Discussion
Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock — SK hynix forced to diversify after 30% of global supply removed from the market
expedition32: My energy contract expires in June. I am feeling the doom clock- just how much can America and their Israeli masters fuck up?
mvdwoord: Can not see them fuck it up more than my own government spending millions to pour concrete into our own excellent natural gas wells (while selling whatever did come out under market price to other countries), and our neighbors on the east celebrating while they blow up nuclear power plants. At least the US and Israel have a chance of improving their position in the geopolitical landscape. We are just slowly then swiftly committing suicide.
trollbridge: Aren’t there huge stockpiles of helium in the US? I can buy party sized tanks at Target or big tanks at the usual places like welding supply places.
th23i43240999: Another bubble. Another war. Great.
varispeed: So more old rich suited men can bang more escorts. The vanity of humanity.
coreyh14444: Remember all the e/acc people telling us to vote for Trump? Some mea-culpas are in order.
surgical_fire: Are you complaining about the Groningen gas wells?I thought that they were being decommissioned due to seismic risks?
mvdwoord: haha yes, the grand seismic risks (economic risk in single digit percentages of the profits available) but not talking about not using them, they are actively and very costly going to fill them with concrete to ensure in the future (even in whatever extreme scenario) they cannot be used again. On top of the fact that we suckered ourselves into long term agreements which led to having to sell our own gas, far below market price to other countries. Full blown retardedness, and the moral high ground was theirs.And our German neighbors, I can still see them laughing at the Orange Man Bad... Boo hoo... what a shitshow.
sigio: Yeah, but even the local (groningen) residents think it's a bad idea to not keep some resources available for emergency situations (they also would like to heat their houses in winter) like when other sources are cut off.
surgical_fire: Is it even possible? My understanding is that the whole region is connected to those oil wells. There's so much you can take before the underground is hollow.They may not have a house to heat if tremors get too bad.
api: That's one of the most disappointing things to me. These people have such resources and the limit of their vision is: bang young girls, accumulate bling, push divisive hateful politics, start wars.That's it. That's the best they can do.Even nominally selfish far-sighted things like genuinely funding a deep research program for life extension is not really something they're into. I mean some of them are "into" it in that they talk about it and occasionally toss money at things but they're not interested in funding or being involved in the kind of multi-year high-focus moonshot program it would actually take to deliver. The problem is that's hard and it takes a long time when banging girls and winning power games is instant dopamine.It makes me keep thinking of paperclip maximizers. It's like we are paperclip maximizers, only our paperclips are sex and dopamine hits from winning power games. A paperclip maximizer with such resources would squander it all on paperclips, and we squander it all on these goal functions built in by evolution. Are we actually intelligent or just clever animals? We can seek what we want, but we don't think much about what we want to want.
lpcvoid: Great timing that the US recently sold its strategic helium supply.
surgical_fire: > haha yes, the grand seismic risks (economic risk in single digit percentages of the profits available)If I lived in the region I wouldn't really care if the economic risk is single digit percentage. I would prefer my house to keep standing.> they are actively and very costly going to fill them with concrete to ensure in the future (even in whatever extreme scenario) they cannot be used again.I think you are arguing in bad faith. If you hollow the underground, filling it with something is a way to mitigate the seismic risk.> And our German neighbors, I can still see them laughing at the Orange Man Bad.Okay, I see now that talking to you is a waste of time.Have a great afternoon.
mvdwoord: Love you too!
breppp: Qatar is probably intentionally shutting down production of gas and oil in order to pressure the US to stop, independently of Iranian attacks.In that respect they may be bombed by Iran but they have the same interests
coldpie: I think about how we could've paid for two brand new, gigawatt-scale nuclear power plants for the same amount of money as Elon Musk flushed down the toilet to try to shut down a website he didn't like. Extreme wealth is a mental illness, and wealth caps are healthcare.
2OEH8eoCRo0: I think we are somewhere in between. Most of us know what we should be doing but actually doing it is hard!As an aside this might indicative of today's defective rich. Carnegie built over 2,500 libraries for example.
fhdkweig: > These people have such resources and the limit of their vision is: bang young girls, accumulate bling, push divisive hateful politics, start wars.I really don't like how Bill Gates and Microsoft made their money, but at least he has realized that in his twilight years to try to make amends via humanitarian work. Buying the stairway to heaven.
fabian2k: Where are they supposed to put all that gas and oil if they can't transport it? I don't think they have much choice here.And as far as I understand, helium is a byproduct of the extraction, so they can't choose to keep only the helium.
breppp: However Qatar stopped production before the straits were officially closed and their stated reason is "due to military attacks", also Russian or Chinese ships can pass
fabian2k: There is no such thing as "officially closed". The moment people start shooting there, driving a ship across becomes dangerous. This was an absolutely predictable consequence of the attacks on Iran, you didn't need to wait until several tankers were burning to know these attacks were likely to happen and the strait would become essentially too risky to pass.
