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on Gopher (inofficial)
HTML Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston
guywithahat wrote 5 hours 0 min ago:
Possibly a hot take but Houston makes more sense in my mind as a city
to do this in compared to Austin. Houston is the fourth largest city in
the US, it has no city zoning, and is the most wonderful place in the
world to do business (at least in my experience). There's a risk if you
do it in Austin that suddenly all your employees get priced out
whenever the city forgets to update zoning (which has happened in the
past, although to their credit they did eventually increase density and
prices dropped)
0_____0 wrote 6 hours 0 min ago:
Hah! I just noticed something - in the video at the top of the page,
the female technician assembling servers is wearing a pink smock with
Chinese text on it, right above the ESD grounding lead. She features in
a still photo down below, but they've digitally removed the Chinese. I
think it says "å¯å£«åº·ç§æ" for "Foxconn Technology." Funny that
they would go out of their way to hide the depth of their partnership.
audunw wrote 5 hours 33 min ago:
Foxconn is a Taiwanese company btw. I think theyâve been setting up
several factories outside of China recently
Naracion wrote 5 hours 55 min ago:
Fwiw--it's not digitally removed, it is just behind her sleeve. In
the video she starts in the same pose and you can't see the text, but
you can once she moves her arm.
bangonkeyboard wrote 5 hours 37 min ago:
Not true. Here is a mirror of an image posted earlier in this
thread:
HTML [1]: https://i.postimg.cc/MK86WX6s/TEmek6j.png
_nagu_ wrote 6 hours 29 min ago:
Probably
user3939382 wrote 6 hours 43 min ago:
Translation: Apple agrees to lose money on Mac Mini production for x
quarters as a concession to the WH for midterm optics in exchange for
undisclosed consideration.
JSR_FDED wrote 7 hours 48 min ago:
I absolutely love my Mac Mini. But wtf is an "advanced AI server"?
kgwxd wrote 9 hours 37 min ago:
I'm sure Texas is going to try to give them the "freedom" to "compete"
with china. If I owned property in Houston, I'd have sold a long time
ago, but with this, I'd panic sell. Take what you can, it's going to be
a wasteland if this pans out.
jama211 wrote 12 hours 19 min ago:
Hilarious and perfect. Apple know how to play this silly government
like a fiddle. Gotta survive the idiot years somehow.
kilroy123 wrote 10 hours 33 min ago:
I'm not convinced this is all temporary.
jama211 wrote 3 hours 45 min ago:
Healthy skepticism is fine.
alt227 wrote 8 hours 26 min ago:
It was last time they did this, when they started producing Mac
Pros in US in 2019, then promptly stopped again. [1]
HTML [1]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/09/apples-new-mac-pro-...
HTML [2]: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/28/tech/apple-mac-pro-prod...
blendergeek wrote 8 hours 1 min ago:
Apple originally announced they would bring Mac Pro production to
the US in 2013.
The two articles you share are one from CNN saying apple was
moving production back to China after 6 years in the US and
second from apple a few months later saying they were keeping it
in the US.
You put the article from September before the article from June
to create a narrative that only a few months passed between
Apple's announcement of US production and CNN debunking it. The
only issue is that the CNN article was 3 months _before_ Apple's
rebuttal.
alt227 wrote 7 hours 47 min ago:
I did not do that intentionally apologies.
However, this issue is complicated by the fact that Trump
toured the factory in 2019 and claimed it was new, something
the press picked up an and therefore the media stories of the
time are pretty warped.
In reality, Apple had many issues ramping up production in the
US for various reason, one example being supply chain. [1] If
they started in 2012 and it all went rosy, why did they have
another press release in 2019 announcing it again, and why are
they making a big song and dance about it again 14 years later?
If everything with manufacturing in the US was going fine, I
would have expected them to start making a lot more products in
the US over those 14 years. Instaead we have a couple of
troubled product lines, and some big shiny press releases
trying to show off its importance.
HTML [1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/now-know-why-apple-had-...
timvdalen wrote 12 hours 40 min ago:
That's a lot of American flags in one article
whh wrote 10 hours 53 min ago:
They need to make sure a certain someone sees them, I suspect.
grepfru_it wrote 13 hours 37 min ago:
Still no jobs about this location posted on Appleâs career page.
Anyone know how one could find employment at this location?
mrkpdl wrote 11 hours 21 min ago:
Through Foxconn presumably
cryptoegorophy wrote 14 hours 26 min ago:
Is this because of China/Taiwan situation I assume?
gaigalas wrote 14 hours 40 min ago:
> Apple today announced a significant expansion of factory operations
in Houston, bringing the future production of Mac mini to the U.S. for
the first time. The company will also expand advanced AI server
manufacturing at the factory and provide hands-on training at its new
Advanced Manufacturing Center beginning later this year.
So, servers and minis share a production line then.
I kinda knew it:
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45599894
zekrioca wrote 11 hours 35 min ago:
Sharing a factory does not imply shared chips or repurposing server
silicon. Also, Apple doesnât follow serversâ econ model.
gaigalas wrote 11 hours 30 min ago:
I'm obviously speculating, but you seem to be very sure of what
you're saying. Can you share a reliable source for that info?
zekrioca wrote 10 hours 54 min ago:
Iâm not claiming insider knowledge, just going by publicly
documents on Appleâs architecture and operations.
Private Cloud Compute runs on Apple silicon servers derived from
the same silicon used in devices, with custom secure OS
infrastructure built around them. See Appleâs security
documentation and reporting on PCC servers by finding the link
somewhere in the comments of this thread.
As for their econ model, just see Cookâs methodical style with
fast turnover to avoid stockpiling [1], i.e., the opposite of
what is going on with AI servers where margins are cut at every
step of the way. So sharing an assembly facility doesnât imply
chips are interchangeable, it may well just be assembly
efficiency, which I guess is common.
HTML [1]: https://mondays.supernegotiate.com/post/inside-tim-cook-...
gaigalas wrote 10 hours 6 min ago:
You mean [1] ?
The only thing it says is "custom Apple silicon", which
honestly could mean a high-binned chip from the same production
line.
You gotta admit that the M4 price is kind of a magic trick.
Also, with zero carbon emissions.
Look at their environmental report: [2] > To address emissions
generated by using primary materials, weâre increasing the
recycled content in our products, maximizing material and
manufacturing efficiencies, and improving yields.
This wording is very specific. It's not "recycled materials",
it's "recycled content" to address the emissions of using
primary materials. I find it to be very sneaky.
I'm not saying they're refurbishing used servers, but there's
definitely something going on here.
Look at their overall environment report from 2024 (not product
specific): [3] There is a section about "Material recovery".
Here is a quote:
> Even after a product reaches the end of its life, the
materials within it can serve the next generation of products.
> Each time that we effectively recover materials from
end-of-life products, we enable circular supply chains.
> Disassembly and recovery advancement: Continuing to develop
better, more efficient means of disassembling products that
maximize material recovery while minimizing waste.
It seems to me that what they're describing here, publicly, is
almost exactly what I said. I just made an extra leap implying
that the disassembled EOL'd products were servers that never
got used and were turned into M4 Minis (which is speculation,
but highly informed by these reports).
Why do this? Well, it means they can invest on servers and if
they lose some race, they can pivot. It's a unique advantage. I
would take advantage of that if I were Tim.
HTML [1]: https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
HTML [2]: https://images.apple.com/co/environment/pdf/products/d...
HTML [3]: https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmen...
thenthenthen wrote 8 hours 48 min ago:
Sounds like greenwashing. They just sell the chips from
cncâing alu cases to a recycler, hell apple does not even
manufacture anything it is all outsourced
DeathArrow wrote 16 hours 7 min ago:
It's interesting they have decided to build it in a blue state.
stevev wrote 17 hours 18 min ago:
Nothing against American ingenuity, but when situations like this
occur, quality often declines for a time. The process may be replicated
from its original source, but the key difference lies in the workersâ
experienceâsomething the Chinese have already mastered.
resters wrote 17 hours 36 min ago:
China's secret to rapid industrial growth in tech has been to invest in
the low end, not the high end. Trump has it all backwards. An Apple
factory in Texas may be good politics for Trump, but it has zero or
negative impact on the competitiveness of the US and creates/amplifies
existential risks companies face due to US political forces.
profdevloper wrote 17 hours 59 min ago:
Will they transition to having Americans make them too?
fundad wrote 17 hours 36 min ago:
Could you imagine that?
cod1r wrote 18 hours 2 min ago:
HOUSTON REPRESENT!!
t1234s wrote 19 hours 5 min ago:
Didn't they build the trash can mac pros in Texas?
with wrote 19 hours 5 min ago:
"advanced manufacturing center" which is 20k sqft, about 1/7 the size
of a typical Costco. I wouldn't hail this as the great revival of
american manufacturing
gnarbarian wrote 19 hours 12 min ago:
thanks trump!
platevoltage wrote 15 hours 43 min ago:
He will never notice, or care about you.
p_j_w wrote 17 hours 41 min ago:
This has undoubtedly been in the works since before Trump took
office. Construction for manufacturing has taken a nose dive since
Trump won the election, though, so even if this particular factory
was because of him, the overall picture isnât any good.
ncrmro wrote 19 hours 35 min ago:
H-Town hold it down!
tcper wrote 20 hours 23 min ago:
Apple produced MacPro in US a few years ago, what about that facility
and workers? Will this facility has the same destiny like MacPro?
pers0n wrote 21 hours 38 min ago:
Right when it gets off the boat from India, they will have contractors
and H-1B visa workers snap the pieces together and now its Made in
America.
ggm wrote 21 hours 55 min ago:
"made" == "assembled"
logotype wrote 21 hours 58 min ago:
Very happy to see this!
DonHopkins wrote 22 hours 38 min ago:
Now with OpenClaw pre-installed!
JeremyHerrman wrote 22 hours 40 min ago:
For anyone who liked Apple's Xserve lineup, it's very cool to get a
peek at these rackmount Apple "advanced AI servers"
I'm excited for these to fall into collectors hands in a decade or two.
otterley wrote 16 hours 17 min ago:
If theyâre built anything like AWSâs servers, their cryptographic
key chip thatâs required for boot will be destroyed the moment
itâs removed from the rack itâs in, rendering it useless.
Theyâll be scrapped.
JeremyHerrman wrote 3 hours 52 min ago:
agreed that Apple will scrap these, but surely some of these will
escape (even in a non-functional state) and with enough effort
folks will figure out how to boot them.
I have a few prototype apple devices in my collection. Especially
with the sheer number of these AI servers it's just a matter of
time before they wind up in public.
tom1337 wrote 12 hours 23 min ago:
Never heard about this procedure but sounds interesting. Is there
anywhere to read about how this works?
Maxious wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
[1] obviously not framed in terms of "here is how we create more
e-waste" but you can see the additional barriers to attempting to
reuse decommissioned hardware
HTML [1]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/pdfs/whitepapers/latest/secu...
whalesalad wrote 22 hours 34 min ago:
My first job was for a startup created by Henk Rogers (Tetris). He
was an avid photographer (our company set out to make photo
management easier) and so he had a lot of photos. In the center of
the office we had a server closet and it was the first time I ever
saw xserve and xserve-raid racked up in person. I believe they were
100% dedicated to storing Henk's photo collection. Really really
gorgeous hardware.
kevin_thibedeau wrote 22 hours 46 min ago:
They've been teasing domestic production for over a decade. I'll
believe it when I see it.
maxdo wrote 22 hours 49 min ago:
To all critics . This is something good going on in the country. Itâs
national interest protection .
Together with robotics push , it has a chance , and even they do small
things . Today they make body , tomorrow cpu , etc itâs a good thing
going on regardless of politics
bigyabai wrote 17 hours 25 min ago:
> Itâs national interest protection .
The US has no national interest in the Mac Mini, or the Mac Pro for
that matter. Homeland security isn't reliant on Apple datacenters.
The Mac comprises less than 10% of Apple's yearly revenue, almost
lower-profit than the iPad. Manufacturing Macs in the US doesn't even
secure your pension.
The iPhone comprises a minor national interest corollary to Apple's
stock price, but that's never being onshored. Apple would go bankrupt
paying Americans to assemble the iPhone, and if you don't believe me
then Google the leaked BOMs.
maxdo wrote 2 hours 35 min ago:
Well, itâs the last company who has more or less complete clue on
how to build computers.
When the war will start what wit China are you going to use ?
Whatâs even more critical who will be the one who will start
manufacturing?
Yeah maybe itâs a tiny drop in the ocean , but thatâs the start
at least of something. Not just installing solar toilets billed as
solar panels for $40k as it was under previous administration
selkin wrote 18 hours 46 min ago:
Why is it a good thing?
Manufacturing jobs are horrible, ask anyone who had one.
The US built a high margins service economy.
This is two steps backwards, no step forwards sort of a deal.
maxdo wrote 2 hours 40 min ago:
This is why we have troubles. This is so delusional in many ways.
You canât be high margin without building at least something .
You canât be a successful country full of lawyers and doctors
only. You have to actually build something
manuelabeledo wrote 2 hours 30 min ago:
> You canât be a successful country full of lawyers and doctors
only. You have to actually build something
The GDP sector composition of most of the largest economies is
heavily service biased. So, no.
atleastoptimal wrote 22 hours 57 min ago:
US manufacturing will not take off without fully autonomous robots
because Americans don't want to work 18 hour days for pay that is
competitive with Asia, and labor laws make it difficult anyway.
tamimio wrote 23 hours 1 min ago:
This feels like tariff evasion tactics, I am not against it tho, I
think apple is handling it well.
j45 wrote 23 hours 3 min ago:
In addition to Mac Mini, hoping more Mac Studios are able to be built
including more regular updates.
Either of these devices (per watt of computing power) could become a
home appliance pretty easily.
seydor wrote 23 hours 12 min ago:
Good but they should be named 'Mac Donald' or Trump Mini or something
and it should be engraved with gold letters. And they are too small,
they should be huge
jimt1234 wrote 23 hours 14 min ago:
What's the over-under for Trump mentioning this in the State Of The
Union speech tonight? The timing of this release can't be a
coincidence.
whalesalad wrote 23 hours 21 min ago:
Has anyone seen this documentary?
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Factory
forinti wrote 21 hours 55 min ago:
Very interesting documentary. It really highlights the clash of
cultures.
yndoendo wrote 23 hours 29 min ago:
While shopping I look where items are produced and by whom company.
When I see an item is manufactured in Texas I put it back on the shelf
and keep walking. That State is too politically corrupt for me to
financially support, same with Florida.
yndoendo wrote 7 hours 11 min ago:
To the one that down voted ... I will continue to not fund the
corrupt state of Texas and Florida.
I will continue to not waste my money on states that reject simple
humanity ... such as rejecting the requirement for heat and water
breaks for outdoor workers ... and erosion of church and state.
[0] [1] [2] [3] [4] P.S. I have family that lives there and they tell
everyone not to move there. If they had the means to get out they
would. Unfortunately it is not just about economics it can also be
about divorced parents with shared custody that prevents this.
HTML [1]: https://www.fox13news.com/news/desantis-signs-bill-banning-f...
HTML [2]: https://apnews.com/article/paxton-indictment-texas-d5e57fc6c...
HTML [3]: https://www.texastribune.org/2025/11/26/texas-laws-effective...
HTML [4]: https://www.fox4news.com/news/texas-laws-now-effect-septembe...
platevoltage wrote 15 hours 37 min ago:
I do this when I buy things on Ebay. I'm not sending my money into
those states unless I absolutely have to.
prmoustache wrote 21 hours 14 min ago:
Also US manufacturing is synonymous with shitty quality and has been
for at least 5 decades.
yndoendo wrote 7 hours 5 min ago:
Some things are good some things are bad.
USA lacks proper regulation for operator safety in automation
environments. USA company can manufacturer machinery that is easily
capable to remove limbs and decapitate people.
EU regulations require safety be built into the machinery if it can
be. This means anything that is manufacture in the USA and
authorized for use in the EU is of better quality.
Most US companies don't care if one of their client employees is
physically harmed because they put up a warning sign.
tombert wrote 23 hours 26 min ago:
Don't most big tech companies have an office in Dallas or Austin? I
remember that the MS campus was huge when I lived in Dallas.
If "can't have been made in any capacity in Texas" is your criteria
that might be pretty difficult.
yndoendo wrote 7 hours 8 min ago:
I rarely buy from big tech companies and support them. I am a sunk
cost for Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon ... all companies you
have to pay me to engage with.
Example, rarely do I navigate to YouTube, I download the videos
before watching them. Or if not, and I am presented with
advertisement .. I say F' It, not watch, and move on with my life.
Computer components are a requirement and I limit my purchases as
much as possible.
SilverElfin wrote 23 hours 35 min ago:
[1] > Apple's work on a new Mac mini factory in Houston wasn't a
quickly-conceived plan to appease President Donald Trump. The reality
is that Apple had a plan ready to do this long before the demands
started.
HTML [1]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/02/24/apples-us-mac-mini-...
flumpcakes wrote 23 hours 36 min ago:
The woman in the pink smock-like clothing:
In the video there are Chinese characters on the clothing above the
front pocket area. In a picture of her later on in the news article the
Chinese writing is gone.
Has it been photoshopped out for the press release images?
heopd wrote 11 hours 37 min ago:
[1] --> here is a printscreen of the girl WITH foxconntech on the
work coat. Before and after:
HTML [1]: https://i.imgur.com/FRcXiSe.png
HTML [2]: https://i.imgur.com/TEmek6j.png
alt227 wrote 8 hours 31 min ago:
Cant view in Imgur due to international politics.
Can you chare to an image host that isnt quite so rebellious?
mhandley wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
I don't see her later on in the news article - just in the video.
Did Apple remove the picture after you pointed it out?
ollin wrote 18 hours 51 min ago:
The still photo (with å¯å£«åº·ç§æ photoshopped out) is the
second image of the "In Houston, workers assemble advanced AI
servers" photo carousel
HTML [1]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/2026/02/apple-accele...
chrsw wrote 20 hours 10 min ago:
That's wild that Apple, the ultimate tech image company, left that in
there considering this is whole thing is all lip service and PR
anyway, not a real change in the global manufacturing mix. Their
entire campaign lost all credibility for me in a matter of seconds.
I'm not even an Apple hater, I like my Apple products.
est wrote 20 hours 53 min ago:
It says å¯å£«åº·ç§æ, Foxconn Tech
karel-3d wrote 14 hours 3 min ago:
Foxconn is a Taiwanese company that assembles iPhones. It's
leadership used to be close to KMT that wants to be friends with
China.
Patrick_Devine wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
I noticed the same thing. I'm assuming they forgot to photoshop out
the chinese characters.
wdb wrote 23 hours 37 min ago:
Next, are European made Apple devices?
vsgherzi wrote 23 hours 40 min ago:
Is no one else interested in the "assemble advanced AI servers,
including logic boards produced onsite, which are then used in Apple
data centers in the U.S." in the pictures? Are they using nvidia GPUS?
Their own silicon? Is there any data out there on what these servers
are like? I don't think we've ever seen a picture of them before.
fckgw wrote 5 hours 23 min ago:
Apple announced their Private Cloud Compute nodes in 2024 and started
shipping them last October. [1]
HTML [1]: https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
HTML [2]: https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/servers/apples-houston...
doug_durham wrote 23 hours 18 min ago:
I believe it is the nodes for their private compute cloud for
inference. They have described these in the past. It's all Apple
chips.
luketaylor wrote 23 hours 29 min ago:
WSJ published a video yesterday with the first pictures of those
servers:
HTML [1]: https://twitter.com/yiningkarlli/status/2026176857541075274
jsheard wrote 22 hours 47 min ago:
It looks like they're cramming 32 Apple Silicon SOCs into each
server - they're on upright daughterboards attached to both sides
of the heatsinks. That's a lotta chips.
trvz wrote 15 hours 10 min ago:
If those are M3 Ultras thatâd make 1024 CPU cores per 2U
server.
512 with M4 Max is only a little above a dual Epyc with 192 cores
each though.
vsgherzi wrote 23 hours 14 min ago:
man what I would give for one of those servers
ijustlovemath wrote 23 hours 41 min ago:
Helene survivor here. What's wild to me is that, regardless of the
small scale of this facility, it's only a few hundred meters from a 1%
flood zone: [1] The address I found for the facility is 9101 Windmill
Park Lane Hudson, TX 77064
This seems ill advised given recent events like Hurricane Harvey
HTML [1]: https://msc.fema.gov/portal/search
bob1029 wrote 14 hours 2 min ago:
That specific location would probably never flood in the way that you
might think. The areas you really need to worry about are downstream
of the Addicks and Barker dams:
HTML [1]: https://www.swg.usace.army.mil/Missions/Dam-Safety-Program/A...
f33d5173 wrote 16 hours 49 min ago:
I don't know what the topography of houston is like, but here in
toronto, a few hundred meters would move you from the bottom of a
deep river valley to the top of it. I would imagine they made sure
they could get insurance before building and wouldn't have picked any
place with a significant risk.
bz_bz_bz wrote 14 hours 37 min ago:
The topography of Houston is that everywhere is a few hundred
meters from a flood zone. You are exactly right; the area did not
even come closer to flooding during Harvey and is a good 30ft
higher than the flood zone OP is referencing.
jccooper wrote 22 hours 22 min ago:
Industrial buildings are typically built at dock height. Even if they
don't do any grading, that would put the building well above any
plausible flooding in that area.
ijustlovemath wrote 20 hours 34 min ago:
My point is that we really don't know what "plausible" is anymore
with these storms. That much is clear in the data. It seems silly
to be so close to a flood zone with your very expensive DUV/EUV
machines. There are probably other places they could have placed
this facility.
_heimdall wrote 9 hours 27 min ago:
I don't think we can both consider FEMA's 1% flood risks and also
assume no longer know what plausible is with these storms.
ijustlovemath wrote 6 hours 45 min ago:
I think it's safe to assume given recent storms that the 1%
floodplains are _underestimating_ the risk
justsid wrote 19 hours 17 min ago:
They are not fabbing the chips there, just assembling the
machines.
ijustlovemath wrote 19 hours 1 min ago:
The price of the carried inventory is still significant; the
scale they mention reaching towards is thousands per day.
That's not including the backlog of components they would have
onsite to ensure production uptime.
justsid wrote 18 hours 42 min ago:
Absolutely, but they are not losing a billion+ in EUV
machines with year+ lead times in a flood. It'll hurt for
sure though and doesn't appear to be the smartest overall
move.
hinkley wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
It also turns out that for insurance purposes you are allowed to
use infill to get the corner of a property that's below the high
water mark above it. At least in some states.
