Japanese startup is gonna figure out a way to make chips more expensive under the narrative that it is made by hand by japanese master artisans.
this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2025
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They just need a tiny tiny person to get to work.... The 1mm man!
i already can see it, a chip factory inherited 3 generations straight of tiny japanese master artisans crafting chips at 300x the price with 300x worse performance in a VICE youtube video.
China had built its entire country from a peasant-tiddled backwater shithole to the manufacturing powerhouse of the world, from two simple steps:
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Steal as much of the Westerners' intellectual property as one is capable of. Fuck you and your copyright laws, but if you steal China's IP ideas, that's unacceptable.
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Exploit the peasants like slave labor and try your best to pay them as such.
This isn't China though, it's a Japan-based startup. At least according to the article
To be fair that's what America did to England.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater
The US used to only recognize copyright of US writers. Foreign books were printed without any payments. Charles Dickens didn't get any money from American publishers who printed his books.
https://www.copyright.gov/history/lore/pdfs/201201%20CLore_January2012.pdf
About time the world does the same to the US.
Better than playing the tariff game.
Whoa, TIL. Thanks for that interesting history lesson!
I gotta say, I've never seen One China sinophobia before, normally you people screech that Taiwan isn't part of China.
China lifted 800 million peasants out of abject poverty. In fact, China accounts for nearly ALL of the world's net positive poverty alleviation in the last 50 years, as capitalist countries have produced more poor people over that time.
Hmm.
This sucks for TSMC, but I have a hard time being upset that humanity’s ability to make better processors will expand, especially given the vulnerability of Taiwan. But I don’t really know enough to have a firm position on this.
As someone who has worked under NDAs for trade secrets, this is a real stab in the back to fellow employees. As an enemy of capitalism, I don’t feel bad for the corporation. Sucks for the people who were excited about their engineering achievements, though.
I’m sure you are correct and there are plenty of folks who would feel this way. From my perspective, post academia-corpo transition, I would love to share developments and innovations more widely and see others use and build on them too. But hands are tied in the private sector.
Rapidus is so getting sued
The perpetrators reportedly shared 'hundreds of process integration technical photos' with the Japanese company [Rapidus], though their exact relationship is unknown and it is unclear whether the chipmaker asked for the said assets.
I look forward to follow up reporting on this part.
"For now, it is hard to evaluate what exactly happened or assess the possible damage to TSMC and/or benefit to Rapidus (if any)."
Rumors only .
Add: Don't get the down votes, the above-mentioned is literally paraphrasing from the article. This whole post is based on rumours & speculation only.
What rumours? They know for a fact the information sharing happened, they just don't get know what the fallout from it will be
They dont even know what info and what was shared.
"Keep in mind that the reports about employees stealing TSMC's 2nm-related trade secrets are vague (to put it mildly), and should be taken with grain of salt. While the initial reports said that up to six people were involved in the wrongdoing, the new report claims that there were 'around' 10 perpetrators. Also, the initial reports failed to detail what information was stolen from TSMC, and the new report mentions 'hundreds of process integration technical photos,' but does not disclose what was on those images.
WE don't know what info and otherwise was shared, because it's an ongoing investigation and they'd be idiots to be telling the public everything. That doesn't make it a 'rumour'. There's enough to it that the govt is investigating, which is by definition more than a rumour.
So we only have rumors. The evidence wasnt clear. That's what I meant. I didn't downplay the investigation.