Want to wade into the snowy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Last substack for 2025 - may 2026 bring better tidings. Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
@graydon @cstross @mirrorwitch I've had to be an expert in this stuff for decades. Which has imparted a particular bit of knowledge.
That being: CHINA FUCKING LIES ALL THE TIME. Just straight up bald-faced lying because they must be *perceived* as super-advanced.
Even stealing as much IP as they possibly can, China is many years from anything competitive. Their most advanced is CXMT, which was 19nm in '19, and had to use cheats and espionage to get to 10nm-class.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/samsung-engineer-accused-of-leaking-10nm-dram-process-data-to-chinas-cxmt
@graydon @cstross @mirrorwitch are they on the verge of their own EUV equipment? Not even remotely close. It took ASML billions and decades. And their industries are built on IP theft. That's not jingoism; that's first-hand experience. Just as taking shortcuts and screwing foreigners is celebrated.
I've sampled CXMT's 10G1 parts. They're not competitive. They claim 80% yield (very low) at 50k WPM. Seems about right, as 80% of the DIMMs actually passed validation.
@graydon @cstross @mirrorwitch so yes, that very much creates a disincentive to bomb their perceived enemies out of existence. For all the talk, they are fully aware of the state of things and that they are not domestically capable of getting anywhere near TSMC.
At the same time though, they are also monopolists. They engage in dumping to drive competitors out of business. So forcing the world to buy sub-standard parts from them is a good thing.
So it comes down to Winnie the Pooh's mood.