melgross

elijahg said:

System settings is still much worse than the old one. A UI compromised for a small screen keeps those compromises on the big screen well. When there's enough space to display a tab bar, use that so you can click directly on the subcategory you want.

Now, when in a setting's sub-hierarchy, you have to click back, then scroll to the category you want, then click again. For example, it's now three clicks to get to Time Machine settings, whereas it used to be one. If there was a second vertical pane on the left with an expansion of the top-level category you had selected, that would eliminate that issue in most cases. But it would look clunky, so instead we have a something clunky to use, but looks attractive. Though I'd say less attractive than the old System Preferences as well as less usable.

tmay said:

avon b7 said:

tmay said:

avon b7 said:

tmay said:

blastdoor said:

The best deterrence would be for the Allies to show they can scale up defense production. Right now, they’re kind of trying but kind of failing. Nothing will encourage China more than a Russian win in Ukraine due to a failure to supply Ukraine with enough anmo. That would be a clear sign of western weakness, and Taiwan could basically kiss its freedom goodbye.

Exactly right.

I would note that the U.S. and Germany, have been especially "timid" in allowing their weapons systems to interdict Russian forces in Russia, as well as destroy Russian military production at the source. Of note, recently developed Russian systems have fallen to Western weapons systems that are decades old; Russian hardware just isn't that great.

melgross said:

avon b7 said:

It's all pretty much nonsense from a chip perspective.

Only a tiny fraction of the world's chip output is on cutting edge nodes. What makes the world go around is everything else that isn't cutting edge. The much older, more mature nodes. 

There are strategic commercial reasons behind China not having access to cutting edge nodes so the most likely outcome of hostilities is old-fashioned, ehem, 'anonymous' physical destruction, a la Nord Stream, for example and the bulk of our telecommunications runs over undersea cabling too so that is guaranteed to get the snip if things go wrong. Satellite communications will also be interfered with. 

That would see a lot of already fabricated chips with very little to do. 

Sanctions have only accelerated China's chip efforts and determination and, as we move beyond silicon, new solutions will come to market (phototonics are showing promise). Possibly for highly specialised fields first but 'kill switches' are simply spanners in the works when it comes to fabrication. 

Apple took a huge risk in putting all its chip related eggs into one basket mostly in Taiwan. It's paid off so far but the risk (political, economic, natural disaster or otherwise) remains and they are seeking to change that slowly. A wise move. 

This is one area in which we can agree. Telling China that we’re not going to sell you the most advanced chips is just going to spur them on to spend a few dozen more billion on figuring out how to do it themselves. China is not Russia. Russia hasn’t the talent or money to compete. China, even with its current economic problems, does.

China's economy is in shambles, so the level of effort to recreate the entire supply chain to compete in leading edge nodes isn't something that will happen very rapidly, if at all. It certainly will be more than a "few dozen more billion".

China not having access to leading edge nodes for AI, for example, maintains the edge that the U.S. and the Western World have on weapons development, anti-ship missiles, as an example, a primary constraint on any attempt of invasion by China.

The greatest danger to Taiwan is though the end of the decade, as the potential window for a successful invasion closes.

China will get there far quicker than they would have otherwise, specifically due to sanctions. Short term gain in exchange for long term loss in semiconductor related revenues. 

"Enhancing Computing Power for AI. In October 2023, MIIT and other agencies announced the Action Plan on the Development of High-Quality Computing Power Infrastructure. Among other things, the plan aims to increase China’s computing power to 300 EFLOPS by 2025. According to MIIT, China reached 197 EFLOPS, ranking second globally, as of 2023. The action plan includes the creation of 50 computing hubs by 2025 to boost advanced computing capabilities and improve data management, processing, and infrastructure. This initiative highlights the significant investment of the Chinese government in advanced computational infrastructure to meet future AI and other computing demands."

https://www.insideglobaltech.com/2024/02/08/spotlight-series-on-global-ai-policy-part-iii-chinas-policy-approach-to-artificial-intelligence/

Your point of view makes some sense only if you set aside the fact that China continues to threaten invasion of Taiwan, a sovereign country. You do agree that Taiwan is a sovereign country, don't you?

Would you accept that China will continue to use this same technology for war fighting, just as the U.S. and its allies have and will?

