The point is that they don't want it to recover. This is evidence that the US Government can't be trusted to provide the service themselves, and those functions should be privatized / contracted out instead... like how our Defense budget is so small thanks to us paying government contractors for everything we need, like $5,000 screwdrivers and $7,500 toilet seats installed by $300/hour Mechanic Specialist II's.
These people mostly already and effectively stopped working... The people I know that took this offer were told to stop showing up for work back in March-ish time frame. I see nothing in the article to suggest a sudden wave of new people taking up this offer -- as far as I can tell, the only thing that's about to change from what this article says is that our unemployment numbers will start to reflect it if those federal workers did not find new employment.
> These people mostly already and effectively stopped working... The people I know that took this offer were told to stop showing up for work back in March-ish time frame.
Well, yes. That's what the DRP was, they were put on administrative leave through 30 September. It's kind of hard to work when you're on admin leave. Are you surprised by the fact that this group of DRP folks are resigning on 30 Sept when that was the agreement they signed under the DRP? Did you expect something else?
Businesses are not expected to protect your freedom of speech. If you want to say stuff that no one wants to print, you can't sue a business for not printing it.
The government can't stop you from requesting a permit and saying it on public lands, though... And back when telecoms were common carriers, you could have done such from your home Internet, now you can only do it from your voice line.
Right but ISPs and services like CF should be neutral parties just like the Cisco routers and Corning fiber. They should not be arbiters of what’s currently acceptable. Thats not to say they are not subject to jurisdictional law but rather they should not be their own law imposing their views.
Now of course if they want to provide you the user with tools to filter or hide things you disagree with out, by all means.
Yep- your phone or electrical provider don’t monitor your speech for objectionable content and neither should someone like Cloudflare once they achieve ’utility’ like status.
Sorry, but sometimes they are. Laws are reactive so can only be updated when harm is done. But if businesses and people act to hold up the spirit of those laws then the harm doesn't happen in the first place. It's proactive vs reactive.
Plus, bring proactive saves everyone a whole lot of time and money. So many things would be better if people (and every entity) was just trying to do their best and no one was trying to fuck each other over. You may call it a dream and that's fine, but also remember that the vast majority of people already operate that way. A small number of people do the most harm
I work in this space regularly. There can be a delay of 2-3 days from the event to charge. Seems some services report faster than others. But this means by the time you get a billing alert it has been ongoing for hours if not days.
I agree that AWS EC2 is probably too expensive on the whole. It also doesn't really provide any of the greater benefits of the cloud that come from "someone else's server".
However, to the point of microservices as the article mentions, you probably should look at lambda (or fargate, or a mix) unless you can really saturate the capacity of multiple servers.
When we swapped to ECS+EC2 running microservices over to lambda our costs dropped sharply. Even serving millions of requests a day we spend a lot of time in between idle, especially spread across the services.
Additionally, we have 0 outages now from hardware in the last 5 years. As an engineer, this has made my QoL significantly better.
You can't write a business plans/proposals and get loans/management approval on these kinds of tariffs.
Imagine trying to get a loan from a bank to make a USA manufacturing plant, pointing to the 150% Chinese tariff. A week later the tariff is 25%. Does your math still work? Probably not. Will that bank continue the loan? Nope. Will the bank even entertain a similar proposal from someone else right now? Nope.
If you want to grow USA manufacturing you need to subsidize it, or give private industry confidence it's not going to lose them money. If you can't do that, your relying on charity / non-profit / philanthropy... And I don't see many of those in manufacturing.
I'm kinda of shocked that chip & many tech companies play ball..
They are a required / no alternatives industry by so much of the USA, with limited alternatives. Is it really more cost-effective for each of these companies to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to avoid tariffs when they could easily pass on these costs because we have no alternatives?
The only telecom in America to resist turning on a domestic eavesdropping firehose tap for the government, was pounded to the edge of bankruptcy.
Intel and TSMC are both strategically important and favored-status corporations for the going concern of the United States, and large swaths of the federal appartatus are invested in their success, contracts, global projection, etc. That comes with a price. Naive to think they are independently operated companies.
> The only telecom in America to resist turning on a domestic eavesdropping firehose tap for the government, was pounded to the edge of bankruptcy.
How so? There was no mention of the government taking action against the company to cause the company to fail. If a company is failing without government contracts, that is on them and not the government.
Bernie was released a month before dying. Don't ask me how I had this fact in the back of my head (I looked at Worldcom and Enron a few weeks ago for another HN story).
