Russia finds 40% of its Chinese chip imports are defective:
As reported by The Register, pro-Putin newspaper Kommersant writes that the percentage of defective imported chips into Russia before the war was just 2%, which isn't very good considering how many components are found in today's electronic items. Now, almost eight months after the country invaded Ukraine, it stands at 40%.
Russia blames these failure rates on the pandemic impacting the supply chain and sanctions forcing it to import chips from the Chinese gray market, an area that not only comes with the threat of faulty products but is also unreliable and slow.
Many businesses have quit Russia as a result of the import restrictions, and those that are left must deal with sanction-skirting Chinese companies for semiconductors. Given that some of these duds were likely intended for military hardware supporting the war in Ukraine, one wonders if Russia and China's "friendship without limits" extends to imports of non-borked chips.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 21 2022, @12:57AM (10 children)
Russia needs a better trade agreement, is all. Put some QC somewhere in China, to reject all the rejects before they get to Russia. Have we forgotten Chinese baby formula? Leaded children's toys? All the cheap tools sold to unsuspecting mechanics worldwide, that break at the least strain? How 'bout rulers, yardsticks, tape measures, and other measuring devices that are 10% too big, or too small?
If you're stupid enough to pay for the QC rejects, don't cry to me. Pay for a small army of QC inspectors, they'll pay for themselves quckly.
Here. While you're thinking it over, have some Chinese bonbons.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @03:24AM (1 child)
Made from real dingleberries
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @05:48AM
Is that the new Russian currency?
(Score: 3, Informative) by looorg on Friday October 21 2022, @01:30PM (6 children)
As noted they can probably solve a lot of the issues by just having a testing step themselves on all the stuff they get. Yes it takes time, and people and so on to do but they could just test and reject. It also removed a lot of the surprises then by equipment malfunctions.
While it is a thing to buy rejects, price mostly, some of them actually do work for what you want. You might not be using the broken parts. Things like that have a long tradition as one could sometimes just use two (or more) "broken" or reject parts to do the same work as a full working part.
The other more disturbing aspect of chips from China is that they appear to be heavily into rebranding (they clean, sand or print over the markings of the chips), not only for new chips or chips one would assume is in demand. They rebrand everything to fill their orders. I guess some of them just see it as a chip is a chip and it had some numbers or so in common and it has the same number of legs and look similar on the outside.
I bulk bought some chips for various old systems and I would say that sometimes you get lucky and they are all what you ordered but sometimes about 25-50% of them are something else or they are broken when you test them. But if you just complain you get refunded. Caveat Emptor. Trust nobody and test everything. Do not just slot it into whatever piece of tech it was supposed to go into. So if you buy stuff from China first get a chip-tester, preferably not built with spare parts from China.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 21 2022, @07:45PM (5 children)
>just test and reject
That was state of the art Quality Control, in 1985.
By the mid 1990s, it had been so solidly established (and not just by Japanese automakers) that proper design, and proper implementation and control of the production process produces better quality parts and products at lower overall cost, that the EU rolled out ISO 9001 which established design control procedures for many industries - especially those involved in life-safety related products.
The only place where these regulations "are more costly and drive up end consumer prices" are in industries which have not yet adopted them and will culturally kick and scream all the way through their initial compliance audits. There, and small businesses that don't know if they're going to be able to sell a product when they develop it - it is cheaper to make the initial prototypes without all the overhead of design controls, and with those you can test the market to see _if_ you have a product you can sell, but... for products that are going to sell significant volume: like thousands of copies a month, or millions of dollars of gross income per year, it ends up (in the large majority of cases) being worth going through the ISO 9000 (and friends) type of design controls process from the ground-up to get a product that doesn't have as many designed-in flaws.
I have worked for a couple of small businesses who resist quality system certifications, and they come out with statements like "our guys are good, we don't need to do all that stuff, we get it right without it" - and, so, you might, sometimes - although the more loudly they proclaimed that sentiment the more dumpster fire all-hands-on-deck damage control sessions they tended to have. Truth is: you _can_ do all the stuff you need to do without documenting it, but if you are doing that then you've already paid 90% of the up front costs of design controls but you don't have any way to retrospectively check if you've done best practices, overkill practices, or could do more to make things better next time.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @09:24PM
> The only place where these regulations "are more costly and drive up end consumer prices" are in industries which have not yet adopted them and will culturally kick and scream all the way through their initial compliance audits.
What about software, is Microsoft ISO 9000 compliant? A quick google suggests that Azure and some other cloud services are, but most other MS products (and the company as a whole) are not ISO 9000/9001 certified.
Any Soylentils know more about this topic?
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Saturday October 22 2022, @05:03AM (3 children)
Nonsense. It's been established that throwing up such blocks to foreign trade as ISO 9001 can get by the WTO. I doubt ISO 9001 has done a thing to improve the EU's quality of products and services (and may well have made things worse by diverting effort to paperchasing rather than quality control). What Japanese automakers did was force every competitor to up their game. That's what changed.
A great example of the chasm between quality products and ISO 9001 is NASA. They're ISO 9000/9001 compliant. But they're building a way-overpriced rocket using the Shuttle technology that hasn't launched seriously since 2011 and greatly hope every fall that a hurricane won't take out their entire SLS launch infrastructure. Great standards can't overcome bad engineering and frankly, nobody has ever bothered to show that there's great standards in ISO 9000/9001.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 22 2022, @01:33PM (2 children)
Nobody claims that the 9001 and related standards are great. They only rolled out in the mid 1990s and have been rapidly evolving since, exactly because the first iterations were far from great. They are improving significantly as time goes on.
