I mean comparatively to HDDs.

Of course there are also challenges to making a high capacity SSD, but i don’t think they are using fundamentally new methods to achieve higher capacities. Yes they need to design better controllers and heat management becomes a larger factor, but the nand chips to my knowledge are still the same you’d see in smaller capacities. And the form factor has the space to accomodate them.

If HDDs could just continue to stack more of the same platters into a drive to increase capacity they’d have a much easier time to scale.

How about a 122.88tb SSD? Large SSDs are pretty common in the enterprise market and arguably much easier to manufacture since you only need to put a bunch of nand chips on a pcb.

Your claim that they would advertise it is speculation. What would be the purpose of that?

To advertise that they can? In return what would be the purpose to hide it?

They do seem to make their advancements at least somewhat public, e.g. with their recent progress with a EUV light source.

I am probably on the pessimistic side and you maybe on the optimistic, so the reality will likely end up being somewhere in between (but only time will tell).

China will do this because they have massive talent mass and ressources, and because they have to.

Well it also was developed in the west by a large amount of talent and resources and still took a lot of time. But you are absolutely right that their hand is being forced.

Restricting exports like this imo was a huge mistake, imo especially in regard to duv. In the end it might have achieved some damage in the short/medium term, but that wasn’t anything the us could capitalize on and it also directly hurt ASMLs profits (meaning less resources to advance). And regardless how the timeline ends up looking on the end (be it closer to your or my prediction), physics are the same everywhere so that can’t be restricted and they will eventually be able to figure it out.

GAA is the next evolution of transistor architecture from FinFET, but as far as I know has no direct link to smaller process nodes. In that (to my understanding) it doesn’t require small nodes and could be used just as easily in larger ones. It’s just that it is more difficult so until now there were other easier ways to make progress. However with new nodes getting more expensive and giving less scaling gaa and other things like backside power delivery are being pursued.

We will have to see if the process is actually good, but I have little doubt that China will become competitive in EUV within 5 years. But if they have it already next year, that will be very fast.

So not only do you expect China to have a working domestically produced EUV machine within 5 years, but a competitive one? Or possibly even next year?

Next year is just pure fantasy that I don’t think even the most optimistic would assume. If they were anywhere close to that we would already know. They’d have shown a working prototype by now.

Euv is crazy difficult and you not only the result of a single company ASML, but many highly specialized companies that are leaders in their respective fields and all over the world like e.g. Zeiss for for the lenses. So for China to replicate it domestically they’d need to copy the whole supply chain. Which is orders of magnitude more difficult than what they’ve done in other industries like electric vehicles or solar panels.

Imo if they have a working prototype of a complete EUV machine within this decade it would already be impressive. But that would still be far off from mass production or wherever the industry is by then (Intel is currently trialing high na EUV). Also for reference Wikipedia says ASML had their first prototype in 2006 and we know how long it took to being that to mass production. China as a second mover might have an edge that speed things up, but just knowing how it works in theory isn’t enough and there are o shortcuts.

But maybe they also pursue another technique such as nano imprint (like canon) to achieve smaller nodes. Maybe that would be easier to replicate without existing global supply chains.

Well there are claims that Huawei is aiming for 3nm with GAA with tape out next year See Here.

I think we shouldn’t forget that the nm numbers really are just that: Numbers. They don’t correspond to any specific measurements and can be chosen more or less arbitrarily. So 6nm for example might just be a slightly refined 7nm node.

Another thing is power efficiency and yields. If they get 4060 performance at terrible yields and with massive power draw then it is very different to getting there at similar parameters as Nvidia.

If China does end up cracking EUV by themselves it would indeed be massive. It’s arguably one of the most complex things mankind has ever done. But there are so many factors to get right that tbh I don’t see it happening any time soon.

Do you even have to pay hosting costs, if you put a game on steam or does valve not distribute your game for free?

If I’d have to guess the bigger issues with a game like this would be licensing or that delisting allows some form of tax advantageous asset depreciation.

Another aspect of why it often is better is that it allows them to avoid paying taxes on sales and already accumulated profits, which is desirable because of the compound interest effect.

I think if using something as collateral for a loan would create a taxable event and eliminate this advantage, then they would care a lot less about the arbitrage play between interest rates and average long term stock returns.

Doesn’t fitgirl just repack stuff (compressing the game for smaller download sizes) rather than doing the actual cracking?

There’s currently a Kickstarter going on for a watch that aims to be modular and repairable. It’s called UNA Watch.

