> all advertising is fake nowadays, so it is hard to compete while being honest. Can't blame them.
Not just advertising but most things that are done online, like dating or job applications. You might be the only job candidate with an honest profile, but if the other candidates have fake inflated their profiles to stand out more, then your resume won't pass the ATS screening because the overabundance of inflated resumes raise the bar even for the honest ones.
Competing in the online attention economy is hell. It's like being in rock concert and trying to attract the attention of the bass player from the middle of the crowd. It devolves into a constant numbers-game arms race between those doing the screening and those seeking the attention, while those refusing to take part in it or are playing honestly by the rules, end up loosing the most.
That Macbook Air is 1200 Euros where I live which is way above the price of the most sold Windows laptops according to the public sales data of big retailers here, which seem top hover around the 700-800 Euro pricing.
So no, it isn't cheaper when you look at what people actually buy. It's only cheaper if your data set is full of the unicorn $4k-8k Dell/HP/Lenovo workstations at corpo pricing .
>I genuinely don't believe this to be true for AMD. I bought a 6600xt on Release Day
That was 2021 though when AMD was still a relative underdog trying to claw market share from Nvidia from consumers. AMD of today has adjusted their prices and attitude to consumers to match their status as a CPU and GPU duopoly in the AI/datacenter space.
You can still buy their GPUs, they work perfectly fine on linux ootb and they even make stuff like the AI Max for local AI that is very end user and consumer friendly. Yes, GPUs got more expensive which is a result of increased demand for them. But for a hardware company, as long as their linux support is as good as it currently is, they are a-ok in my book.
>The EU was funding fab lines, several levels back up the chain IIRC?
Yeah but much larger(16-12nm) and much less profitable nodes than what Taiwan, the US or even Japan and China have now.
> I'm just saying the idea you can't be successful if you make cruder, older resolution chips is probably wrong
Define success. Smallest nodes are bringing in the most profits and every country prefers more profits versus less profits, especially Europe given it's budget deficits and welfare spending.
Larger nodes that aren't very profitable are good for national security but Russia and even North Korea are proof you don't need much domestic semiconductor industry to completely terrorize neighboring countries and level entire cities. WW1-style artillery shells and rifle rounds will do just fine.
Yes, I think that's true. But I also think from re-establishing a viable VLSI industry on cruder tech, Europe (like China) can move up the food chain into the smaller lines, as the tech beds in. The irony of ASML being a JV with strong European roots, but the VLSI moving to "anywhere but europe" at scale stands out.
I don't buy labour costs. I think it's probably post-VLSI packaging, assembly of devices, and compliance with HAZMAT that made the moves to Asia and Latin America happen. These plants don't use a lot of cheap labour. So wage cost cannot explain the decision.
There are interesting posts going back decades (crufty google doc shares, USENET posts..) talking about what the work culture at TSMC is like, about Intel management. I think VLSI is like cheese making: if you wear the wrong perfume on the wrong day, you destroy the entire output in one go. But that doesn't justify 16 hour days and toxic management.
Covid virus didn't make you poor, it was the government's response to it of shutting down large parts of the economy(and not others) plus printing endless money and dumping it on the market(mostly on rich people/businesses running on debt) distorting the market and creating hyper-inflation that wiped out your savings and wages.
Same with the war in Europe, they weren't forced to give up on cheap Russian gas that was the base of their economy, they voluntarily chose to do that to save Ukraine, with the obvious effect their prices would go up and standard of living would go down.
People need to start holding their elected governments accountable for their actions of putting too many thumbs, arms and legs on the economic scales that cause wealth transfer form the poor to the rich under the pretext of every crisis("never waste a good crisis"), and for the "let the peasants eat cake" response they get in return.