Some of the calculus is not about if it will flood it's about if
you'll lose your investment if it floods. If an underwriter is
willing to cover it, you might go for it anyway.
boznz wrote 23 hours 25 min ago:
When it floods, they can hold their hands up and say "well we
tried".. then get back to business as usual in China
PlatoIsADisease wrote 22 hours 38 min ago:
Ask any AI, they say Apple has the best marketing of any company in
history.
All this tracks. Anyone else getting bombarded with WSJ youtube
videos about Apple manufacturing?
nozzlegear wrote 18 hours 6 min ago:
No, my YouTube recommendation algorithm just vacillates
erratically between recommending esoteric engineering clips from
15 years ago and trying to push me down an alt right reactionary
pipeline.
Dig1t wrote 23 hours 27 min ago:
They will build to a much higher standard than normal US residential
construction, as they do with most commercial buildings. Many people
do not understand the vast difference between residential
construction quality and the quality that mega corps get. I
personally watched Apple build their new campus in Austin (I have
daily progress pictures of the construction site, I work there),
everything is solid concrete. These buildings can withstand any type
of hurricane.
Flooding is also something which can be mitigated: build foundations
to be taller, work with the topography to avoid the path of water,
and build drainage solutions. You should see the drainage field that
Apple built for their campus in Austin, it's absolutely massive and
can divert an incredible amount of water.
Aurornis wrote 22 hours 42 min ago:
> Many people do not understand the vast difference between
residential construction quality and the quality that mega corps
get.
Itâs not limited to mega corps. Commercial construction is built
to a higher standard. Some times you can buy commercial grade
hardware and materials for your house if you want.
Larger buildings are also more robust at the foundation because it
needs to be so much stronger. That thick concrete is necessary, not
a luxury.
lysace wrote 23 hours 31 min ago:
That's a good sign it's not a serious long-term effort. Onshoring
cosplay?
hinkley wrote 21 hours 59 min ago:
The American flag hung on a wall they didn't even bother to paint
is a good sign it's not a serious long-term effort.
Steve Jobs would have fired someone over that obvious broken window
situation, and he'd have been (mostly) right to do so.
apercu wrote 23 hours 33 min ago:
Weirdly the first thing I thought was "Why Texas"?
mgh95 wrote 23 hours 28 min ago:
Likely a combination of business-friendly policies (low tax, no
employer payroll tax, etc.) and proximity to ports. Houston is the
6th [1] largest port in the USA.
HTML [1]: https://pangea-network.com/busiest-and-biggest-ports-in-th...
dmix wrote 22 hours 16 min ago:
Apple also managed to build a Houston factory quickly there, it
was announced in Feb 2025 and was starting production by August
which is pretty impressive.
HTML [1]: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/economy/articl...
ViscountPenguin wrote 23 hours 12 min ago:
Given that this is being done in large part to appease Trump the
fact that it's a red state surely has something to do with it
too.
apercu wrote 23 hours 17 min ago:
I agree with you on all of these except: low tax
I grew up in DFW.
My house in WI is assessed at a significantly higher value than
my siblings house in Ft Worth.
My 2025 property tax bill ~$5k, my 2025 state income tax - not
gonna publish it here but not all that significant.
Sibling in Texas property tax bill: ~$14k. Significantly higher
than my state income tax + property tax.
Also, I don't have to live in Texas.
jamescostian wrote 8 hours 8 min ago:
I think there's more to your sibling's taxes than property
taxes. The data tell the opposite story - WI property taxes are
higher than TX ones, at least if we look at the medians: [1] As
someone living in Fort Worth and making good money as a Staff
SWE, I got a tax refund this year. It was due to paying
interest on my house, but still.
I'd recommend asking your sibling see if they qualify for the
homestead exemption, it's significant. You or they can check if
they're using it and see their exact property taxes here:
HTML [1]: https://www.propertytax101.org/propertytaxbystate
HTML [2]: https://www.tax.tarrantcountytx.gov/search
Kirby64 wrote 4 hours 26 min ago:
Texas property tax rates are some of the highest in the
country. Should be higher than Wisconsin.
The difference here is really more of an indicator of
property values in the respective areas. In major metros in
Texas, you're looking at ~2%+ tax rates, which is infact
higher than Wisconsin, even in the metros there.
> As someone living in Fort Worth and making good money as a
Staff SWE, I got a tax refund this year. It was due to paying
interest on my house, but still.
If you paid more in property taxes, that would indicate you
can take a larger federal tax deduction... so, if anything, a
tax refund implies you paid a lot in local property tax.
Either that, or a boatload in interest (or, both). Neither is
indicative of local property tax being low.
AdamN wrote 11 hours 15 min ago:
Oh ... they don't care about the taxes their workers are paying
:-)
Apple probably got a nice little abatement for 20 years so
they're doing ok.
cloverich wrote 22 hours 29 min ago:
I moved from TX to west coast a few years back. Property taxes
down, all other taxes and expenses up; total cost of living
much higher now. It's also business friendly enough to make
deals on taxes as needed, I can't imagine that will be a
problem. I get the hate on TX but tbh outside of the heat, it
can be a pretty great place to live across many dimensions.
google234123 wrote 22 hours 54 min ago:
Isn't this something where there is clear and easy to obtain
aggregate data. What is the average tax burden for someone in
Wi vs Tx instead of comparing a single data point from each? I
have a feeling it's going to contradict you
adamgordonbell wrote 23 hours 44 min ago:
Apple is very tied to Chinese manufacturing in a way that is hard to
replicate in US.
They will agree to make some high margin simple to assemble thing in
the US to appease government, but if it goes as well as last time, they
will stop as soon as they can.
In china they were often able to iterate on designs and have custom
screws and other parts made and ramped up in very short times.
Something about having the whole supply chain in one place and very
motivated and it all fell apart when tried to move to US.
So things that took weeks became hard on anytime line.. per Apple in
China book.
lenerdenator wrote 6 hours 5 min ago:
At a certain point, if you want the people of your own country to
have any sort of loyalty or deference for you, then you'll need to
have loyalty or deference for them.
"But it's cheaper in our main geopolitical rival" doesn't quite wear
like it used to.
midnitewarrior wrote 7 hours 2 min ago:
The manufacturing facility they are committing to is 8-12x the size
of the average American home at 20,000 sq. feet.
This is a token operation meant to project the idea that
manufacturing is coming back to the United States. This is
appeasement by Tim Apple.
brightball wrote 7 hours 3 min ago:
Yep. Stories like that are the strongest case to protect US on shore
manufacturing. All of the knowledge, skill talent and associated
supply chains naturally colocate.
tedd4u wrote 7 hours 37 min ago:
'Q:What does China's competitive edge look like in practice?'
'A: One example from The Times article: When Jobs decided just a
month
before the iPhone hit markets to replace a scratch-prone plastic
screen
with a glass one, a Foxconn factory in China woke up about 8,000
workers
when the glass screens arrived at midnight, and the workers were
assembling 10,000 iPhones a day within 96 hours.
'Another example: Apple had originally estimated that it would
take nine
months to hire the 8,700 qualified industrial engineers needed to
oversee
production of the iPhone; in China, it took 15 days. Anecdotes
like that
leave you "feeling almost impressed by the no-holds-barred
capabilities
of these manufacturing plants," says Edward Moyer at CNET News,
"impressed and queasy at the same time."'
From:
HTML [1]: https://theweek.com/articles/478705/why-apple-builds-iphones...
api wrote 6 hours 17 min ago:
A popular misconception is that manufacturing is done in China
because itâs cheaper. That hasnât been true for a while. There
are cheaper places, many of them. China is now simply the best, at
least when it comes to electronics and adjacent stuff.
tuna74 wrote 4 hours 59 min ago:
A lot of things are much more efficient in China as well. Compare
the cost in time and money for travel between Beijing to Shanghai
vs New York to Chicago for example.
lenerdenator wrote 6 hours 4 min ago:
Best == cheaper. Could you do it in the US? Probably. But it'd
take longer and you'd have to pay more money.
quentindanjou wrote 5 hours 40 min ago:
This is not true.
There is now a skill gap. There are countless examples that it
isn't about being cheaper. The organisation and optimization of
the workforce and infrastructure isn't something we can ignore.
The choice of China isn't because it is cheaper, a lot of
high-end and even luxury products are produced in China because
they can ensure a high-quality manufacturing.
There are other places, as the comment above mentioned, that
can produce for cheaper.
lenerdenator wrote 3 hours 15 min ago:
Of course it's true.
The US could do the exact same. Many high-quality,
sophisticated goods are made in the US.
It's just cheaper to do in China because the salaries are
lower and the costs of establishing more efficient business
infrastructure are lower.
And since these companies care more about cost than anything,
they choose China.
unbalancedevh wrote 2 hours 35 min ago:
I think it was "Smarter Every Day," but there's a YouTube
channel where the guy went all-out in trying to design,
source, and manufacture a simple grill scrubber 100% in the
US, and failed. He got the product finished and on the
market, but it was literally impossible to do it with 100%
American content. IIRC, part of the problem was suppliers
that lied about their sourcing, but that still represents
the complete lack of availability of US sources.
Almondsetat wrote 6 hours 0 min ago:
The US literally doesn't have the people to do this.
_DeadFred_ wrote 4 hours 58 min ago:
China didn't either, until it did. US business isn't willing
to build up the workforce to do this but we definitely have
the people.
kube-system wrote 4 hours 12 min ago:
The US used to have a more built out industrial base but
since those days a lot of things have changed,
structurally, economically, culturally, and in their
regulatory environment. The people who would have been
doing this work are doing cushy service industry jobs
today.
_DeadFred_ wrote 3 hours 31 min ago:
Huh? The people who would have been doing this are doing
shitty HVAC jobs (but still getting to be a bit
creative). Are doing shitty welding jobs. Are doing
HEAVILY underemployed service industry jobs they hate.
Etc, etc. None of the people I know with a mind for
making/tinkering/refining processes are working service
industry jobs happily.
People didn't culturally decide they don't want these
sorts of jobs, business did, because short term monetary
benefit. The other stuff may have come along after but
could easily be reversed. But currently there is no need
to reverse because US business only cares about short
term monetary gain.
All this talk like this is some huge systemic thing is
BS. If there were jobs, it would all happen. Just like it
did in China.
kube-system wrote 2 hours 43 min ago:
This goes far beyond skilled labor. But I'll start
with that point. The US already has a huge shortage of
skilled labor, and it's not like we would ever take
people from the HVAC industry and put them in a
factory. People in the US are gonna still want air
conditioning. Culturally, the US absolutely pushes
young people to aim for white collar service industry
jobs.
Second, it takes a huge amount of engineering talent to
do what China is doing as well. In the US, a lot of
engineering talent has been attracted to software (or
other service industry jobs), where there's a lot of
money to be made, and you can sit on your ass and argue
on an orange-colored website all day. I prefer that to
wearing a hardhat and waking up at 6 AM to go to a
factory.
Third, China concentrates a lot of this talent into
dense cities, and people make a lot of sacrifices to
live there. You're definitely not gonna convince an
HVAC guy to leave his suburban home and sell his pickup
truck to go live in a dormitory in a dense city and
ride a scooter. In China, there's plenty of people
that are itching to leave the countryside for the city,
leave their families, and search for a better life. In
the US, people that live outside of cities, generally
want to live there, and aren't interested in
relocating. Most developed nations feed this need for
skilled labor by importing labor from countries where
people have a strong desire to better themselves but
don't have a cultural expectation of a backyard and a
white picket fence. But the US has had a fucked up
immigration system for a long time now.
Fourth, China pulls out all of the roadblocks in order
to facilitate the growth of their industrial base.
They don't need to go through 10 years of planning to
build something, they don't need to argue with a local
zoning board, and if they want to build something they
don't wait for the free market to decide to do it. If
they want to support an industry, they just do it.
Single-party unitary governments are efficient as fuck.
Of course, this comes with many drawbacks, which
politically are just not viable in the US.
_DeadFred_ wrote 1 hour 47 min ago:
Edit: I grant I could be old and outdated. But having
seen cycles. Having seen Japan go up and down. Having
seen offshoring first go to Mexico then easily
transition to China, I just don't see any black and
white here.
1. The HVAC guys would definitely fill the the quick
turnaround, small shops that surround the
manufacturing industry in China if that was an
option.
Culturally doesn't matter. The majority of young men
I know are underemployed and hate the service
industry, but would be a fit for having their own
adjacent business like that ones in China that get so
hyped as enabling their dynamics. I think you are
very focused on the crowd you know. The young people
I know are so itching to create they have 3d
printers, or make fishing flies, or make their own
clothes.
2. Sounds great, if you live in the bay area or other
tech scenes. I no longer do. I left tech to work
(albeit tech) in a factory. For the majority of
people I know, what you lay out it isn't an option or
on the table. They are under-employed in brain dead
service jobs they hate, and that do not provide them
a future. They would jump on building up the adjacent
small businesses that China's manufacturing depends
on and that people here hype as 'wow, you can find a
shop that does XYZ'. The stuff people say 'we just
don't have in the USA'.
3. Small town America was factories since forever. I
don't think China's way is the only way. We have a
very good transportation system whereas when China
established it's manufacturing it didn't. I think
your view is myopic here and clouded with 'the China
way'.
4. Again, the 80% of America you seem to ignore,
pulls out all the stops for shitty ass 50 employee
employers to build. You seem to be focused on a very
small part of the US.
Nothing you say is a limiter IF the jobs are there.
American companies pulling the jobs killed American
dynancism, not any of the things you list. If it's
TRULY no longer about cost, we could EASILY do it
again. The people I met in China weren't better than
the average American. They were great, and I think
very highly of China. But the advantage I saw were
wages, and people from the countryside willing to put
up with a lot, but I don't think they will put up
with as much long term (and I hope they don't have
to, again the people I met are all great people and I
hope the best for all of us). And a side of
environmental pollution (I know 2 guys that moved
their factories to China purely because of savings by
not having to be environmentally friendly. So many
that falls under your regulation, but that isn't a
long term solution/state for China and that was a
decade ago, maybe things are changed for the better
already).
kube-system wrote 51 min ago:
I don't think you realize the difference to which
cultural expectations of the workers are different.
Yeah, people "hate" their service industry jobs
here, but you can get a job in Iowa wrangling
spreadsheets making $50,000 a year, grab coffee
from the office coffee pot, sit in air-conditioning
all day, then you clock out at 5 PM and drive your
truck home to your house in the suburbs with a yard
and a white picket fence. Nobody wants to make
that same money or less working on a hot factory
floor with a clipboard on a 996 shift and live next
to a factory belching smoke. But in China, you can
find people who will do that, and they'll wake up
at 3 AM to work on an urgent customer request. And
collaborate with all the factories down the road,
and have a prototype out by 8 AM. In the US
you're not gonna get somebody to respond to your
email before 10:30.
> 80% of America you seem to ignore, pulls out all
the stops for shitty ass 50 employee employers to
build. You seem to be focused on a very small part
of the US.
It's easy to get politicians to give out some tax
breaks for a reelection campaign. It seems to be
damn near impossible to actually get anything done
that actually matters. We frequently spend
billions of dollars to support manufacturing
investment and have nothing to show for it.
Just look at Foxconn in Wisconsin, as an example.
Over $1 billion and half a decade and still
nothing. China could've had a whole city built.
We were just trying to get 13,000 factory jobs, but
we couldn't even manage that.
lenerdenator wrote 5 hours 51 min ago:
Yes and no.
The US is still an economy with the ability to tackle very
complex tasks with its industrial base. Up until fairly
recently, it was a major destination for people seeking
higher education and work in specialized fields in STEM,
which is necessary for the execution of the projects that
companies like Apple want to do.
The problem is that we now have an anti-immigration
administration, and are home to a number of multinational
companies - Apple's a great example - that feel that their
one and only obligation is to create value for shareholders.
They don't want to throw the money needed at American
engineer salaries, because money paid to the American
engineer is money not paid to a shareholder.
We can possibly deal with the administration. The US isn't
the only country in the world with a nativist movement; China
does it with non-Han peoples within its borders. The real
hangup is making a bunch of Americans with capital feel some
sort of loyalty towards their own country and its workers.
slaw wrote 3 hours 36 min ago:
No and no.
US companies started offshoring in 2022. There are no new
STEM jobs since than.
lenerdenator wrote 3 hours 18 min ago:
> US companies started offshoring in 2022. There are no
new STEM jobs since then.
"The real hangup is making a bunch of Americans with
capital feel some sort of loyalty towards their own
country and its workers."
midnighthollowc wrote 7 hours 28 min ago:
That's pretty amazing, honestly.
Here I can't even get a tradesperson to give me a quote, much less
show up on a dime. I guess I need another eight billion dollars,
give or take a penny
MisterTea wrote 5 hours 23 min ago:
> a Foxconn factory in China woke up about 8,000 workers when the
glass screens arrived at midnight
Yea must be really amazing living a crowded factory dorm room
with suicide safety nets under the windows only to be abruptly
woken up because some schmuck in California demands his precious
phones be assembled. Must be a wonderful gig.
kakacik wrote 6 hours 15 min ago:
Project this a decade or two into future and I honestly don't
have a solution for the west but a gradual decline into
mediocrity. We have less corruption and communicate directly also
about problems, so at least that will work for us for some time
too.
But maybe China and similar places will elevate their overall
prosperity enough that people will refuse to be treated like this
en masse, so there is some hope.
chrisweekly wrote 4 hours 14 min ago:
less corruption?
maybe time to check your priors
dyauspitr wrote 5 hours 22 min ago:
I think all these factory manufacturing labor problems will be
a thing of the past soon. The way robots are improving in China
and the US, they will probably end up being an equalizer. It
might become just as cheap to produce goods in either country
at that point.
audunw wrote 5 hours 37 min ago:
These anecdotes come from the very peak of Chinas demographic
dividend. In a decade or two their demographic dividend will be
in a steep decline.
China also needs to change something drastic to avoid brain
drain. The migration of competent people is still one-way.
There no path to become a Chinese citizen. China has come a
long way, but Europe is still ahead on building liveable
communities and wok/life balance, while the US is still
attractive to those seeking freedom and prosperity. China has
avoided issues due to a huge population and that demographic
dividend. But eventually itâll become an issue
GenerWork wrote 5 hours 31 min ago:
>China also needs to change something drastic to avoid brain
drain.
Why does this matter? I hear this a lot but at the same time
I look at what's coming out of China, especially in the AI
space, and it's clear that brain drain isn't really hampering
them.
_DeadFred_ wrote 4 hours 59 min ago:
It's almost as if you don't need the absolute best and
brightest. Heck we used to get by retraining people from
other industries to be programmers. I know companies
absolutely can't do that now nor be expected to help grow
their workers and can only work with exact match H1Bs, but
it used to be a societal expectation of companies.
Neil44 wrote 9 hours 30 min ago:
A bit like the automotive CKD kits, to comply with trade rules in the
most efficient way possible.
leokennis wrote 13 hours 33 min ago:
> They will agree to make some high margin simple to assemble thing
in the US to appease government
I chuckled out loud at the
huge-ass-safety-hazard-in-any-manufacturing-environment US flag thumb
tacked to the factory wall. It's all wafer thin gold leaf to appease
the toddler in command.
HTML [1]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/2026/02/apple-accelera...
burningChrome wrote 16 hours 16 min ago:
>> Something about having the whole supply chain in one place and
very motivated.
This is the legacy of Tim Cook before Jobs passed. He was the guy who
put immense pressure on Chinese factories to deliver on the insane
quotas and timeframes he forced on them. He essentially blackmailed
companies in order for them to his bidding - threatening to go to
competitors if they didn't deliver exactly what he wanted.
The stuff Apple got away with in China could never be repeated here.
I mean, you think you can regularly push so many workers to commit
suicide, you have to put nets around the buildings in order to
dissuade them from jumping off buildings? Yeah, not happening here.
Which is why Apple does business there. Its why Tim Cook was able to
abuse Chinese labor laws to get them to deliver the impossible, time
and again, regardless of the human cost.
ribosometronome wrote 16 hours 2 min ago:
Not happening here? Foxconn's per capita rate during the peak of
their suicide cluster was like 1.4-1.8 per 100k, America as a whole
averages closer to 12-15 per 100k.
embedding-shape wrote 10 hours 49 min ago:
So America the country is more likely to lead people to suicide
than Foxconn the company? I'm not sure that's making the point
you wanted it to make.
bbshfishe wrote 17 hours 16 min ago:
Chinese manufacturing? Itâs not made in China. Itâs assembled.
vablings wrote 17 hours 30 min ago:
The Mac Pro is already made in the USA and has been for a long long
time, at this same facility the apple server is also made.
asimovDev wrote 11 hours 36 min ago:
to be fair it's not clear if Mac Pro will continue to exist, it's
been in a limbo for a while. When I saw this post on the front page
my first thought was "oh, this is how they solve the 'We need to
have a product assembled in the US but we only have Mac Pro that we
do not want anymore'"
yalogin wrote 18 hours 10 min ago:
They did and stopped previously? Interesting, can you please give
more details?
typ wrote 19 hours 54 min ago:
American business leaders have (had?) an obsession with gross margin
and tech "advancedness." They thought they would be the winner as
long as they occupied the high-tech sectors in the supply chain. So
they discarded the high-volume, low-margin, low-growth, low-tech
businesses like assembly lines and outsourced them. But the reality
is that the proximity of the assembly lines creates a cost advantage
that attracts more upstream suppliers to surround it. Even Intel was
seeking to build more fabs in China before being stopped by the US
government.
chrsw wrote 20 hours 13 min ago:
Well put. I tried to explain this to someone years ago after they
asked a question like "why don't they just build a factory here?". I
was like "you need more than _a_ factory, you need a whole ecosystem
of manufacturing". I guess I didn't make my argument clear enough
based on their response.
I think the USA has been very clear based on our actions over the
past 4 or so decades: we don't want this kind of labor in this
country. I don't see any material changes despite the recent puff
pieces and political grandstanding.
msabalau wrote 19 hours 53 min ago:
It is really unclear why you think that either the political
interest or strategic logic of not wanting to rely on manufacturing
in China, and having some on the value being created here goes
away, or is some idle whim.
Sure, if it took decades of slow patient effort to create the
current situation, it might take decades to unwind it. And, sure,
the US political system is exceptionally bad at industrial policy.
