Hacker News Reader

j_walteron Learn how chips are made with this Rollercoaster Tycoon-inspired animation

In some cases yes, in others no. As much as I love my new electronics I still play my 14 year old Xbox One, read on my 2012 Kindle Paperwhite and use multiple 5+ year old laptops that function almost the same as they did (running Linux helps). 3 years is not really the lifetime of most consumer electronics anymore...at least outside of the latest GPUs.

j_walteron Learn how chips are made with this Rollercoaster Tycoon-inspired animation

This is pretty good...simplifies the process and some of the items are out of order, but it describes the process pretty well.

Keep in mind, even 20 year old chips have 6-700 steps in their process...it's a giant loop of Etch, Photo, Implantation, Furnace, Chemical Vapor Deposition, Physical Vapor Deposition, Chemical Mechanical Planarization, etc...don't forget the measurement steps and defect scans. State of the art chips take 3-4 months to complete this process and it's well over a thousand steps.

j_walteron Bonsai: Janestreet's UI Library

They made money through extreme manipulation of the Indian stock market...when working with a market that has 422X leverage through derivatives its much easier to make money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhqosmgfGR0

j_walteron 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

If his wife who is being charged in a crime asks her husband to destroy evidence, then yes that is a crime. Transporting may be what he was doing when he was caught, but they clearly had enough evidence to support that he was doing more than that.

30 years is absolutely excessive, but that doesn't mean the guy is not guilty.

j_walteron A sentimental tour of late 1990s and early 2000s hacking tools

I loved L0phtCrack...

j_walteron Apple, Intel have reached preliminary chip-making deal

Some people also thought Gamestop was a good deal at $400 after 50x-ing...but when you look at fundementals, earnings and actual projected growth and not just the hype, you see the stock for what it really is. At $20 it was a good deal because of the possibilities of long term success (which we haven't seen any actual evidence of yet), but at $125 it is way overpriced.

Another way to look at it. TSMC profit in 2025 was equivalent to Intel revenue (both about $55B), but Intel made zero dollars profit, yet somehow their market cap is now half of TSMCs.

j_walteron TSA leaves passenger needing surgery after illegally forcing her through scanner

So just get rid of TSA and have no security? They find hundreds of guns in carry on baggage every year, but that should be no big deal right?

They didn't force this person through the scanner, they could have asked for a supervisor and discussed the situation. Don't trust the people at the bottom of any organization if you have a concern.

j_walteron Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth

> Commands now take about a day to arrive, with another day for confirmation. Compare that to the Moon (1.3 seconds), Mars (up to 4 minutes), and Pluto (nearly 7 hours).

These numbers aren't right...Mars is 4 minutes MINIMUM, but could be up to 22-ish minutes at the maximum distance between Earth and Mars. This is also one way, double that for communication and a response.

j_walteron TSMC Arizona outage saw fab halt, Apple wafers scrapped

https://www.reddit.com/r/Semiconductors/comments/18x5vr5/sem...

This reddit post captures what I've seen at TSMC in Taiwan. $120K is normal pay at the director level...engineers make $2500-5000 a month. TSMC AZ starting pay for a new college grad w/ BS is probably just under $100K/year with just salary, with the potential to make over $120K within a few years with full vested bonuses.

j_walteron TSMC Arizona outage saw fab halt, Apple wafers scrapped

TSMC has backup generators in their AZ fab. You actually have to have backup power or a few hundred millisecond blip could cause days or weeks of tool down time. You should see what happens when you lose the ability to keep a clean room at temp/humidity/airflow...it's weeks or months.

j_walteron TSMC Arizona outage saw fab halt, Apple wafers scrapped

TW workers have a majority of their compensation in bonuses, so the OT portion is quite small and many do not even bother to ask for it. The overall compensation between a TW and US engineer at TSMC is also significant. Not to mention the lowest paid hourly workers...where in TW they make 2-3X minimum wage, but in the US it's like 1.25X.

j_walteron Portland is not burning. Here's live context and sourced fact checks

Wildfires don't usually happen downtown...which is what this website seems to be tracking. At least from this 2023 article the number of fires related to the homeless camps is pretty consistent and only the % drops during the summer months.

https:

j_walteron Portland is not burning. Here's live context and sourced fact checks

https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/03/15/data-shows-fires-at-ho...