vasco: Messer Completes Acquisition of Federal Helium System from BLM https://www.messer-us.com/press-releases/messer-completes-ac...
bix6: Why did we sell it instead of lease? This seems like something that should be in public hands.
cagenut: sorry thats too far left wing an opinion in america today
fhdkweig: Could you define the acronym "e/acc"? DDG seems to think it means: "What Does E/Acc Stand For, And What Does It Mean? E/acc stands for the phrase effective accelerationism, and it basically indicates one's personal ideological belief that artificial intelligence will one day become an all-powerful being that can fix the vast majority of humanity's problems."I don't think I have ever heard a MAGA talk about AI.
spiderfarmer: The MAGA Web3 bros have all switched to the Clawdbot hypetrain, still flogging courses and slop.
dv_dt: Except that foundations are massive tax shelters - maybe he did some good along the way, but the also blocked IP release of covid vaccine technologies
fhdkweig: Can you give me more information on that? DDG on Bill Gates and COVID just keeps finding stuff about Epstien (for some bizarre reason).
Forgeties79: At this point I wish he had shut it down. Instead he turned into a mouthpiece for the right and duped his followers into thinking he’s “liberated” the site and made it into some bastion of free speech.
actionfromafar: You can't do that with two gigawatt-scale nuclear power plants!
yread: Groningen gas field produced 40 billion m3 a year. 100m3 is 1MWh, currently sold for 50 eur. So the production would generate revenue of 20 billion eur a year. Tax it at 10%, get 2B eur. Buy/build houses for 400k a piece, 5.000 a year. There are cca 10.000 houses with minor or major damage damage. In 2 fucking years everyone gets a new second house for free and we get cheap gas.
littlestymaar: You realize that people's houses are more than a number in a balance sheet?Losing all your personal items and memories + living homeless for a few years while the reconstruction is in progress isn't minor inconvenience.
walletdrainer: Bullshit they are, houses are entirely replaceable and in fact many people do so every couple of years.Some jurisdictions even have “tenants rights” laws that literally force landlords to terminate all contracts whenever a tenant is about to have lived in a location for too long.
infogulch: The sale was completed in 2024.
ceejayoz: > At least the US and Israel have a chance of improving their position in the geopolitical landscape.This seems, uh, awfully optimistic.
bondarchuk: Ah, sorry, this will not work, we are not capable of building new houses in any significant capacity. I don't know why but it's the reality.
bombcar: It's worse when you realize that Musk at least does something with his insane wealth, even if it's also insane.Most either do nothing really of note, or donate it to "causes", which may be good, but kind of boring.
renewiltord: He’s not “doing something with his insane wealth”. He’s wealthy because he’s doing something. The moment he announces he’s stepping back and going to be boring he loses half his wealth or more.God does not come down from the heavens and bestow money that one spends on what one chooses. People value his companies because he’s there. TSLA will instantly collapse in valuation if he exits.
arunc: So the RAM prices are going to skyrocket again?
breppp: Back then there were only two ships attacked in the straits, and one was an Iranian shadow fleet ship. I am not sure that is "closing the straits" in any shape or form
nottorp: So if there's an active shooter on the one alley to your workplace you should still be at work in time, right? :)Or let's make the analogy clearer: if your Uber driver cancels the ride because there's an active shooter on the only road between him and you, it's their fault not the shooter's?
fluidcruft: A lot of the balloon use has switched to nitrogen (helium became much, much more expensive after the strategic helium reserve was sold off)
bilsbie: Is lifting gas? That’s pretty cool.
nerdsniper: Technically yes, but practically no. Air is 78% nitrogen. Nitrogen is 3.3% lighter than air. Helium is 86.2% lighter than air. Hydrogen is 93% lighter than air.
infogulch: BLM [(Bureau of Land Management)] completes $460M sale of federal helium reserve to private company | 12/12/2024 | https://www.eenews.net/articles/blm-completes-460m-sale-of-f...Messer Completes Acquisition of Federal Helium System from BLM | June 27, 2024 | https://www.messer-us.com/press-releases/messer-completes-ac...
actionfromafar: Those party ballons were very cheap for a while.
notTooFarGone: the mystical time when the wind on the see is not there and there is no sun? Maybe even the tides stop working?
phr4ts: For those who don't understand, Biden sold the Helium not Trump - he took office on Jan 20, 2025.
actionfromafar: I feel that as soon as the existential threat easened with the splintering of the Soviet Union, the US started doing some self-harming libertarian flavored shit to itself.In the 1980s, I assume getting rid of the "strategic reserve" of anything would have met more pushback, because of primal fear overriding greed.
dmix: People will always keep looking to politicians to make the world better despite their terrible track record.
forgetfreeman: If they aren't doing a good job primary the hell out of them.
baldeagle: BLM was required (to sell it) by Congress in the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013.
forgetfreeman: crypto-libertarian "government bad" ideology is one hell of a drug.
dnautics: well it was signed into law by obama, so there's that.
dnautics: thanks obama?