But, at the end of the day, the political and military logic is,
and will be for the forseeable future, get your supply chains out
of China. Just because it is slow and difficult doesn't there is
any reason to believe the pressure will relax. (Putting aside the
possibility of an AGI/robotics revolution)
bmurphy1976 wrote 20 hours 55 min ago:
The term for China's manufacturing advantage is agglomeration. The US
is never going to be successful with these manufacturing initiatives
until the US government gets its act together and starts rebuilding
all the infrastructure that has been destroyed over the last 50
years. That requires more than just tariffs. It requires actual
investment. Investment in infrastructure, people education, power,
everything. It's actually why silicon valley is so successful because
it is an agglomeration of the tech industry. We need the same for
manufacturing if we ever expect to do it again.
shiroiuma wrote 16 hours 39 min ago:
>Investment in infrastructure, people education, power, everything.
This isn't going to happen. The US government these days does not
care about investment in things like infrastructure or education.
vondur wrote 21 hours 48 min ago:
I doubt the MacMini is a high margin product for Apple. I'd agree
it's probably one of the more simpler items to build in their product
line.
yreg wrote 21 hours 34 min ago:
Yeah not high margin but rather low volume.
pbreit wrote 22 hours 13 min ago:
I think this could stick. The supply chain competence needs to get
built in the USA.
WillAdams wrote 21 hours 9 min ago:
Didn't work out well when Malco tried to keep Vice Grip production
here in the States:
HTML [1]: https://toolguyd.com/malco-eagle-grip-locking-pliers-final...
827a wrote 22 hours 29 min ago:
And, to be clear about one thing (which I believe is also raised in
the book): Much of this is the direct result of Apple investing
literally a quarter trillion dollars and exporting critical western
IP toward developing Chinese advanced manufacturing capability (among
other American technology companies). The story of startups only
being able to manufacture in China is a cute tale that is true for
startups. For Apple, investing in the strategic capabilities of
America's geopolitical rivals was an active decision Tim Cook and
other Apple leaders made.
tw1984 wrote 15 hours 10 min ago:
> Much of this is the direct result of Apple investing literally a
quarter trillion dollars and exporting critical western IP toward
developing Chinese advanced manufacturing capability (among other
American technology companies).
Really love your 1990s style western centric view.
Care to explain how fancy western IP is not leading in more and
more techs fields, e.g. drones, EVs, renewable energy, robotics,
fighter jets etc.? because western companies invested in China and
gifted fancy western IPs they don't even have to China?
827a wrote 2 hours 14 min ago:
Its a 2020s western-centric view, because the world is
western-centric (though, from your viewpoint in the CCP
propaganda farm, I can understand why you'd feel differently).
Everything China has was taken from the West, either by theft,
the soulless disregard of western business leaders, or by sending
their children here for education (if they decide they even want
to return; many hate to go back, and we welcome them!)
alt227 wrote 7 hours 59 min ago:
All of those things you mentioned start small and build locally.
As soon as they become big enough to want to manufacture and sell
internationally, the only option is to move the production line
to Asia. Unless somebody big like Apple invests in manufacturing
plants and supply chains in western countries, Asia will still
have all the investment and factories and this will never change.
WillAdams wrote 21 hours 11 min ago:
A big change from Steve Jobs' dream of a California factory where
sand and other raw materials came in one end, and finished
computers went out the other --- the NeXT factory was an excellent
exemplar of early automation (greatly assisted by Canon, an early
investor).
kccqzy wrote 22 hours 17 min ago:
A company like Apple has very little incentive to care about
geopolitics, other than by current or future government laws and
regulations (a government mandate, tariffs, etc). In the absence of
government intervention, Apple has determined that investing a
quarter trillion dollars is the cheap choice; getting the same
result in the United States would probably need much much more than
a quarter trillion dollars worth of investment. If the United
States thought that such investments by Apple would have
undesirable geopolitical implications, Congress should have acted a
long time ago.
Braxton1980 wrote 20 hours 19 min ago:
> Acompany like Apple has very little incentive to care about
geopolitics, other than by current or future government laws and
regulations (a government mandate, tariffs, etc).
Isn't that massive? You make it seem like it's not important but
look at Trump's tariffs that are connected to geopolitics. The
US's relation with China could worsen to a point where certain
imports are banned.
edgyquant wrote 8 hours 36 min ago:
The alternative is to do nothing. That you are worried at all
is proof we have to take measures to ensure we arenât
dependent on adversaries.
peyton wrote 21 hours 48 min ago:
Dell ate Compaqâs lunch with a BTO model. Itâs pretty clear
Tim Cook decided to put the factories out of reach after that
experience. Putting the supply chain close to major customer
markets is cheapest but invites competition.
827a wrote 22 hours 5 min ago:
Your learned helplessness is defeatist and boring. We need not be
Moloch's subjects; Apple's business priorities are not the result
of some natural and unstoppable force, and their leadership is
not exempt from responsibility because of your belief that it is.
Someone, sometime, in a surprisingly boring room, wearing a
surprisingly boring suit, made decisions like those which opened
a factory in China instead of Texas.
montagg wrote 20 hours 35 min ago:
Texas would need to train its people. And the people would need
to be as hungry as the Chinese were, and are to a certain
extent. You should read the book the OT is talking about, it
shows how the U.S. didnât stand a chance in manufacturing,
even going back to the 80s. Literally just not getting back to
potential clients for two weeks and saying X or Y canât be
done, while Southeast Asian companies were jumping at the
chance to build stuff.
Thereâs a giant cultural shift that needs to happen in the
U.S. to get that backânot sacrificing labor laws, like China
does, but the same idea that X or Y CAN be done, and actually
jumping at the chance to build stuff instead of feeling
entitled to it.
We do have agency, but the agency actually starts in the U.S.,
in education and culture, and not with a company like Apple.
copper4eva wrote 6 hours 39 min ago:
I think US regulation is a huge part of what you're talking
about though. In the US it is a literally pain to do anything
new. I work at a chemical plant, and it took years (I'm not
exaggerating, it was something like 2-3 years) to get all the
permits to build a new unit. Because of how slow the city is.
So when you talk about how Asian companies were quicker to
jump on new things, that's exactly what I think of. I haven't
worked in Asia, but I imagine their government is not holding
them back with red tape even a tenth as much.
selimthegrim wrote 19 hours 38 min ago:
See my comment up thread ( [1] ) about Tillman Fertitta.
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47146484
shimman wrote 20 hours 17 min ago:
All these things sound like great reasons to force Apple,
along with the rest of big tech, to pay to better our society
in the form of taxes.
fragmede wrote 16 hours 9 min ago:
It doesn't seem like money is the only issue. Infinity
dollars won't help if the culture is radioactively toxic
and shitty. (Arguably if you had infinity dollars you could
spend it on therapists and counselors to fix the culture.)
palmotea wrote 14 hours 53 min ago:
> Infinity dollars won't help if the culture is
radioactively toxic and shitty.
And what's "radioactively toxic and shitty"? Not wanting
to slave away for low wages in bad working conditions?
Business apologists like to slander American workers, and
it's tiring. Most of the "radioactively toxic and shitty"
culture is management culture.
fragmede wrote 14 hours 46 min ago:
As mentioned upthread, if you go to an American machine
shop, they'll take two weeks to get back to you, and
generally be a PITA to work with, vs China's jumping at
the chance to build stuff.
HTML [1]: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTjEVB5p2/
palmotea wrote 14 hours 43 min ago:
> As mentioned upthread, if you go to an American
machine shop, they'll take two weeks to get back to
you, and generally be a PITA to work with, vs China's
jumping at the chance to build stuff.
Probably because the Chinese are working 996. I know
people who work 996, in China, and they dislike it as
much as I would.
That's "jumping at the chance."
fragmede wrote 13 hours 52 min ago:
You don't have to work 996 to have an attitude of
let's help the customer take their product to
market. The American machine shop will laugh at you
for not being a machinist, and tell you oh we don't
do powder coating, we don't make cardboard boxes or
styrofoam inserts. So then you, as the customer
trying to get a product to market gotta run around
town figuring it all out.
Meanwhile, you start talking to the Chinese machine
shop guy, and he's all yeah my brother's does
powder coating, his uncle does cardboard boxes and
styrofoam inserts are another relative. The
American attitude could go that and not work 996,
but that's why it's not just about the money.
Loughla wrote 8 hours 7 min ago:
So your argument is that because machine shops
don't do the leg work for you in finding
suppliers for the things you need, they're worse?
palmotea wrote 8 hours 12 min ago:
So basically you're blaming American workers for
an attitude problem, when the real issue is, due
to offshoring, the supply chain either doesn't
exist here or isn't so centralized/expansive
enough that someone has random relatives in
related manufacturing businesses they're
motivated to send work to?
So basically, you're being unfair.
And, from personal experience, while it's not
exactly the same, when I've worked with American
tradesmen, they've always had someone they could
refer me to for related work.
shimman wrote 7 hours 36 min ago:
These people will never stop to think that they
are the problem in society, society has been
molded in their neoliberal image where everyone
is a savvy consumer and worker. We have 40
years of living in such a society and income
inequality is worse than the gilded age, life
expectancy is regressing, and children are
doing worse in school; people don't even have
the time to enjoy themselves and are forced to
consume to be part of culture. Why we took all
this for granted because a couple of MBA
fuckups thought they knew better than the rest
of us, I'll never know. Well actually I do
know, because they were so greedy they wanted
to make slightly more money rather than provide
Americans good jobs.
It's disgusting on so many levels.
kccqzy wrote 21 hours 52 min ago:
I do not have learned helplessness. Nor have I claimed
Appleâs business practices are the result of a natural force.
Nothing is natural here. I said that Congress could have acted.
Is Congress part of the nature now?
In contrast you have provided no arguments for why Appleâs
leadership bears responsibility rather than Congress.
ryandrake wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
> Something about having the whole supply chain in one place
I can't find the source but I thought I read somewhere that the major
manufacturing cities in China are all geographically laid out like
giant assembly lines. The companies that process the raw materials
are located mostly inland, then the companies that form those raw
materials into metal and plastic stock are next door, and then the
companies that take that stock and make components are next door to
them, and the companies that input those components and output
subassemblies are next door to them, and so on all the way down to
the harbor where the companies that produce finished products output
directly onto the loading docks where the ships await.
The US can't even zone a residential neighborhood without lawyers and
special interests jamming things up for decades through endless
impact studies and litigation. How is it going to compete with a
country that can lay out entire cities, organizing the value chain
geographically towards the ocean?
coldtea wrote 13 hours 14 min ago:
>I can't find the source but I thought I read somewhere that the
major manufacturing cities in China are all geographically laid out
like giant assembly lines
There was a great article from like 20 years ago - it quoted Jobs
too on that. I remember Forbes or something like that, maybe this
"âHow the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Workâ â The New York Times
(Jan 21, 2012)" (cant open it now)
brudgers wrote 14 hours 49 min ago:
The US can't even zone a residential neighborhood without lawyers
and special interests jamming things up for decades through endless
impact studies and litigation.
Famously, Houston has no zoning.
ThePowerOfFuet wrote 14 hours 8 min ago:
The downside is that then nothing prevents a fireworks factory,
or tannery, or whatever, right in the middle of a residential
area.
Or, as they say everything is bigger in Texas, why not think
big... an oil refinery!
mr_toad wrote 12 hours 37 min ago:
A bit of quick searching reveals that Houston does have many
building regulations, for example restrictions of hazardous
enterprises. Itâs just that the regulations arenât quite
as black and white as zoning laws.
HTML [1]: https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/houston-doesnt-have-...
bluedino wrote 17 hours 31 min ago:
It's like they mastered Sim City and applied it to real life
fredley wrote 11 hours 16 min ago:
It's like the mastered Factorio and applied it to real life.
selimthegrim wrote 19 hours 40 min ago:
You know, I think the bigger issue is Tillman Fertitta scuttling
the other UT research campus they wanted to set up in Houston
because it would screw up his status as chairman of the University
of Houston board or something. I guess Houstonâs gonna have to
make do with these tech jobs.
mschuster91 wrote 19 hours 53 min ago:
> I can't find the source but I thought I read somewhere that the
major manufacturing cities in China are all geographically laid out
like giant assembly lines.
... like Factorio, just in real life.
> The US can't even zone a residential neighborhood without lawyers
and special interests jamming things up for decades through endless
impact studies and litigation.
A lot of that is to prevent our cities from looking like China did
before they haphazardly cleaned up shop before the Olympic Games.
Remember all the smog alerts? Athletes being afraid the smog and
pollution would impact their performance?
> How is it going to compete with a country that can lay out entire
cities, organizing the value chain geographically towards the
ocean?
There's a tool for that, it's called tariffs - basically, make it
uncompetitive for manufacturing moving off to a country that
systematically undercuts pricing even at the cost of its
environment.
Unfortunately, the current administration doesn't even have the
concepts of a plan on what they want to achieve with tariffs. It's
mind boggling to watch.
thrdbndndn wrote 20 hours 31 min ago:
Sorry, but this sounds more like a myth, or at least heavily
exaggerated. Similar to how Japan often gets romanticized.
Organizing the entire chain geographically at the scale you
described (inter-city) doesn't bring huge cost advantages by
itself. In China labor has historically been cheap, so the
transport cost between regions was never the dominant factor
anyway.
Most industrial clusters in China formed organically over time just
like the rest of the world. Aside from some exceptions like mining,
there isn't some master plan laying out entire cities as linear
supply chains to the ocean It's not SimCity.
One thing you're right about is that there is less bureaucratic
friction or 'lawyers' in the way when it comes to economic
development. For the former, it's because economic growth is THE
metric for the government, especially at the local level, so they
do whatever it takes to make it happen. For the latter, it's
because⦠well, in China no one sues the government, period. I'm
not sure it's a good thing.
Disclaimer: I'm Chinese living in China.
maxglute wrote 6 hours 23 min ago:
Strategic industries, i.e. 5 year plan ones, local gov will
absolutely master plan to excruciating detail for complete
industrial chain. Less strategic industries local gov will get a
few anchor industries to root and rest is organic. Intercity
proximity also brought huge advantages in terms of transportation
speed, especially in 90s-00s. The other consideration is scale, a
bumfuck tier3 chinese city specialize in xyz will have millions
of people which naturally enables greater levels/depths of
industrial agglomeration, which is what makes PRC exceptional.
Think old Detroit motocity hub that dominated 90% of US car
production. PRC has 100s of said cities for different industries.
It's not myth/exaggeration that consequence of PRC scale,
historically exceptional/aberration tier industrial clusters in
other countries, PRC has 100s of, as baseline template.
dubcanada wrote 8 hours 12 min ago:
As a Chinese living in China, you must know the layout of the
city does provide logical sense. I've only been once, and I buy
stuff from factories fairly often. When I went there I basically
went to a mall district where all the furniture was sold, then I
went to the tile district to review tiles, I went to several
other "districts" that where nothing but that single item.
I went to the window factory, which was directly beside more
window factories, and directly beside that was the place that
extruded aluminum for use. The aluminum they used was produced a
up the road in what they called the metal district.
You are even saying that "industrial clusters in China" so there
is clearly some amount of planning involved. There is obviously
benefits to having all of the aluminum factories beside a
aluminum producer, and having the shipping/packaging warehouses
by the docks, etc.
There is some amount of government work at play here, either on a
small scale or a larger scale to provide a reason for places to
all setup.
I've also seen things that just are not possible in North
America. Asked for samples of aluminum extrusions and had the die
made and extrusion done in a day. Locally it would take months
before a sample is at my door.
I've sent designs for quotes and get quotes in hours, half the
time factory in NA doesn't even reply. And even when it does it's
more of a "go away" then anything else.
I've seen live video of robotic factories building entire
cabinets for housing.
There is some amount of rose coloured glasses in this thread. But
we cannot deny that China wants business and can get stuff done
fast and efficiently. That cannot be said for modern day
factories in US or Canada. The work ethic and desire for business
are just completely different.
copper4eva wrote 6 hours 50 min ago:
You seem to assume that just because similar industries exist
near each other in China, that it must have been government
intervention. Which maybe it was, I don't know. But this same
trend exists in the USA too.
You have areas with lots of Oil Refineries, Houston and Baton
Rouge for example. You have areas with lots of steel mills,
like in North West Indiana. These are examples I personally
know of. Obviously a lot of big tech factories exist close to
each other in Silicon Valley and in Austin Texas too.
There are "industrial clusters" in America too, simply put. It
is natural for large chemical plants or industrial sites to
build up near where their source is. Hence all the oil
refineries around the gulf. This is not a uniquely China thing
at all. Lots of major US cities are known for specific types of
industries.
Braxton1980 wrote 20 hours 25 min ago:
Is the labor cheap in China or are you comparing it US salaries?
Can a person working in a Chinese tech factory for a major US
company afford a reasonable place to live a reasonable distance,
food, some entertainment, and have savings?
thrdbndndn wrote 20 hours 16 min ago:
I'm not comparing it to US anything, I'm comparing it to other
cost components like raw materials and parts, whose prices are
often global.
The point is that transportation within China isn't a dominant
factor in industrial cost or efficiency. So the idea that major
manufacturing cities are laid out like giant assembly lines
isn't nearly as important as OP suggests.
China still has many advantages over the US in manufacturing. I
just don't think this is a major one, even if there's a grain
of truth to it.
ProAm wrote 20 hours 40 min ago:
Apple as a company that does not pay taxes should at least invest
in the country they are located in. *Designed in Cupertino, Taxes
paid no where, profit leveraged in the US
nerdsniper wrote 21 hours 14 min ago:
So, thereâs a decent amount of electronics manufacturing in Anhui
Province which is pretty far from the well-known hub of Shenzhen.
Anhui is generally more known for their mining industry.
So, to your query, maybe somewhat? But not strictly.
fuzzfactor wrote 21 hours 27 min ago:
In Houston there is no zoning.
energy123 wrote 19 hours 10 min ago:
It's a network effect though, if 80% have zoning then you may as
well be a tiny island country.
The other issue is minimum wage and workers rights. It should be
possible to have Chinese workers making widgets on US soil
instead of Chinese soil, for $0.5/hr more than they can make in
China. But that's illegal many times over.
Then people wonder why manufacturing is dying across the West. If
your inputs (labor) are more expensive you can't compete, it's
extremely basic. That might be acceptable but at least be honest
about the trade-off you've made, and don't pretend you can patch
it up with hacks.
fuzzfactor wrote 17 hours 41 min ago:
>manufacturing is dying across the West.
Died a long time ago and went to hell in handbasket :(
>If your inputs (labor) are more expensive you can't compete
Houston had always been less expensive than Detroit, LA,
Chicago, New England and just about anywhere else in the US for
this kind of thing, but it was really the cheapness of the
foreign labor that made it irresistible to Wall Street. It had
always been that way but didn't really matter until after the
value of the dollar had been dropped so low that they had to
pay workers what amounted to exorbitant sums while the labor
still ended up with less discretionary cash, and that was at
the lower-value dollar.
You should have seen Houston in 1979 when the Nixon Recession
was raging worse than ever, long after he had sailed into the
sunset. It was no Pittsburgh[0] but there were still two steel
mills and of course one of them was US Steel where they had
expanded to the industrial suburb of Baytown Texas specifically
because the labor was cheaper than up north.
Wall Street took that differential to the bank and lit their
cigars with $100 bills :\
Eventually led to champagne and caviar with each round of
layoffs.
Nixon "opened up" China, but Reagan was not yet here to put the
nail in the coffin.
I agree it would take a whole lot more unfair advantages just
to get closer to a level playing field.
The way to real manufacturing growth is to build much
higher-value-added products per worker.
The difficult problem to overcome is that most of the low-cost
raw materials have been coming from China for so long, and the
ideal thing would have been coming from more than one place the
whole time.
But no, the absolute cheapest must be sought.
Mexico could have been ready by now but they would have had to
do it on their own in an organized way like China and India so
it pales by comparison, especially high tech in spite of all
the brilliant Mexican engineers and innovators.
Lower-cost labor in India might be abundant enough but it'll
take a while before the supply chain can compare to what China
has built with all the dollars they have had in their hands for
so long.
[0] Made up for it with oil, as heavy industry goes.
SaltyBackendGuy wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
This reminds me of a great freakonomics podcast that talked about
China being run by engineers and America being run by lawyers.
HTML [1]: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-is-run-by-engineers...
titzer wrote 5 hours 32 min ago:
Minor correction: America is run by pedophiles with a lot of
money, who naturally hire lawyers.
red-iron-pine wrote 2 hours 7 min ago:
funny how this is getting downvoted when we know now that it is
objectively true, with emails and pictures
jayseb wrote 17 hours 1 min ago:
The books is amazing too, just finished reading it. Gives you
peek into cultural dynamic of both countries:
HTML [1]: https://insightbooks.app/books/breakneck
canjobear wrote 19 hours 33 min ago:
Thatâs because engineering degrees were the only thing you
could get from college during the Cultural Revolution.
pear01 wrote 21 hours 29 min ago:
That guy is so annoying his subpar analysis has become such a
trope. America used to build things too. Lawyers have been part
of the founding and fabric of both societies. Trying to reduce
China v America to engineers vs lawyers is so reductive it's just
mind blowing this keeps getting repeated.
almosthere wrote 8 hours 45 min ago:
Just about everything on NPR is I want this to be true, not
this is true.
jama211 wrote 12 hours 21 min ago:
So youâre only attacking the title they need to use to
survive on the modern internet, rather than the nuanced points
they actually make?
If anyoneâs analysis is subpar itâs yours.
IshKebab wrote 13 hours 56 min ago:
It's one of those just-so stories that sounds like a nice neat
explanation. You can't put the complex reality into a neat
single sentence so nonsense like this is always going to win.
Gud wrote 14 hours 40 min ago:
The USA still has a lot of high end manufacturing going on.
There is no âused toâ.
bad_haircut72 wrote 6 hours 39 min ago:
At the end of the day the reason people see manufacturing as
special is because in a war it is a strategic resource. If
this wasnt the case nobody would care about "manufacturing
jobs" any more than the general economy. So if you use
defence production as your metric... "U.S. Navy Shipbuilding
Is Consistently Over Budget and Delayed Despite Billions
Invested in Industry"
HTML [1]: https://www.gao.gov/blog/u.s.-navy-shipbuilding-cons...
embedding-shape wrote 12 hours 32 min ago:
Sure, but it's seemingly doing less and less. "Value Added by
Industry: Manufacturing as a Percentage of GDP" has been
going downwards for a long long time, here is the last twenty
years:
HTML [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/VAPGDPMA
Gud wrote 9 hours 8 min ago:
I concur with moregrist
embedding-shape wrote 8 hours 52 min ago:
I'm very glad that you confirmed that with a comment, I
was a bit confused what specifically you thought.
