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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • I definitely agree that this is a big problem happening way too often, but not sure if it is the case here.

    First of all we need to remember that the majority of debt came from AT&T splitting off Warner and saddling it with billions of debt (this is where i see the root for many of the problems), not from the Discovery side at their merger or the split now. Secondly as i understand it the linerar networks are obviously the declining assets, but still the ones with more profit/revenue.

    That makes it a judgment call whether one believes that those will be able to pay off this debt, before they become irrelevant. This might indeed involve cost cutting measures and negative effects, but who would invest in this business today? So long as there are no public bailouts involved i’d be fine with letting the debt holders judge by themselfes if they are fine with this (i assume they had a say in allowing this?). I guess this might be sad for CNN and some of the sports programs, but i feel like most people here won’t care too much what happens with the likes of TCL or HGTV.

    The part we probably care more about (Warner/HBO) is the one getting the clean slate. Whether they try to make it work as a studio with streaming service on its own or try to sell it to someone else we will see. So presumably not a situation like JoAnn fabrics or Toys’R’Us where a liked company was saddled with debt and bled dry.



  • So after this brief merger they are already splitting again? But this time Discovery gets loaded up with the declining linear television parts and I assume also the huge pile of debt?

    Obviously share ownership adjusted accordingly, but I guess there would have been no other way to transfer the debt and declining business parts directly to discovery or someone else. Because no one would take that deal even for free.

    I might actually see this as a win for movie/television fans as I doubt there’d been a faster way for warner/HBO to become separated from the debt and cable stuff.

    The re-rebranding back to HBOmax makes more sense now.

    It’ll be interesting to see how this changes CEO pay. Does Zaslav take a pay cut since he now manages a much smaller company? I doubt it. I bet he gets another performance bonus and on the other side the former CFO now CEO of the new company will also be paid handsomely to handle the crappy parts. Leading to overall even more management salary.




  • Ich weiß immer noch nicht ganz was ich davon halten soll.

    Einerseits glaube ich, dass es praktisch relativ wenig Unterschied macht, wen wir da tatsächlich hinschicken, andererseits bleibt bei mir der EIndruck, als wäre das mal wieder ein Beispiel wo Personen, wenn sie erstmal gewisse Kreise erreicht haben, mehr oder weniger Narrenfreiheit haben. Da werden Dinge zurechtgebogen wie es einem am besten passen, anstatt dass man halt mal Pech hat, wenn es nicht genau so läuft wie man es sich wünscht. Und der “Normalo” in dem Fall Helga Schmid (die dafür ja wohl ebenfalls bestens qualifiziert und schon ausgewählt war) hat dann das Nachsehen, ohne zumindest mir offensichtliche fachliche Gründe, sondern nur weil sie halt nicht im Richtigen Club war.

    Es ist ja nicht so als ob Baerbock nicht auch einfach nochmal ne runde im Parlament hätte sitzen können. Über die Liste wäre sie sicher eingezogen und finanziell wäre das eventuell sogar lukrativer für sie gewesen. Wenn sie sich jetzt als Außenministerin besonders verdient gemacht hätte, dann würde ich es vielleicht noch einsehen. Aber bei mir hat sie keinen Nennenswerten Eindruck hinterlassen und ich weiß nicht ob sie irgendwas mit ihrer “feministischen” Außenpolitik erreicht hat.


  • I mean comparatively to HDDs.

    Of course there are also challenges to making a high capacity SSD, but i don’t think they are using fundamentally new methods to achieve higher capacities. Yes they need to design better controllers and heat management becomes a larger factor, but the nand chips to my knowledge are still the same you’d see in smaller capacities. And the form factor has the space to accomodate them.

    If HDDs could just continue to stack more of the same platters into a drive to increase capacity they’d have a much easier time to scale.




  • Your claim that they would advertise it is speculation. What would be the purpose of that?

    To advertise that they can? In return what would be the purpose to hide it?

    They do seem to make their advancements at least somewhat public, e.g. with their recent progress with a EUV light source.

    I am probably on the pessimistic side and you maybe on the optimistic, so the reality will likely end up being somewhere in between (but only time will tell).

    China will do this because they have massive talent mass and ressources, and because they have to.

    Well it also was developed in the west by a large amount of talent and resources and still took a lot of time. But you are absolutely right that their hand is being forced.

    Restricting exports like this imo was a huge mistake, imo especially in regard to duv. In the end it might have achieved some damage in the short/medium term, but that wasn’t anything the us could capitalize on and it also directly hurt ASMLs profits (meaning less resources to advance). And regardless how the timeline ends up looking on the end (be it closer to your or my prediction), physics are the same everywhere so that can’t be restricted and they will eventually be able to figure it out.


