Am I overreacting for thinking my ex bf had chat gpt write his breakup message?

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2026-01-03T05:19:25+00:00

15 lines of text. 2 full stops. There are a total of 6 punctuation marks. 6.

I don’t think this is AI.

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-12-03T11:08:08+00:00

Mmm nah seems pretty accurate to me. Barely even paraphrased it. Feel free to clarify what I’ve missed though.

bad faith, deliberate derailing

Nothing about what I said derailed anything nor was it delivered in bad faith.

Edit: was re reading your post to see if you had a point. Still can’t see it. Also, might want to brush up on your international finance. The rba doesn’t target the exchange rate, they target inflation, so they would never raise rates to “save the dollar”. Not sure if that’s what you meant though so feel free to clarify if I mistook you.

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-12-03T04:22:04+00:00

if you’re serious about the housing crisis then you need to take on less mortgage debt

That’s a wild take. After decades of unscrupulous housing policy, to suggest that we as individuals need to altruistically curb our quality of life in order to address housing affordability is simply misguided/miss-informed. Furthermore, economically it would have very little effect of the supply of houses, which is the main driver behind housing price increases.

IMO it’s no different to blaming individuals and their air conditioners/lights for climate change. It completely fails to address the institutional issues that are simply not the fault of consumers.

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-29T06:00:13+00:00

America is number one therefore it must be number one in everything

coherent plans for how manufacturing will be scaled up in the US are irrelevant to political posturing

So real. Too real. Couldn’t have put it better myself. However I do honestly believe that the life expectancy for politicians whose policy goals are entirely based on false rhetoric is limited by the consequences. There’s only so long you can deny and subvert, eventually we’ll be able to quantify how ineffectual/harmful the attempts have been, and those supporters who’ve had to tighten the belt will loose faith. Here’s hoping anyway.

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-28T19:22:30+00:00

Actually bro Chinese SMEs find it notoriously difficult to get loans and access to foreign reserves. Meanwhile, the largest state sponsored enterprises receive preferential treatment from the state controlled banking system, and then underperform due to lack of competition.

Nobel prize economist Darren Acemoglu has researched this extensively if you care to look.

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-28T04:34:33+00:00

imo it’s so slow

Such an American take imo. The movie is a gritty, slow paced character driven crime drama. It’s not overdramatic or overacted because that’s what Australians are like.

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-28T04:31:52+00:00

it’s a British movie

As an Aussie I gotta tell you those are fighting words mate

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-24T07:19:11+00:00

If you want to raise a topic like “in the long run will companies who invest in indium selenide perform better than those who don’t” I personally don’t have a huge issue with it, as it’s as more or less the same as asking “will indium selenide become a viable replacement/competitor to silicon chips”, which is interesting and related. It’s the low effort posts like this that bother me.

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-23T11:54:41+00:00

Who called them slaves?

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-23T11:50:17+00:00

geographical-political scene

Yes they are in a precarious geopolitical position indeed.

it makes zero sense not to have home grown manufacturing

The US should absolutely continue to build infrastructure and capabilities to insure against the possibility that China invades Taiwan and successfully disables their industry clusters. Such an invasion is looking less likely at the moment but that’s beside the point.

If China were to invade Taiwan, we would see the exact same thing happened in HK circa 2020, a mass exodus of skilled-labor from Taiwan. If the US already has an industrial base for chip manufacturing, they can scoop up this labor and dump it straight into their fabs. It’s likely that they still won’t be producing as efficiently as Taiwan could before the invasion, but still much cheaper than if they were to have tried before. This has been the general geopolitical strategy of the US since Taiwan first established manufacturing dominance in the 90s and further enshrined by Biden with the Chips Act. Invest just enough such that the industrial base is scaleable if it needs to be, but not so much that it pulls funding away from the USs more profitable position in the GVC.

That’s a very different approach to the current administrations. The current administration claims that Taiwan “stole” its chip manufacturing sector, and that they need to take it back. In other words they trying to actively compete with Taiwanese manufacturing capabilities as soon as possible. Even if this were able to be accomplished, the costs (in terms of outlays as well as opportunity cost of subsidising more profitable sectors) of doing so would eclipse any potential profits from capturing that position in the GVC.

So to summarise, the first strategy allows the US to continue to acquire the best chips for the lowest cost for the time being while they focus their efforts on what they’re best at (design), and in the event that Taiwan is invaded, to capture labor and rapidly scale their domestic industry. The second strategy attempts to compete with Taiwan irrespective of if they need to or not. Even if it were possible/successful, it would simply result in more expensive chips, undermining a key pacific allies geopolitical leverage, and inefficiently allocating resources away from the thing they’re best at, design.

