flared off and burned, because it’s less greenhouse emissions than it escaping unburned.

https://www.bocgases.ie/files/balloon_grade_helium_factsheet... says 95% helium and 1% oxygen while https://dan.org/alert-diver/article/helium-gas-purity-what-i... says 97.5% helium but very unlikely for it to be as low as 80%

You sure about that? Everything I've ever heard says that balloon gas is generally grade 4, which is 99.99% pure. Not good enough for MRI, but quite a lot better than 80%.

I believe that that's the stuff you buy in the shop, the non-refillable containers. If you buy a proper refillable balloon gas cylinder it's the higher grade stuff. Source: bought the shop stuff, got disappointed, bought the cylinder, happy.

I can personally attest that this is not foolproof, if it is even the case. Those helium tanks you can buy for large parties knocked me out as a kid. Lost consciousness fell to the ground, blacked out. Supervise your kids if you buy one!

source? the value I found is 97.5%+ helium for party balloons: https://www.grecogas.com/learn-our-industry/your-complete-gu...

People commit suicide with it because it's supposedly painless and quick.

We're dumb enough now to have forgotten history.

Moar hydrogen party balloons. Making partying fun again!

[flagged]

This is very likely not true.

Nitrogen? That's basically just air, what good would a balloon be using nitrogen? Might as well just blow it up with your lungs. It's certainly not going to float in any case.

> balloon use ... helium became much, much more expensive

More than just from inflation? (sorry, not sorry!)

Is lifting gas? That’s pretty cool.

Why did we sell it instead of lease? This seems like something that should be in public hands.

Foi de vasco (died).

BLM was required (to sell it) by Congress in the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013, as the alternative was to not offer any H to the market due to the authorization to sell expiring. Sponsored by a Republican and passed basically unanimously with the proceeds used to pay of the debt (back when we cared about that)

An explanation is particular political group was ideologically enthralled with privatization.

The 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….

let's see if it turns into mashallah :)

It's not just plastics. Practically every substance we use and rely on to maintain civilisation as we know it has a petrochemical or fossil fuel base.

I understand the not burning fossil fuel thing, but why can't it be seen like another mineral resource?

Isn't the main source of helium from oil production? It's not like we have fusion reactors turning H into He.

That 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.

/r/LeopardsAteMyFace contains many counterexamples.

For 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.

> 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.

The MAGA Web3 bros have all switched to the Clawdbot hypetrain, still flogging courses and slop.

I 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.

People are admitting that now. It's happening. There's some hope that something can be done about him.

Even Alexander the Great's conquest of Persian was mostly a soft coup. That country is a fortress.

In addition to history, Americans don't really "do" geography. Apparently it's harder than math.

Thank deities someone else remembers this.

I was not aware of this 'on camera' request. Does anyone have a citation?

Graham is doing media interviews where he’s backing this war currently.

Also why you find that hilarious instead of expected? Trump is the GOP now. Everyone with more than the barest of pushback to him have been purged from the party and he’s working on getting rid of those people too.

That'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.

Bold of you to call young, underage children (including those as young as 6) escorts.

The correct way of putting it is so old rich suited men can engage in pedophilia.

> At least the US and Israel have a chance of improving their position in the geopolitical landscape.

Does the improved geopolitical landscape consist of closed strait of Hormuz? Not sure what else they can geopolitically achieve compared to how things were a few weeks ago.

Are you complaining about the Groningen gas wells?

I thought that they were being decommissioned due to seismic risks?

The US appears to be ideologically committed shitting on their trade partners and ending the dollar's run as a reserve currency and you see this leading to improving it's geopolitical standing? Through what mechanism?

> At least the US and Israel have a chance of improving their position in the geopolitical landscape.

This seems, uh, awfully optimistic.

Are 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.

However 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

Don't reply to breppp it's an obvious spy/operative account.