Look interesting, but imo with these things it’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem, where the upgradeability/repairability only has value, if it is actually provided in the future (and economically viable). Something that can only be proven in time, but requires people to trust it before.

I’m not in the market for a new watch right now, since I just repaired the screen on my Garmin, but am keeping an eye on it, since sadly Garmin seems to have entered the early stages of enshittification.

I’d say the most recent major influences were the IPO and the emergence of LLMs.

Reddit becoming a publicly traded company and the preparation to do so certainly initiated a major shift in its priorities.

Ai and large language models make it easier than ever to create shiny, but low quality content.

And the rest is just reddit becoming more mainstream leading to an overall shift towards banal rather than niche topics.

They also often want growth beyond what the original market niche supports.

Does this actually matter that much? I have a pixel 6a that has the visor style camera bump and with a case on it just disappears.

And even if I’d use the phone without case Google’s bar shaped design still allows the phone to lay stable on a surface without wobble, just at a slight angle instead of flat. Which I guess would be an issue with other designs.

Sounds like it’s going in the right direction for you financially, that’s great! Depending on the interest rate paying off a mortage is definitely the right call and a pretty good (+reliable) return.

That said i would probably still set up a small savings plan on a broad market ETF. Not because it’s necessarily an amazing time to invest, but to dip your toes into the experience and get a bit desensitized against the fluctuations. Doesn’t really matter the amount really (assuming you can invest without large fees), it just makes a difference psychologically to have skin in the game. That way you have some history once you decide to enter the market with larger sums.

The Covid dip, while certainly unusual, is a pretty good example to why it might be a good idea. Since then there’s constantly been chaos in the world, but you could have invested with the worst timing in 2020 and would now be better off than by sitting on the sidelines. The past isn’t indicative of the future, but on that topic i really like the story of Bob, the world’s worst market timer

To be fair i think times are rarely normal. Just since 2000 we’ve had the dot com bubble, great financial crisis, covid pandemic, ukraine war and now this. Although the current situation feels like a particularly unforced and unnecessary one. And before that there were also plenty of other crisis from world wars, the cold war with things like the cuban missile crisis or the 1973 oil crisis.

HYSA with those rates certainly seem like an appealing place to be in the current market, but as always this is a question about market timing, which is hard to impossible. When did you exit your positions and when do you plan to reenter? Because as said with the recent drops on a wide market scale we are still only down to levels just before the US election and nobody knows how things will play out in the future.

So my point still stands that anyone who is finding himself in acute issues due to the current market changes has done poor risk management. Broad market etfs are meant for a long term investment horizon of 10-15 years exactly so one can weather out downturns. And if someone is close to retirment it would have been prudent to shift some portion of savings into more stable investments similar to how target date funds handle it. Which might still be a good move right now, as the losses are still within reason, assuming a diversified investment strategy (and not something like having bought tesla at peak or the trump meme coin).

That seems like a good addition, although at least for younger people i’d still prefer stocks over the safer annuities, since with a longer time horizon you can weather out some of the fluctuations for higher returns.

What’s the better alternative? I’d certainly take a 401k over the current system in Germany where the current working population pays for the pensions of those currently retired. Which is obviously unsustainable if you take a single look at the demographic changes ahead.

Stocks will eventually go up again and at least for my global all world ETF the current drop means we are only back to where we were in September 24. Trump is certainly destroying a lot of wealth with his actions, but I think this would be true regardless of how you invest.

And anyone in hot waters right now because of the current drops should have probably been invested more diversified and maybe reduced risk a bit more.

I find it’s at least theoretically in the right spot for mass adoption. Something like a valve index or bigscreen vr paired with a strong gaming PC would of course offer a much better experience. But thats just not realistic for the masses.

Also Apple failed with their expensive premium device (although I guess it was always kind of a dev device sold to the masses).

It’s certainly debatable, but at least for the price it offers a lot imo.

The quest exclusives are of course frustrating, but it makes a lot of sense from a business perspective, considering Meta is trying to position themselves as the VR platform (similar to say android with smartphones).

If you don’t mind Meta/Facebook, then the oculus quest headsets are also very affordable hardware and deliver a good experience. I think the issue lies with content.

Smartphones or handhelds like the steam deck with flat screens could use plenty of already existing content made for screens. With VR you want different content that is made specifically for it. There is a decent amount of games (but still much fewer than for other devices), but honestly not that much more.

Additionally it also can only really be used at home, where most already have other devices.

It’s a chicken and egg problem. But imo if there were more genuine unique productivity tasks and experiences available through VR, we would see more adoption.

Tell that to everyone playing games like path of exile (which i admittedly have also played too much of in the past).