There's some interesting history here. Toyota started manufacturing in North America in the 70s-80s largely due to pressure from the US government in the form of tariffs and import restrictions. For example, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Motor_North_America:
"Toyota’s first manufacturing investment in the United States came in 1972 when the company struck a deal with Atlas Fabricators, to produce truck beds in Long Beach, in an effort to avoid the 25% "chicken tax" on imported light trucks."
...
"After the successes of the 1970s, and the threats of import restrictions, Toyota started making additional investments in the North American market in the 1980s. In 1981, Japan agreed to voluntary export restraints, which limited the number of vehicles the nation would send to the United States each year, leading Toyota to establish assembly plants in North America."
The book "The Machine That Changed the World", while a bit dated, gives a great overview of the history of Toyota from US automaker perspective.
As a mechanical engineer, I want to offer some perspective on how specific this is for people working exclusively in software. I would never ever even consider working fully remotely, mainly because my job involves designing physical things. The prototypes and models for them are not and cannot be in my home. A big part of my job involves making sure the technician can actually assemble the things I design, which requires going to the place where they assemble it. My company employs many software engineers, and they work from home more frequently than the mechanical or electrical engineers, but they are much more hesitant to allowing full remote just because the work is so centered on the physical product. Every time I see an article posted here arguing one way or the other this rarely comes up. Regardless of the pros, cons, or preferences this just is not an option for a lot of technical people.
This is fair, but I think software engineering is more typical of most knowledge work in this respect than mechanical engineering is. Most knowledge workers aren't handling physical objects for their work beyond a keyboard, mouse, and possibly a high-quality headset.
Software is probably rare among engineering disciplines in never requiring physical access to specialized equipment, but it's pretty normal in the scope of white-collar work in general.
I'm not so sure about that, scientists need labs, academics have labs and lecture theatres, lawyers (some of the time) need courts and to meet clients or counterparties, very few doctors can work from home a non-trivial amount, etc.
I agree it's unusual for something we call engineering, but I don't think needing more than a computer is that unusual for 'knowledge work'. A lot of finance has been more changed by computers than professions like accounting say which you could roughly say just swapped paper for computers and always could've been done from home to a similar extent. I suppose it's the internet being the significant piece, or just needed as well as computers themselves.
Article is paywalled so I can't read past the first 2 paragraphs, but I still don't understand what the controversy about this is. EUV was developed with significant input and resources from the US government [1], so I understand the rationale behind export controls there. But immersion lithography is quite different. My understanding is it was proposed in published papers as early as the 80s, but was industrialized by ASML in the late 90s. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the US government was involved with immersion lithography in any way.
I'm sure the actual legal mechanisms are complicated, but I don't see any justification for the US imposing export controls on technology developed in-house by a European company.
ASML got an export license until December. Maybe they'll get it renewed. The SCMP is jumping the gun a bit when they suggest that ASML will be prevented from exporting DUV equipment come January.
I'm sure the actual legal mechanisms are complicated, but I don't see any justification for the US imposing export controls on technology developed in-house by a European company.
It's possible the scenario is something like this: American company XYZ has key patent on feature ABC that is required to build this type of hardware. ASML licenses ABC patent from XYZ. If they sell the resulting product to the Chinese, then the US comes after XYZ for violating some sort of export law that prohibits granting IP licenses to people who sell to the Bad Guys. So XYZ is more or less forced to include export-control language in their patent license agreement.
There are probably several such guns aimed at ASML's head. The US is really, really good at coming up with things like that.
You mention there probably several such guns aimed at ASML's head and I have no idea what set of carrot+sticks are involved but want to point out it might not just be sticks/guns.
It might additionally be an appeal to ASML or Dutch self-interest. China does not have a good reputation for respecting IP (and I do not think this is just propaganda.) ASML is not somehow exempt to that medium/long-term in one way or the other and has already had issues with that vis-a-vis China (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/15/critical-chip-firm-asml-says...)
Sometimes a corporate entity like ASML needs government(s) to take a stand so that there is a more level playing field so they don't lose out to local/smaller competitors who take a different approach.
ASML is capable of deciding for itself whether it's risky from an IP perspective to sell to company X or Y. It's not ASML that is asking for these export controls. In fact, ASML executives have been warning that these export controls will spur Chinese investment in indigenous chip-making equipment providers, threatening ASML's business over the long term.
I completely agree that this is a significant risk of the export controls.