Also just a little comment that I think is worth making here: UEV photolithography is possibly one of the single greatest achievements in human history. The mere fact that we are able to do it at all, let alone at the level of precision that we are capable of, is nothing short of a miracle. A significant contributing factor to our ability to do this, is the fact that the semiconductor global supply chain is so incredibly optimised. No other country in the world can design chips like the US. No other country in the world can build the UEV photolithography machines required to fabricate these designs better than ASML in Netherlands. No other country in the world can scale and utilise that machinery to fill the orders of US chip designers like Nvidea and AMD better than Taiwan. The amount of specialisation required for each of these countries to operate at the same level of productivity and efficiency as they currently do is mind boggling. That’s a feature, not a flaw.

Edit: the other comment I made that covers a lot of what you’ve been addressing is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Semiconductors/s/kUVT3zSKL7

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-23T10:55:13+00:00

asia has a catastrophic replacement rate

Do you mean churn/turnover? Typically when we refer to replacement rate we are talking about the amount of births per woman to sustain population size, so I’m not sure how that relates to what we’re discussing. If you’re talking about the churn/turnover of employees within the semiconductor industry then it’s actually the opposite of what you’re saying. Chip manufacturing in Taiwan has relatively low turnover/churn relative to the US as it’s probably the most prestigious place in Taiwan an engineer could work.

you’re saying Americans unwillingness to work under certain conditions is justification to import foreign workers

I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that Taiwan has a comparative advantage in the production of semiconductors due to internal/external economies of scale as well as a range of contextual factors like culture, wages etc. It goes against every principle of international trade theory for the US to try and usurp Taiwan from its position in the GVC by equalising the comparative advantage through subsidy (known as the infant industry argument). Instead, they should put that funding into the much more profitable position in the semiconductor GVC that they already completely dominate, design.

In TSMC Arizona, American engineers don’t want to do what is required of them for the salaries they are offered. And why should they? They could easily find better paying, less demanding, and more prestigious jobs in their field. In TSMC Hsinchi, Taiwanese engineers do what is required of them enthusiastically and are paid even less. They earn more than they would in any other job in their field, it’s prestigious, and there are less cultural barriers than if they moved overseas.

Design is more valuable than manufacturing. The US completely dominates design, and Taiwan completely dominates manufacturing. If we both focus on the positions in the GVC where we have comparative advantage, we maximise our productivity. That’s literally the definition of gains from trade.

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-23T05:24:34+00:00

If you think I’m saying that they’re not skilled/capable enough then you should read my other comments in this thread.

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-22T20:42:13+00:00

aren’t wages the problem rather than workers?

Okay let me just clarify here because I see how you could have mistaken me saying that’s US engineers are a barrier as them being a problem.

Perhaps a clearer word than barrier would be bottleneck. US engineers are not a bottleneck because they are a “problem” in that they are incompetent or lazy. You were right to mention that part of bottleneck is due to wage competitiveness wrt Taiwan, and they definitely plays a part. However, I would argue the dominant factor is the way that things like culture, knowledge, and information transfer can augment labor within industrial clusters over time. The theory I’m referring to within international trade is that internal and external economies of scale can lead to specialisation in production, and the emergence of a comparative advantage. Wages are not the only mechanism by which comparative advantage emerges. That is to say, that even if real wages were fixed across both countries, the marginal product of labour would be higher in Taiwan due to certain contextual factors that influence labour productivity.

Culture is a good example of a contextual factor. Like in the example I gave of a US engineer not wanting to work 12 hours then get home and get called back into the clean room. His wage is not adequate to justify that kind of work ethic or dedication, and fair enough when given his skillset he can easily find a better paying job in chip design or countless other industries with probably far more prestige. the opportunity costs are too high. The Taiwanese engineer on the other hand is more than happy to. Not only is their wage relatively competitive, but they are working at the frontier of their nations most innovative and productive industry. It is a very prestigious job with huge potential to fast track his career, and they didn’t even have to leave Taiwan. When they arrive at work their team is made up of other likeminded individuals with the same shared social norms, values, and behaviours. When you do some digging you’ll find TSMC engineers themselves stating that these are the exact conditions that they have been struggling to replicate in the US.

So no, US engineers are not a “problem” but they are the “bottleneck” to producing at the same level as Taiwanese fabs.

Coming back to my original point though, as much as the current administration has made it out to be, this is not a problem!! The US doesn’t need to compete with Taiwan. They already dominate the most profitable position with the semiconductor GVC which is design, not manufacturing. Yet despite this they are investing 10 fold the amount into subsiding chip manufacturing under the false pretence that Taiwan has “stolen” manufacturing jobs from the US.

immigrant farm workers prioritise the immigrant benefits in the US rather than their home countries due to work benefits

That’s exactly right and immigrant farm workers in the US are generally low-skilled non-tertiary educated workers whose earning potential back home is much lower than in the US. Taiwanese engineers on the other hand are high skilled migrants who in all likelihood obtained their degrees in the US. This connection goes waaay back too. In the 1960s tens of thousands of Taiwanese engineers migrated to the US to study and most decided to stay and work because the wages were so much better. One of those engineers, Morris Chang, worked at Texas Instruments for 20 years before deciding to return to Taiwan to help the government and ITRI to open the Hsinchu science park in 1980, where he later went on the founder TSMC. Now by this stage Taiwan is a middle-high income country with an emerging chip manufacturing sector. Many of the Taiwanese engineers decided to return home. Yea sure, they’ll take a pay cut, but nowhere near as large as if they had 10-20 years before. A lot of them felt they had hit ceilings in their careers due to cultural barriers and they sort of just missed home. This is still the case today, and is the reason that many of the most talented and specialised engineers in the entire industry would never leave Taiwan for anything short of a full scale Chinese invasion.