I think you are confusing Bernie Ebbers (Worldcom founder/CEO in Clinton Mississippi) with Bernie Madoff (big ponzy scam in NYC)? Yes, they are both named Bernie.
I think people in power are pretty fond of non democratic systems, they like them. They make friends and get favors. Far easier than competing.
And what's the alternative for many of them? Lawsuits?
SCOTUS has quit doing their job. The checks and balances are out the window. There is no leadership / anyone in power at the national level when it comes to democracy in the US at this time.
> when they could easily pass on these costs because we have no alternatives
The administration has made it clear they will take such actions personally.
The USA by and large figuratively controls the world. All of Europe is one step away from a protectorate and if Taiwan doesn't want to conquered by China they need the USA in the way.
If the USA ever sours on the relationship it means China will take Taiwan so they do whatever they need to do to appease the USA.
Intel isn't dead. They've made some bad choices and investments but they're still huge. They have $30 billion in gross profit per year on an utterly boring, non-hype based business model. Get rid of some dead weight, write off the bad investments, improve their foundry business and their value easily grows multiples of what it currently is.
On top of it already being a shrewd business deal, doing a favour for the US government also potentially buys protection for TSMC and Taiwan from China. Plus the immediate tariff relief.
Intel is not profitable. They have negative eps and negative free cash flow. The cash flows from existing products can't be considered in isolation. If their R+D and Capex investments stopped, the sum total of the existing+legacy cash flows wouldn't nearly cover Intel's substantial liabilities.
They also have 50 billion dollars in debt, and their cash flow situation has gotten so desperate that slices of future fab revenue have been pawned off to private equity, who now has a senior claim on the assets (as do the bondholders).
An equity stake and Intel is not something that a TSMC would want without coercion. It's just not a very attractive place to be an equity holder.
>Get rid of some dead weight, write off the bad investments, improve their foundry business and their value easily grows multiples of what it currently is.
As if it was that easy. The company has now been through multiple CEOs attempting to mix up these ideas in various ways. The last CEO tried to do a Hail Mary to improve the foundry business, but the balance sheet can't support it. Now the new CEO is essentially writing off those investments and putting them on the back burner. Considering that, getting rid of the dead weight will be difficult, considering the company itself is largely dead weight... The quality of their employees is not good, or at least not nearly at the level that needs to be (18A yields are alarmingly low, and that's the critical product that basically determines the company's future. 14a is already looking more and more distant despite it being the purported savior not even a year ago).
Realistically, their financial situation puts them right at the precipice of needing to shed the fabs, and/or permanently continue down the path of more Brookstone-like partnerships where they can spread the burden (which then caps the equity holder upside).
There is nothing "easy" about the current situation. Maybe without the 50 billion in debt, but nearly all of remedial paths are running into nasty balance sheet constraints. There's no more room to spend quarters rejiggering the thing.
Current assets are $43 billion. Total assets are $192 billion. $30 billion yearly in gross profit. Debt is only $50 billion. They still hold 75% market share. Repeat, they still sell 3 times more chips than AMD.
Yes, their balance sheet isn't as good as some fabless competitors but if TSMC helps them with their 14a yield then it looks like a good investment.
Also, having TSMC on board will surely help with their fab business. Again, between the US government needing them to survive, TSMC on board, plus the fact they still do have a decent core business, I think Intel (and TSMC's investment) will be fine.
It's actually better than that. TSMC wouldn't help intel with their 14a node. They would kill it, fire all of Intel's foundry R&D, and just build TSMCs 14a node.
You euphemistically called it "help", but all you agreed to was a hostile takeover of a competitor only to gut said competitor. If a company genuinely thinks they are ahead, they don't have to do these petty tricks unless they want to nib a promising competitor in the bud while they are small and cheap. Intel is neither, nor is it a promising purchase. The only thing of value they possess is x86 IP.
But the US government has proven to be unreliable in maintaining commitments -- even words on paper are meaningless as it doesn't seem to stop them from changing the deal later and demanding more ("I have change the terms of our agreement, pray I do not alter them further"), and then another request demanding more. Would TSMC be doing the government a favor and gaining protection, or are they being extorted? ("would sure be a shame if we doubled your tariffs again...")
Does it really matter? Does TSMC have a choice either way?
They’re a globally important company but they’re not ASML and they’re stuck between two superpowers and the threat of potential total war. They’ve had the misfortune of being sucked into geopolitical maelstrom and those tides are far too strong for any company to resist.
EUV was developed with in a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement between the US Department of Energy, Intel, ASML, and so on - giving Congress control over who ASML sells the EUV technology to.
