I think the main counter example to this in the case of Intel is Global Foundries success after splitting from AMD. However GF had to find their own niche downmarket to the cutting edge nodes that AMD requires. So in the case of RR, it’d be like if the turbine segment gave up on SOTA aero engines and instead transitioned into electricity generation turbines (or some less sexy end market).
My personal bias is that in the long term, keeping the different divisions as one whole makes both sides less fragile in the long run.
The other problem I think you’re getting at that being on the cutting edge of a market that is extremely capital intensive is a tough sell to the banks & financiers. I feel like every industry outside of finance is increasingly squeezed out like humanity can survive on securities arbitrage alone.
> Global Foundries success after splitting from AMD
As I know, in ~1990th HBR written article about constantly under-loaded semiconductor fabs and concluded, it is unprofitable to tightly couple them to R&D.
Counter-argument was, that Intel used ties to fabs, to achieve extreme level of scalability, to fill market demand fastest, so marketing won.
What really happen, appeared few new specialized classes of semiconductors - signal, accelerators, high-power (high-current), and low-power (energy effective), and independent fabs made universal pipeline, to fill all market demand, but Intel stuck on desktop CPUs and failed all other classes (as example, Intel was unsuccessful in try to got niche on smartphones SoCs - still have not made cellular modem and nearly failed on GPUs).
To be more exact, Nvidia in reality is most software company from hardware companies, and AMD with their GPU division constantly competes to Nvidia literally head-to-head.
And what was gamechanger - when AMD struck to limits of reliable transistors on one die, they decided to switch to chiplets - they made 2.5D multiple-die design with silicon interimposer, while Intel used their manufacturing superiority to make huge dies with all included.
- Once appeared, with chiplets, AMD could achieve much better performance on weaker but much cheaper technology and won.
So my point - Intel suffered from too tightly couples with fabs, so once they have to adapt their designs and marketing to semiconductors, when AMD successfully avoided this trap. BTW, for this exist much better example - similar problem once killed Atari and Commodore.
Example, how Intel could use their superiority and fast feedback.
Semiconductor fabs usually not make ultraclean materials themselves, but bought from many smaller specialized entities. As example exist few companies, producing ultraclean silicone as crystal cylinders. When fab bought such crystal they could slice from it few wafers and made test runs with their product line designs. For example, they could try i7-7700, i7-7700hq and i7-7700k. If they seen good output with 7700k, it is best possible, as these chips have very similar die size, but 7700k is most expensive; if they seen moderate output with 7700k, but good output with 7700, it's also ok, for them also good demand; but if only 7700hq have good output, things are not good, because notebook chip is not so easy to sell, so have to do some marketing (usually these seen as some exceptionally high prices for some chips, because of low silicone output).
Unfortunately, semiconductors have limits on how large could be one die. Companies like Cerebras use some tricks, usually they just disable parts of die with jumpers, as I know, same tricks used Nvidia before 30th series, but approx same time appeared whole industry movement for chiplets standards, and looks like Nvidia used 2.5D technology to avoid trap with too large die.
I purchased a suppressor for my 9mm handgun that I use for recreational target shooting. It isn’t as quiet as the movies, but the suppressor paired with a higher mass bullet makes a world of difference compared to unsuppressed. The tone of the sound is lower and lacks the deafening crack of a rounding going supersonic and makes the activity so much more comfortable.
Jamie Dimon? He isn't the fed. Also, the interest rates set by the FED only apply to banks, not the yield of US treasuries, which is set by supply and demand for those treasuries.
Intuit is a perfect microcosm of everything wrong with the western status quo. Complete disregard for their customers, corporate focus on regulatory capture and other forms of rent seeking, product updates that reduce functionality from prior versions accompanied by price hikes.
How many deaths would there have been if people did not have access to the technologies that create air pollution? If every CO2/pollution emitting device (cars, power plants, metal production, food processing, coal mines, etc) were all to be shuttered or massively cut back at once, deaths would increase substantially more. Yeah air pollution is bad but I think the solution needs to be incentive/reward based rather than punitive.
Europe has plenty of “Kangaroo courts” of their own and partnerships like five eyes encourages authorities to share information. The UK’s NSA equivalent doesn’t need to worry about infringing on an American’s 4th amendment right and technically (if you don’t think about it) the NSA has plausible deniability if the UK shares this information. And vise versa with UK citizens or any western government.