But China was already expected to climb their way into semiconductor manufacturing with significant investment. What, were they not going to do that? ASML was threatened long-term either way.
But I agree it will definitely focus minds in China on the problem and lead to some acceleration of their progress.
It's not just fraud you need to worry about. Here's a horror story for you. A few years back I was moving to a city for graduate school and needed to rent an apartment. A friend of mine toured the place and when we decided to rent the landlord asked if we could send him the security deposit using Zelle. I sent the deposit using his contact information, but he never received it.
I spent three weeks being passed back and forth by one bank being told I needed to speak with they other bank. They confirmed the money had been debited from my account, and confirmed it was not deposited in his, but nobody could tell me where the money went. I called Zelle multiple times, but all they would tell me is I needed to talk to the banks. Eventually after three weeks the money was quietly returned to my account with no explanation. After a bit more digging it appears my transaction triggered some fraud alert, but neither myself, the depositor, or either bank was notified of this.
To add insult to injury, during this process the people in charge of Zelle at my bank (which rhymes with Space) told me I was out of luck, because using the Zelle for any type of commercial transaction, including sending rent or security deposits, is against the terms of service. Looking back over the terms of service I found they were 100% correct.
I also found that Zelle is basically just a front-end for the existing ACH Direct Deposit system. It was created by a consortium of banks to compete with services like Venmo, but it at it's core a very different service. Venmo actually provides value by acting as a middle man: Venmo pays the recipient and collects the money from me. Zelle is just a way to send money directly to someone's checking account, but by using their email address or phone number instead of the account and routing number. This is why there is absolutely no recourse if anything goes wrong.
I use Zelle all the time but with people I know. In fact, I can't remember where my check book is. I use Apple Pay all the time and I use an actual credit card about once a month. I use cash at one place, my taco truck of choice. And for the record, I've never touched bitcoin.
I've used PayPal and Venmo but I don't see their utility now and prefer Apple Pay.
All of these modern tools have their benefits and risks. I got burned for $40 on Zelle for a bike part. It was a $40 lesson.
Agreed. I'm being hyperbolic when I say "do not ever use Zelle". I'm sure it's fine for passing money between friends. It's just that my version of the $40 lesson had a few more zeros on the end, and so stings a bit more.
For me I only use Venmo because that's what most people in social circles use. If they used Cash App or Apple Pay, I'd use those instead.
The point of a voided check is to prevent an issue in case you make a mistake manually recording your checking and routing numbers. It’s just an insurance policy- there’s really no reason not to do it.
It’s the easiest way to collect this info from most people. Getting a voided check will pass the info from people who don’t know the account number and routing number.
So it’s a good, real requirement because it works more frequently than any other alternatives.
at least photoshop works and I don't have to go get a real check or order checkbooks
you know what works even better though? copy and paste. banking and technology illiterate wage slaves aren't the only ones that wind up with employment on occassion. payroll companies should offer multiple ways to get this done.
I worked an a site that did lots of ach transactions.
We had so many support tickets and errors from people making errors with entering routing and account numbers. Like 20% of all new payees enters bounced back or went to the wrong place. This worked out because new payees were rare since people typically pay the same people over and over.
I think HR does the cancelled check thing because the risk of error is so great and consequential. If people’s paycheck fails, that’s bad.
Walking people through cutting and pasting is harder than “give me a check.”
BTW, the solution for problems like this is complain to CFPB. Banks are afraid of CFPB and complaint will help solve problems.
Zelle has their own instant transfer system, and banks settle up overnight. My understanding is that there isn't ACH transaction for each transfer. Banks have less visibility into Zelle.
I hope FedNow kills Zelle. That should be better integrated. I think Venmo and other payment apps will stick around cause offer useful app.
Thanks, but I don't think I know enough about this to speak about it on the pubic record. My experience is based on remembering what random customer service reps said a few years ago and a bunch of reddit and forum posts. For example, I don't know if Zelle is literally just direct deposit--if it was how did they freeze my transaction for 3 weeks?
But I do get the sense that of all the payment platforms, Zelle is uniquely risky because of the way it's set up. I do with a journalist would look at it from that angle rather just from the "wow there's a lot of fraud here". It seems to be that the banks are incentivized just to get have this product out here to undercut the competition from digital payment platforms, but have absolutely no incentive to make it a functional or safe platform.
> I also found that Zelle is basically just a front-end for the existing ACH Direct Deposit system. [...]