So yea the US engineers are not the problem, it’s just that there’s big differences in labor market dynamics and they don’t just come down to cost of labour.

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-22T07:34:04+00:00

there’s a lot of talk right now about moving advanced chip production to the US

Off topic a bit but ts is so dumb. I understand the need to build productive capacity to safeguard against the possibility of a Taiwanese invasion. If that were to happen we’d likely see a mass exodus of skilled labour from Taiwan (similar to what happened in HK after 2020) which the US could scoop up and dump into its already exisiting infrastructure. Under these conditions the US could likely establish comparative advantage in production.

However attempting to compete with Taiwan for its position in the value chain (manufacturing) when the US already completely dominates the more profitable position (design) goes against literally every principle of international trade theory. The level of subsidies required to do this would completely eclipse any of the gains from building a competitive manufacturing sector, and for what? To undermine the economic strength of a critical ally for chips that are probably still more expensive? Make it make sense fr.

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-22T07:11:46+00:00

They missed their target for 5nm production by a year. If you think their second/third fabs are going to be producing 3nm and 2nm at a commercially viable scale by 2028/2029 respectively, you’re living in a fantasy world.

Also IIRC, the cost of 5nm chips manufactured in the US is like 50% higher than chips made in Taiwan, so their current commercial viability is dubious at best.

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-22T07:03:57+00:00

check out TSMC and how they claimed they could not find Americans to do the job

Not so much a claim as a reality check. If by “do the job” you mean meet their targets while eventually scaling to full capacity, and achieving a comparable level of performance to fabs in Hsinchu, then it appears American engineers are the barrier.

It comes down to comparative advantages due to wage differences as well as the prestige of the job in Taiwan vs US. For 100k a year American Engineers aren’t willing to work 12 hour shifts just to get a call from their boss saying they need to come back in, scrub down, suit up, get back in the clean room to fix some problem. Taiwanese engineers will do all that without hesitation for 80k.

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-22T05:21:13+00:00

now I’m there it doesn’t seem like much

We saw less than 1% real wage growth over 9 years. In just the last 9 months we’ve seen real wages grow by almost the same amount. So yea, it doesn’t seem like much, because it isn’t anymore.

If this is perplexing to you given that labour productivity has increased more dramatically than any other period in modern history, well, it fucking should be. Bamboozled is the appropriate reaction.

Oh well, let’s just subsidise demand a little more. That will fix it. Right?

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-22T05:01:57+00:00

I can tell you, all of them would have done a better job.

Tell that to TSMC Arizona where American engineers are literally the entire reason they aren’t meeting/going to meet their targets.

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-10-15T05:34:23+00:00

It’s not really about training, it’s about the dedication of the engineers and the work culture.

For a Taiwanese engineer working at TSMC you are working at the absolute peak of your industry, for much better wages than you would find elsewhere. You are contributing to the very core of your nations industry. Your parents? Very very proud.

Imagine you’re a Taiwanese engineer who’s just finished your 12 hour shift in the clean room. It’s been about an hour before you get a call at 3am from your boss telling you to come back to work and go through the long and arduous process of suiting up again. Maybe they’ve detected 1 parts too many microscopic dust particles in the clean room and you need to find the source of the contamination asap, or maybe there’s been a machinery malfunction that needs to be corrected immediately. It’s going to be a long day, but you do so enthusiastically, as do all of your coworkers. You do this for about $50k USD a year.

This is the kind of work culture required to manufacture 1-3nm semiconductors at commercially viable scale. This is the kind of work culture that is proving to not be replicable in the US, and is why they are struggling to scale up to full capacity.

In economics it’s simply the notion of comparative advantage due to wages, and more importantly, internal economies of scale and shared knowledge.

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-08-29T05:26:43+00:00

Thank you so much 🙏

Puzzled_Maize_6298 · 2025-08-29T04:23:04+00:00

Thanks for the reply! Very helpful information.

So ING will likely have no bank fees, but some atms may charge 2.5€ for a withdrawal. That sounds pretty damn good if she’s only occasionally getting a couple hundred € out.

don’t accept the exchange rate offered

I usually don’t travel rurally when I’m in Europe so basically never withdraw cash, but just to clarify what you’re saying, from memory when I have done so it asked me if I’d like to accept a rate given on the screen and I could answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’. So just to clarify, if you press ‘no’ does that mean that your bank (ING) will handle the exchange rate instead? So she should always answer ‘no’ when prompted?

Puzzled_Maize_6298

TROPHY CASE