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Hardware Technology

Some Chip-Starved Manufacturers Are Scavenging Silicon From Washing Machines (scmp.com) 175

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
A major industrial conglomerate has resorted to buying washing machines and tearing out the semiconductors inside for use in its own chip modules, according to the CEO of a company central to the chipmaking supply chain. From a report: ASML's Chief Executive Officer Peter Wennink remarked on the situation, without naming the conglomerate, during his company's earnings call Wednesday. The beleaguered firm relayed its struggle to him only the prior week, he said, signalling that chip shortages are going to persist for the foreseeable future, at least for some sectors. "The demand we are currently seeing comes from so many places in the industry," Wennink said, pointing to the wider adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. "It's so widespread. We have significantly underestimated the width of the demand. That, I don't think, is going to go away." Even major chip equipment makers including US-based Lam Research are struggling to get enough components to fulfil orders, potentially making it more difficult for semiconductor fabs to significantly increase their capacity in the near term.
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Some Chip-Starved Manufacturers Are Scavenging Silicon From Washing Machines More

Some Chip-Starved Manufacturers Are Scavenging Silicon From Washing Machines

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  • whiter than whitespace (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Thursday April 21, 2022 @04:47AM (#62464608) Homepage
    at least their code will be clean

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by xack ( 5304745 )
      And Linux exists [roeschswiss.com] for washing machines too.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Joking aside most of the smart washing machines will be running embedded Linux, or in a few cases BSD.

        • Re:whiter than whitespace (Score:5, Funny)

          by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Thursday April 21, 2022 @08:29AM (#62464956)

          Joking aside most of the smart washing machines will be running embedded Linux, or in a few cases BSD.

          So if I mount my smart washing machine on a desk, it’s safe to assume 2022 is the year of the Linux desktop?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Might be easier to mount your smart TV on the desk, most of those are Linux.

            • I wish it was a bit easier to root these smart TVs with their dumb ass telemetry and ads. Linus should have switched over to GPLv3 when he had the chance.

        • Depends on how "smart" it is. If not that smart then eCos, VxWorks, uC/OS, NuttX, etc would seem preferable for control systems and simplistic custom user interfaces (random knobs, buttons and lights). Not a whole lot you can leverage from Linux if you're not using X11 and TCP/IP. Once you get into the realm of smart, I'd almost want to split the board into a microcontroller that does the washing machine business and a single board computer that is just a kiosk for your washing machine.

          • Yes, Linux is not great for this in some ways. The cost for the board gets a lot higher; more RAM/Flash required, which may not sound like a lot but manufacturers do try to save pennies. Second, you either want something that's not always on but is fast to boot, or you want something that takes minimal power usage when idle, and linux isn't great in either regard. Everytime I've worked on an embedded system that had Linux as a component the system was much more complex than it needed to be.

            • If you can charge $100 or maybe even $300 more for a "smart" washer by putting $20-30 of extra components in it, then it can be profitable. If your supply chain issues force customers to jump on a waiting list for your most premium products you still have your bread and butter "dumb" washers available immediately.

              Once "smart" crap becomes a commodity, like it has with TVs, then the margins to cover a beefy SoC for Linux goes away. With TVs that gets replaced with marketing metrics (privacy abuse) and advert

          • One thing I see with Linux is that everyone views it as a hammer to use for all nails. However, Linux is not a real time OS, and even though there are patches to the kernel, none are official. Instead, for an embedded appliance, something more lightweight is needed. There are a lot of things that a smaller, realtime OS can provide, be it a shorter boot time, more reliability, more intrinsic security, and so on.

            One project I wound up doing was as the parent poster mentioned. A microcontroller like a Rasp

  • Chips with everything (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rantrantrant ( 4753443 ) on Thursday April 21, 2022 @05:07AM (#62464616)
    If you have chips with everything, you're gonna need a lot of silicon. It's a pity that silicon is in shorter supply than potatoes. Perhaps hold back on chips with things where they're not really all that useful or necessary?

    • Perhaps hold back on chips with things where they're not really all that useful or necessary?

      They should go up considerably in cost and make that happen on their own. Perhaps it's just too early (amazingly) for that to happen, with pricing agreements already in place.

