thorhammerz

Markets / auctions are beautifully simple in that respect. You emplace an offer. Someone responds with a bid. If bid matches offer, product changes hands. Management of inventory (such that supply never quite drowns out demand at any point in time) is just a prudent move on NVDA's part to keep prices in their favor (or at least, stable) when there are no competitors trying to flood that particular product space with their own supply.

IIRC, around 2/3rds of the trade (in GDP) is within the NAFTA itself. If trade stops tomorrow, North America in all likelihood experiences a nasty recession with product shortages across the consumer electronics space for several years. But it'll also be all over in 5-10 years (industrial reshoring to mainland & Mexico is an ongoing process, but hardly complete). While yes, it allows massive budget deficits (and will only get larger as the boomer generation continues their 25-year-long sojourn into senescence... whatever red numbers Congress is passing now is only going to get larger for probably another decade), the economic "drag" is still very much real. Most of the consequences are simply several decades further out than what most doomsday pundits larp on (the short version being "when its time for the millennials to retire"). There is (at this time) no alternative ("hard" currency like Gold & Bitcoin are off the table because they are hard: modern society & economy operates on being able to "poof" up line items on both sides of banking balance sheet into existence), simply because nobody wants anyone else's fiat/debt (the Europeans shot themselves out of contention after the last financial crisis). I would argue the military bases themselves aren't important for the US: without the Soviet threat they are primarily for the benefit for the local power in saying "we have American troops here, attack and you anger Uncle Sam". The important part is the navy, which is blue water capable regardless of whether the aforementioned bases exist (having a navy means you get to pick and choose where the fight happens, and if you don't win, you run away and fight again another day). The "problem" China faces is multi-faceted. Just looking at the non-financial parts of it (as books can be cooked to delay problems almost indefinitely) A horrible demographics structure. Domestic consumption led growth is basically an impossibility upon consumption saturation of their existing population. Cue their own boomer generation moving into their late 60's and 70's over the next decade, and the CCP will have to start being extremely creative in how they want to implement old age support (basically from scratch), on top of the productivity losses that comes with lots of people retiring (and not enough replacements filling in). They import roughly 70% of their energy, most of which comes via tanker on the ocean. And most of that is from a continent (or two) away. It doesn't take much for anyone to interdict the Strait of Hormuz or the Strait of Malacca and China is SOL within a year (they have lots of missiles and lots of smaller ships. Little of which is useful in actually securing safe passage through Malacca, let alone the Persian Gulf). Or for anyone unfriendly with the Russians (a list that isn't quite so short) to start causing "accidents" to Russian sourced tankers, for that matter. Should the Russian system continue to degrade (extraordinarily likely given their own demographic decline, and the gutting of what remains of their working age population to fuel the war effort), they lose their capacity to manufacture fertilizer for export. Once that happens, China goes into famine, and it's certainly not the first time the Chinese space has experienced one. Industrial scale agriculture requires industrial scale inputs. Couple that with bad relations towards their export markets (some of whom are having their own demographic collapses), and either Xi finds a way to walk a 5000 km long tightrope, or we get to see some not-so-nice fireworks in the Chinese space sometime over the next few decades. This is not to say "China is doomed", insofar as this says "China has multiple shotguns pointed at its head, and it has little agency over when/where they may fire".

I'd imagine die-size is important moreso for how it affects yields (rather than raw production cost out of the fab, which is low relative to the sticker price), as that directly impacts the amount of supply available for any given configuration / product tier. Though, I suppose that also depends on how wide the full wafer of silicon is.

They remember a time when a certain tier of products were sold at another (in this case, lower) price point. Some however, believe they are entitled to the products at the old price point. Look no further than the poetic waxings on how the vendors/manufacturers are all immoral for changing the price against their favor.

The bizarre simply propagates themselves into reality when interest rates are zero/near-zero .