>
> tl;dr do not ever use Zelle.
I can't figure out how to do ACH transfers to friends with my credit union, and I've been told Zelle is the solution for that. I guess I should stick to Venmo?
In the US, Zelle vs. Venmo is comparable to debit card vs. credit card. With Zelle/debit, you're basically mailing cash - it might get lost in transit, your money is gone right away. With Venmo/credit, there's a middleman with a big pile of cash that assumes the risk of money being in-flight, and usually eats fraud/errors as a cost of doing business in exchange for selling data about your spending to advertisers.
This exactly. And this is the reason that Venmo or Paypal need to charge fees for commercial transactions, because they're providing a service. What bugs me is that Zelle seems to be marketed as equivalent to those other digital payment platforms, but in reality it's very different.
I don't really care about Oliver Stone, but as a longtime climate activist (and engineer) I'm glad to see any publicity promoting nuclear. I can't take seriously any proposal for reducing fossil fuel generation that doesn't involve nuclear power. The Messmer Plan in France shows that this can be done in a relatively short time frame. They built huge capacity between the 1980s and 2000s and still get 72% of their electricity from nuclear today.
Meanwhile Germany decided to phase out their nuclear generation over decades due to environmental concerns, and ended up re-commission old coal plants to meet demand. The full story of this is complicated and is also thanks to the current gas crisis in Europe, but the fact remains that the decision to phase out nuclear has lead to more carbon emissions, not less.
I think the US view of nuclear power has been really complicated by the anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s, where nuclear power was (not unreasonably) linked to the military industrial complex. That said, I think the largest obstacle to nuclear power in the US is the federal structure of the government. The US still doesn't have a centralized location for the long-term storage of nuclear waste thanks to Harry Reid killing the Yucca Mountain project in the late 2000s. No state representative has any incentive to allow a facility like that to be constructed in their state, and the federal government is unable or unwilling to force the issue.
I'm heartened to see climate activists slowly but surely starting to take nuclear seriously. I want to plug Emergency Reactor as doing to difficult work of trying to turn the tide of public perception and make nuclear central to the climate change discourse. https://www.emergencyreactor.org/
> I can't take seriously any proposal for reducing fossil fuel generation that doesn't involve nuclear power.
I think about 10% nuclear is a reasonable prediction midpoint (coincidentally the same as it is now, but the total generation will be higher), but that means I think no nuclear is about as likely as 20% nuclear and I take the "mostly nuclear" prediction from the trailer even less seriously than I would a no nuclear plan.
Nuclear takes way too long to come online. If we decide today to build 40 new reactors around the world it will be decades before they are online and operational.
Nuclear is also way too expensive. Building those 40 reactors would cost way, way more than building equivalent production in wind and solar.
Renewables and storage are cheaper, faster and yes, safer. There is absolutely no rational reason to keep building new nuclear reactots.
IPCC AR6 synthesis report shows otherwise: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/static/2f8a061eaef8dbfc9c.... The graph considers the effect of various actions and technologies in reducing emissions before 2030, and the estimated costs. Nuclear is there, even if building new reactors would have a limited effect before 2030, but we would still need to further reduce emissions afterwards.
As a former government bureaucrat, the reason why it takes such a long time to come online is because of bureaucratic red tape. The anti-nuclear side of the debate uses these regulatory hurdles to essentially halt any nuclear progress.
Study identifies reasons for soaring nuclear plant cost overruns in the U.S.
"The authors also found that while changes in safety regulations could account for some of the excess costs, that was only one of numerous factors contributing to the overages."
"Many of the excess costs were associated with delays caused by the need to make last-minute design changes based on particular conditions at the construction site or other local circumstances, so if more components of the plant, or even the entire plant, could be built offsite under controlled factory conditions, such extra costs could be substantially cut."
If you want a more local example, the same type of bureaucracy that stops nuclear reactors is the same one that stops multi-dwelling units in California.
Fixing the regulations is nearly impossible. So much of alternative energy projects, nay ALL natural resource projects, are hindered by frivolous "environmental justice" lawsuits, regulatory demands, and outsiders with personal agendas; such as people lobbying to stop a solar farm in a place they don't even live or have any financial stake in, simply because they disagree with solar energy.
Regulatory burden is IMO the single greatest impediment to American environmental, energy, and manufacturing progress. It's simply not worth it anymore for developers given how heavily the system is unfairly tilted against them.