Portland has issues with homeless...no one can deny this fact. Things are a little better since hard drugs were recriminalized, but the city is far from "fine".

j_walteron Microsoft CTO says he wants to swap most AMD and Nvidia GPUs for homemade chips

They were more of a bargain 3 months ago at $80B.

j_walteron Intel Foundry demonstrates first Arm-based chip on 18a node

No one has doubted Intel's tech...its their manufacturing that is the problem. Anyone can make one successful chip from a wafer...making 80%+ yields is an entirely different problem to crack.

j_walteron Intel Foundry demonstrates first Arm-based chip on 18a node

Everything for the past few generations of nodes have not been actual dimensions but more of an equivalency. TSMC nodes are no different.

j_walteron US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief

Wouldn't be the first time they became obsolete either...and I think even with the US governments help they are too far down the drain to come back.

j_walteron US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief

What part of any plan they have had tells you they are likely to stop losing money any time soon? They are basically selling for asset price right now...because the market doesn't believe they are worth more than their assets.

j_walteron TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process

The iPhone 18 part is for clicks...it really has nothing to do with the iPhone 18 and everything to do with TSMC's N2 process.

j_walteron TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process

This was not just from a thumb drive as that is very tightly controlled at TSMC (they did catch someone right away before it got leaked). The employees were caught printing info and removing it from the company (caught due to magnetic ink setting off the metal detectors) as well as using phones to take pictures of their laptop info while connecting from offsite. Taking pictures of remote laptops is a more covert way, but both employees were caught through suspicious pattern analysis and review of access logs of people right before they quit the company.

j_walteron AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

You are forgetting AMD...they are up there as well (double digits %). Thats how the compete so effectively with Intel.

j_walteron AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more

That will 100% never happen. Nvidia is big, but not even close to a majority of TSMC revenue or loading. Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, etc...

In this case...TSMC is holding all the cards, not Nvidia

j_walteron Intel's new CEO explores big shift in chip manufacturing business

Probably losing appeal because, as another article pointed out, the 18A process has been found to be roughly equivalent to TSMC's N3 process, which was in HVM in 2023...not exactly what was promised the last few years (which was better performance than TSMC N2).

What is interesting is TSMC claimed this over a year ago and Intel denied it.

j_walteron Intel's new CEO explores big shift in chip manufacturing business

A majority of the chiplets are made by TSMC, but the main cores had still made by Intel. This has changed somewhat the last few years, but TSMC is still making a lot of chips for Intel. Supposedly the 18A node will be used for the latest gen CPU but it is still likely to use some TSMC chiplets.

Example: https://www.techpowerup.com/298027/tsmc-not-intel-makes-the-...

j_walteron As US vuln-tracking falters, EU enters with its own security bug database

Review Peter Allor's comments...struggles on who pays and who should be the long term controller of this program was what led to the push right up to the last minute. As usual in government if you don't push hard enough nothing will change...and I still see nothing from CISA regarding their views on what happened...all we see is conjecture from MITRE and joy because they got their $$$.

j_walteron As US vuln-tracking falters, EU enters with its own security bug database

>>>and quietly rolled out a limited-access beta version last month during a period of uncertainty surrounding the United States' Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program.

You mean the 24 hour period where people freaked out and assumed things that weren't true? The renewal came down to the wire just like most do during negotiations...MITRE tossed the news out there to stir up concerns but it was all just sensationalized. A "funding lapse" is not the same as "contract not renewed yet"...

j_walteron Study finds that budget cuts to public R&D would significantly hurt the economy

>>>and long-run is MUCH more important for governments than companies.

Yes, but rarely for the people in charge of spending the money in the government or the people who were voted in to do so.

j_walteron Future of OSU Open Source Lab in Jeopardy

Cost of living in Corvallis <<< Cost of living in Seattle

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

j_walteron Study finds that budget cuts to public R&D would significantly hurt the economy

Private sector can make it more efficient for some things...but what I'm referencing is the use of NGOs for public services and the most wasteful I've seen are in the "Large Blue Cities". CEOs of relatively small firms that get millions of dollars in funding but also give themselves 6 figure salaries for "charity work".

I saw a recent article about an NGO that was going to not be able to help immigrants learn how to navigate the path to citizenship. Big story about losing $300K a year in federal grants. However they also took in $2-3M a year in other funding and spent most of it on lobbying for immigrant law changes, as well as paying their CEO a decent 6 figure salary. However the sob story about cutting services to immigrants was the only thing they talked about cutting.

j_walteron Study finds that budget cuts to public R&D would significantly hurt the economy

Not sure about the USAID part, but ActBlue has been suspected of illegal fundrasing activities for a long time. Googling will find a lot of stories similar to the one above.

"Mark Block, former chief of staff to Republican 2012 presidential candidate Herman Cain, alleges that a total of $884.38 given in his name and without his knowledge between May and October was designed to circumvent federal election law and may be part of a larger scam involving tens of thousands of unwitting donors." https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/is-actblue-in-lega...

"An 88-year-old retired Yale University professor, for example, supposedly made 7,539 donations for a total of $213,163, according to FEC records." https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/01/08/elderly-democrats-say...