Gud wrote 8 hours 11 min ago:
Youâre welcome
moregrist wrote 11 hours 10 min ago:
I donât think you can take âpercentage of GDPâ as an
indication that the US is doing less. It could be doing the
same amount while the GDP grew tremendously in other areas,
for example software.
And if you look at the absolute contribution in dollars,
manufacturing has gone up 1.76 times between 2005 and
today: [1] This is roughly 2.9% a year over 20 years, so
slightly ahead of inflation over the period.
To me this points to a story where manufacturing grew
slightly but the other parts of the economy grew a lot
more. Not exactly a bear case on manufacturing, but not a
tremendously exciting one either.
HTML [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USMANNQGSP
ua709 wrote 8 hours 0 min ago:
When politicians talk about the decline in manufacturing
what they mean is jobs. I work in American manufacturing
and there are tons of amazing projects happening but the
decline in jobs is real. Especially low skilled jobs,
This trend will only continue and I doubt any politician,
regardless of thier background, can change that. And
Iâm not sure itâs a bad thing as it means
manufacturing productivity is increasing
The main reason itâs so political is the drop in number
of jobs has been huge, and too fast for many to adjust.
Automation has come fast.
â Manufacturing employment declined from 17.3 million
in January 2000 to a low of 11.5 million in December
2009, a drop of 33% over the decade. Compared to the peak
of 19.5 million in 1979, manufacturing employment had
declined approximately 41% by 2009.â [1] Interesting to
think about. Share of GDP staying stable but number of
jobs fell by around half.
HTML [1]: https://blog.uwsp.edu/cps/2025/01/29/u-s-manufac...
nicoburns wrote 6 hours 40 min ago:
There's a long-term economic problem looming around the
loss of jobs: which is that most people's ability to
command a share of our economic output (i.e. earn
money) is tied to their value as a labourer. If that
labour is no longer needed by those who control capital
and thus allocation of labour resources (which is
increasingly the case across many segments of our
economy), then we end up with an economy where people
increasingly struggle to earn a decent living.
Of course there are areas where that labour would be
useful: healthcase, teaching, childcare, elderly care
all come to mind (and there are many other examples).
But our economy is not set up to enable this. The
problem isn't supply side (difficulty retraining people
to do the jobs), it's demand side: the people who need
these services often don't have the money to pay for
them. So the jobs are badly paid.
And it's a downward spiral: as wealth becomes more
concentrated, demand for labour drops because those
controlling the wealth already have their needs met and
often don't care about the needs of others.
If history is anyhing to go by, then this will
eventually lead to war and/or revolution.
callmeal wrote 14 hours 49 min ago:
> Trying to reduce China v America to engineers vs lawyers is
so reductive it's just mind blowing this keeps getting
repeated.
Think of it as engineers vs non-engineers (lawyers/mba
types/etc). We complain about that on here all the time (ex.
boeing). It's where the priorities are: is it on making things
better or making more money? In an ideal world, it would be
both. Unfortunately here, it is not otherwise enshittification
would not be a thing.
laffOr wrote 9 hours 43 min ago:
It feels like people accept this criticism when it props up
their position - for an American (software) engineer,
companies run by _American engineers_ vs companies run by
American non-engineers is an obvious case of engineering is
better (see criticism of Boeing); but when it's Chinese
engineer vs American non-engineer, the "American" bit is more
important.
swsieber wrote 16 hours 6 min ago:
It rings true though.
I worked at a dev company, and we got bought by an IT company.
Much pain and friction, all around. Is that a reductive
representative of the company differences? Yeah, but it's still
a useful mental model that helps one understand the
differences. And I think the lawyer vs engineer trope is
useful. Yeah we have both. Both my companies had both IT and
developera, but the stakes & priorities were different enough
that that lense became extremely helpful.
kevinqi wrote 16 hours 55 min ago:
just one q: have you been to china before?
anon7725 wrote 20 hours 27 min ago:
> America used to build things too
Indeed. âUsed toâ is the key observation. In the wake of
WW2, the U.S. had both dynamism and the ability and will to act
collectively. This combination led to rising standards of
living, the space program, Silicon Valley, the internet, etc.
The U.S. economy is still relatively dynamic, but the will to
collective action has completely failed.
Europe can act collectively but lacks dynamism.
Which country, today, demonstrates both traits?
KaiserPro wrote 8 hours 7 min ago:
Look america's 1939+ expansion was subsided by the british
empire trying to expand arms manufacture.
What america has been doing is subsiding engineering capacity
in china. This was done because it created more profit for
larger companies as they merged and eliminated costs. This
higher profit drove a "roaring" economic expansion. But now
china is capturing more of the value.
A solution is to use tax as a way to re-patriciate
engineering capacity. This is kinda what trump is supposed to
be doing, but carving out exceptions for friends, and using
blunt instruments doesn't work all that well.
pear01 wrote 20 hours 17 min ago:
What point do you think you're making? That's not the
question. You're just repeating the same obvious geopolitical
comparison everyone regurgitates these days.
The question is about whether any of that can be meaningfully
attributed to some lawyer vs engineer divide. Your question
doesn't answer that in the slightest and thus I have no idea
why you are asking it.
decimalenough wrote 17 hours 16 min ago:
It's not about the specific degree the leaders hold. Thanks
to Communism, China (and the Soviet Union before it) had a
profound belief that society can be engineered, and that
people and nature are both raw material that can be shaped
to fit the needs of society.
The US, on the hand, is obsessed with individual rights,
and any sort of collective action that threatens those
rights is extensively litigated.
This is really what Wang's thesis boils down to, and which
of course it's an oversimplification, there is a kernel of
truth in there.
DeathArrow wrote 16 hours 12 min ago:
>Thanks to Communism, China (and the Soviet Union before
it) had a profound belief that society can be engineered,
and that people and nature are both raw material that can
be shaped to fit the needs of society.
Isn't that a trait of the left in general?
chii wrote 17 hours 12 min ago:
> society can be engineered
and the hidden implication is that there's a correct
trade off to be made (because engineering is about trade
offs).
So what happens to those people whose gotten the bad end
of the deal? If china builds a damn, the villages
downstream gets moved (with small compensation that is
not commensurate with the value of the dam being made).
It's also why the high speed rail in california is
costing so much in the US vs something similar in china.
TheOtherHobbes wrote 12 hours 50 min ago:
That's better than a culture that sees every
transaction solely in terms of corporate profit and
doesn't consider the existence of trade offs at all.
The result is that far more people get far worse deals
far more of the time. Healthcare, the jobs market,
education, climate damage, grift in high places - it's
all the same issue, and a lot of the problems are
rooted in denial of reality on spurious "economic"
grounds.
cucumber3732842 wrote 20 hours 57 min ago:
It gets repeated because we actively incentivize repeating it.
It's a popular trope that confirms the audiences bias's and
when you do that the monkey brain gets rewarded by seeing the
number in the top right go up.
adamweld wrote 21 hours 7 min ago:
I've only listened to one interview with Dan Wang, but I
understood him to be particularly talking about the
politicians, not the country as a whole.
I can't speak for China, I've only visited a few times, but in
the US it's true that an overwhelming number of successful
politicians were previously lawyers. Which is not a good thing
IMO.
sharadov wrote 5 hours 16 min ago:
This podcast between Tyler and Dan was a great listen - [1]
Dan came off as very China biased and Tyler literally
schooled him on a few occasions.
But despite that, there are grains of truth in what he said,
we have lawyers turned politicians at the helm in the US, so
we have a great democratic system but on the flip side hardly
any engineers leading us to the predicament we are in now,
where nothing ever gets built.
HTML [1]: https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/dan-wang...
Gravityloss wrote 7 hours 23 min ago:
Bill Allen certainly got a lot of things manufactured at
Boeing, despite being a lawyer
lukan wrote 12 hours 44 min ago:
"I can't speak for China, I've only visited a few times, but
in the US it's true that an overwhelming number of successful
politicians were previously lawyer"
I can't speak for china either, so I looked it up and indeed,
Xi Jinping studied chemical engineering and his predecessor
Hu Jintao worked as a hydraulic engineer before becoming a
politician.
Well in germany we had Merkel as a doctorate in quantum
chemistry (but she never worked as an engineer, but neither
did
Xi Jinping).
I certainly would prefer politicians with some engineering
background, unless they use their skills to manufacture a
total state surveillance and control machine.
NickC25 wrote 7 hours 40 min ago:
>.... unless they use their skills to manufacture a total
state surveillance and control machine
Well, um, that's China in a nutshell. They did exactly
that.
Turns out people with power like to amass and maintain
power, regardless of the structure they gain it in.
blipvert wrote 8 hours 25 min ago:
Here in the UK the leader of the opposition frequently
refers to herself as an engineer.
She was a software engineer. LOL.
(I speak as someone with a degree in Computer Science and
Software âEngineeringâ, and an inglorious past as a
Chemical Engineering student)
sampo wrote 5 hours 27 min ago:
UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has both an
engineering degree (computer systems engineering) and a
law degree. Best of both worlds?
AdamN wrote 11 hours 26 min ago:
Yeah I'm pretty nervous about engineers in charge. Merkel
is interesting because her dad was reverend in the East.
My reading of her is more that she was smart and there were
good options in physics/chemistry - but then she
effectively went right into politics directly afterwards.
For better or for worse she never had that 5-10 years of
day-to-day work before politics.
kakacik wrote 6 hours 9 min ago:
She is the most hated EU politician in whole eastern part
of EU, a symbol of EU failings and main reason there are
many EU-sceptics across whole region.
A lot of current/recent crisis and utter dependence on
russian gas and oil was her doing. She desperately tried
to appease putin at all costs despite him mocking her
from time to time, she pushed long term underfunding of
German army despite war on Ukraine happening since 2014,
closed down nuclear plants too fast so coal energy was
needed immediately and so on.
Shame on her to be polite, not a good example if you want
to show that engineering background (just studies in her
case) can lead to better outcomes than lawyers.
lukan wrote 4 hours 0 min ago:
The german army was never underfunded. It just enjoyed
lots of luxories, like lots of management staff instead
of combat troops and custom made special equipment
(that often failed to deliver) instead of buying what
the market offered.
pear01 wrote 20 hours 54 min ago:
And that was true when we built things too. So what point are
you making? If only FDR was an engineer then maybe we would
have ramped up production and taken on the Axis across two
oceans. But oops he was educated as a lawyer I guess we're
doomed now. Like I just don't get it.
Sure Xi and some other senior leadership in China studied as
an engineer. He also studied Marxism. As a part of a
government delegation he studied agriculture, even bringing
him to stay abroad in Iowa of all places. The world is too
complicated for this type of analysis, sorry. I don't even
think it is remotely the right data point to focus on or
compare.
Dan Wang does the same spiel on every podcast and it is
always terrible and seems predicated on credulous hosts who
know little about the history of either country and certainly
not enough about both who just use his lame analysis to
engage in this current fad of Western self-pity. Instead of
reform and asking hard questions let's just throw soft balls
at Dan Wang's cheap analysis that anyone with a Wikipedia
level education would know is absurd so we can keep propping
up the same impoverished China v America tropes.
Why don't we demand better honestly we should be ashamed that
one guy can just come up with such a dubious thesis suddenly
appear everywhere and no credible debate or pushback once.
The only thing Dan Wang convinces me of is the poverty of the
modern intellectual environment.
yareally wrote 17 hours 27 min ago:
Coincidentally, FDR's predecesor was an engineer and we
know how that presidency went (not that it was entirely his
fault, but he didn't make things better either)
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover#Minin...
FeloniousHam wrote 5 hours 23 min ago:
I enjoyed Megan Mcardle's take on Hoover:
HTML [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/imprompt...
shimman wrote 20 hours 19 min ago:
These people are just trying to find an alternative
narrative because the vast majority of the population have
been rejecting neoliberalism for a good 30 years now. So
they spin up the foreign enemy is better than us, so we
need to deregulate more and not hold monopolies
accountable.
If we broke up Google or Amazon, suddenly we're just as bad
as China!
HeWhoLurksLate wrote 18 hours 32 min ago:
why can't we go "wow they're getting really good, maybe
we should invest harder in education and research?" That
makes wayyy more sense to me
_DeadFred_ wrote 4 hours 52 min ago:
In the west greater education doesn't lead to people
wanting to live in a factory compound in communal dorms
with suicide nets where they can be woken up at
midnight to start a shift on a whim. Doesn't lead to
people wanting to eat all their meals in a cafeteria
with the other people on their shift. The factories I
visited even their children went to school in a school
within the compound.
maxweylandt wrote 14 hours 11 min ago:
Comedian Ronny Chieng has a bit about this: (sorry for
short)
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1cmCueTZz1A
jacquesm wrote 18 hours 8 min ago:
Because it would first require one to acknowledge that
they are no longer ahead. In some cultures this sort of
thing is extremely difficult.
harrall wrote 14 hours 12 min ago:
In humans*
jonstewart wrote 21 hours 34 min ago:
HTML [1]: https://www.americanscientist.org/article/freakonomics-w...
Avicebron wrote 22 hours 18 min ago:
Authoritarian central planning isn't an inherent trait of
engineers and nor should we aspire for it to be.
mullingitover wrote 14 hours 31 min ago:
Itâs funny because the foundation of neoliberal economies is
the corporation: a strict authoritarian planned economy.
callmeal wrote 14 hours 46 min ago:
>Authoritarian central planning isn't an inherent trait of
engineers and nor should we aspire for it to be.
I would say that for long-term engineering projects (building
bridges etc) authoritarian central planning is a required
trait.
_bent wrote 19 hours 41 min ago:
Every single privately run company is authoritarian.
jmknoll wrote 20 hours 17 min ago:
I think what the person you're replying to is referring to is
the fact that, in contrast to the US, many senior politicians
in China literally have engineering backgrounds, or at least
engineering degrees. Although this has actually been less true
in the past 10-15 years. This article gives a bit of an
overview -
HTML [1]: https://www.chinausfocus.com/2022-CPC-congress/chinese...
BurningFrog wrote 21 hours 9 min ago:
China hasn't done much central planning for many decades.
tw1984 wrote 14 hours 39 min ago:
No, central planning is key to the state capitalism employed
by China, it is done on ALL strategic industries.
They just no longer do any central planning on nonsense
matters like how much ice cream need to be produced for the
summer and how much coffee shops are required for Shanghai.
Synaesthesia wrote 15 hours 0 min ago:
They do, the state permits a free market but they also
coordinate strategically to make decisions which benefit the
country.
mikestorrent wrote 21 hours 54 min ago:
You don't need to brand efficiency and structure-at-scale as
"authoritarian"; how painfully American of you. I know it's a
completely foreign concept for anyone that has grown up in
America, but it's actually within the realm of human
possibility for the government and the individual to be aligned
and want the same thing. Typically this is evidenced by
tremendous social progress, which we see in evidence with the
rapidly rising standard of living in China over the last few
decades.
It's easier when your government is proposing "hey, let's build
all the factories the best way we can" and not "hey, let's
impose illogical and continually-changing tariffs on everything
and let Howard Lutnick's kids steal all the proceeds". You're
right as an American to be skeptical of the government - it's
not operating in your best interests unless you're one of the
elite insiders. That doesn't mean it has to be that way.
dash2 wrote 12 hours 22 min ago:
> it's actually within the realm of human possibility for the
government and the individual to be aligned and want the same
thing.
Actually, this is very hard because different individuals
want different things. Normally you need a mechanism like the
market or democracy to aggregate individual preferences.
Expecting a dictatorship to do this well seems optimistic,
and the full history of communist China doesnât support the
idea.
ianbutler wrote 17 hours 0 min ago:
You're providing much too much credit to China's government,
the dynamic is simpler:
China just hasn't calcified yet after workers press for
better standards of safety and quality of life and maybe they
won't because that's where being authoritarian comes into
play. They will crush that in a way we have moved away from.
We used to build great things in the US and then we decided
the blood price of 30 lives for the Brooklyn bridge or 100
for the hoover dam wasn't worth it. It's really not hard to
build anything when you ignore any second order questions of
impact. Why do you think certain people here want
deregulation and for the EPA to go away.
A quick google shows China prioritizes speed over safety
something we've decided here in the US is not acceptable.
red-iron-pine wrote 2 hours 17 min ago:
> China just hasn't calcified yet
aye. the old elite of China were overthrown by the
communists, whose (that is, Mao's) decisions starved most
of the country, followed by the insanity of the cultural
revolution.
the new technocratic leadership is just that -- new.
really only started happening in the 1980s and 90s.
the US is falling apart due to the entrenched hyperwealthy
seeing more and more rents. China's hyperwealthy are all
new money and are not entrenched yet, not the way groups
like Ford or Boeing or Goldman Sachs are. But soon they
will be, and soon the CCP will start prioritizing their
needs
palmotea wrote 15 hours 27 min ago:
> We used to build great things in the US and then we
decided the blood price of 30 lives for the Brooklyn bridge
or 100 for the hoover dam wasn't worth it. It's really not
hard to build anything when you ignore any second order
questions of impact. Why do you think certain people here
want deregulation and for the EPA to go away.
Because wouldn't it be just totally awesome for our rivers
to burn again? [1] > In 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936,
1941, 1948 and 1952 the river caught fire, writes Laura La
Bella in Not Enough to Drink: Pollution, Drought, and
Tainted Water Supplies. Those are some of the incidents
weâre aware of; itâs hard to say how many other times
oil slicks may have ignited, as press coverage and fire
department records were both inconsistent. But not all the
fires were as innocuous as that of 1969. Some caused
millions of dollarsâ worth of damage and killed people.
But even with the obvious toll on the landscape, regulation
of industry was limited at best. It seemed more important
to keep the economy booming, the city growing and people
working. This attitude was reflected in cities around the
country. The Cuyahoga was far from the only river to catch
fire during the period. Baltimore, Philadelphia, San
Francisco, Buffalo and Galveston all used different methods
to disperse oil on their waters in order to prevent fires.
HTML [1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-ri...
ianbutler wrote 15 hours 2 min ago:
Iâm not those people youâll not find a disagreement
from me
vincnetas wrote 15 hours 33 min ago:
for 2023 us vs china workplace fatalities per 100.000 are
3.5 vs 3.0 in favor of china. (quick ai query)
in regards to calcification of china your position is
unclear. you say that china advances due to pressure from
workers but at the same time claim that pressure from
workers is irrelevant because government can crush them at
will. you cant have the cake and eat it too...
b112 wrote 10 hours 22 min ago:
quick ai query
AI halucination is well known, and output is
non-repeatable.
There is also no indication of what timeframe, what
industry, how it is calculated and more.
AI responses are starting points, and should never be
considered factual without verification.
If you want to have any trust in youe numbers, find real
stats, from a reliable source.
typ wrote 20 hours 13 min ago:
If that were the true secret sauce of the economic success in
China, why had it not taken off before the 2000s? Like, they
have been that "aligned" and "want the same thing" and "run
by engineers" since the 50s, no?
maxglute wrote 9 hours 37 min ago:
They did. Developmental state for huge country = phases
measured in generations. 1.4B can't get away with building
a few industries like other tigers, JP/SKR/TW/SG who can
capture a few highend and do fine per capita.
TLDR timeline
50s-70s was soviet engineers / knowledge transfer from post
war wreckage. Built basic industry, 80s-10s was
relentlessly building out every industrial chain for every
sector except leading edge because lack talent. Talent
pipeline was 90s-00s building out academic system,
2010s-20s was brrrting tertiary talent. Couldn't brrrt
tertiary talent without teaching peasants literacy in 60s,
and then having literate parents in 80s family planning
(i.e. one child policy) which filtered generations of 1-2
kid households where surplus went towards
education/tertiary. All the recent highend progress
recently was result from that, step by step building on
generational phase/timescale. PRC only passed US in total
STEM a few years ago, now they on trend to talent
inflection point 2x-3x STEM vs US in next 20 years. People
mock one child policy, but it was exactly choreographed for
this outcome, one of few cases of generational peasant to
phd planning, though 50 year foresight to build up greatest
high skill demographic dividend in human history, not 100
year foresight because cost is shit TFR in the next 50
years.
tw1984 wrote 14 hours 46 min ago:
> why had it not taken off before the 2000s?
This topic has been discussed on Chinese forums and social
media for like 1 million times. The short answer is it did.
To give you a prefect example - the J-10 fighter jet was
first tested in 1998, it shot down multiple best EU made
fighter jets last year.
wat10000 wrote 20 hours 0 min ago:
It kind of did. GDP per capita grew at around 6% per year
from 1952-1980. It was starting from such a low base that
it was still pretty low in 1980, but it was much improved.
And Mao was not an engineer.
typ wrote 19 hours 26 min ago:
6% compared to the post-2000s is mediocre, especially
given the low baseline. Not remarkably better than other
high-income democratic countries like Japan and West
Germany. Even the US can have ~4% growth at the time.
superxpro12 wrote 21 hours 10 min ago:
For all the progress, you lose me immediately with the
"social credit" system. If there was really true 'progress',
then you wouldn't need a one-party system that suppresses all
dissent.
Only need to look to the recent changes in Hong-Kong and the
obviously hostile takeover of a democratic government to see
how "pure" these changes really are.
thenthenthen wrote 9 hours 5 min ago:
Social credit system is not really a thing. Yes various
apps have various âcredit scoresâ and if you are
convicted of crimes you can get travel limitations, but
there is no such thing as a âsocial credit systemâ.
Much like how the government is not centralised at all,
provinces can make their own laws and so on.
r14c wrote 14 hours 51 min ago:
I believe the premise is that you have to oppress the rich
to a certain extent to prevent them from usurping the
people's government for their own ends.
biggoodwolf wrote 19 hours 14 min ago:
No true scotsman
shimman wrote 20 hours 22 min ago:
Dude come on, the US already has a social credit system.
Where do you think China got the idea of credit scores
from? Try getting a good loan in the US if your credit
score is under 400. You're barred from having certain jobs
if you don't have a good credit score.
Get some new talking points, you're like 40 years out of
date.
Saline9515 wrote 20 hours 3 min ago:
The difference with China is that the US credit score is
limited to your banking activities.