As usual a corrupt Federal bureaucracy captured by the oil and gas industry applies laws which allows the them to make up new rules and conditions as they go along.
In any other industry experience gained from earlier builds would go into improving future builds
I’m not sure if you were serious with this comment, but for the sake of other readers I wanted to point out this is a legitimate strategy. Many people tend to pair solar with installing mini splits, EV chargers, or some other home upgrade that will offer value at the expense or a higher electric bill. This can make the solar investment make sense where it previously didn’t.
I worked in the solar industry for years and this is a very good summary of the residential install process from the customer side.
I’ll also second one of the main points of the author: do NOT get a solar lease. Either finance it through a solar loan or pay cash. A good solar company will not push you into a lease. If they try, talk to someone else.
Also should be noted to get multiple estimates, even though that's kind of common sense. I had them vary wildly, where the most expensive one was literally twice as much as the cheapest one.
I got three estimates. Huge variety in price. All three companies sent someone out to survey the house. Two were very friendly salesmen who took photos of the roof and told me how much I would save, but couldn't answer technical questions. The third company sent out an engineer, who came into the house and talked me through where the inverter would be best situated, how the batteries worked, the benefits of a diverter etc. Third company instilled the most confidence and they were also the cheapest. Went with them.
Why are the leases so problematic? If you don't have the funds nor credit score to finance it, why not just rent out the roof space so to speak? Any return you get from it is better than nothing.
Solar leases are the problematic ones (where you pay a percent of the energy you generated). It sounds like a good deal, but the rates increase yearly and the compounded cost doesn't end up being worth it. The author was cash-flow positive on a fixed-rate lease immediately and it doesn't come with a contract with a 3rd-party provider, although I guess that depends on how much sunlight you have.
We got a house in San Diego near the bottom of the last market (2012) and I was a medical resident at the time with two school age children. The previous owner had installed electric everything (even had to get a larger trunk line run and breaker panel). So our electric bill was a little nuts, randomly hitting tier 3 pricing and landing $350+ electric bills. For a household with negligible marginal income, that was unpleasant. We had 0 capital to play with but switching to solar was a no brainer. Even the lease is cheaper than paying PG&E.
Would I do it that way again? Probably not. But I have more wiggle room now.
> hitting tier 3 pricing and landing $350+ electric bills
I just wanna chime in and add: PG&E got rid of the third tier (unsure when) and, in the Bay Area, we're looking at around $0.35-$0.40/kWh at the upper end of the rate schedule (plus an explosion in natural gas prices on the West Coast). $350+ electric bills are pretty much now the norm for anyone who wants to heat their house up much past 60°F.
My understanding is the leases are a challenge when you want to sell the house. New buyers would have to also agree to the lease's terms or you have to pay to break the lease and remove them.
I agree overall, but there are a lot of misconceptions about cast iron that can give it a learning curve.
The post glossed over this, but it is certainly possible to damage your seasoning, especially if something you're cooking sticks to the pan. However, this doesn't mean you need to do some day-long "reseasoning" process that involves stripping the whole thing and baking it in the oven. Just clean the pan, put some oil in it, put it on the burner, and rub the oil in with a balled up paper towel until it gets hot. Do this after you cook until you build up a good seasoning and then stop. If your seasoning gets damaged for any reason, just rub some oil into it after you cook until it's good again.
The key for me was learning to care for carbon steel woks. It's basically the same as cast iron, but there's a lot less misinformation and internet superstition out there.
> this doesn't mean you need to do some day-long "reseasoning" process that involves stripping the whole thing and baking it in the oven.
Unless you want everything you cook in the cast iron pan to smell like what was burned in it for weeks, you really do. Or, hear me out: buy a new cast iron. The seasoning process is really onerous, but the manufacturer does it in bulk, and a new cast iron is typically cheaper than a quality nonstick pan. The incredible inconvenience of re-seasoning has made me want to never do it again after a few attempts over the last dozen years in various apartments. Nope.
It's definitely possible I'm doing it wrong. There are so many reasonable-sounding articles I've read over the years about smoke points and food-safe flaxseed oil and temperatures and ventilation so you can season for H hours for each seasoning coat...
