Thread

1. ocd · 1790861971 · focus · HN ↗

   I'm not a business guy, but I think I would be very worried if I created any opening (even on the very long term) for competition to justify itself being built up to meet demand (or national security requirements of other countries) on an industry I mostly control, because I prioritized extremely high prices for a few years that might have the effect of changing the arithmetic for potential competitors that wouldn't have done it before.

   It makes me consider whether there would be retaliation in later years against the US intellectual property system in countries other than China. While RAM is a tangible product, the areas it serves aren't really.

   1. ecshafer · 1790862934 · focus · HN ↗

      How much of this issue is self-inflicted? Micron is building a massive fab in Syracuse. They've spent like 4 years seeking approval, lobbying politicians, doing BS "environmental impact studies" (which are mostly just rent seeking and political handouts). They finally started building, but if they had just been able to put shovel in the ground we would already have this fab be producing memory.

      1. thephyber · 1790864430 · focus · HN ↗

         If only we didn't have 100+ years of factories shitting where we eat we might not have thousands of governments wanting assurances that companies don't harm people in their area.

         Silicon Valley is littered with SuperFund sites of bankrupted companies who conveniently couldn't afford to clean up the toxic mess they left behind when they became the vessel full of debt after the corporate shell game moved on.

         1. ecshafer · 1790864658 · focus · HN ↗

            Do these environmental impact studies effectively stop that? could they effectively stop this issue with a more efficient process?

            What happens now is that there are a large amount of studies, that pay consultants and organizations to generate thousands of pages of documentation. They then turn around, have some niche issues that they pay to go away. For example was Micron having to purchase a few acres of land 25 miles away as a park for some owls effectively helping stop superfund sites?

            This is basically environmentalism security theater and political grifting.

            1. nullocator · 1790867288 · focus · HN ↗

               Maybe if they tried to build some of these on existing dilapidated commercial or industrial plots that are vacant and languishing they wouldn't have to jump through so many procedural and political hoops. I'm told these exist all over rural america.

               Instead they want to build their 100 acre Data-Center/Technology Industrial Park adjacent to the burrowing owl habitats or up against Grandma Martha's backyard.

               1. ryathal · 1790868181 · focus · HN ↗

                  Building on vacant industrial land is more expensive because you have to clean it up first. It might even be a superfund site, no one is interested in actually finding out. There hasn't been any room on compromise or cleanup assistance in most cases.

                  1. ecshafer · 1790872550 · focus · HN ↗

                     There is also additional risk here. If company X made an unknown superfund site, then company Y develops on it. Is company Y then liable if the superfund site becomes known?

                     1. mrguyorama · 1790877309 · focus · HN ↗

                        All this speculation is pointless. Superfund sites haven't had their cleanup funded by the companies doing the pollution since 1995, when congress decided that the tax on companies to fund such cleanup (which had funded 70% of the cleanup of superfund sites up to that point) no longer needed to exist, and since then the taxpaying public of you and me have been paying every single dollar for cleaning up the pollutants these companies emit.

                        You didn't have to pay to cleanup a site before using it, because the expectation was that you paid while running your business and the site would be cleaned before you wanted to utilize it.

                        But now the "Superfund" has been underfunded for like 20 years. Biden's IRA set up a new tax for ten years but, not sure how well that's going.

                        We literally had the system set up well and working fine, but it cost companies a few dollars so it had to go when the "Greed is good" folks came along.

                     2. thephyber · 1791200062 · focus · HN ↗

                        No, this is not an issue.

                        A "SuperFund Site" specifically exists because the previous company no longer exists in a form that any assets can be extracted from the legal entity. There's no point in suing something which can't pay damages. It's not just "a business with a toxic piece of land". The term "SuperFund" means the EPA has taken over the responsibility of managing the cleanup after the previous company is gone (eg. The legal entity split off some of their their albatross debts/liabilities such as toxic land that no longer can be used for revenue onto a disposable company that they spun off)

                        Also land doesn't come with a warranty when it is transferred. So long as the previous owner disclosed all of the relevant information about any hazards known to the seller that is legally required, the old owner is off the hook. If you sell a house with lead paint which was built on landfill that exists near high voltage power lines and the seller described those facts in the escrow period to the buyer (usually in a mass of paperwork), you can't be held liable if the buyer's family develops health issues in that house.

                        Please don't try to speculate yourself into non-existent legal scenarios.

            2. thephyber · 1791201033 · focus · HN ↗

               Welcome the Abundance Agenda. There are entire books being written about how we need to streamline the bureaucracy and policies to actually accomplish the goals of the environmental movement, not just create a self-licking-ice-cream-cone of Vogons, forms/checklists, and tit-for-tat lawsuits.

               Your concern, while well intentioned, is a red herring. At best it can highlight that enforcement of negative externalities is imperfect, but then again everything is.

      2. tzs · 1790876217 · focus · HN ↗

         It took just over 3 years to get approved, and the reason it took so long is that it is massive project (1400 acres) and has enormous infrastructure requirements that needed comprehensive study by reviewing agencies to make sure the area could handle them.

         The first two fabs there will require 17 million gallons per day of water and when fully operations in the early 2040s the facility will need 48 million gallons per day. That is more than existing infrastructure can handle so the project also includes a new pipeline extension to Lake Ontario.

         That water requires extensive treatment before it can be discharged. It will be pretreated on site, then go to a new $1 billion industrial wastewater treatment plant being for this project, and then finally discharged into the Oneida river.

         The energy requirements when fully operation are 1850 MW drawn continuously 24/7 every day of the year. That's 16 TWh a year.

         For comparison that is a little above the annual electricity use of Ft. Worth, TX or Charlotte, NC, and little below Indianapolis, IN. It is about 14% under San Francisco, CA. A little over half of Chicago, IL, about 1/3 of Los Angeles, CA, and about 30% of NYC.

         That's way beyond the existing grid capacity, so lots of infrastructure upgrades there are taking place.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.