So yes, US companies do have a choice. They can lobby Congress to cut off TSMC from their main hardware and parts supplier entirely, crippling it altogether, except for their Arizona plant which is ripe for nationalization for natsec.
TSMC certainly brings a lot to the table but if they were completely knocked out, it would just deprive the world of the top end of fab capacity for a while. On the other hand almost every fab in the world depends on ASML for parts and maintenance, even the old fabs on legacy nodes.
Taiwan is too dependent on the USA ATM to make that choice. If they were to go it without the USA, the only choice would be to become an actual bonafide province of China, they aren't going to exist on their own. Almost everyone else outside of eastern Asia, however, can make a different choice.
I think there's reason for the EU to ensure that there's no semiconductor manufacturing monopoly.
So the EU offering something like nuclear weapons sharing à la that which Germany etc. would probably be reasonable if the US bullied Taiwan too hard. But I don't think it's happening, I think people want good relations with China.
If it were a win-win relative to their other options, they wouldn't have to be forced into it. They may have been able to make the best of it, but let's not pretend value is being created.
> Will Apple, AMD, and nVidia continue to trust TSMC if it owns half of Intel?
It doesn't matter because none of them have much choice. None of them own fabs and Samsung's capacity is significantly less than TSMC's. Plus Samsung also designs chips.
Not sure about that. Buying Intel would make TSMC a direct competitor to most of its biggest customers which could incentivize said customers to look for alternative foundry.
Delivery drivers on some apps are told the expected pay for a trip. If you don't tip, they might decline the job because it costs them more to deliver then they make.
This makes your order sit longer until someone decides to do it, perhaps because there's a penalty from the company for declining jobs, and the driver is willing to lose money to remain in good standing
There was one study that saw 0 participants who contracted HIV during the trial according to the data on the FDA PDF [0]. Was 2,000 participants in Africa who were identified as potentially at risk, aged 16-25.
> YEZTUGO demonstrated superiority with a 100% reduction in the risk of incident HIV-1 infection over TRUVADA (Table 13).
~2,000 given YEZTUGO with 0 infections by the end.
~1,000 given TRUVADA with 16 infections by the end.
Now, this is a great study result if accurate. Substantially better. However, 100% protection is misleading clickbait article. The company does not claim to be 100% effective anywhere I can see... and at best they lifted this statement from this study to use as clickbait.
Yeah, it's not 100% protection in all studies. One study did have no participants contract aids which is fantastic and would be one data point for 100% prevention.
Another had 2 participants contract HIV out of about 2000 "Person-years". This was compared to another HIV treatment where 9 people contracted HIV (with only 1k "person-years" in that cohort). This equated to 89% reduction in HIV contraction compared to the other PrEP drug.
And that IS a fantastic result and if everyone could take this we'd probably be in a great spot HIV wise. ~90% improvement over current PrEP is great, and it's way easier to take and not mess up.
What’s a typical rate for infections per person-year among people not using these precautions? For those who don’t know follow the epidemiology here, how good effective are the older drugs compared to not taking them?
Having grown up when AIDS was peaking, the idea of this scourge preventable and treatable feels damn near like sci-fi, and I’m thrilled at the progress we’ve made.
This heavily heavily depends on the population you choose, given the difference in sexual habits.
As a data point, the paper below shows 1,213 out of 18,401 high-risk people in France got infected in 4 years (and 260 out of 31,992 with the previous gen prep, it seems this one reduces it by ~10x again)
I think it's pretty clear that being easier to take and not mess up is the reason for the difference in statistical effectiveness. The reason for lower numbers for effectiveness of daily oral Truvada prep is primarily measuring differences in adherence.
Yes, my phrasing was responding to the way the parent stated it as "90% more effective, and also it's easier to take". As you say: It's 90% more effective precisely because it's easier, not and also. Behavioral factors matter an enormous amount for the real world success of many types of drugs!
I'd be interested in a modeling study looking at the equilibrium infection rate, assuming everyone was on the drug, but otherwise did not change their behavior with regards to risky sex (or maybe even under a few scenarios of increased risky behavior from risk compensation [0]. You don't actually need 100% protection for the longterm equilibrium to be eradication of HIV (that's the whole idea of herd immunity).
How long would it take for a drug with this level of protection to result in ~no cases of HIV? What level of adoption would it require?
>if a certain event did not occur in a sample with n subjects, the interval from 0 to 3/n is a 95% confidence interval for the rate of occurrences in the population.
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