When everything is working, cast iron seems great: quick brush off, slight bit of oil to rub in while it's still warm, done. When a spot of rust appears, or large spots on the interior become matte while the rest is shiny (or the reverse), or you're using it as a dutch oven and burn a steak, well, that's when the nightmare begins. After several weekends of attempting to get that smell out and get it re-seasoned, I gave up, left it in the leave/take area of my then building, and bought a new one. But I haven't used that one much, because I know it's only a matter of time until something happens and I am faced with the whole process again.
If my seasoning is getting a bit thin I just smear on some oil in a thin layer and heat at high temperature for about 3 minutes and that’s it. I never have any rust spots because I always dry it after use.
Those AMD presentations are publicly available though. It looks like hot chips is a tech conference, and those AMD presentations were published as part of HC 28. I’ll follow up with a link if I can find one, but I think it’s pretty clear they are not in any way trade secrets.
Does anyone have any insight into how much benefit MSFT actually gets from these decisions? I understand that the intent is to 'make line go up', but as a simpler user I can't really imagine how telemetry and shilling OneDrive actually leads to meaningful revenue growth. On the other hand, people have been loudly complaining about this since the Windows 7 days, and I imagine that there must be some reason they're doubling down on such an unpopular strategy.
> I can't really imagine how telemetry and shilling OneDrive actually leads to meaningful revenue growth.
Microsoft’s ad revenue is $10B (1). Allowing advertisers to send ads based on user profiles is a major feature of digital advertising. Collecting telemetry data improves the user profiling.
These types of changes have a direct positive impact on one of Microsoft’s fastest growing revenue stream. This will lead to meaningful revenue growth.
Former MSFT here. People tend to think of Microsoft as one unified company with a unified strategy.
That is not the case, its best thought of as a batch of little companies that band together to create a product. These companies may compete for resources and attention internally and so each one will optimize for their own benefit.
Ads in Edge? That's probably a decision made by some Principal Program Manager with director support on the browser team. The metrics that get tracked for that event are likely how many people click through the ad, rather than the over all impact to the OS.
The OS Core team doesn't have the influence to say no, or stop the browser from showing those ads. I recall internally when I (a paying customer for O365) got a toast (that is what a popup ad is called internally) for O365 and I decided to raise an issue.
Some PM II (mid-level PM was running the campaign, and they were showing metrics that more people signed up for O365 as a result of the campaign, so per them it was good. I was not in that organization and since that director had OKRs that required signups, he told me to go away.
The core OS stripped down has none of these things, but at integrated build, lots of stuff gets put in, and when one team says no to something, often another one will say yes. A good example is that Office has its own update infrastructure and tooling outside of Windows Update. Why? Office wanted to deliver updates on weekly basis and Windows Update said no as that would be too impacting for users, so Office simply said ok and built their own.
These issues rarely if ever get surfaced to an executive, as by the time the metrics get up to a CVP generally they are showing broader trends, like adoption, or game breaking bugs, or as you note, the line going up. Executives do not get these problems (such as inconsistent UI) to them. Those things rarely rise above a Group PM or Engineering Manager level, and those people often do not care about the complaint as for that metric helps them or is part of their strategy.
Windows, the product team cannot do anything about it due to political problems internally at MS and that is not the engineering team behind Window's fault. We (as that was a team I was on) hated when a product team would do something obnoxious and if we could catch it prior to release would often bluntly complain. More often than not we would get told that we were the platform and to stay out of the other teams business.
Anyways, there isn't some mass company dark pattern strategy or other conspiracy, just a bunch of little factions that are all optimizing for their own interests. Office is probably the worst offender of the batch (Skype, Teams, OneDrive) and Windows can do little about it.
I'd argue that once a movement has been installed it's very difficult to rule it out unless someone on the board can PROVE that it hurts revenue. This kind of decision (UI designers overriding anyone else) probably comes from a middle manager who has top support, the exact reason why it is impossible to un-stuck such decisions. Think Apple, you have to get X out before you can unstuck his/her decisions. That's politics.
"Toyota’s first manufacturing investment in the United States came in 1972 when the company struck a deal with Atlas Fabricators, to produce truck beds in Long Beach, in an effort to avoid the 25% "chicken tax" on imported light trucks." ... "After the successes of the 1970s, and the threats of import restrictions, Toyota started making additional investments in the North American market in the 1980s. In 1981, Japan agreed to voluntary export restraints, which limited the number of vehicles the nation would send to the United States each year, leading Toyota to establish assembly plants in North America."
The book "The Machine That Changed the World", while a bit dated, gives a great overview of the history of Toyota from US automaker perspective.