      • There's that interesting word in economics, "should." Economics is essentially about human beings & how they interact with each other on large scales. "Should" usually means that's what's happened in the past & we expect that to continue. Things might do that. They might not.
        • I know I "should" get your point but it eludes me.

        • Change the rules, change the outcome.

          If chips aren't available, either the products become unavailable, or the products stop using chips.

          That's economics. Notice workers moving elsewhere when expensive real estate wasn't required for them to report to the office to work? And notice their employers changing compensation to reflect some of the consequences of those choices? Economics is a b*tch.

    • Re:Chips with everything (Score:4, Informative)

      by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Thursday April 21, 2022 @05:39AM (#62464646)

      Perhaps hold back on chips with things where they're not really all that useful or necessary?

      Cars would be a good starting point. Get rid of the egregious touch screens, stop the telemetry and halt the practice of integrating everything into the dash so if one thing goes down, so does everything else. Get knobs and buttons back in play and watch the number of chips plummet.

      • Sadly probably too late to expect that considering having a backup camera is legally required. If you must have a display taking up precious dash space, you can pretty easily guess where the displaced controls are going to re-appear. And hey, if we did it for some of the controls why not go all the way and stuff the rest in there! /s

    • Washing machines are useful and necessary.

      I assume if they can afford to buy washing machines for the chips inside them then the "unnamed" corporation is on a government contract or something.

      Your tax dollars at work.
       

      • Broken washing machines are often free, because they're such a pain to remove. And the chip is not usually the broken part.

        • Broken washing machines are often free

          But probably not in plentiful supply. Not if they need a specific manufacturer/model.

      • You do realize you've progressed to the point of making up evidence for your beliefs out of thin air, right?

        • How many washing machines do you think they can scavenge? These chips aren't for something that's in mass production.

        • You do realize you've progressed to the point of making up evidence for your beliefs out of thin air, right?

          Hi, welcome to the 21st century, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. Many people here have been inventing spurious evidence for years, some even since the Frank Statement's [wikipedia.org] 1954 comment that

          statistics purporting to link cigarette smoking with the disease could apply with equal force to any one of many other aspects of modern life

          This was later translated into Global Warming Denial [theguardian.com] with the aim of stopping governments from acting to save humanity. Your idea of returning to ideas of truth and honesty

      • Also, chips aren't fungible. You can't take a chip from a 10 year old washing machine and use it in a new network router, and you can't repurpose the chips that were going to be used in an auto entertainment system to be used in a home security system. The chips may come form a common foundry, but they're not the same.

        Now this story is from a CEO, and they're not known for being honest or having all the facts, so the story of the washing machine may not be entirely accurate. But it it were true, I suspec

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          Also, chips aren't fungible.

          Some of them are. There are parts in pretty much every design that are available from multiple manufacturers and have been for decades. The ones in short supply seem to be mostly older micro-controllers, which you might find in junked electronics.

          This story smacks of business urban legend though. Somebody needed a particular part that they couldn't get right away for a small run of something or other, and desoldered a few from a pile of old boards. The story made its way up to so

          • No, there are moden chips in short supply, with lead times of 6 to 12 months, and it's been like this for 3 to 4 years now. The supply chains have always been tight, it just wasn't in the mass market press until recently.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Megane ( 129182 )
            Older microcontrollers tend to not be reprogrammable. Internal flash wasn't used until the late '00s, and even then, in the quantities needed for retail appliances, it's an extra cost over mask ROMs. A few pennies add up when you manufacture a few million of something.

    • Perhaps hold back on chips with things where they're not really all that useful or necessary?

      Define useful or necessary and as you do ask your friends and family if they would buy a TV without a remote control. In many cases what we have is not necessary but very much becomes a modern 1st world comfort that we can't fathom to live without.

      You want a switch, like some kind of Neanderthal? It's 2022, based on movies every device including the coffee machine should have a holographic interface by now.

      • Cable modems aren't "necessary" lets pull the chips out of them. ;-)

      • Perhaps hold back on chips with things where they're not really all that useful or necessary?

        Define useful or necessary and as you do ask your friends and family if they would buy a TV without a remote control.

        Clothes washed in 2022 by a brand new $2000 embedded wifi computer that happens to have attached plumbing compartments, are not usefully or crucially cleaner than clothes washed in 1990 by a mechanical device you bought for $100 bucks already 10 years used and swapped out a simple hose to get running again..

