News
2024-03-18
2024-03-17
2024-03-16
2024-03-15
Your Internet is Too Fast
It was costing me around $90 a month for gigabit Internet service. So I downgraded to 200 Mbit, for about $35 per month, and it is plenty fast for me.
2024-03-14
2024-03-13
How NASA Overcame the Challenge of Opening the Asteroid Sample
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RnhSs55fik4
In ancient Egyptian mythology, Apophis is a demon serpent and the enemy of the sun god Ra.
2024-03-12
DEI killed the CHIPS Act
Commentators have noted that CHIPS and Science Act money has been sluggish. What they haven't noticed is that it's because the CHIPS Act is so loaded with DEI pork that it can't move.
The law contains 19 sections aimed at helping minority groups, including one creating a Chief Diversity Officer at the National Science Foundation, and several prioritizing scientific cooperation with what it calls "minority-serving institutions." A section called "Opportunity and Inclusion" instructs the Department of Commerce to work with minority-owned businesses and make sure chipmakers "increase the participation of economically disadvantaged individuals in the semiconductor workforce."
The department interprets that as license to diversify. Its factsheet asserts that diversity is "critical to strengthening the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem," adding, "Critically, this must include significant investments to create opportunities for Americans from historically underserved communities."
The department does not call speed critical, even though the impetus for the CHIPS Act is that 90 percent of the world's advanced microchips are made in Taiwan, which China is preparing to annex by 2027, maybe even 2025.
Handouts abound. There's plenty for the left—requirements that chipmakers submit detailed plans to educate, employ, and train lots of women and people of color, as well as "justice-involved individuals," more commonly known as ex-cons. There's plenty for the right—veterans and members of rural communities find their way into the typical DEI definition of minorities. There's even plenty for the planet: Arizona Democrats just bragged they've won $15 million in CHIPS funding for an ASU project fighting climate change.
That project is going better for Arizona than the actual chips part of the CHIPS Act. Because equity is so critical, the makers of humanity's most complex technology must rely on local labor and apprentices from all those underrepresented groups, as TSMC discovered to its dismay.
Tired of delays at its first fab, the company flew in 500 employees from Taiwan. This angered local workers, since the implication was that they weren't skilled enough. With CHIPS grants at risk, TSMC caved in December, agreeing to rely on those workers and invest more in training them. A month later, it postponed its second Arizona fab.
https://thehill.com/opinion/4517470-dei-killed-the-chips-act/
The law contains 19 sections aimed at helping minority groups, including one creating a Chief Diversity Officer at the National Science Foundation, and several prioritizing scientific cooperation with what it calls "minority-serving institutions." A section called "Opportunity and Inclusion" instructs the Department of Commerce to work with minority-owned businesses and make sure chipmakers "increase the participation of economically disadvantaged individuals in the semiconductor workforce."
The department interprets that as license to diversify. Its factsheet asserts that diversity is "critical to strengthening the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem," adding, "Critically, this must include significant investments to create opportunities for Americans from historically underserved communities."
The department does not call speed critical, even though the impetus for the CHIPS Act is that 90 percent of the world's advanced microchips are made in Taiwan, which China is preparing to annex by 2027, maybe even 2025.
Handouts abound. There's plenty for the left—requirements that chipmakers submit detailed plans to educate, employ, and train lots of women and people of color, as well as "justice-involved individuals," more commonly known as ex-cons. There's plenty for the right—veterans and members of rural communities find their way into the typical DEI definition of minorities. There's even plenty for the planet: Arizona Democrats just bragged they've won $15 million in CHIPS funding for an ASU project fighting climate change.
That project is going better for Arizona than the actual chips part of the CHIPS Act. Because equity is so critical, the makers of humanity's most complex technology must rely on local labor and apprentices from all those underrepresented groups, as TSMC discovered to its dismay.
Tired of delays at its first fab, the company flew in 500 employees from Taiwan. This angered local workers, since the implication was that they weren't skilled enough. With CHIPS grants at risk, TSMC caved in December, agreeing to rely on those workers and invest more in training them. A month later, it postponed its second Arizona fab.
https://thehill.com/opinion/4517470-dei-killed-the-chips-act/
2024-03-11
2024-03-10
Nixon's Most Effective Speech
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5_XEN8TXcn0
If you could go back in time and listen to this speech, would you conclude that sacrificing American lives in a faraway land was in the best interest of the United States?
This Is Easily the Most Important Speech Jordan Peterson Has Ever Done
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mTS57hkAUk&t=65s
I differ from Peterson in that we cannot reliably assume the supernatural. There are many different opinions on what the divine means, so we cannot reliably assume that a higher power has expectations of us.
We live in a society where we think that people should be good, but not all cultures share this view, or they disagree on what good means. However, we think that societies work better when people aren't cruel, cooperate with each other, and show compassion.
I don't think that humans should necessarily be sacrificial animals for others. Taken to the extreme, the individual becomes a slave to power structures. However, voluntarily caring for others seems to make us better and stronger people.The best speech I have heard Jordan Peterson give is this one...
He speaks at such a high level, it forces me to pay close attention to keep up.
2024-03-09
RFK Jr.: How I See The State Of Our Union
He is not wrong about the decline of the United States, but he doesn't make clear what kind of government he stands for. It seems likely that he is a big government politician.
2024-03-08
Stephen Hicks: How Failed Marxist Predictions Led to the Postmodern Left
This is a lengthy video. It makes the point that the early Marxists believed that their theories were scientific and that they could predict the future.
However, when all the Marxist predictions failed to come true, and following the revelations about cruelty and death in the Soviet Union, the Marxists went back to the drawing board. They concluded that facts don't matter. They concluded that results don't matter. They decided that only political victory mattered.
This conclusion seems like Cognitive Dissonance. Why wouldn't results matter? They must think that a free market is so unfair and so unjust that it would be better to adopt a worse system in the name of fairness. Marxists don't want you to do better, because you won't under their policies. They want to punish the wealthy.
One Marxist told me that it is all about who is in charge; they want the people to be in charge. Funny, I thought that this is the political system that we live in. The reality is that Marxist governments only exist through force and without exception turn into tyrannical dictatorships. So much for the people being in charge.
Marxists want group ownership of the means of production. We sort of have that now. My retirement fund is invested in hundreds of companies, and so is yours.
If people were perfectly happy, they would not need politics. However, people are never happy. It is the nature of human beings to be unhappy about something. People want the government to fix their miserable lives, but the government can't really do that. We will never have enough money, and if we try to adopt exorbitant taxes then we will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Politicians will promise people the moon, but they can't deliver and never do.
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