  • GAA is the next evolution of transistor architecture from FinFET, but as far as I know has no direct link to smaller process nodes. In that (to my understanding) it doesn’t require small nodes and could be used just as easily in larger ones. It’s just that it is more difficult so until now there were other easier ways to make progress. However with new nodes getting more expensive and giving less scaling gaa and other things like backside power delivery are being pursued.

    We will have to see if the process is actually good, but I have little doubt that China will become competitive in EUV within 5 years. But if they have it already next year, that will be very fast.

    So not only do you expect China to have a working domestically produced EUV machine within 5 years, but a competitive one? Or possibly even next year?

    Next year is just pure fantasy that I don’t think even the most optimistic would assume. If they were anywhere close to that we would already know. They’d have shown a working prototype by now.

    Euv is crazy difficult and you not only the result of a single company ASML, but many highly specialized companies that are leaders in their respective fields and all over the world like e.g. Zeiss for for the lenses. So for China to replicate it domestically they’d need to copy the whole supply chain. Which is orders of magnitude more difficult than what they’ve done in other industries like electric vehicles or solar panels.

    Imo if they have a working prototype of a complete EUV machine within this decade it would already be impressive. But that would still be far off from mass production or wherever the industry is by then (Intel is currently trialing high na EUV). Also for reference Wikipedia says ASML had their first prototype in 2006 and we know how long it took to being that to mass production. China as a second mover might have an edge that speed things up, but just knowing how it works in theory isn’t enough and there are o shortcuts.

    But maybe they also pursue another technique such as nano imprint (like canon) to achieve smaller nodes. Maybe that would be easier to replicate without existing global supply chains.


  • Well there are claims that Huawei is aiming for 3nm with GAA with tape out next year See Here.

    I think we shouldn’t forget that the nm numbers really are just that: Numbers. They don’t correspond to any specific measurements and can be chosen more or less arbitrarily. So 6nm for example might just be a slightly refined 7nm node.

    Another thing is power efficiency and yields. If they get 4060 performance at terrible yields and with massive power draw then it is very different to getting there at similar parameters as Nvidia.

    If China does end up cracking EUV by themselves it would indeed be massive. It’s arguably one of the most complex things mankind has ever done. But there are so many factors to get right that tbh I don’t see it happening any time soon.


  • I am honestly not sure about that. Similar to the ASML restrictions this does hinder them in the short term, but it also means they have all the more reason to double their efforts to make a domestic product. And it also means the chinese firms get this whole market by default and the western ones lose it, which in return means less revenue/profit to keep pushing ahead.

    I guess at this stage it might be all that’s left as a counter measure, but I feel like the west in general really dropped the ball pushing for general equal access and opportunities, when it still had a stronger hand.





  • Ich muss gestehen, dass ich mich nicht wirklich mit der Materie auskenne, und lasse mich deswegen gerne eines besseren belehren, aber ich stehe dem ganzen sehr negativ gegenüber.

    Letztlich kann FlixTrain hier doch einfach Rosinenpickerei betreiben und sich nur die besten und profitablen Strecken und Zeitslots heraussuchen. Falls sich eine Fahrt als unprofitable heraus stellt, bietet man sie nicht mehr an. Das kann die Bahn nicht, denn sie muss gesellschaftlichen und politischen Zielen folgen.

    Wenn der Lokführer der DB vorher eine andere unprofitable Stecke bedienen muss, kann es dadurch zu Dominoeffekten kommen. Ein weiteres Problem das es für FlixTrain nicht gibt.

    Und ich bin mir 100%ig sicher, dass wenn FlixTrain als Unternehmen doch auf die Nase fliegen sollte, dann werden sie sofort Wettbewerbsverzerrung schreien und entweder Schadensersatz verlangen oder, dass die Bahn ihren Service verschlechtert.



  • When watching the machete order, did you skip episode 1 like suggested here? Because if yes, then watching it this way and then adding the sequels seems like a contradiction to me. Episode 1 may be a failure in execution, but the core concept imo is solid. Can’t say the same about the sequels, even if they look prettier (to the point of doing stupid scenes just for the visuals).



  • They overinvested funds into stuff they didn’t need (disney buying lucasarts and such)

    I do agree that they overspend on a lot of things, but in my book buying Lucas Arts for $4b was a steal. I think they mostly got it for so cheap because George Lucas wanted to be done with it. Even with the way misshandeld it (bar some highlights like Andor), this was most certainly a good investment.

    I mean the sequels were bad and yet those alone made more than $4b at the boxoffice (yes I know that isn’t profit, but just to give some perspective). And star wars is also a powerhouse in terms of merchandise sales, think of the amount of baby Yoda toys being sold.