        People before 2005 weren't scrounging around caked in drab filth like Arthurian Monty Python peasants.
        No matter how much gee-whiz SensoKleem[tm] SmartSpin[tm] technology and phone-app control you add to

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z80a ( 971949 )

      There's no shortage of materials in general, specially sillicon that is literally sand.
      What is in shortage is basically robot time.
      Chip plants are basically massive extremely complex machines that takes 2-3 years to build, so you can't quickly increase the output.

  • Time to breed some rotom [pokemon.com]!

  • PSOC (Score:5, Interesting)

    by labnet ( 457441 ) on Thursday April 21, 2022 @05:57AM (#62464678)

    We have been completely screwed over by Cypress (recently acquired by Infineon)
    Their entire PSOC 5 range is out of stock for the next year. We were just quoted $1250ea for a $5 chip from the grey market.
    We are a small company but have had to spend $4Million on stock to keep making product with lots of engineer time spent on qualifying alternative parts. Supply chains have been getting worse not better.
    Tough time to be a electronics manufacturer.

    • With prices like that it's easy to see why chip makers aren't rushing to ramp up production.

      • The prices that chipmakers charge has largely remained the same, most chips have only gone up in the few percents. If you can't get a chip from a distributor, you have to buy one from a 3rd party reseller. They will charge what the market supports, in a supply crunch these numbers can get quite high. In addition, these 3rd party resellers can corner the market and buy out all chips, then charge whatever they want.

    • Even before the supply chain collapse, this was consistent with the washing machine repair market. $1250 for a used $5 cost to produce board because the machine is 6 years old and there are no replacement parts. It actually is pretty common in appliance repair in general.

      • Used to be a 35 year old washing machine could be repaired - parts were being made and used because the mechanisms didn't change, or not much.

        Using electronics has changed all that. Making spares is not worth it.

        I can hardly wait for current and recent cars to start suffering real electronic failures. Not going to be seeing many 'collectible' Mustangs and Camaros from this era, not like the 60s vintage cars, the electronics will become unavailable. Heck, some Ferraris with trick dashboard parts are seeing N

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Sufficient replacements for a certain period of time may become mandated by law at this point. Right to repair campaigns have been getting a lot of wind in their sails both in EU and US because of these shortages and more and more people and companies hitting a point where they can't get a new thing for a reasonable price, nor can they make a simple repair because it's all DRM'd to hell and some of the specific parts aren't available.

    • Sounds like you screwed yourselves over by not having an alternative supply line. Google single point of failure.

      • Umm, most hardware designs (probably on the order of 100%) have an electronic component that would prevent the design from being built if it couldn't be sourced.

    • Great time to be an engineer. Job security and a chance to use all those skills taught in school.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )

      When I first saw Cypress advertising these things ten or so years ago, the first thing I thought of was the kind of problems you can get with a single source. There's plenty of MCUs out there with a bunch of analog and digital pins, and with effort you can port your code. There's NOT plenty of MCUs out there with a programmable gate array thingy inside. The big difference is that programmable logic is generally not fungible, unlike a bag of GPIO and ADC pins.

      It might not be so bad if it were common to have

  • Normal practice in Huiaqang Bay (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lkcl ( 517947 ) <lkcl@lkcl.net> on Thursday April 21, 2022 @06:35AM (#62464734) Homepage

    for anyone who has been to Huiaqang Bay, the practice of recovery of components for re-use is fairly normal and standard, and has been for decades. on a plane from HK to Taiwan i met someone who gave me their business card, they sell huge quantities of re-balled BGA processors and Memory ICs recovered from e-waste, and they were proud to inform me that their business saves the environment by prolonging component lifecycle beyond that of one product.

    why the hell these people are *complaining* like it's somehow "beneath them" when in fact they're participating in saving resources and performing the valuable service of recycling, particularly when the production of those electronics used extremely toxic materials and required draining vast amounts of pure water from the environment, is beyond my comprehension.

    • The strange thing here is that TFA specifically says that the unnamed company is 'buying washing machines' rather than that they are sourcing components from one of the suppliers who deal in e-waste pulls.