Agree; sitting on a 10 series GPU and am only starting to consider shopping when the 5000 series drops (8 years will have been a good run ). I'd argue the most important factor for the upgrade cycle slowing is on the PC side: most rigs built in the past several years are very unlike the ones from the early/mid 2010's as widespread adoption of SSDs means PCs are no longer become unbearably slow after a few years of use. Tech enthusiasts have not come to terms that what's considered "normal" (wrt to rate of performance change & relative pricing) is just as liable to change against their preferences, as it was for their preference last decade.

On the flip side: because meaningful upgrades are expensive (if at all present), while at the same time the hardware itself can last near a decade (if maintained in good care), over the long run consumers won't be spending that much more (if anything, possibly less) as the need to upgrade for most people is simply not urgent anymore.

Does the Austrian government use something along the lines of "people actively seeking a job, but aren't holding a part/full time job" as their criteria for unemployment?

Look on the bright side: with how well they're able to bin their chips & model their yields (such that they can shovel out a such a cut down die as an x80 tier chip), we can get a fairly predictable 5-15% increase per generation per price tier. Great for profits (all the "good" stuff can go to the guys running them on their compute farms, who are comparatively price insensitive so long as the performance is there), and still satisfactory for the average consumer who will still experience a 50-80% performance increase every 5-7 years or whenever they replace their rig/laptop every half-decade.

If a large business touches the US financial system (credit / payment systems / banking if anything along the way ever touches SWIFT), the US government has levers to induce compliance if they suddenly decide to care one day (regardless of whether such "care" is justified or not).

Whether the game developers (or any consumer entertainment product marketers / designers, really) are intentionally taking advantage of human behavioral patterns is entirely beside my point: the populace is going to get their dopamine kicks one way or another (whether that's from gaming, gambling, alcohol, opium, whatever): they aren't about to magically work harder/longer hours when they've had their taste and the government one day tries to say "no".

I would conjecture that they're just blindly firing their darts (and praying some stick), hoping that the populace's productivity will magically rise because they suddenly can't enjoy their games as much.

Does China (not inclusive of anything integrated with TSMC/GF) actually have the technical expertise to recreate (and manage the production & usage thereof) the lithographic equipment needed to make say, the equivalent of Intel's 14nm process (that "OG" 14nm was used for Broadwell/Haswell)?

Ready for 10% CPI to stick with us until 2030+?

Think of it as just a piece of America mean-reverting to the historical norm. The great dream of globalization is unwinding now that Pax Americana has no big-baddie to fight, and the evolving (i.e. rapidly aging) global demographic structure means there will be few places of demand (let alone demand driven growth) left. Trump brought the issue into the conversation (even if he was by-and-large, mostly rhetoric and little follow-through action). Biden is now institutionalizing it.

Because xx50 sounds better / higher than xx40. Makes it easier to charge an arm and a leg for a low-end part .

That may be today's official stance, yes. In due time, when governments seek cost-effective ways to keep their populace pacified (bread, circuses, and opioids), the data and the "solutions" this provides will prove quite convenient .

Can't wait until the solder becomes critically short-supplied .

When a government tells its citizens to "use natural lighting", you know it's a shit-show in the making. Welcome one and all, to a world where energy prices are going (well on its way) to the moon (and that has implications beyond just the gasoline bill & home heating... think of every single industrial output that is energy intensive or uses petroleum as a direct input... oh wait, that's basically all of them)! Such Green, Much Revolution, Very Wow.

Or just life in general, with where things are quickly heading .

Just wait until they start hyping about Tin pricing .

Your ire would be better directed at the various special interests pushing for hardware/software/biometrics integration, rather than Microsoft itself . All they're doing is collecting their paycheck .

Those who have surrendered freedom (however benevolently window-dressed) in the name of supposed safety (however temporary it may be).... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And when it doesn't work, the customer then refunds (or tries to...) the product, wasting everyone's time (and more importantly, the vendor's money in labour / customer service and return shipping fees) . In such a world, why on earth would they possibly make it not work to begin? It's not like the manufacturers / vendors would be the side with the asymmetric (and lopsided) risk profile against them, amirite?

Those prioritizing security uber alles, are typically not too stingy with whether the IPC and/or clocks are running at last decade's i3 speeds (or the sticker price, for that matter) .