If the above is true, and it certainly is, then why would the U.S. want to continue to give China the tools to increase China's war fighting ability in the short term? Why wouldn't the U.S. and its allies restrict sales of dual use technology to China, and at the same time, decrease investment generally in China, with a shift of the supply chain.

More to the point, where is your support of your beloved EU to take up some of the slack in production on the older nodes that you are so fond of touting? One would think that you would be at the forefront of that.

China has been attempting to move to leading edge nodes, and that has cost them a tremendous amount of resources, mostly to little effect. True, SMIC has been able to use DUV to get to 7nm, and they may be able to get to 5nm, but that will be at a huge inefficiency and cost. At the same time, the U.S. and its allies have shut off sales of DUV machines to China, with restrictions on support for those, as well as restrictions of much more of the semiconductor supply chain that China has access to.

As for the invasion of Taiwan, it isn't a sure thing in any case, and the more time that goes by, the more resources that the West will have in place to deter it, should China decide to invade Taiwan.

As for your posts above about the "loss of sales", that quite laughable, given that Nvidia, et all, are expected to continue massive sales driven by AI, even without sales to China of the latest hardware.

Apple took a huge risk in putting all its chip related eggs into one basket mostly in Taiwan. It's paid off so far but the risk (political, economic, natural disaster or otherwise) remains and they are seeking to change that slowly. A wise move. 

The only real threat to TSMC is China invading, so yeah, it has certainly paid of for Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD and many other, including those users of the older nodes.

I'm mainly talking about the technology side of things even if there is some degree of geo-political overlap.

Taiwan's sovereignty is neither here nor there. There is a geopolitical angle to the TSMC situation and that is based on purely commercial interests and those interests are tied inevitably to technology hegemony. 

Take TSMC out of Taiwan and no one would give a damn about the people of Taiwan. For the US it would simply be another 'Afghanistan' and if they could keep military outposts there, all the better. That is the harsh reality.

'Dual use' technology is simply an empty reference, devoid of any real meaning. 

Huawei handsets were 'banned' in the US. That is protectionism, plain and simple. No dual use scenarios. The 'Hawks' say the Evil CCP have their fingers in every Chinese company. No Chinese company is free from its influence! At least according to them. So why are plenty of other Chinese companies allowed to operate within the US? Where is the dual use danger within a smartphone, a laptop or whatever, anyway? 

Come on, even 'people' are dual use! 

Then there are the technology supply chains themselves. Almost all of them involving China somewhere along the way. iPhone included. Much was (and still is) said about that, but China is still pumping out core technology components worldwide. 

It is not up the the US to decide who can 'have' and who can 'not have'. 

Weaponry does NOT use cutting edge technology for the most part and, as stated by Peter Wennink, most military use chipset technologies are around 15 years behind the technological curve. 

No one, and I think this needs repeating, NO ONE is in a position to thwart China's technology advances because that is quite literally mission impossible. 

ALL US moves have had the overall opposite effect: spurring China to do it themselves. Accelerating Chinese advances at the expense of US interests which have have seen their revenue streams severed. 

"ASML Holding NV Chief Executive Officer Peter Wennink said US-led export control measures against China could eventually push Beijing to successfully develop its own technology in advanced chipmaking machines." 
... 

If they cannot get those machines, they will develop them themselves. That will take time, but ultimately they will get there
... 

"The laws of physics in China are the same as here,” 

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/asml-says-chip-controls-push-160223528.html

Of course, privately, Wennink is tearing his hair out because he knows that when China pulls the rabbit out of the hat, his company is in for some formidable competition. 

That exact same word was used by the CEO of Nvidia to describe Huawei's current AI products. 

Both companies are losing business to their biggest customers for no good reason. 

In what way is forcing China to reach its goals faster, better than having them reach them later? 

I'll tell you: In no way. 

It's crazy. 

The problem is that the US voted in a president who was simply not fit for office and his replacement is too senior to understand what is really going on. 

And one of them will probably be back for the next term! Neither candidate is fit for the job, realistically speaking. 

Trump's China obsession (as Tweeted by the man himself) was all about things not happening "on my watch". 

That was it. No one (except the Pentagon no less!) held him in check. The Pentagon actually held back one of his executive orders on China for 'national security' reasons, only to let it proceed later. 

It's something when your own president is deemed a national security risk. 

Now Biden is making the same mistakes. 