      It wouldn't surprise me if the actual story is, indeed, one where a company that normally buys from the vendor's authorized reseller got a face full of 72 week lead times and had to go to one of the recyclers who they historically wouldn't have touched, and just got mangled; but as written it's extra ba

    • recovered from e-waste

      This isn't e-waste though. This is scavenging from other industries and products destined for consumers. TFA is being completely disingenuous by posting stock pictures of people in electronics recycling centres, but note that the words recycling or waste don't appear anywhere in the article other than the picture captions.

      If it were just e-waste it wouldn't be news, and it certainly wouldn't have ASML's CEO talking about it.

  • Silicon is everywhere, what they're really saying is they're running out of the sands that are particularly good for extracting the specific isotope of silicon they want with few/no impurities - either of other elements or of other isotopes. And, yes, isotopes matter.

    Recycling silicon is an option, yes, but at some point they won't be able to recycle it fast enough and/or will run into a supply problem. Worse, the quality won't be good enough for the sorts of scales chips are being produced at. It'll only r

    • It’s a supply chain issue that is experiencing ripple effects, not a chemistry problem.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jd ( 1658 )

        It's not just that. The sand that is used (from one specific site) is running out, because it's also very popular with construction. There simply isn't much of it left. There's nothing the supply line can do about that.

        • People are in denial about peak *

          Peak cotton, peak copper, peak sand... It's not literally everything, there's lots of things where production has yet to peak (e.g. lithium) but it's enough things that it's a real problem for basically every industry.

          We are definitely going to need new substrates. Any chance we can use a microlayer of diamond? I always heard that was supposed to be hot-shit, only impractically expensive. They have been growing those on all kinds of weird surfaces.

    • Large mass spectrometer to seperate isotopes (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Paul Fernhout ( 109597 ) on Thursday April 21, 2022 @08:28AM (#62464954) Homepage

      Thanks for posting all this info. I first heard about this general idea in James P. Hogan's sci-fi novels, including his 1982 "Voyage from Yesteryear".
      https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]

      Coupling large-scale generalized mass-spectrometer-like material separation techniques with fusion energy and automated factories could produce a huge amount of finished goods at a cost essentially too cheap to be worth keeping track of for typical consumer-level applications. Such techniques would also (in theory) able to completely recycle consumer goods by turning them into plasma which is again separated by an industrial-scale mass spectrometer back into raw materials. Accepting and appreciating this possibility is part of an abundance mindset that (in the novels) leads to radical changes in economics and related politics and social relationships. See also Marshall Brain's "Manna" story. And it is also connected to idea in my sig.

      Related ideas -- though not as general being not focused on isotopes -- using chemistry were also worked out in NASA's 1980 summer study on Advanced Automation for Space Missions:
      https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
      "What follows is a portion of the final report of a NASA summer study, conducted in 1980 by request of newly- elected President Jimmy Carter at a cost of 11.7 million dollars. The result of the study was a realistic proposal for a self-replicating automated lunar factory system, capable of exponentially increasing productive capacity and, in the long run, exploration of the entire galaxy within a reasonable timeframe. Unfortunately, the proposal was quietly declined with barely a ripple in the press. What was once conceivable with 1980's technology is now even more practical today. Even if you're just skimming through this document, the potential of this proposed system is undeniable. Please enjoy."

      The specific diagram for the HF acid-leach process at the core of material separation in the AASM model:
      https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]

      As you can see from the comment there, NASA was very focused back then on makign a design that used very little computer memory: "Assuming each valve can be automated with a 1K computer allocation, and each subsystem can be automated with a 10K memory allocation, then the total computer capability required for continuous leach system operation is (1)(111) + (10)(34) = 451K which is 7.2X10^6 bits using 16-bit words. This should be sufficient to handle normal system operations and troubleshooting, although actual repair must be done by mobile repair robots. Also, any catastrophic malfunctions such as pipe ruptures, jammed fixtures, leaks, heating element burnouts or explosions must be diagnosed and corrected by the mobile repair robots."

      The mass-spectrometer approach using a plasma ultimately will probably be easier to manage and more reliable and produce better results -- like separation by isotopes -- than a mess of piping and specific processes.