MSFT_Edging wrote 9 hours 18 min ago:
That's not actually true. Companies can opt to report
your employment to credit agencies, providing another
datapoint in background checks.
deadfoxygrandpa wrote 13 hours 16 min ago:
what do you think china's credit system is like?
digitalPhonix wrote 18 hours 18 min ago:
Have you tried renting recently?
m4ck_ wrote 19 hours 29 min ago:
It's not just loans and banking. Bad credit severely
limits your housing options, even rooms for rent are
running credit checks these days. Some employers too,
even in roles where you aren't directly handling money
or anything close to it.
palmotea wrote 15 hours 25 min ago:
The difference between a social credit score and a
credit score is when you criticize the president,
your social credit score goes down, but your credit
score stays the same.
TheOtherHobbes wrote 12 hours 40 min ago:
The people who have been stalked and apprehended by
ICE for online criticism of what ICE is doing might
not agree.
As might visitors who are being asked to show five
years of social media history to make sure their
views are politically acceptable.
Free speech is over. If dissent isn't being
actively punished - the current push for
deanonymisation is coincidental, no doubt - at the
very least it's heavily throttled algorithmically.
Saline9515 wrote 18 hours 9 min ago:
I understand this, but I meant that the data sources
used to build credit scores are mainly banking/debt
related. Jaywalking ore saying slurs online won't
affect it, unlike in China.
kakacik wrote 5 hours 38 min ago:
*not yet. And if you are not US citizen and coming
in as a tourist, what you write applies heavily and
can end up in properly harsh treatment. So its not
as rosy as you write (which already ain't rosy)
hamandcheese wrote 20 hours 24 min ago:
> If there was really true 'progress', then you wouldn't
need a one-party system that suppresses all dissent.
This makes no sense. It is possible for a totalitarian
government which is threatened by dissent and concepts like
"democracy" to also work in the interest of improving
overall quality of life.
viraptor wrote 19 hours 38 min ago:
If things work so well that everyone's quality or life is
improved, why would there be dissent large enough to
worry about.
It's the same category as: Why would a company with happy
well paid workers be worried about unions and try to stop
them forming.
henrikschroder wrote 16 hours 54 min ago:
> If things work so well that everyone's quality or
life is improved, why would there be dissent large
enough to worry about.
Have you met people?
viraptor wrote 14 hours 38 min ago:
Sure. There's always going to be someone opposing
something. But I'm not aware of cases where a
disagreement in an environment good for everyone was
large enough that it caused the leadership/government
collapse. Similarly on a small scale, the number of
grumpy people at companies I worked at scaled more or
less with how good things were for everyone.
In other words, if things are good enough, there will
be more people disagreeing with the totalitarian part
than with the overall conditions.
resters wrote 20 hours 32 min ago:
Snowden's revelations showed that the same stuff exists in
the US.
xtn wrote 20 hours 50 min ago:
There are bad things in China, but there is no "social
credit" system being used.
TheOtherHobbes wrote 12 hours 46 min ago:
There's a social credit system everywhere. It's called
"money". It's quite literally and explicitly a credit
system that rewards certain behaviours and castes and
punishes and disempowers others.
The fact that everyone in the West is used to it doesn't
alter the fact that it's social engineering at scale and
not a law of nature.
Saline9515 wrote 20 hours 23 min ago:
Yes there is. Why deny it? It's pretty public. In this
french documentary, which was later aired on the
parliamentary tv channel, the author films his daily life
with his chinese wife, who has a social credit account,
and interviews officials speaking openly about it. It's 4
years old.
HTML [1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma6txLM_LLs
ivankabiden wrote 18 hours 0 min ago:
[1] There is no so-called social credit system you
western guys have in mind. There is a credit reporting
system. It's not that different from the US credit
reporting system. But it has far less of an impact on
our daily lives than the US system on Americans. For
example, no one asks for your credit report when you
want to rent a house.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit_sy...
stx5 wrote 18 hours 32 min ago:
fake news!
yanhangyhy wrote 19 hours 27 min ago:
i dont have.. and nobody talks about it.. in china.
this remind me one of the ep of the TV show when they
found so many evidence of a massacre using chemical
weapons and broadcast it.. and then found out its all
fake.
Saline9515 wrote 17 hours 45 min ago:
If no one talks about it, why is this .gov.cn article
discusses the problems currently posed by the
existing social credit system? There isn't indeed a
nation-wide score, but given the size of Chinese
municipalities (often larger than most countries in
the world), it's far from anecdotal.
HTML [1]: https://credit.fgw.sh.gov.cn/xyyj/20220902/8...
yanhangyhy wrote 16 hours 4 min ago:
> There isn't indeed a nation-wide score
there is no score at all. even this article didn't
talk about anything about 'score'. its no different
compare to many other countries. soical credit
system is a general concept.
I do wish everybody outside of china have your
mindset. then we have nothing to worry about.
ivankabiden wrote 17 hours 18 min ago:
There is a credit reporting system, similar to the
one in the US. However, most people are not
affected by it in their daily lives. Only those who
are in serious financial trouble and cannot pay off
their debts are placed on a blacklist, which
restricts them from traveling by high-speed rail or
flights.
grosswait wrote 8 hours 38 min ago:
Yeah, I was on my way to being convinced that my
understanding was a misconception, but this just
halted that in its tracks. Youâve just stated
the slippery slope has been built and is ready
when desired.
transcriptase wrote 16 hours 57 min ago:
Now go find a mirror and read your post out loud
to yourself, slowly.
dijit wrote 7 hours 37 min ago:
The US also restricts peoples right to travel
if they owe too much in taxes or have more than
$2,500 in unpaid child support payments.
They can even revoke your passport (which is
functionally the same thing as some forms of
travel only accept a passport).
So, you're both doing the pointing spiderman
meme here.
mlsu wrote 22 hours 17 min ago:
Have you met an engineer? I'd say "being an engineer" is
probably the single most predictive trait for authoritarianism
in my experience.
throw0101a wrote 7 hours 51 min ago:
There's a decent amount of research that finds a correlation
between engineering degrees and terrorists:
> According to two European social scientists working in
Britain, Italian Diego Gambetta and German Steffen Hertog,
who present their case in Engineers of Jihad: The Curious
Connection between Violent Extremism and Education, the
presence of engineers among known Islamist extremists is 14
times greater than can be explained by random distribution.
It was a finding the authors reached with caution and even a
certain resistance. âWe are social scientists,â Hertog
explains in an interview, âso we are always seeking
socio-economic explanations. We accepted this idea that there
might be personality traits, expressed first in choice of
profession and then in political ideology, very
reluctantly.â
* [1] > This article demonstrates that individuals with an
engineering education are three to four times more frequent
among violent Islamists worldwide than other degree holders.
We then test a number of hypotheses to account for this
phenomenon. We argue that a combination of two factors â
engineersâ relative deprivation in the Islamic world and
mindset â is the most plausible explanation.
* [2] *
HTML [1]: https://macleans.ca/news/world/why-do-so-many-jihadi...
HTML [2]: https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/29836/1/W...
HTML [3]: https://spectrum.ieee.org/extremist-engineers
lnsru wrote 14 hours 0 min ago:
I am electrical engineer and electrician working in regulated
areas. In both areas the frameworks limits my choices and
obviously I am very authoritarian. There is no room for
discussion. If I need a DC DC converter for 2 amps I will
pick one rated for 4 amps. No discussions! If I need to
install a heat pump 60 feet away I will pick 5x6 square
millimeter cable and all the circuit breakers from
installation manual. There are no options or opinions. I
communicate this in polite way to the clients.
And this flows in other areas. If I need a functional vehicle
with cheap upkeep I optimize for it. I invest in low risk
products since the income is limited. I know that people with
plan and confidence are scary, you donât meet them every
day.
nerdsniper wrote 21 hours 12 min ago:
As an engineer, I do think thereâs some mild but noticeable
correlation in bulk. But there are other categories which
would be much more predictive. And most of the correlation
with engineers are actually a confounder effect from things
like multigenerational socioeconomic status, or religion.
If you were to control for other variables I doubt thereâd
be much correlation. After filtering out engineers who belong
to other categories with stronger associations to
authoritarianism, youâre more likely to be left with the
hyper-individual-freedom types than the hyper-authoritarian
types.
lkbm wrote 21 hours 58 min ago:
Possibly, but it's just as much a predictive trait of being
libertarian, which for all its faults, is extremely
anti-authoritarian.
jfengel wrote 19 hours 46 min ago:
When libertarian means liberty for everyone, it's
anti-authoritarian.
Too often libertarian means liberty for me and not for you.
That's authoritarian.
eli_gottlieb wrote 20 hours 18 min ago:
Libertarianism is just privatized authoritarianism.
cherrycherry98 wrote 19 hours 37 min ago:
Libertarian principles encourage relationships built on
mutual consenting parties rather than coercion. This
implies that both parties have the freedom to choose.
Imagine being stuck with a small dating pool of
undesirable partners, the choices may not be good but
that doesn't make it authoritarian.
SlightlyLeftPad wrote 21 hours 45 min ago:
Except in 21st Century America, where libertarian is really
just masked authoritarian. Essentially, that means âfree
to do whatever you want as long as itâs our way.â
red-iron-pine wrote 2 hours 8 min ago:
"i hate the gub'ment esp. the way evil mega-corporations
tell me to"
bb88 wrote 21 hours 48 min ago:
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely. --Lord Acton.
It's not really so much one's belief system as it is what
happens when one gets power -- and that's hard to predict
regardless of the ideology.
galangalalgol wrote 20 hours 53 min ago:
Not really. Seeing what people do when they get power is
as predictable as what they do when given meth.
nerdsniper wrote 20 hours 20 min ago:
Eh. Maybe. But I do see people who are pretty
consistent when they have power. It may be somewhat
unpredictable before they get power, but somewhat more
predictable once youâve seen how they act with it.
This principle of relative consistency is baked into
how I test employees for management and friends for
trust, and in the past, roommates as well. Though I do
acknowledge potential for growth as well, but in my
older age I generally also need to see evidence of
motivation to give strong benefit of the doubt wrt
possible trajectory.
Romario77 wrote 22 hours 41 min ago:
if you look at Mac Mini design, it didn't change much in many years
(2011-2024 is practically the same) [1] so maybe that's the reason
they chose it. They just designed a new iteration in 2024, so maybe
they don't expect much change for a while.
HTML [1]: https://preview.redd.it/always-loved-the-design-of-the-mac-m...
ccgreg wrote 22 hours 36 min ago:
The guts on the inside changed several times during that timespan.
dlenski wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
> They will agree to make some high margin simple to assemble thing
in the US to appease government
They'll also hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony with maximum fanfare, at
which they'll be sure to fawn over Donald Trump, let him ramble at
length, and maybe give him some sort of shiny award.
Let's call it The Steve Jobs American Technology Greatness Prize.
It'll be a blindingly flashy PVD-gold-plated 12" silicon wafer with a
Mount Rushmore-style portrait of Jobs and Trump etched into it.
a-dub wrote 22 hours 44 min ago:
it's probably a good thing to have domestic advanced manufacturing if
only to have real-world testbeds for development of advanced
automation technology.
it's cool and all that boston dynamics can do what they do, but i
wonder if one reason why the chinese robotics industry is so advanced
is because they've been able to test in production on real production
lines, experiment with dark factories and learn a ton in the process.
it's kind of funny when you think about it. both the west and east
are facing down the same set of potential problems that come with
real automation of industries that have served as true economic
dynamos for decades.
dlenski wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
> it's probably a good thing to have domestic advanced
manufacturing if only to have real-world testbeds for development
of advanced automation technology.
Yes, it's a good thing to have domestic advanced manufacturing, but
this probably doesn't qualify.
According to the article, it's a site where they already assemble
servers for Apple's own use, and will now start assembling Mac
Minis as well. Electronics assembly is, for the most part, a pretty
low-value part of the supply chain.
It's not nothing, but it pales in comparison to the scientific and
technological sophistication and financial value of wafer fabs and
IC test and packaging facilities. (I worked at Intel's flagship
fabs in Oregon, and have worked as a consultant with other semi
fabs around the world.)
Aurornis wrote 22 hours 45 min ago:
> In china they were often able to iterate on designs and have custom
screws and other parts made and ramped up in very short times.
This becomes less of a problem as the product matures.
The Mac Mini is a good example of a design they likely stabilized a
while ago.
cobalt wrote 22 hours 16 min ago:
even if the form factor looks similar, the production will change
overtime, esp the internals
chvid wrote 22 hours 58 min ago:
They are also very tied to Chinese demand with about 1/5 of their
total business coming from China.
xmcp123 wrote 22 hours 58 min ago:
They wonât just have custom screws, they will sort them by
incredibly small amounts of manufacturing error and make those
correspond with devices that have similar amounts of manufacturing
error, so it matches(like a slightly too large screw going with a
slightly too large hole).
On production lines.
Obviously this is not plan A, but their ops team is insane.
Terr_ wrote 22 hours 48 min ago:
> sort them by incredibly small amounts of manufacturing error and
make those correspond with devices that have similar amounts of
manufacturing error
I spent a little while unsuccessfuly trying to recall the jargon or
the anecdotal company-name here, but IIRC there was an early
pioneer in this where a company making radios (?) tried to develop
a software system that would categorize non-conforming parts so
that the flaws in different pieces would cancel out.
I don't think it worked for them, at the time it was far more
efficient to just spend money on improving the quality and
tolerances of the parts.
ruraljuror wrote 23 hours 1 min ago:
Good point about the supply chain; and it seems like most responses
mistakenly disagree with you.
Thomas Friedman talks about this after his most recent visit to
China. Where China excels is through rapid supply chain development
by fierce regional competition among several
(state-supported/sponsored/seeded?) competitors.
yreg wrote 21 hours 28 min ago:
Jobs said so to Obama as well.
HTML [1]: https://archive.ph/vGBjd
ruraljuror wrote 22 hours 48 min ago:
Link to Friedman's piece on this: [1] Also he talks about this on
The Ezra Klein Show.
HTML [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/opinion/trump-tariffs-c...
dangus wrote 22 hours 57 min ago:
I get fatigue when everyone claims that all these Chinese
businesses are state sponsored.
Do we not recognize that western governments do this too? Do we not
recognize that western banks and VC firms are quasi-state
institutions? Do we not see western countries continually subsidize
businesses by lowering corporate tax rates and giving out cheap
loans?
The US government was giving out $7500 per car to buy EVs and the
US carmakers still got demolished by better Chinese products.
Itâs like the western zeitgeist canât accept that China is
simply out-competing them on pure merit.
Itâs not possible for China to have every business be
state-subsidized and running a loss. At some point the truth is
that China is getting wealthy by selling the most competitive
goods. It doesnât matter that the state âsubsidizesâ it
because the money for the subsidy comes from selling the best and
most competitive products.
bsder wrote 22 hours 33 min ago:
> Itâs like the western zeitgeist canât accept that China is
simply out-competing them on pure merit.
With a 400m head start in a 1600m race. It's a whole lot easier
to out-compete somebody when you know the government will
backstop you even if you misstep.
Solar and battery technology were two of those areas. China
absolutely dumped cheap, mostly inferior solar cells on everybody
else to wipe out competing manufacturers until they caught up.
And China absolutely subsidized local battery consumption until
their manufacturers had critical mass and market share. Even
now, the RISC-V ecosystem mostly relies on China funding students
to do the grunt work of porting everything over.
This is a smart thing. We used to do stuff like this in the US.
(See: VHSIC, VLSI project, Sematech, etc.)
And now, BYD appears to be, at this point, simply a superior
manufacturer and it doesn't appear to be close. It absolutely
grinds my gears that I have to root for BYD to come into the US
and bankrupt the automotive companies to finally move their
asses, but we have been here before--back in the 1970s with Japan
producing better cars.
shiroiuma wrote 19 hours 53 min ago:
>It's a whole lot easier to out-compete somebody when you know
the government will backstop you even if you misstep.
You mean like how the US government constantly bails out and
props up the American car companies?
bsder wrote 17 hours 14 min ago:
> You mean like how the US government constantly bails out
and props up the American car companies?
Um, yes? Did I stutter? Do you have bad reading
comprehension? Are you using an AI?
Precisely what part of "we have been here before--back in the
1970s with Japan producing better cars" did you miss?
hn_acc1 wrote 22 hours 39 min ago:
China is not state-subsidized / running at a loss on materials so
much (although they probably get cheaper rare earth minerals) -
they're running at a loss on wages. There's no "loss" there - the
state doesn't have to buy labor and sell it to the companies to
put into the product at a loss - the companies simply pay less
overall in terms of labor, because that's the prevailing rate.
Even if you paid 5% more for materials for an iphone but could
pay 50% less for labor than China, you could probably beat China.
How does the state sponsoring come in? The state represses the
people and the wages and prevents them from leaving for greener
pastures in many cases, which benefits the corporations.
dangus wrote 16 hours 47 min ago:
Factory wages in China are almost $2 more per hour than factory
labor in Mexico.
I don't buy this argument.
Sure, labor protections in China are weak, but let's use our
mirrors: the US has no guaranteed paid time off of any kind, it
has unions on paper only, 1 in 10 Americans have no health
insurance, and it's nearly the only country where medical
bankruptcy exists as a concept. The largest employer in the US
runs a scheme where their workers are intentionally kept
part-time with low enough wages to need SNAP assistance and
other social safety net programs, as well as avoiding any
obligation to provide health insurance, effectively subsidizing
their corporate profits with tax dollars. America's middle
class has been shrinking via housing, healthcare, and education
cost inflation while China's middle class has been growing as
its industries have continually moved further up the value
chain.
"China is just cheap labor" is a last-Millennium viewpoint.
China is a manufacturing ecosystem where you can walk into a
physical marketplace and find rows of vendors with skilled
technicians who all know how to work on electronic or machinery
or other manufacturing skills, where they offer services like
chip-level NAND upgrades where they solder on storage upgrades
to your iPhone while you wait.
China is now a country where you would pay a price premium to
buy their products over competitors.
Synaesthesia wrote 14 hours 59 min ago:
Yeah but China is a low cost economy, rent, food and things
like transport and electricity are cheap. That means
employers simply can pay workers less than the USA because
the cost of living is so high in the USA.
tuna74 wrote 4 hours 54 min ago:
If you build good infrastructure you reap the rewards.
dangus wrote 8 hours 21 min ago:
Rightâ¦which means China is managing their economy better.
Itâs not like the commenter above us who claims itâs
all about repression and restriction.
Literally last night the US president stated that his
policy is to keep real estate expensive, and his main
attempt to lower housing costs is by lowering mortgage
rates, a policy which is incredibly short-sighted and
squeezes American workers more. It also wonât work as
housing is sold at market value: lowering rates will
increase sale prices as buyers compete on available supply
and the amount they can pay on a monthly basis.
I am not specifically trying to get political about it, but
the Republican Party is generally opposed to public transit
and is essentially anti-urbanism. They view cities as
dangerous bad places with evil Democrats in them. They have
done things like holding federal transit project funding
hostage to MAGA demands.
Meanwhile, you donât need to own a car to live in China
and get around. They built out the worldâs premier high
speed rail network, and theyâve built massive metro
systems in their cities rapidly.
Those âghost citiesâ in China? Thatâs also known as
âavailable housing.â They usually eventually get
filled. Americans paying above-inflation rates for homes
would envy that sort of thing.
Most other countries including China would consider the
high cost of healthcare to be a pressing national
emergency, but the US government has allowed the insane
status quo fester.
ruraljuror wrote 22 hours 55 min ago:
Sorry to cause fatigue.
The US government absolutely does not do what China does in this
case. But the reason for my paranthesis and question mark was
that I was not sure what call it.
GeekyBear wrote 23 hours 2 min ago:
> Apple is very tied to Chinese manufacturing
Apple (and all the other multinationals) are tied to manufacturing in
nations with cheap labor.
China is far from the only nation with cheap labor.
> India now accounts for approximately 25 percent of global iPhone
production, up from single digits just a few years ago.
HTML [1]: https://manufacturing-today.com/news/apple-moves-quarter-of-...
0xWTF wrote 23 hours 6 min ago:
Came here with a similar comment, pasting here to avoid another
top-level comment tree.
====
I bought a mac mini a year ago for $599. Personally, I'm pretty sure
I would pay another $50 if it said "Made in the USA" on it. Maybe
$80. Not sure I would pay $100.
But I worry this will prove to be like when Daimler bought Chrysler
and shipped the Crossfire fully assembled except the rims, which were
bolted on in the US so they could say it was "made in the USA". They
only sold 76,014 and now Daimler extracted itself from Chrysler, so
maintaining them has become a bespoke hobby.
hn_acc1 wrote 22 hours 34 min ago:
Crossfire was an interesting car - looked at them for a bit, but
needed a 4-door..
If I was in the apple ecosystem (I prefer PCs with Linux, Android),
I would pay $100-200 more for a mac mini made in the USA if there
were actual benefits, like most of the additional cost went to
paying domestic labor, better parts availability, better
repairability, etc.
dangus wrote 22 hours 59 min ago:
The conversion rate is actually 0%. Nobody will pay more for a USA
version.
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43787647
quantumwannabe wrote 21 hours 37 min ago:
That's because his American-made competitors charge $50 less than
he is charging for his Chinese-made showerhead:
HTML [1]: https://www.waterchef.com/products/waterchef-sf-7c-premi...
dangus wrote 16 hours 1 min ago:
Sure, but what would happen if WaterChef charged $20 less for
"Made in China"?
You can't compare different products across different brands,
the whole point is to compare the exact same product made in
two different locations.
hn_acc1 wrote 22 hours 44 min ago:
Well, um.. Forgive me for not being in the market for a
showerhead in the last few years and / or not knowing about this
one company that I didn't see at Home Depot/Lowes when I did buy
a couple of them?
I admit I'm probably an outlier, but in terms of durable goods,
I'd pay 30-50% more for lots of things if they were "made in the
USA" or "made in Canada" (any western country) and it meant
something - like, better parts availability, repairability,
documentation, support, etc. Not all of them, but something -
AND, it was paying domestic imports / reducing imports.
I'm not living paycheck to paycheck, but I'm not wealthy.
zanderz wrote 7 hours 23 min ago:
For anything more complex than a shower head, a made in USA
label often implies some trickery with final assembly of
imported components, like the crossfire example above.
Researching the supply chain for every single purchase is too
tedious and exhausting for many of us otherwise willing to vote
with our wallets.
dangus wrote 16 hours 21 min ago:
I haven't heard of the brand either, they just happened to
actually run the experiment. I think you'd just have to pretend
that both options are presented in a hardware store next to
each other: identical product, company, warranty, support phone
number, etc. Are we really buying the more expensive one just
because it's made in USA or will we just say that we will do
that and act in our own best interests by saving our money?