From the recent US tariff increase factsheet (May 2024):

"As President Biden says, American workers and businesses can outcompete anyone—as long as they have fair competition. But for too long, China’s government has used unfair, non-market practices." 

"Through the CHIPS and Science Act, President Biden is making a nearly $53 billion investment in American semiconductor manufacturing capacity, research, innovation, and workforce. This will help counteract decades of disinvestment and offshoring that has reduced the United States’ capacity to manufacture semiconductors domestically"

Fair competition is banning Huawei's handset business and putting it on the Entity List without a shred of supporting evidence? Fair competition is threatening allies? Fair competition is weaponising technology and the dollar? 

The US can 'outcompete anyone' yet in the very same document, reveals that the root causes of the inability to compete lie in disinvestment and offshoring.

What a mess! 

And that is why the US has no technology leverage in ICT market terms on 5G.

The US dropped the ball! 

And after years of moaning about China subsidising industry (something everyone, everywhere has done forever!) it is now OK to launch the CHIPS act (with strings attached). Those strings being that China is out of the picture. There is your 'fair competition'.

So now, de-dollarisation has begun. De-Americanisation is underway. Virtually nobody is supporting sanctions against Russia. The only countries openly supporting the US represent less than 12% of the world's population. Almost the entirety of the rest is either invested in BRICS+ and/or the BRI. And let's not forget the Digital Silk Road.

The unipolar world is gone but the US is clinging to an 'old world' mindset.

It is not only doomed to failure (that ship sailed the moment Trump put pen to paper) but there is no going back. US technology is now 'toxic' in the eyes of many and when China eventually catches up, it will be very competitive. For starters, where do you think local Chinese companies will be sourcing their new technologies? 

As Africa, Latin America/Brazil, Asia etc move up the technology ladder, where do you think they will be sourcing their technology from?

HarmonyOS has already hit 800 million devices. This year it will jettison Android completely in China and move to a 'pure' HarmonyOS version. It is tipped to overtake iOS in China by year's end. It seems Huawei took first place in Chinese tablet sales for Q1-24.

Apple is currently heavily discounting iPhones in China as the Pura 70 series targeted the price points of every single current iPhone model.

The Mate 70 series is rumoured to release and go head to head with this year's iPhone.

As Huawei takes marketshare away from Apple and other Chinese players, it is also taking share indirectly from US companies (like Qualcomm). 

Had it not been for sanctions, how much of this technology would be a reality today? 

I know you want to go 'full on' politics but try to keep things in the technology bubble on the whole. Please. 

Good luck on Huawei competing with 2nm iPhones next year, but sure, Huawei will do very well with BRICS and third world countries.

The rest of your rant is certainly supporting of authoritarians, but mostly, your worldview is unsupported. Certainly sanctions would have been less likely if Xi hadn't become the totalitarian that he is today, including those sanctions on Huawei.

People love to hate the U.S., you certainly do, but there's masses of other people that see America is a great place to move to, given the chance. This would be obvious given the many entrepreneurs and CEO's of major tech companies that are immigrants to America.

Should the U.S. finally deal with immigration, I would expect that the best and brightest will preferentially want to  come here, and other Western Countries, certainly not to China, Russia, or any of the other BRICS members, save maybe India.

You seem unable to connect the dots that Xi is the ruin of China, not the U.S.

avon b7 said:

It's all pretty much nonsense from a chip perspective.

Only a tiny fraction of the world's chip output is on cutting edge nodes. What makes the world go around is everything else that isn't cutting edge. The much older, more mature nodes. 

There are strategic commercial reasons behind China not having access to cutting edge nodes so the most likely outcome of hostilities is old-fashioned, ehem, 'anonymous' physical destruction, a la Nord Stream, for example and the bulk of our telecommunications runs over undersea cabling too so that is guaranteed to get the snip if things go wrong. Satellite communications will also be interfered with. 

That would see a lot of already fabricated chips with very little to do. 

Sanctions have only accelerated China's chip efforts and determination and, as we move beyond silicon, new solutions will come to market (phototonics are showing promise). Possibly for highly specialised fields first but 'kill switches' are simply spanners in the works when it comes to fabrication. 

Apple took a huge risk in putting all its chip related eggs into one basket mostly in Taiwan. It's paid off so far but the risk (political, economic, natural disaster or otherwise) remains and they are seeking to change that slowly. A wise move.