“Surveillance state” is debatable. I would disagree, but I’ve had that debate too many times on HN recently, and don’t propose to start it again here.
However, to call the UK “totalitarian” is just an abuse of language. The country is not run by a single all-powerful party or dictator. It’s especially odd to use this word and then make a comparison to the US, which (though it is not totalitarian either by any stretch of the imagination) is currently in the midst of an executive power grab, with demands for a level of partisan loyalty from civil servants that remains unthinkable in the UK.
I don’t know what your goal is here, but if you want to persuade the average person in the UK to change their minds about the extent to which the government should be able to access surveillance data, it helps not to bundle your arguments together with wild misstatements.
You're right I shouldn't have used the adjective "totalitarian." It was the kind of mindless parroting of phrases that I dread myself, so thank you for pointing that out! The UK has extremely strict surveillance laws, which are incompatible with EU legislation by now, so it's not a typical example of European countries in that respect. That's all I meant to say.
If so, that was a judgment about legislation that is no longer current (and wasn’t when the judgment was issued). It may be that current legislation is also incompatible with EU law (IANAL, I’m not arguing that point), but AFAIK there is no court judgment to that effect.
No, I didn't talk about court judgments. Yes, I had various aspects of the Regulation of the Investigatory Powers Act and recent additions to the Investigatory Powers Act in mind.
> It may be that current legislation is also incompatible with EU law (IANAL, I’m not arguing that point), but AFAIK there is no court judgment to that effect.
Quite possibly but that wasn't my point. The point is that the UK is by far more of a surveillance state than any EU country, at least to my knowledge. UK legislation is not typical for a European country in that respect. People can go to prison in the UK for not handing over an encryption password and the UK has just effectively banned end-to-end encryption (if you put a backdoor in it, it's no longer end-to-end encryption).
I’m just responding to the specific claim regarding the incompatibility of current UK legislation with EU law. AFAIK this is not an established fact. It’s an increasingly hypothetical question, though not entirely so.
Of course, it's not an established fact. Who would establish that fact? The UK is not a member of the EU. I was talking about the current UK legislation and I stand by what I stated. You disagree but have not presented any reasons why I should change my mind. You even said you're not a lawyer and have not displayed any knowledge of EU or UK legislation and practice. So you disagree. I understand that. There is no need to further continue this discussion.
What I do know is that I won't be able to sell my software in the UK or to any UK citizens or to any citizens who want to use to to communicate with UK citizens because it uses secure end-to-end encryption. That's the important bit for me personally.
When a famous media personality was assassinated the police managed to catch the killers within hours. Turns out they really DO track every car on the highway- it wasn't just bragging.
I don't mean that Europe has worse processes. I mean that the US IC doesn't care about those processes. They can just take whatever they want from European providers.
It’s not even that they have to “break in.” The government allows big tech companies to basically do whatever they want as long as big tech provides the government with an easy way to move forward with the parallel construction needed to bring case against literally anyone should officials be motivated to see that person imprisoned. Everything you’ve ever done can and will be used against you to maximum effect.
I had multiple videos popping up in my feed of people dying in various accidents yesterday. Honestly people deserve more of an explanation than “oopsie”. That type of stuff is traumatizing.
There is also an overlooked “tail risk” with cloud services that can end up costing you more than a a few entire on-premise rigs if you don’t correctly configure services or forget to shut down a high end vm instance. Yeah you can implement additional scripts and services as a fail-safe, but this adds another layer of complexity that isn’t always trivial (especially for a hobbyist).
I’m not saying that dumping $10k into rapidly depreciating local hardware is the more economical choice, just that people often discount the likelihood and cost of making mistakes in the cloud during their evaluations and the time investment required to ensure you have the correct safeguards in-place.
Yes. And somehow, those cloud providers just can’t seem to work out how to build a spend limit feature for customers who’d like to prevent that. It must be a really difficult engineering problem…
It’s not that it’s cheaper overseas, rather it’s often not available domestically at any price. People don’t realize just how absolutely gutted America’s commodity/heavy industrial production capacity really is and the whole system makes it nearly impossible to rebuild.
My personal bias is that in the long term, keeping the different divisions as one whole makes both sides less fragile in the long run.
The other problem I think you’re getting at that being on the cutting edge of a market that is extremely capital intensive is a tough sell to the banks & financiers. I feel like every industry outside of finance is increasingly squeezed out like humanity can survive on securities arbitrage alone.