> and it meant something - like, better parts availability,
repairability, documentation, support, etc.
But remember, this bit isn't related to the country that
assembled the product, it has much more to do with the company
and brand doing the post-sales support, marketing, and the rest
of the customer-facing stuff. The Mac mini isn't getting a
better post-sale experience just because it's going to be
assembled in Houston. The product and company are identical.
Finally, I think it may be worth recognizing that there's a
growing perception that Chinese products are the best ones,
just like how people felt about many American products built in
the post-WW2 era. I would subscribe to this perception that
Chinese products are more likely to be good than products made
in many other countries. They just have the ecosystem and the
most expansive, skilled high volume manufacturing on the
planet.
logotype wrote 21 hours 50 min ago:
Youâre not alone. Iâm a self-funded startup founder and I
still buy Made in USA goods (clothes, appliances, tools,
supplies, equipment, etc). For me the price isnât the main
factor, itâs simply that I want to support the countries I
like. Been doing this for 10 years now. Based in London so I
also buy Made in England things too. Never ever support
authoritarian regimes!
georgemcbay wrote 16 hours 41 min ago:
> I still buy Made in USA
> Never ever support authoritarian regimes!
(Speaking as an American)... you sure about that?
xuki wrote 23 hours 17 min ago:
Mac mini is a relatively low volume product for Apple, the margin hit
would not be consequential to their bottom line. I'll believe it when
they start making iPhone in the US.
onlyrealcuzzo wrote 23 hours 18 min ago:
You could prototype assembly in China, then have everything ready to
go, and do mass assembly elsewhere.
apercu wrote 23 hours 33 min ago:
Jebus. âItâs hard to manufacture in the US.â
Yes.
Thatâs what rebuilding capability looks like.
China built dense supply chains over decades. Of course iteration was
faster.
Hard isnât a reason not to do it.
Itâs what happens when youâve optimized for margin and optics and
performance instead of resilience.
nutjob2 wrote 23 hours 28 min ago:
No, it's local manufacturing theater.
The US does a lot of manufacturing, second only to China, but not
low margin stuff that isn't economic.
Trying to "bring back" that sort of thing is idiotic and is
entirely performative and induced by the current incompetent
administration.
China is a genuine threat but the right solution is to move it to
other friendlier countries instead of losing money trying to do it
in the US.
Stupid is a reason not to do it.
dartharva wrote 4 hours 27 min ago:
Common rhetoric says the US's grassroots economics and job market
have been consistently sinking to the point that falling back to
that kind of "low margin" manufacturing is back to being
feasible. Is that false? Are US wages still too high for that?
AngryData wrote 23 hours 15 min ago:
It is apparently economic to do so in China and apparently any
other place you want to outsource it to. Does smaller and one-off
productions have as high of margins as high speed automated
stamping machines running 24/7? No. But that doesn't mean it
isn't profitable at all.
And quite frankly, who gives a fuck if top owners and investors
get maximum returns, boo hoo they got 4% return instead of 8%,
that is still far better than the average working class's deal.
Our entire problem is a suffering middle and lower classes that
need decent work, they will still be happy even if the product
they make is a bit lower margin because they are paid hourly, not
paid by dividends and stock options which is where all the higher
margins profits go. Average citizens pay has not correlated with
increased company profits, and increased company profits isn't
what makes society stable, so the investor class is going to have
to suck it up and take the hit unless they want their entire
house of cards to collapse.
CPLX wrote 23 hours 12 min ago:
Yes youâve hit on the reason. Very few people understand
this.
The reason we donât invest in manufacturing is because of
requirements for return on capital.
Ask yourself why GM is doing massive stock buybacks in the era
of global transition to electric cars. Why arenât they using
these huge sums of cash to invest in the next generation of
products and instead literally just sending the money out the
door?
WillPostForFood wrote 23 hours 16 min ago:
The US manufacturing situation is much worse than you suggest,
and is top heavy with low margin boring industrial stuff. Largest
sector for US manufacturing is Chemicals, which includes
fertilizer, petrochemicals, pesticides, and some pharma. The
second largest sector is Tobacco, Food, and Beverages.
I think some more "low margin" computer and chip manufacturing
would be healthy.
deaddodo wrote 23 hours 21 min ago:
This is the part that blows my mind. People seem to think the US
is incapable of and does no manufacturing. It is the second
largest manufacturer[1], and has a capacity about 65% of what
China does. Which is 350% of the next largest manufacturing
country.
What they stopped manufacturing was menial and low-end product;
because it's not price-effective to have 100 Americans sit on an
assembly line and solder SMT components for $7-18/hr. Instead,
those potential workers pivoted into service jobs and office
work.
1 -
HTML [1]: https://www.safeguardglobal.com/resources/blog/top-10-ma...
rayiner wrote 23 hours 8 min ago:
> What they stopped manufacturing was menial and low-end
product
This statement is as inaccurate as the comment youâre trying
to debunk. The fact is that China leveraged itâs low-end
manufacturing work to work its way up the chain and now is the
leader in many areas: [1] . E.g. China has been investing
heavily in radar technology and as a result has air to air
missiles with comparable range to the U.S. [2] There are
synergies to having the high end stuff and the low end stuff in
the same place. The story of IBM developing System 360 mentions
the benefit from the ladies who wound the wire core memory and
the guys who designed the computer on the same campus in New
York. We gave that up when we outsourced the âmenialâ stuff
abroad.
HTML [1]: https://itif.org/publications/2025/09/23/how-china-is-...
HTML [2]: https://en.defence-ua.com/weapon_and_tech/why_the_us_i...
rangestransform wrote 3 hours 15 min ago:
When I was at Tesla, this was the reason given for having the
Fremont factory despite Bay Area labour prices
deaddodo wrote 14 hours 55 min ago:
Your entire blurb doesn't prove an inaccuracy, it simply
shows that China has diversified it's manufacturing beyond
low-end manufacturing.
I never claimed that they did not do high-end manufacturing.
rayiner wrote 8 hours 5 min ago:
The point is that high end and low end manufacturing are
intimately related. You canât outsource your low end
manufacturing without your high end eventually collapsing.
The U.S. still manufactures high end products in some
fields. But in many areas we have lost the high end as well
as the low end. E.g. we canât compete with the Chinese in
electric cars.
apercu wrote 23 hours 14 min ago:
Fair, but there is tons of HIGH END manufacturing we could do
that we just don't, even though there is every incentive to do
so.
deaddodo wrote 14 hours 48 min ago:
The US does 65% of China's manufacturing capacity at 25%
their population.
They are doing fine.
Thlom wrote 11 hours 49 min ago:
This can only be correct in spreadsheets. In the material
reality China outproduces the US by orders of magnitude.
For example, China produces ten times more steel, 3 times
more cars and in shipbuilding China manufactures literarily
thousands of times more ships than the US.
maxglute wrote 10 hours 5 min ago:
Bingo US produces about ~1/2 of PRC by VALUE ADD not
gross output.
And it's not all high value goods. US produces
magnitude(s) less than PRC in nearly all industrial
sectors, i.e somewhere between single digit times less to
100s less. Some of it might not matter, like trinkets,
some of it does, like 500x more shipbuilding by tonnage.
Of the magnitude less that US produces, some legit high
value like aviation, some are spreadsheet value, i.e. US
car worth 3x than a comparable Chinese car. For
shipbuilding, PRC produces like 50m DWT per year, aka
MORE than US total WW2 shipbuilding, all 4 years, and
generate about 150b revenue. US produces 0.3m tons (round
up), and generate about 40b.
A ton of US ship, even navy isn't worth except 50x
premium over a PRC ton except in spread sheets. That 50x
premium is rent/capture, it's what prevents US from
actually industrializing vs spreadsheet industrializing.
TLDR except in a some high value sectors, US is getting
absolutely mogged even per capita in gross output.
CPLX wrote 23 hours 14 min ago:
Thatâs just not the reason though.
The reason we canât do manufacturing is because Wall Street
demands capital light business models.
That, in turn, is an outcome of being the global reserve
currency.
twoodfin wrote 21 hours 31 min ago:
The reason we canât do manufacturing is because Wall Street
demands capital light business models.
Not at the (AI) moment.
delfinom wrote 23 hours 16 min ago:
Yes/no.
China at this point is hard in automation, beyond anything the
US has. China is well past the peak of sweatshops.
As someone in the manufacturing space in the US, the biggest
issue we have in the US is that manufacturing continues to die.
Any manufacturing we have left is the old guard dying off. It
comes from a range of issues from companies refusing to invest
in younger employees, to the cost of real estate (both buy or
rent) for commercial properties being absurd..
deaddodo wrote 14 hours 51 min ago:
Incorrect. To reiterate, the closest near competitor below it
does ~30% what the US does; and it only goes down from there.
And, compared to China, they are doing 65% of their
manufacturing capacity at 25% of their population. The US is
doing fine.
The fact that China is diversified beyond low end
manufacturing just shows that they have incentive + economic
impetus to expand that field; and hardly disproves what I
stated or shows any trend of US manufacturing "dying off".
vsgherzi wrote 23 hours 37 min ago:
Just as manufacturing in China took time manufacturing in the US will
take time. The US has lost much of its skilled labor and mom and pop
parts shop. If we have any hope of re-invigorating this some large
company is going to have to bite the bullet. Chicken and egg problem
imo. I'll leave whether this is worth it or not up to the economists.
whynotmaybe wrote 22 hours 52 min ago:
No, US didn't lose it, we collectively decided that whenever we buy
something, the price was the most important aspect.
It's like everybody forgot that their neighbour's job depend on
them.
We're repeating the same pattern with online shopping, malls and
stores everywhere are closing because of our collective actions,
we're not losing them like I lost my keys.
dyauspitr wrote 5 hours 10 min ago:
This is not a valid criticism. You cannot expect people to become
activist consumers through every purchase in their lives. Some of
this is on manufacturers too. With all the billions and trillions
we have I donât understand why Americans are refusing to set up
large scale dark factories. China already has ramped up a huge
number of them but we refuse to do it.
solidsnack9000 wrote 16 hours 39 min ago:
Choosing the lowest price is rational for the consumer. Setting
the trade policy that allowed that lowest price -- the USA has
less protection for the semiconductor industry than it has for
textiles -- was the mistake.
Free trade does result in the best prices but it has other,
negative effects, and it is when we think as policy makers -- as
citizens, not consumers or business owners -- that we are
accountable for those effects.
mschuster91 wrote 19 hours 37 min ago:
> We're repeating the same pattern with online shopping, malls
and stores everywhere are closing because of our collective
actions, we're not losing them like I lost my keys.
A huge part of that is rents. Basically, a store that owns their
property outright or even on mortgage has far less worries when
business turns down during a crisis. Take Covid - a year or two,
depending on where you were, in more or less lockdown conditions.
A store that was owner-owned? No big deal. Staff was paid for by
government assistance, not much ongoing cost for the building.
Owned but mortgaged? Cut a deal with the bank, no bank wants to
go through a 2007ff event again and they also got assistance for
loans. But a store that was rented? Yeetie yeetie. Commercial
renters have zero protections anywhere, and landlords are
nonforgiving - especially when they are backed by REITs and other
investment vehicles.
Recent history is filled with examples of investment funds that
behave like vultures - seek out a company that has sizable owned
real estate, buy stocks, force the management to sell off the
real estate in a heavily biased sale-and-lease-back maneuver, put
the acquisition debt on the company's ledgers, sell off the real
estate and let the husk of the company wither.
alt227 wrote 7 hours 55 min ago:
> A huge part of that is rents.
And this is becasue huge international investors still own
sites like malls and retail centers and still remember the
massive rents they used to command for those units.
The bubble will burst when enough sites are written off, and
IMO rents will come back down to a reasonable level in a decade
or 2.
mschuster91 wrote 3 hours 17 min ago:
> And this is becasue huge international investors still own
sites like malls and retail centers and still remember the
massive rents they used to command for those units.
Oh no. It's US pension funds that own a lot of real estate,
and these will continue to get bailed out or protected by the
government.
The decision of the US to back pensions on the stonk market
has insane, crippling side effects not just on their economy
but also on the rest of the world.
shiroiuma wrote 20 hours 7 min ago:
>We're repeating the same pattern with online shopping, malls and
stores everywhere are closing because of our collective actions
Are you talking about the small mom-n-pop shops that are only
open when most people are at work, while with online shopping you
can do it any time 24/7? The same mom-n-pop shops that refused
to take returns, and had poor selection and would take weeks to
order something for you, at a ridiculous price?
There are a lot of really good reasons online shopping has put so
many stores out of business.
cucumber3732842 wrote 20 hours 53 min ago:
Who's we?
The college educated white collar professionals who are grossly
over-represented in policy discourse?
Middle america, the formerly industrial northeast and the former
bulk industry west have been complaining about this shit policy
for over a generation.
Implicitly shuttering our manufacturing and heavy industry by
subjecting it to policy that we knew would make it increasingly
noncompetitive at the margin and would prevent continuing
investment was a macro/federal level economic policy choice that
was actively pursued for approx 50yr.
Braxton1980 wrote 20 hours 12 min ago:
What government policies are you referring to? Businesses moved
manufacturing to China because their goal is to make as much
money as possible. The only potential barrier is if US citizens
would care that it wasn't made in America. Products are labeled
and most people don't care.
This is an American quality where a person who works in a
factory that makes extension cords and needs their job to
survive would buy the cheaper lamp even though it's made in
China.
Most people aren't willing to make financial sacrifices to help
people they don't know EVEN if they might be affected by
another person having the same belief.
NickC25 wrote 7 hours 31 min ago:
>Most people aren't willing to make financial sacrifices to
help people they don't know EVEN if they might be affected by
another person having the same belief.
Because in the US that's the case because people give a shit
about cost - you could make financial sacrifices to help your
community by buying local...but your costs of living are
skyrocketing every year, the costs of your family are
increasing, and the difference between buying from BigCorp
(Walmart, Amazon) and from your local store (which is
1.3-1.7x the price vs BigCorp) adds up.
Sad but it's true.
mschuster91 wrote 19 hours 35 min ago:
> Businesses moved manufacturing to China because their goal
is to make as much money as possible.
There used to be other times and more honorable businessmen.
Then came the Dodge Brothers who managed to get a court
judgement asserting shareholder supremacy over long term
interests [1].
The only thing I never understood is how in god's name Amazon
got away with reinvesting profits and never dishing out to
shareholders for decades. [1] .
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co
cucumber3732842 wrote 11 hours 2 min ago:
>There used to be other times and more honorable
businessmen
The 1930s through 1960s (i.e. industrialization had matured
but you can't construe it as "modern" business) are chock
full of corporate raiders, acquisitions with nearly
monopolistic goals, cartels, etc.
rangestransform wrote 20 hours 48 min ago:
Not overrepresented enough given that middle America has
disproportionate per capita voting power
cucumber3732842 wrote 20 hours 32 min ago:
It's not just middle america. It's the entire economy that
deals in things first and numbers and ideas second.
donw wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
We collectively decided nothing.
Our political/ruling class wanted more of the pie for themselves,
dropped the trade barriers protecting American industry, and
gorged themselves on the arbitrage as manufacturing flowed to our
chief geopolitcal rival, who was quite happy to accept such a
generous gift.
insane_dreamer wrote 21 hours 49 min ago:
That's true, but we also collectively decided to buy cheap
stuff from Walmart instead of buying from the local town store,
creating a race to the bottom.
pixl97 wrote 19 hours 59 min ago:
Ya, because the same item was way more at other stores and
people didn't understand why. Most of it was logistics at
first and not just cheap items. That and buying in very very
large lots. It was over time that the hunt for more profits
started chasing cheap items.
Really the mom and pop store was set to die in the US because
of car culture. You'll pay a bit more to walk to the closest
store, but if you're already driving there is very little
cost in driving to a store a little farther is almost
nothing.
plagiarist wrote 20 hours 51 min ago:
Or did stagnant wages drive Americans to buy what they could
afford instead of products that would last?
We also have many US manufacturers moving sourcing their
subcomponents from overseas to save a few cents per unit,
there's no way to prevent that, nobody is going to check the
BOM from everything they ever buy.
I think collective behavior is a large component but it is
not quite right to declare it as the primary driver.
Braxton1980 wrote 20 hours 5 min ago:
What if people could have purchased American made goods but
this means that they would have had to have less or what
they did get wouldn't be as good.
For example, I get a 40inch TV instead of a 65 inch or I
buy a set of American made screwdrivers but then I can't
get a bottle of Vodka.
Most people have their basic needs met. They just want as
much as possible for their money even if it harms other
Americans. At the same time, if they happen to work at a
factory making extension cords, they'll want people to buy
their US made cords to protect their job.
Because most people are selfish when it comes to people who
aren't family or friends.
vsgherzi wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
What you're describing literally is us losing it. We lost in the
market. Price was above all for the market and we didn't adapt
and lost. I agree with the point you're trying to make but we did
lose it in the sense that we do not have the manufacturing
capacity we once did
alt227 wrote 7 hours 57 min ago:
We didnt 'not adapt and loose' we welcomed it with open arms in
order to get cheap prices. People voted with their wallets and
collectively decided they didnt give 2 hoots about where
something was made as long as the price was right.
denkmoon wrote 22 hours 46 min ago:
Homo economicus' desire for a 'good deal' or 'a bargain' will
kill us.
SlightlyLeftPad wrote 21 hours 43 min ago:
âWhy would I hire X when I can get it for $20 a month on
ChatGPT?â
Hmm, I donât like the sound of that.
throwaway894345 wrote 23 hours 1 min ago:
Thereâs no world in which large scale manufacturing is returning
to the US. Not only are our labor costs dramatically higher than in
east asia, but we also lack the logistics infrastructure to quickly
produce components and get them to their next stage of assembly
quickly. And we canât just build that stuff because we donât
have a totalitarian government that can just bulldoze farms and
houses to run a highway or railway. We also are less interested in
pollution, which raises the sticker price on US manufacturing.
If weâre serious about it, we are going to have to commit
ourselves to economy-tanking tariffs (like thousands of percents)
for many decades until the US worker is as poor as the Vietnamese
worker.
vsgherzi wrote 22 hours 35 min ago:
In spite of no totalitarian government and things like
environmental regulations the US still is able to be one of the
most innovative nations on the planet. I don't think we need
those things to be able to have manufacturing in the united
states. We had it at one point and we can do it again. It's not
going to be easy and it's going to need some real breakthrough
ideas before we can actually compete. Apple here is the first
step.
azinman2 wrote 20 hours 31 min ago:
The US had it when the rest of the world was severely bombed
during WWII, and a lot of the world was very undeveloped.
Things changed.
edgyquant wrote 7 hours 24 min ago:
The US had it for a hundred years before that and was already
by far the largest industrial power on the planet before
world war 1
throwaway894345 wrote 20 hours 38 min ago:
We never had manufacturing within an order of magnitude of
China's scale in the US. Probably not within two orders of
magnitude. When the US was a manufacturing powerhouse, we had
far cheaper labor, far fewer environmental regulations, far
fewer labor regulations, and far simpler supply chains.
> Apple here is the first step.
Pretty sure the much-touted Foxconn plant in Wisconsin was the
first step, and just like this one it will be scaled down to a
few hundred jobs as soon as possible.
rockskon wrote 23 hours 1 min ago:
No amount of time will let the U.S. - a country of 348 million
people - replicate what China - a country with 1.4 billion people -
a can do with manufacturing.
This isn't "working harder".
This isn't "rebuilding infrastructure".
This isn't "training people in trades".
The numbers are so cartoonishly lopsided as to be a non-starter for
categorically replacing Chinese manufacturing.
maxglute wrote 6 hours 10 min ago:
People idealize US regaining manufacturing glory is like climbing
from 1/5 back to 5/5 US industrial peak. Meanwhile is PRC grew he
denominator and working at 20/20 scale. Ultimately 20 > 5 > 1,
but better 5 than 1.
rockskon wrote 28 min ago:
I mean...we're destroying advanced manufacturing where we make
expensive things in exchange for cheap manufacturing of basics
like textiles where tariffs of 1000% would be needed to make
U.S.-made goods competitive.
derektank wrote 21 hours 38 min ago:
600 million people live in North America. 1 billion people live
in the Americas. Another billion live on the Pacific rim in
non-Chinese countries.
Establishing regulatory harmony across all those countries is
obviously not possible in the same way it is in a single
authoritarian state, but if the US made it a priority to create a
trade bloc capable of replicating Chinaâs manufacturing
capacity, it probably could.
rswail wrote 13 hours 21 min ago:
There was an APAC trade treaty called the TPP that
Rodham-Clinton/Obama pulled out of which would have done
exactly that. They were forced to withdraw because of pressure
from unions, ie labor not capital.
Now it's the CPTPP and doesn't include the US.
Canada is looking to the Pacific and EU for trade now (and
China as well), so is Mexico.
It's likely that the EU/UK trade bloc will connect with the
CPTPP via both the UK and Canada, which connects them to the
APAC/ASEAN nations.
Everyone is aware of the power of the Chinese economy and the
idea of the CPTPP is precisely to build up a trade economy that
can compete and co-operate with China on an equal basis.
In the meantime, China is using its Belt & Road Initiative as a
sort of "Marshall Plan" to extend its influence by building
infrastructure like ports and rail.
These trade initiatives are at least focused on increasing
trade, as opposed to the US "trade policy" which is to use
tariffs as a crude form of protectionism and extortion to
"bring manufacturing back".
cmrdporcupine wrote 20 hours 27 min ago:
Establishing regulatory harmony is not only not possible but
the current regime is working in exactly the opposite
direction.
If the US wants to take on China, and actually needs Canada's
help to do it -- I can assure you they just set themselves back
10-20 years from achieving that. We no longer have any
interest.
The labour forces of Mexico and Canada are not at the US's
disposal for these kind of games anymore. For several decades
we have been exploited by the US for low wages and cheap
resources -- and now there's a regime that's making cheap
political points by accusing us of the opposite while trying to
emmiserate our populace. So, yeah, no thanks.