      Tangentially, here is an interesting take on the periodic table that my son showed me recently which essentially outlines all possible atoms by some combination of protons and neutrons where presumably an industrial-scale mass-spectrometer could in theory separate a plasma into all the little boxes of the 2-dimensional grid (protons x neutrons) as they all have different weights and charges.
      "Live Chart of Nuclides"
      https://www-nds.iaea.org/relns... [iaea.org]

    • Further, it would take time to build a linear accelerator of this sort, so it would make sense for companies to start looking at ways to scale up the technique.

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/sci... [bbc.co.uk] (demonstration of limited production of Si-28 via AMS, yields sufficient and suitable for building individual computers)

      http://isosilicon.com/wp-conte... [isosilicon.com] (the current state of play, showing both the necessity for Si-28 purification and why this can't be done economically via AMS using current approaches)

      Isotopic purity is only important for quantum computing. It does not affect the overwhelming majority of chip manufacturing. There may be some niches where it is worth paying a lot for higher thermal conductivity, but this has nothing to do with the chip shortages right now.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jd ( 1658 )

        It determines yield (because it determines defects). It determines speed (since defects change temperature). In short, those impurities DO impact the overwhelming majority of chip manufacture once you pass the 50nm scale.

        If you want wafer-scale integration, you simply can't do it without isotopic purity, and if Intel really wants those 80-core CPUs then they have to do WSI.

        So, frankly, I call bull.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gwjgwj ( 727408 )
      If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand. Milton Friedman

    • what they're really saying is they're running out of the sands that are particularly good for extracting the specific isotope of silicon they want with few/no impurities - either of other elements or of other isotopes.

      That's not what they are saying at all - you are confusing multiple issues. There is no shortage of sand, the shortages are caused by supply chain logistics which were all balanced on a knife-edge and then heavily disrupted by Covid.

      Isotope separation is NOT an issue. As the articles you link indicate (although two are heavily outdated - one being about the failed Avogadro project to redefine the kilogram and the other which mentions laser isotope separation techniques which did not turn out to work wel

  • What are they re-using, and for what purpose ? It's not as if "chips" are all the same.
    Similarly, a modern microcontroller embedded in a washing machine pre-programmed to do what's required to run that washing machine is unlikely to be of any use in, say, an anti-lock brake system, or to run an SD card.
    I've got a couple of tubes of old TTL and 2764 EPROMs. Anyone want them for a new product ? These are at least examples of relatively generic chips which can be used for a range of purposes, but in their ca

    • a modern microcontroller embedded in a washing machine pre-programmed to do what's required to run that washing machine is unlikely to be of any use in, say, an anti-lock brake system, or to run an SD card.

      You can still get really low-end micros. They use very tiny amounts of die area, and they are not very delicate designs so they get good yields. The prices have gone up but at least they exist. The kind of chips that are actually worth salvaging from entire completed consumer products are going to be complex enough that they are reprogrammable. They are going to be more complex, expensive chips, with larger die areas. Think SoCs for washing machines with touch screens. Until recently, those parts were getti

  • I'm puzzled... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Thursday April 21, 2022 @07:48AM (#62464868) Journal
    This story seems strange in that, if you are willing to pay the sort of premium implied by buying washing machines to scavenge the handful of microcontrollers, power ICs, maybe an application processor if there's some stupid 'smart' feature set; it would seem like you should be able to take that same willingness to pay and snag the silicon somewhere upstream more efficiently(whether that's just outbidding the appliance manufacturer to secure stock from the IC manufacturer; or, if the appliance guys have a stockpile or long term supply contract, making them an offer that makes selling you the chips more profitable than shoving them into a washing machine and selling that).

    If this is just a story of someone who normally buys parts from fancy authorized resellers who only touch new stock of good provenance being forced to talk to brokers who deal in more irregular bits and pieces, odd lots, liquidations, reclaimed bits from e-waste, etc. that would make a lot more sense, since there wouldn't be any opportunity to just buy them out upstream if they were actually incorporated into washing machines several years ago; but that's not what is written here.

    • ASML stock is down (Score:4, Insightful)

      by monkeyxpress ( 4016725 ) on Thursday April 21, 2022 @08:20AM (#62464932)

      ASML is one of the largest suppliers of fab equipment in the world, but in the last few months their stock price has dropped from ~$860 to $640. This is a bigger problem for the management team than any chip shortage.