Romario77 wrote 22 hours 47 min ago:
both are pretty big numbers and I think are pretty capable to do
mass manufacturing. As evidenced by many industries that US had
and still has.
it could be less economical, so Apple has to innovate to be
competitive on pricing - with automation, robots, etc.
vsgherzi wrote 22 hours 48 min ago:
we don't have to entirely replace Chinese manufacturing to build
back American manufacturing that's a false dichotomy.To compete
we'll just have to be more revolutionary than the manufacturing
industry already is.
rockskon wrote 14 hours 55 min ago:
And what exactly will stop China - a country infamous for
copying U.S. technology - from copying whatever the U.S. comes
up with?
rswail wrote 13 hours 18 min ago:
China did in the 1990s exactly what the US did in the 1890s,
steal IP to build up its own industries. The US did it to the
UK and Europe back then, China has done it against the US/EU
over the last 3 decades.
It's at the point now where it is self-sustaining, which is
why you see China starting to enforce IP Rights, precisely
because it is now generating its own IP that it wants to
protect.
Any economist would say that if China did just "copy" US
technology to make itself more productive, that's good
economic practice, from China's perspective.
Moats only worked for a while to protect European castles,
they don't exist now.
rockskon wrote 4 hours 56 min ago:
It sounds like you're agreeing with me.
tw1984 wrote 14 hours 22 min ago:
forcing the US to copy Chinese designs?
Ford is openly discussing the idea to have joint ventures
with Chinese EV makers, the whole idea is to get Chinese EV
techs in exchange for US market access.
TikTok takeover is another good example.
9dev wrote 23 hours 21 min ago:
Are you sure thatâs actually what you want though, competing with
China in skilled labor?
rob74 wrote 22 hours 54 min ago:
Well, once AI takes over most of the white collar jobs, people
will have to do something to put food on the table, and not all
of them can be gig workers. Or do you see ideas like Universal
Basic Income as an alternative for the US?
9dev wrote 11 hours 19 min ago:
I'll worry about the Deus Ex Machina when it's here. Until
then, AI is mostly generating a lot of text and burning insane
amounts of energy, and we have bigger problems to worry about.
Like a president diverting ten billion dollars of tax payer
money into his cosplay UN for crooks and dictators.
nkassis wrote 22 hours 32 min ago:
That's argument is a bit rough given manufacturing is one of
the areas seeing the most automation progress and success. One
of the main reason it's not more successful is labor costs can
be lower than automation that wouldn't be true if we wanted to
replace the income of white collar workers in the US.
If we end up in a place where AI and automation take over then
yeah I think we start looking at alternative income sources and
economic system. Just like star trek predicted we would do
after WW3.
vsgherzi wrote 23 hours 16 min ago:
Of course I do. Competition can only be good here.
hn_acc1 wrote 22 hours 50 min ago:
You willing to work 996? I would prefer some form of work-life
balance.
edgyquant wrote 7 hours 25 min ago:
Most factories in the us simply have multiple shifts and run
24 hours
vsgherzi wrote 22 hours 44 min ago:
Why is that the only way to accomplish that? We'll have to
restart manufacturing while also keeping wages livable and
the work the US does competitive. As I said above we'll just
have to be more revolutionary than the manufacturing industry
already is.
tencentshill wrote 23 hours 33 min ago:
It needs a careful long term approach from real leaders. Not a
run-and-gun, corrupt, chaotic president throwing tariffs (taxes) up
on a whim.
palmotea wrote 14 hours 45 min ago:
>> Just as manufacturing in China took time manufacturing in the
US will take time. The US has lost much of its skilled labor and
mom and pop parts shop. If we have any hope of re-invigorating
this some large company is going to have to bite the bullet.
Chicken and egg problem imo. I'll leave whether this is worth it
or not up to the economists.
> It needs a careful long term approach from real leaders. Not a
run-and-gun, corrupt, chaotic president throwing tariffs (taxes)
up on a whim.
The problem is all the real leaders got indoctrinated and drank
the globalization kool-aid. Unfortunately, it seems only an
insane and chaotic person was able to actually buck the
iamverysmart consensus.
0_____0 wrote 23 hours 9 min ago:
There is no contingent in the US federal government that has a
coherent plan for doing what you're talking about.
The investment in capability that is necessary to build the next
generation of manufacturing capabilities in the US is simply not
within the public imagination.
mothballed wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
I don't think it's something that can be centrally planned
well.
If the US changes their environmental regulations to match
China, lowered their tax-to-GDP ratio to match China, changed
their worker regulations to match China, and then opened up
free immigration from Mexico for cheap factory labor then the
"free" market would likely take care of opening up quite a bit
more manufacturing.
0_____0 wrote 16 hours 0 min ago:
china did not synthesize shenzhen through having poor
environmental regulations and cheap labor, nor would one
expect to have a shenzhen appear spontaneously in the us if
the us allowed in unlimited migrant labor and abolished all
environmental law.
cucumber3732842 wrote 20 hours 39 min ago:
Hell, don't even match it. Split the difference and it would
unleash a torrent of economic activity.
It will never happen because there's too many industries and
jobs that only exist because of all that regulation and will
fight tooth and nail to avoid a short term haircut.
xienze wrote 23 hours 19 min ago:
Heâs at least getting companies to pretend like theyâre going
to try. Thatâs a starting point. Before, the best youâd get
out of these CEOs is âLOL those jobs are never coming back,
learn to code or whatever else hasnât been outsourced fully
yet.â
throwaway894345 wrote 22 hours 56 min ago:
His predecessor worked with Congress to actually bring
microchip manufacturing back to the US and tried to keep us
competitive with EV manufacturing (not to mention the
infrastructure investments that are necessary for any serious
manufacturing effort). Those were real commitments.
Extorting CEOs to announce investments (like the Zuckerberg hot
mic incident) is not worth anything to me. Meanwhile the US has
been hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs for the last year.
NetMageSCW wrote 23 hours 41 min ago:
The press release says theyâve been making their own servers there
successfully so it doesnât seem like there is a reason they would
stop Mini manufacturing quickly.
nutjob2 wrote 23 hours 33 min ago:
Two different things. They do not have margin to preserve on the
servers.
If I was interested in "performative local manufacturing" I'd also
build my own servers, it has the least economic impact.
modeless wrote 23 hours 37 min ago:
They did the exact same thing with Mac Pro in 2019. I notice they
don't say they'll stop manufacturing the Mac Mini anywhere else.
This is a political thing and will change with the political winds.
pama wrote 23 hours 53 min ago:
Mac minis are sold out in NYC these days because everyone gets them to
try out openclaw. Even if this move by Apple is unrelated to the recent
demand, it certainly was timed right for the policy and market makers.
PlatoIsADisease wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
The wild part is that these are awful and not usable.
Both my fortune 20 company and my buddy got these for LLMs... and the
champion/my buddy had the look of shame when it wasnt usable.
sigmar wrote 23 hours 12 min ago:
It's so funny to me that HN seems convinced that artists have a
sudden renewed interest in desktop computers, when LLMs have been
driving mac mini sales for more than a year
bigyabai wrote 19 hours 3 min ago:
It's so funny to me that X users think OpenClaw represents more
than 1% of Apple's desktop sales because it's what their timeline
says is true.
If you want to humiliate me conclusively, throw me some numbers.
LLMs have moved trillions worth of hardware value, but only a
fraction of it is Apple branded.
intrasight wrote 6 hours 47 min ago:
Why do you say that?
Anecdotally, everyone I know who has bought a Mac mini in the
last month has done so to run OpenClaw. Yes only three people,
but before that I only knew one person over several years who had
bought one.
F7F7F7 wrote 20 hours 25 min ago:
I'm a product exec now but used to be designer and lead UX teams.
Even though I don't use those skills as much nowadays it's still a
almost daily hobby of mine.
Like the rest of HN (maybe it's HN's fault!) I managed to convince
myself that I not only needed a Mac Mini desktop but also a 4090
rig for AI.
The 4090 hasn't been booted up in 9 months and the Mac Mini is now
the world's most amazing 10GBE NAS server. My older M1 Max
Macbook Pro and underpowered newer Macbook Air are the only things
I use.
trvz wrote 15 hours 7 min ago:
I think youâre using âunderpoweredâ wrong here.
abustamam wrote 19 hours 18 min ago:
I mean, I'll take the 4090 if you don't want it :)
It's funny how we convince ourselves we need things. I bought
myself a 3080 Ti a few years ago because I wanted a gaming
computer, but then I ended up buying a Playstation 5 and not
using my computer for anything more intensive than Factorio. More
recently though I have been using my 3080 for Comfy UI image
generation and messing around with local models, so I guess it's
getting use now.
locusofself wrote 23 hours 52 min ago:
why were mac minis so popular for this compared to any other machine,
cloud VPS or local VM?
TiredOfLife wrote 17 hours 6 min ago:
claws are run mainly by rich american programmers. The only
computer they have is a macbook. The only brand they know is apple.
The only cloud they know is serverless
PlatoIsADisease wrote 22 hours 34 min ago:
In classic Apple fashion, they fooled people into thinking an
integrated GPU is the same as Nvidia.
Gosh I wish I could hire their marketing company.
usef- wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
Where did they say this?
hackingonempty wrote 23 hours 37 min ago:
Macs have "unified memory" meaning the GPU uses the same memory as
the CPU and minis can have up to 64 gigs. So its a lot faster than
running on a CPU and a lot cheaper than any other GPU based rig
with similar memory.
ErneX wrote 8 hours 12 min ago:
Everyone recommending a Mac Mini for OpenClaw is recommending the
base model (which has just 16GB of ram), so itâs not about the
unified memory, it is about the agent being able to interact with
your apple ecosystem services like reminders, iMessage etc.
It is the cheapest Mac you can get for that.
mountainriver wrote 21 hours 42 min ago:
Macâs are still pretty terrible at running LLMs. They will be
there someday, but that isnât today
PlatoIsADisease wrote 22 hours 35 min ago:
Unified Memory and Integrated GPU.
Apple is amazing at marketing to make 1990s technology sound
cutting edge. I'm sure they change something for plausible
deniability, as a nominalist, not even 2 of the same computers
are the same.
matthewfcarlson wrote 23 hours 13 min ago:
It allows your Claw to access all your iCloud data easily like
reminders and iMessage for example
hirvi74 wrote 17 hours 15 min ago:
Everything about that makes me feel very uncomfortable. Google
made and spent a fortune on getting people's data, and now
people are just handing it out for free by the GBs.
mholm wrote 23 hours 31 min ago:
Most openclaw users are not running the models locally.
locusofself wrote 21 hours 41 min ago:
This is what I thought. The iMessage integration makes sense I
guess though.
retired wrote 23 hours 39 min ago:
The Mac mini has a very good value for money if you need raw
performance in a small silent package. Frequently available for
between $399 - $499 discounted.
A VPS that can perform like a Mac mini will likely cost the same as
a Mac mini in 12 months time.
hirvi74 wrote 17 hours 13 min ago:
I picked one up to replace my prior mini that I spent 4x the
amount of money on. It's an absolute speed demon.
piskov wrote 23 hours 7 min ago:
Openclaw is running via api. The reason people are bying separate
machines is for security isolation and 24/7 power â performance
is irrelevant.
amelius wrote 23 hours 49 min ago:
Because these people have Apple IDs, and they need a machine that
can access their various accounts.
llmslave wrote 23 hours 51 min ago:
so you can use the full operating system
FitchApps wrote 23 hours 44 min ago:
And get hacked via prompt injection
piskov wrote 23 hours 6 min ago:
Thatâs why people buy separate machines / use VPS.
Phemist wrote 23 hours 51 min ago:
More importantly iMessage
kombine wrote 23 hours 54 min ago:
Wasn't going to buy one before, not going to buy one now.
tedd4u wrote 23 hours 55 min ago:
It doesn't say the Mini will be exclusively produced at this US
facility. I wonder in say 2 years what % will be "produced" in the US?
1%? 0.1%?
alwillis wrote 23 hours 43 min ago:
> It doesn't say the Mini will be exclusively produced at this US
facility.
What's likely to happen is Mac minis for North America will be made
in Houston. Otherwise, the ones for the rest of the world will be
made at the same facilities they are now.
Just like iPhones for the US are made in India; iPhones for the rest
of the world are made in China.
swiftcoder wrote 13 hours 23 min ago:
> What's likely to happen is Mac minis for North America will be
made in Houston
I'd guess it's a small percentage of the Mac minis for North
America. Just enough that they get exempted from tariffs on the
ones coming in from overseas...
alwillis wrote 3 hours 47 min ago:
Because Appleâs CEO is playing nice with the administration
(for now), Apple has been exempt from tariffs, even going back to
Trumpâs first term.
Also investing $500 billion in domestic manufacturing doesnât
hurt.
toast0 wrote 22 hours 31 min ago:
I imagine iPhones for India are also made in India. India has a lot
of programs to promote production within the country, and IIRC,
Apple moved production there to take advantage of that. Given they
have production in India, it makes sense to use that production for
shipments to the US given better tariff rates for things produced
in India vs China.
mcmcmc wrote 23 hours 47 min ago:
Theyâll make a gold one there every year as tribute to Trump
general_reveal wrote 23 hours 56 min ago:
Was it such a sin that our electronics were made in the East? Was the
west truly deprived and the east really abused? Itâs nearly the end
of of our lifetime (+-100 years is a margin of error), so the fact for
our lifetimes is that our electronics got made there.
What is the final judgement about this?
notepad0x90 wrote 23 hours 31 min ago:
The same reason Europeans are moving away from US tech right now. You
can't bury your head in the sand and pretend geopolitics is
imaginary.
TulliusCicero wrote 23 hours 52 min ago:
"Sin" is the wrong framing, but outsourcing most of your capability
to actually make stuff can definitely cause problems for a country.
For example, on a military level, the US is concerned about how
rapidly China is catching up in naval capacity, China is building new
warships far faster than the US can. And it's hard not to notice that
China's overall shipbuilding capacity is more than 200x higher than
America's.
The US has a lot of pride over having been "the arsenal of democracy"
in WW2, and it's well known that a huge part of why the US was
effective in that war was sheer mass: the US simply made much more
war 'stuff' than any other combatant. But if the US was to get in a
shooting war with China today, it would likely be China that would
enjoy an advantage in production scale, with the US trying to make do
with fewer vehicles and munitions.
general_reveal wrote 23 hours 46 min ago:
Tactical error then. I suppose I was hoping someone would make the
human plea that the barter was mostly a net good for our lifetimes.
Our neighbors made our clothes. You suggest tactically this a
problem, but Iâm wondering if we managed to live peacefully and
goodly this way?
jesse_dot_id wrote 1 day ago:
i_dont_believe_you.gif
random3 wrote 1 day ago:
Gotta love PR embracing the many definitions of "made in"
jama211 wrote 12 hours 20 min ago:
When the system works against you, why not
jcims wrote 16 hours 10 min ago:
Itâs worked for the automotive industry for decades.
givemeethekeys wrote 23 hours 14 min ago:
Surely, someone high up asked,
"What is the least amount of work we have to do in order to not pay
tariffs?"
dartharva wrote 4 hours 26 min ago:
you say that as if they were supposed to do something else.
random3 wrote 22 hours 13 min ago:
and everythign ended in "this is the way!"
d--b wrote 1 day ago:
My wild guess is that Cook cut a deal with the IRS so that they build
in the US, but get tax benefits other companies don't get, so that it
looks good on the administration - like the tariffs are working - and
still benefits Apple.
I don't think Apple wouldn't find a cheaper place to manufacture Macs
than the US. The US is literally the most expensive place to build.
That, or the Mac Minis are 100% asembled by robots, which is also a
possibility.
giobox wrote 1 day ago:
We already know exactly what the deal is, no need to speculate. Apple
got large tariff exemptions in exchange for supporting Trump's "Made
in America" agenda:
> [1] >
HTML [1]: https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-invest-american-manufacturing...
HTML [2]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/08/06/apple-exempt-from...
jgbuddy wrote 22 hours 57 min ago:
Isn't that the whole point of the tariff? To incentivize US
investment?
bdangubic wrote 1 day ago:
by IRS you mean Mar a Largo?
null_deref wrote 1 day ago:
Non political genuine question, is building in the USA more expensive
than letâs say Germany?
runako wrote 23 hours 46 min ago:
No. But you have to understand that American political rhetoric
only allows for things to be made either in the US or China (and
occasionally Mexico). In that framework, yes the US is the most
expensive place to make things.
nessbot wrote 1 day ago:
Can one "cut a deal" with the IRS without it ending up in legislation
(i.e. tax law)?
bux93 wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
The IRS can issue Private Letter Rulings (which are anoymized but
public so you could check if they treat a company preferentially -
although not which company) and Advance Pricing Agreements.
Rulings from different countries are typically used to ensure no
taxes are paid. E.g. get a ruling from the US that some activity is
taxable in Luxembourg, and then get a ruling from Luxembourg that
it's taxable in the US. Like McDonald's did. Either country will
then say "well, it's up to the other country to tax that, I'm not
policing that". Mostly after a while, multiple companies get clued
in and it all gets exposed and the "loophole" is closed. E.g. a
uble Irish with a Dutch Sandwich. See [1] This can be an honest
error by one or both tax services, a strategic move (to be a "tax
paradise" and prevent other taxable activities from leaving the
country), or - one would speculate, allegedly - for political or
personal gain.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
d--b wrote 9 hours 35 min ago:
Large companies cut deals with the government all the time.
When a large company wants to create a new plant somewhere, they go
shopping for what state/city will give them the most favorable tax.
Politicians throw in special exemptions, special tax credits,
exclusivity contracts, all sorts of things.
In the US, everything is flexible.
mattnewton wrote 23 hours 53 min ago:
Legally no, but in practice the president has been trying to assert
the power to unilaterally levy taxes, even in spite of the supreme
court ruling that you need the legislature to pass a tax. People
still paid the tariffs. I would be extremely suprised if that's the
only place this admin is trying to tax by fiat, and tax policy
enforcemetn is far less visible than consumer tariffs.
CursedSilicon wrote 1 day ago:
Not without a big beautiful bribe [1] I assume
HTML [1]: https://www.theverge.com/news/737757/apple-president-donal...
nessbot wrote 23 hours 54 min ago:
Yeah, not denying the bribing. But that doesn't change tax law.
It still needsto be passed by congress. Does it affect
enforcement, though? maybe
CursedSilicon wrote 23 hours 20 min ago:
So much of what this admin has done "needed" to be approved by
congress. They're complicit in the overreach of power
AIorNot wrote 1 day ago:
Better than nothing- assemble things made in asian countries in usa,
just a step above boxing
lysace wrote 1 day ago:
Why is that better?
rayiner wrote 23 hours 36 min ago:
Because itâs important to have the domestic capacity to build the
most sophisticated products. Political power is downstream of
manufacturing capacity. The countries that have sophisticated
enough centrifuges that they can refine weapons grade plutonium
derive an incredible amount of political power from that fact.
Remember that, after World War I, the U.S. had most demobilized its
military. The Japanese had more aircraft carriers than the U.S. in
1941. Thatâs why Japan attacked Pearl Harborâit thought it
could win!
But while the U.S. was weak militarily, it had been the largest
industrial producer since the late 19th century. Within a couple of
years of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. had built a bigger air force and
navy than the rest of the world combined.
Thatâs why itâs better to be able to make Mac Minis in Houston.
Because you can repurpose those facilities to produce electronics
for warships instead of having to buy parts from countries you
might be at war with.
techpression wrote 1 day ago:
Didnât know they were also pushing education so heavily, I mean it
makes sense, but still great to see that they donât expect skills and
knowledge to appear out of thin air and is putting money to improving
it.
hypeatei wrote 1 day ago:
[flagged]
buzzerbetrayed wrote 1 day ago:
Letâs say youâre right and Apple is only doing this because of
Trump.
Then Trump did a good thing. Youâre inadvertently praising Trump in
your attempt to slander Tim Cook.
philipallstar wrote 1 day ago:
Those sound like good things. I'm not sure why your second paragraph
sounds like the opposite.
hypeatei wrote 23 hours 10 min ago:
Currying favor with fascists is NOT good. What has meaningfully
changed for onshoring to make sense economically? Nothing. All
that's happened is an executive came into power who threatens
tariffs and other retaliatory action via the DOJ / DHS / FCC if you
don't do what Trump says. It's embarrassing and frankly insane that
our business leaders continue to stay silent, have dinners at the
Whitehouse, and put out puff pieces like this.
Mark Zuckerberg made up pledged "investment" numbers on the spot at
one of their dinners and was caught on hot mic admitting it. This
is hilariously corrupt and will not result in a US manufacturing
boom.
philipallstar wrote 21 hours 35 min ago:
Calling people fascists for any reason has completely removed the
real meaning of the word. Putin did the same to incentivise the
war in Ukraine, and in the US, if you're not the media companies
benefitting from endlessly stirring people up to a frenzy with
that word, you're the LLM trained on their very narrow input
texts.
hypeatei wrote 20 hours 54 min ago:
> Calling people fascists for any reason
Luckily it's not just "for any reason" then! There are plenty
of examples, where do you want to start? I'll start with a few:
Steven Miller saying they have plenary authority, Bovino
claiming a city was "theirs" after rolling up with CBP/ICE
goons, JD Vance saying federal officers have "absolute
immunity", CBP officers showing up in force at Gavin Newsom's
rally, and the pardon of Jan 6th insurrectionists.
Also you didn't answer how the economics of onshoring have
changed, I guess the fascist thing really struck a nerve... I
wonder why.
philipallstar wrote 13 hours 17 min ago:
> I guess the fascist thing really struck a nerve... I wonder
why.
Oops - you've done it again.
bigyabai wrote 1 day ago:
They're cursory gestures at best, and stark condemnations of US
manufacturing capacity at worst. The Mac Mini and Mac Pro are not
complex or dense electronics in the slightest. They're carrier
enclosures for TSMC technology, you could probably make them in
Siberia if you wanted to.
The hard part is manufacturing Apple's high-volume hardware, namely
the iPhone. That is not anywhere close to being onshored, and Apple
seemingly has no interest in even attempting it if Indian labor is
still an option.
As Tim Cook put it: "In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling
engineers, and Iâm not sure we could fill the room. In China, you
could fill multiple football fields..."
dmix wrote 21 hours 55 min ago:
So Tim said it's not yet practical so they aren't doing it? And
instead of moving what they can?
The article mentions they are opening a manufacturing academy to
train a future generation of Americans to build manufacturing
capability.
bigyabai wrote 20 hours 43 min ago:
You have to ask yourself, why does America beg Apple to onshore
in the first place? Why is Apple offshoring things that can be
done in the US?