      I would be very cautious with listening to much of what the CEO is saying. If he hasn't named who this conglomerate is then for all we know it's just some small part of a department of an obscure business that might be doing a whole eco-range of recycled products for all we know. For all the reasons you've listed, the story doesn't make much sense - you can still get parts (I'm an EE that makes a small product) but you just have to pay a lot more than before, and I can't see how this works out vs just paying a bit more for new parts except in a very limited number of situations.

    • same willingness to pay and snag the silicon somewhere upstream more efficiently

      You're assuming that this is a possibility. In many cases the contracts for parts are locked in sometimes years in advance. You're right it would absolutely be cheaper to simply undercut the competition during production. But we've seen countless times across industry how this isn't always possible.

  • Strange idea, I know. But we had washing machines before the silicon chip was invented.

    If computer chips are too expensive then maybe consider people might want to save the money by getting one with a simple clockwork timer that you manually set to the right time.

    Not everything needs to be able to email you that it is done.

    • There's definitely a lot of dumb IoT, including stuff that has infected washing machines; but I suspect that silicon controls displaced electromechanical ones on price pretty thoroughly even in devices where no features beyond the reach of the old electromechanical control modules were added.

      The electromechanical units were hardly fine swiss watches in terms of either build quality or cost; but even a 3rd rate timer motor plus the contact assembly it drives is unlikely to fall within even a factor of ten

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        On the other hand, well designed MCU-based replacements stand to have a comparable or longer lifetime and are a lot cheaper to manufacture because the parts are standardized. But these will usually be below what you need for reasonably done "Internet connected" (think classical 16 bit Arduino or even smaller). Hence these would/should typically _not_ be IoT, bit just micro-controller based automation. Engineering-wise, putting "Internet" on top of that just because it is possible is the height of incompeten

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Well, on the engineering side, KISS is king, for reliability, security, maintainability and cost-effectiveness. But on the marketing side, any additional feature is a chance to convince some nil-whit "customer" do buy this product because the nil-whits think they are getting "more". What they actually get with IoT in devices that very mich do not need it is a maintenance and security nightmare, especially if the device needs to be network connected to work right. (Otherwise you can just leave it disconnect

  • Just like Radio Shack (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Thursday April 21, 2022 @08:23AM (#62464942) Homepage Journal

    In the 80's I discovered that it was cheaper to buy finished goods from radio shack and desolder components than to actually buy the same components retail from Radio Shack.

    I used to scavenge copper wire from old tube-type tvs, too.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      Your time and effort in desoldering everything made up the price difference.

      • No, actually it didn't. I could desolder about $50 worth of parts in less than an hour, versus making $4.25 (minus taxes) working at McDonalds.

        I remember paying $1.50 for a single npn transistor which today retails for 6 cents [futurlec.com]. Radio shack still still charges 37 cents [radioshack.com], or six times the market value for transistors. But at the time, they were the only retail source of new electronic components.

        TBH, I'm surprised they're still in business.

  • Hope it's not Boeing. Or spin cycle will take on a whole new meaning.

  • The price of your broken dishwasher has doubled from $1 to $2! At this rate, you can expect it to be worth $65,536 in 15 years!

  • Or "how to fuck yourself over by not stocking up on critical parts". An instance of the "Save a Penny, Lose a Million" paradigm of modern supply management.

    I hope these morons have learned something and are doing things a bit more professionally and more resilient in the future.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      Dream on. The sort of cut-costs-to-the-bone accountants who were responsible for JIT are now in the C-suite and there's no way in hell they'll admit they got it wrong. When the going gets tough they'll just bow out with a golden goodbye and let someone else clear up the mess.

  • Run Bender run! They're coming for your 6502!!

  • No wonder my VW just put me into a spin cycle.

  • There it is, middle left side (Score:3)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday April 21, 2022 @10:32AM (#62465398) Journal

    No wonder I can't find the TV remote. Those Chinese chicks in the photo swiped it, and have a mound of proof. They probably have my missing sock-pair-halves also. Don was right: Chinese are sock thieves!

  • This whole IoT thing is BS. I don't need "smart" appliances or a car with computerized everything. The real reason for IoT is to track people and sell that data to the marketing a-holes. Putting silicon into everything is a waste of resources.

  • ...you could buy a new washing machine and take out the chip and sell it cheap.

    Goose-liver producers also sell Goose with the mention (without liver). :-)

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