It doesn't matter how many manufacturing experts America trains
anymore. We lost this race; China has globally-competitive
manufacturing, and the US doesn't. Apple doesn't want to
willingly pay for American labor today, and a decade of
manufacturing graduates will probably only ease the blow when
big corps are forced to onshore again.
s-y wrote 1 day ago:
Your point being?
thinkingtoilet wrote 1 day ago:
Others need to follow. It's strange that we don't view the
manufacturing of advanced electronics as a matter of national security.
mattnewton wrote 23 hours 56 min ago:
The government is slowly waking up to how important chips are and how
far behind domestic sources have fallen from foreign (mostly Chinese
and Taiwanese) sources. That's what the 2022 CHIPS act was about.
These things just take a lot of time, there are tremendous headwinds
to fight, and the US government + US media increasingly seems unable
to see through projects past the next election cycle.
ChrisMarshallNY wrote 23 hours 14 min ago:
What folks don't talk about, is that the reason for all the
offshoring, is good old-fashioned American Greedâ¢.
Lots of billionaires in the US, got that way, by exporting all
their production to China. Because they did it, lots of lower-tier
people had to do the same, or go out of business.
Since we worship billionaires, that little bit never seems to get
mentioned, as it makes them look bad.
The only cure is to cost some of those billionaires money.
Ain't gonna happen.
tonyedgecombe wrote 14 hours 39 min ago:
I'm not sure I would call it greed. More like survival. Once your
competitor finds some cost saving measure then you have the
choice of following or going out of business.
MarsIronPI wrote 22 hours 24 min ago:
> The only cure is to cost some of those billionaires money.
But that was the entire point of the Trump tariffs? Or am I
missing something here?
Tyrubias wrote 20 hours 40 min ago:
The money is not coming out of the billionairesâ pockets.
Tariffs are ultimately a tax on American consumers and small
businesses. Large businesses owned by billionaires just
increased prices. Now, if the government is forced to repay
tariffs, then they will be refunded to the companies. Consumers
and small businesses who were forced to close will get no
benefit. In the end, whether the tariffs are kept or the
tariffs are struck down, the consumer gets screwed and the
billionaires get richer.
paul7986 wrote 1 day ago:
Love my Mac Minis..great computers to connect to a TV for a full
Internet experience on your TV.
arthurcolle wrote 1 day ago:
Apple ramping up Mac mini production in Houston to meet demand for
Clawbots is wild. When were Mac minis a hot commodity before three
weeks ago?
ErneX wrote 8 hours 9 min ago:
Thatâs not the reason.
Fergusonb wrote 1 day ago:
They're definitely more popular right now, but they've been a winner
since M1.
Great performance, quiet, efficient.
It would be tough to get a windows machine at that price that gets
anywhere close on performance, especially if you consider the cost of
electricity.
Great parent/grandparent machines, home servers.
bigyabai wrote 1 day ago:
> It would be tough to get a windows machine at that price that
gets anywhere close on performance
Not that tough. I paid $299 for a Ryzen 5800h mini PC last year,
which roughly lands in the same performance bracket.
Would have considered the Mac Mini, but the AMD box has much better
Linux support.
caminante wrote 23 hours 23 min ago:
Even if the mini is more power efficient at $600 base, saving
$300 upfront pushes out the breakeven point.
alwillis wrote 23 hours 28 min ago:
> a Ryzen 5800h mini PC last year, which roughly lands in the
same performance bracket [as a Mac mini].
Not really. And this is before the M5 Mac mini which ships later
this year.
Putting it together in desktopâmini form factors:
- Raw CPU: M4 is much faster singleâcore, generally faster
multiâcore at lower power.
- GPU: M4âs iGPU is roughly 2Ã+ Vega 8 and more modern.
- Memory subsystem: M4 has far higher bandwidth and unified
memory, ideal for integrated GPU and many modern workloads.
- Efficiency/noise: M4 wins by a large margin; much higher perf
per watt.
- Compatibility: 5800H wins if you need bareâmetal x86 OSes
like FreeBSD or specific x86âonly software stacks.
- 5800H: 35â54 W configurable TDP in laptops; miniâPC
implementations often run it fairly hot to maintain clocks.
- M4 in Mac mini: ~24 W base TDP, ~40 W boost, but getting
clearly higher performance per watt.
bigyabai wrote 21 hours 11 min ago:
The M4 is from 2024, the 5800h is from 2021. You should be
comparing against the M1 or M2, which was Apple's actual
competitor at that performance bracket and time period.
wtallis wrote 20 hours 0 min ago:
You bought the 5800h last year, and provided last year's
price paid for it. That makes the 2024 Mac mini more relevant
than the models that weren't being made or sold last year.
Unless you'd like to dig up what that 5800h system cost back
in 2021, to put that into context against a Mac mini from
back then?
bigyabai wrote 18 hours 49 min ago:
The Beelink mini PC I bought MSRPs at $600, but it comes
with a 500GB NVMe drive. In Apple's pricing scheme, that
puts it equivalent to a $800 Mac Mini configuration.
To reiterate, this is absolutely a comparable machine to
the Mac Mini in terms of performance. Maybe not your ideal
configuration, but I had $300 and a limited patience for
Asahi development.
wtallis wrote 16 hours 38 min ago:
> To reiterate, this is absolutely a comparable machine
to the Mac Mini in terms of performance.
Reiterating is not the appropriate response after someone
has already detailed many ways in which the performance a
5800h is not in the same league, none of which you have
even attempted to refute.
The more truthful claim you could have made is that you
don't need the extra performance (far more plausible,
given that you bought a new machine with a four year old
chip), or that you needed storage capacity more than you
needed performance.
caminante wrote 23 hours 14 min ago:
Let's assume the 5800H consumed 50W and the mini consumed 0W
and both ran 100% utilization all year at $0.20/kWh.
The mini would save $87/year. That's a 3.5y breakeven assuming
no reinvestment.
jajuuka wrote 1 day ago:
I think there was a rush during the early Intel transition because
they were dirt cheap computers you can upgrade yourself and even dual
boot Windows. I feel like there was another big bump for them as a
set top boxes to run XBMC or something. Might be wrong though. M1
release also saw the Mini's be a cheap entry point to seeing what
Apple Silicon could do.
al_borland wrote 23 hours 9 min ago:
The first Intel Mac minis came out in the era of Front Row, Apple's
attempt to turn every Mac into a media center computer. They had IR
sensors and remotes. I had one hooked up to my TV, which was a big
step up from the first gen AppleTV.
Plex started as a Mac-only XBMC fork during this era. There were
also apps like Remote Buddy which let you control pretty much
everything with the simple remote that came with the Mac.
Apparently Remote Buddy still exists and works with the current gen
Siri Remote.
mikepurvis wrote 1 day ago:
Even to this day there aren't really a ton of options for a
non-devkit, non-router arm64 machine that you can use as a desktop
workstation.
jajuuka wrote 20 hours 25 min ago:
I was happy to see that x64 mini computers have really come
along. Some of the units from China are really impressive with
some exposed full PCI-E buses.
Arm64 is still limited for sure, but with Snapdragon and Windows
finally committing to ARM I think the future is bright for that.
Just not here yet.
mikepurvis wrote 16 hours 55 min ago:
A thunderbolt 3 connector is 4 PCIe lanes, isn't it? I know
there can be compatibility gaps, but there are definitely
TB-connected enclosure boxes available. NVMe connectors are
also 4 PCIe lanes, and I believe any of those can be broken out
and used for whatever (m.2 cellular data modems for example).
Are you thinking of plugging in actual consumer expansion
cards, or are you wanting the lanes broken out on some kind of
riser where they can go to hardwired stuff on a carrier board?
wtallis wrote 16 hours 42 min ago:
Thunderbolt isn't literally four PCIe lanes; Thunderbolt can
encapsulate and carry PCIe traffic, and Thunderbolt
controllers are typically connected with four PCIe lanes,
though the amount of PCIe traffic a Thunderbolt link can
carry is not necessarily as much as four PCIe lanes.
Directly exposing literal PCIe signals cuts out the pair of
expensive Thunderbolt controllers.
Aurornis wrote 1 day ago:
> to meet demand for Clawbots is wild
This is not in response to OpenClaw. It takes a long time to plan a
new manufacturing facility.
The Mac Mini is a natural place to start training at a new facility
because it's their simplest product.
Mac Minis are also around 1% of Apple's device sales. Even with an
OpenClaw-inspired burst of sales, it's still a small part of their
volume.
alwillis wrote 22 hours 57 min ago:
> Mac Minis are also around 1% of Apple's device sales.
Apple doesn't break out the Mac sales by product, but the latest
estimates is it's 5% [1] of total Mac sales.
[1]
HTML [1]: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/23/mac-mini-us-manufactu...
Aurornis wrote 21 hours 24 min ago:
> Apple doesn't break out the Mac sales by product, but the
latest estimates is it's 5% [1] of total Mac sales
Right, but it's closer to 1% of total device sales like I said in
my comment.
Macs are only part of their device lineup, of course.
alwillis wrote 4 hours 1 min ago:
> Right, but it's closer to 1% of total device sales like I
said in my comment.
Thatâs correct.
gigatexal wrote 1 day ago:
This is to appease pumpkin potus and his merry band of idiots
Update: For the record I do hate the POTUS. Heâs ruined our
reputation around the world. Allowed things like USAID to die
removing aid from millions leading to many deaths. Heâs
incompetent and very stupid which will likely get us killed either
in some war or in the next pandemic. Tarrifs are a tax. Congress
raises taxes. If you support his right to tax without congress then
go live under a king. Iâm an American. We donât want kings.
Need I go on?
And hating POTUS for what heâs doing to the country is my right
as an American. We werenât perfect. But we were at least
respected. Now the world laughs at us.
He works for me. And you. And heâs doing a garbage job at his
job. Why continue to give him a free pass. Would you give someone
like this in your team a pass?
Hereâs hoping his managers (congress) fires him (impeaches) him.
kshacker wrote 1 day ago:
The same thing could be said after polishing with AI and it will
be a fact
As stated, it is offensive
You need to do appeasement as needed. Business is business.
gigatexal wrote 23 hours 19 min ago:
Your ability to rationalize would make you a king in a true
failed state where might makes right and appeasement actually
works. Stand for something or youâll fall for anything like
justifying the moron in chief.
gjsman-1000 wrote 1 day ago:
So what? Even if you hate who the president is, it is in the best
interest of everyone that the president does a good job. Wanting
the president to fail and millions to suffer is scorched earth
hatred, not strategy.
gigatexal wrote 7 hours 19 min ago:
This is the same as saying to a woman in an abusive
relationship: âitâs in the best interest of the kids and
the family and everyone else that you put on a happy face and
make it look like heâs a good husband and father even if he
beats youâ
gigatexal wrote 23 hours 18 min ago:
Business will continue to business. POTUS is a failed
businessman many times over who only increased his wealth by
whoring himself to our enemies be extorting our allies.
Iâm on the right side of history. Are you?
platevoltage wrote 15 hours 40 min ago:
I mean, now he's just straight up taking money from the
treasury.
bastardoperator wrote 23 hours 58 min ago:
This President isn't doing a good job on really any level. Its
not that I want anyone to fail, it's that the President today
is currently in a state of failure, and those failures like
enriching himself can have long term devastating effects on our
society.
rayiner wrote 1 day ago:
Even if you hate the orange guy, there's something to be said
for his approach of using threats to achieve results instead of
carrots like tax breaks.
gigatexal wrote 23 hours 14 min ago:
Haha very telling that this is what you find laudable.
Onshoring manufacturing ⦠itâs a low margin low skill
(relative) industry compared to the services and things of
the modern economy. We import goods made cheaper in other
countries and benefit from it in consumer surplus⦠that the
educated here on HN can invert a tree or whatever the latest
leet code garbage is being asked in interviews but never took
and economics class or basic ethics is beyond me.
rayiner wrote 22 hours 41 min ago:
If you were correct, it would be trivial for Apple to
reshore the manufacturing. But itâs not. Because what
China has proven is that, when you outsource the âlow
margin low skillâ stuff, everything going up the chain
will follow. China used its low-margin low skill work to
bootstrap the rest of the stack, and now they can make air
to air missiles with range exceeding US missiles: [1]
Margin is the wrong way to look at it. Law and finance are
high margin work. But lawyers wonât help you win a war.
HTML [1]: https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/china-fi...
TimorousBestie wrote 16 hours 43 min ago:
> China used its low-margin low skill work to bootstrap
the rest of the stack, and now they can make air to air
missiles with range exceeding US missiles: [1] ...
Weâve got to get you some better sources, mate. This is
a straight-up Russian propagandist pretending to operate
out of the UK while having a mailing address in South
Korea.
HTML [1]: https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/china-...
HTML [2]: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/military-watch-ma...
rayiner wrote 9 hours 15 min ago:
Fact check websites are tankie propaganda. But this
particular point about air to air missiles is well
attested.
TimorousBestie wrote 7 hours 58 min ago:
> Fact check websites are tankie propaganda.
Notice that this doesnât contradict your link being
shoddy. Blindly reiterating Russian propaganda is
very patriotic of you.
> But this particular point about air to air missiles
is well attested.
Please donât pretend that I was disputing the
expected range of the PL-17; thatâs clearly not the
point I raised.
bigyabai wrote 1 day ago:
This is not for Clawdbot, this is a re-run of the 2019 strategy where
Apple promises to manufacture a low volume of high-margin PC
enclosures on US soil.
sigmar wrote 1 day ago:
>With its next-level AI capabilities, it has become an essential
tool for everyone from students and aspiring creatives to small
business owners.
Seems to me this part of the PR release is a reference to
claudbot/openclaw. What else could it be referring to?
ErneX wrote 8 hours 7 min ago:
Not even a maxed Mini with 64GB of ram is useful for local
inference related to OpenClaw, that is not the reason people are
getting a Mini for that, they get the base model with 16GB
because itâs the cheapest device that can interact with your
iCloud data (reminders, iMessage, etc).
gjsman-1000 wrote 1 day ago:
How about Apple Intelligence having been in almost every press
release from the last year?
If you genuinely can't find out what they are referring to,
you've been on HN too long.
minimaxir wrote 1 day ago:
Apple has been taking about Apple Silicon's AI capabilities for
the past few years, particularly around Apple Intelligence.
arthurcolle wrote 1 day ago:
They mention Mac mini! They have like 3 other desktop lines going,
and they mentioned the mini!
Also: "In Houston, workers assemble advanced AI servers, including
logic boards produced onsite, which are then used in Apple data
centers in the U.S."
Advanced AI servers!
chihuahua wrote 22 hours 51 min ago:
Everyone else (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, etc) has boring plain
AI servers.
Apple invented Advanced AI Servers! So much more advanced!
Just like in the 2000s when the G4 Mac was a "supercomputer".
Aurornis wrote 1 day ago:
> They mention Mac mini! They have like 3 other desktop lines
going, and they mentioned the mini!
Mac Mini is their simplest product. It's the natural place to
start training at a new facility.
> Advanced AI servers!
Yes, they have their own AI servers.
LoganDark wrote 1 day ago:
Do they now? I assume they use them internally for something
like Private Cloud Compute?
jeffbee wrote 1 day ago:
> Mac Mini is their simplest product.
How can it be simpler than the Apple TV?
jjice wrote 1 day ago:
Really looking forward to seeing how this ends up, especially over the
next few years. I knew about their recent Arizona TSMC chips in
iPhones, but this is nice to see.
SpaceManNabs wrote 1 day ago:
I understand apple's push for US manufacturing in general but what do
they mean by AI servers? I thought apple's current AI strategy is using
other AI models?
snazz wrote 23 hours 13 min ago:
Private Cloud Compute uses their own hardware:
HTML [1]: https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
SpaceManNabs wrote 22 hours 42 min ago:
Thanks! I wonder how they enforce retention of personal data if a
user adds identifying data and they use a model from anthropic or
wtv like others said. maybe that is the wrong question at all if
they are using their own models but i thought they didn't. Apple's
AI strategy on the whole sounds coherent to me but the specifics
are super confusing.
tibbydudeza wrote 1 day ago:
They are using M workstation class chips for inference on their own
blades since Google's models are meant run on TPU's it would not have
been difficult to port it.
They also use Anthropic internally (code/marketing/sales) which runs
their models on Cerebras so they also seem to be agnostic so runs on
the same Apple hardware.
jjice wrote 1 day ago:
I believe they're choosing to run Google models on their hardware.
evanjrowley wrote 1 day ago:
Why does the video show them assembling rackmount servers and not the
Mac Mini?
Is that assembly really in the US? Asking because the woman in the
first shot appeared to have Chinese letters on the left side of her
uniform.
tokyobreakfast wrote 23 hours 53 min ago:
Are you suggesting Apple is engaged in a massive subterfuge where
they imported Black and Hispanic actors and hung a US and Texas flag
on the wall in a Chinese factory as a staged photo op? Maybe the
factory is really a sound stage.
whilenot-dev wrote 23 hours 55 min ago:
Interestingly, these exact letters appear to have been removed in the
photo after the first two paragraphs: [1] EDIT: a screenshot from the
video:
HTML [1]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/2026/02/apple-accelera...
HTML [2]: https://imgur.com/a/X3t4crC
TiredOfLife wrote 17 hours 9 min ago:
Also what is the point of hair cover if half of hair is hanging
outside it.
neilv wrote 23 hours 38 min ago:
Apple PR did what they could with the art they had available and
the need to pander to a gov't administration, but weren't inspired
to do it more genuinely?
"Think Different" -> "Think Indifferent"
cestith wrote 23 hours 20 min ago:
Well, theyâre dealing with an administration indifferent to
thinking. Everything is emotional.
rayiner wrote 23 hours 44 min ago:
Crazy propaganda!
arcfour wrote 23 hours 57 min ago:
How would you take a video of something that has yet to happen?
amelius wrote 23 hours 52 min ago:
Ask AI.
mirekrusin wrote 23 hours 49 min ago:
They only have Siri.
irishcoffee wrote 23 hours 44 min ago:
Same difference?
mikestew wrote 23 hours 26 min ago:
Oh, if only that were true...and that's the joke.
rayiner wrote 1 day ago:
I assume Foxconn, etc., have a lot of Chinese and Taiwanese workers
on site to help bootup the facilities. But Apple's Houston facility
is a real place: [1] Foxconn bought it last year:
HTML [1]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/8702+Fairbanks+North+Houst...
HTML [2]: https://communityimpact.com/houston/cy-fair-jersey-village/d...
jerlam wrote 22 hours 32 min ago:
It's the same situation as the Hyundai battery plant in Georgia
last year. The foreign experts come to the US to teach us modern
manufacturing. It's more accurate to describe it as Foxconn
outsourcing to the US (for tax reasons), not Apple bringing
manufacturing back home.
wredcoll wrote 23 hours 37 min ago:
That's... amusing.
latexr wrote 1 day ago:
> Why does the video show them assembling rackmount servers and not
the Mac Mini?
Because the video is of the workers in that specific factory, and
theyâll only start producing the Mac mini there later in the year.
Itâs in the title. You canât show real video of something which
hasnât happened yet.
abustamam wrote 19 hours 23 min ago:
True you can't, but that's never stopped anyone from pretending
(for example, trailers for live events).
ChrisMarshallNY wrote 23 hours 19 min ago:
> You canât show real video of something which hasnât happened
yet.
I have seen exactly that, thanks to AI...
latexr wrote 22 hours 0 min ago:
You have not. If it was generated by AI, it was not real video.
AI was the reason I added the word in there.
ChrisMarshallNY wrote 18 hours 50 min ago:
Fair point. My post was actually a joke.
kylehotchkiss wrote 23 hours 32 min ago:
> You canât show real video of something which hasnât happened
yet.
We're going to have to teach our children this concept about
discerning the AI slop their grandparents flood Facebook with :')
mirekrusin wrote 23 hours 50 min ago:
They're assembling linux boxes that run their cloud.
j45 wrote 1 day ago:
Mac Mini's have had a following for a long time.
Increasing for sure with different uses and possibilities.
giobox wrote 1 day ago:
It's in the post: "In Houston, workers assemble advanced AI servers,
including logic boards produced onsite, which are then used in Apple
data centers in the U.S."
JeremyNT wrote 23 hours 0 min ago:
I'm curious what "logic board production" really means. My
suspicion is it means "soldered a thing onto a motherboard" where
all the individual pieces were shipped from Asia and the soldering
is done by robots.
shiroiuma wrote 19 hours 23 min ago:
Any modern circuit board is fully assembled by robotic equipment.
It really isn't possible for humans to reliably assemble
something like the PCB in your phone: things are just too small.
A large pick-and-place robot can do it very quickly.
buzzerbetrayed wrote 1 day ago:
In the second paragraph it says theyâre producing advanced AI
servers.
jjice wrote 1 day ago:
> âWe began shipping advanced AI servers from Houston ahead of
schedule, and weâre excited to accelerate that work even
further.â
tekacs wrote 1 day ago:
My guess would be that they're building Apple internal hardware as a
precursor? So that Apple can be the test customer?
epolanski wrote 1 day ago:
They have been saying this since almost a decade.
alwillis wrote 23 hours 10 min ago:
Apple will spend more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next
four years â [1] Apple Manufacturing Academy opens in Detroit on
August 19 â [2] Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI
privacy in the cloud â
HTML [1]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/apple-will-spend-more...
HTML [2]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/07/apple-manufacturing-a...
HTML [3]: https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
newsclues wrote 23 hours 56 min ago:
They have made some machines in the us, like the Mac Pro
HTML [1]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/09/apples-new-mac-pro-to...
buzzerbetrayed wrote 1 day ago:
Theyâre literally opening a new 20,000 square foot facility I
Houston. So Iâm not sure what your comment implies, but it takes
time to build things like that.
iamtheworstdev wrote 1 day ago:
i guess he's wondering if they finally managed to secure a domestic
screw producer or they're if importing them from China?
adolph wrote 22 hours 45 min ago:
Houston is a net exporter of screw [0]. But in seriousness,
Houston has domestic production of fasteners etc for oil and gas
as well as NASA.
0.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJ_Screw
stevehawk wrote 11 hours 44 min ago:
it's a reference to the last time Apple tried this in Austin,
their production was throttled due to the inability of their
screw supplier to meet demand.
HTML [1]: https://mashable.com/article/apple-mac-pro-screw
epolanski wrote 1 day ago:
Sure, they pledged 100B under Biden and 200 under trump..to produce
a bunch of Mac minis.
NetMageSCW wrote 22 hours 47 min ago:
Did you read the Press Release?
epolanski wrote 12 hours 50 min ago:
Yes
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