Standards aren't meant to overcome bad engineering, they are meant to teach good engineering. There is a cost in that education, but the cost is far smaller than the cost of bad engineering being used on large scale projects. The standards themselves don't embody much in the way of good engineering practice, what they enforce (if you comply with them) is the processes of learning good engineering, primarily learning from prior mistakes.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 23 2022, @12:08AM (1 child)
Have to be. Else foreign companies would adapt and it'd lose its value as a trade obstacle.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 23 2022, @01:07AM
For what it's worth, as a small medical device maker I have consistently found the European regulations and clearances to market simpler, easier and less expensive to implement than the FDA for domestic sales.
Two examples: once your facility is certified compliant with the regulations, you self certify your products and may begin sales without waiting for anything from the European regulators. Audits are requested and scheduled by the company, not drop in surprises like FDA inspections.
Of all the med device regulations on the planet, ISO 13485 (spawn of 9001) is the most predictable and usually the cheapest to implement with the least delays. This doesn't mean it's cheap or easy, just that it's the best available in any market of significant value.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday October 22 2022, @02:22PM
Russia needs a better trade agreement
No, Russia needs to DIE. At least its president does.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 4, Funny) by istartedi on Friday October 21 2022, @02:00AM (40 children)
It's long been speculated that China has 2 quality grades on various things: Domestic and Export. When people complain about things like cheap mills from Harbor Freight, you often hear this. "The ones you buy in China don't have that problem". Now there might be a 3rd grade: Special Quality Operation.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by khallow on Friday October 21 2022, @02:16AM (14 children)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @02:51AM (11 children)
> what they can get away with.
That matches what a friend said about bicycle parts his company was having made in China (10+ years ago). The prototypes were usually very good, they would bring them back (N. America) and test them against the drawings and specs, all OK. Then when they ordered a batch, the quality went to hell. He spent months in China being frustrated with problems like this and I think he concluded that the production was done by a completely different factory (or even another company) than the prototypes--although he was buying from just one supplier.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @05:51AM (10 children)
Don't worry the free market will sort it out(tm).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Friday October 21 2022, @06:18AM (9 children)
If we'd let it, the free market would have sorted out the companies that rely on cheap Chinacrap a while ago.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @06:34AM (2 children)
Don't worry about that either, the free market will sort it out.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday October 21 2022, @06:44AM (1 child)
Stop anthropomorphizing the free market, it doesn't like that one bit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @08:04AM
It's fortunate we have a non-human spirit to tell us the truth, Salam Salabim.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday October 21 2022, @07:56PM (5 children)
I completely agree with your point, and have been puzzled by the constant hunger for cheap crap. You'd hope the greater buying public would get sick of things breaking. And in some cases they have, but it's (too) often a very slow change.
I think it's a multivariate thing, and I think a component is the proliferation of advertising, amped up by the growth of electronic communications. The phone in most people's pockets pushes ads.
So people have become conditioned to want "New!". In the old days people would love their washing machine and pay to have it repaired. But even for things like refrigerators where prices have risen much faster than inflation (whew!) people will opt to toss it and buy new. Of course that has created a somewhat industry for "pickers" and recyclers and selling used stuff, but the main driver is the demand for "New!" stuff.
Another factor is the general transient nature of life- life itself (we don't really know how long we have), but that people are moving around and changing jobs and houses and countries more than ever, so why think about anything long-term or constant. "Lighten the load". Not everyone feels or lives that way, but a lot do, and they're often the ones buying all the cheap crap.
And we have the pressure of, and are often at the whim of Wall Street, of high-speed trading, and very short-term profits and worry about today's numbers, rather than years-long trends.
It's rare to meet people who truly want good quality. People may say they do, but we see the actuality of the greater market.
Reminds me- just last week I did an emergency repair of a high-end (BlackMagic) camera switcher, maybe 2 years old. Power supply capacitors, and not even the bigger filtering ones- just very small ones which were not doing switching work, went high ESR. Replacement ones, harvested from older pre-capacitor plague, were twice the physical size for the same electrical parameters. Discouraging that anyone would be willing to make such crappy capacitors.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday October 22 2022, @05:26AM (1 child)
It's not that hard to understand. Let's give an example from my work. As a comptroller for several neighboring locations, I need a box of equipment for each location. I found that I often would have infrequent, impromptu needs for a certain sized screwdriver, scissors, and some odds and ends (mostly paperclips and rubber bands) in addition to daily use of that box. So in each box, I put a cheap screwdriver and pair of scissors. I'm far more likely to lose these items than I am to break them with the light weight use they're put to (and as we know, more expensive equipment isn't less likely to disappear!).
A counterexample was about 2008, I put together equipment for filling high altitude balloons for an aerospace non-profit (JP Aerospace [jpaerospace.com]) that I volunteered for at the time. I didn't have infinite funds to throw at the problem, but I made sure the screwdrivers, wrenches, counters, and other tools were solid and reliable. And that there was a second set of equipment. If something breaks or gets damaged, that could put off the launch, so there was a more serious need for quality over cost.
Cheap equipment makes it cost effective to leave a tool or other equipment at each location that needs it. It's also great for a first timer. If you don't know if or what you need from a particular widget, then a functional, cheap widget can help you learn what you really need.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday October 22 2022, @06:00PM
Very good points. It's another slice of the pie- the multivariate paradox of quality.
Your example makes sense, but there's a biggest-picture push to always cheapen things, then when it's gone too far and people literally die, then people back off.
Read up on the Brooklyn Bridge, and how many things were tested, especially the wires that make up the main suspension cables. Overall they built that thing to last, and what, 130+ years later and it still handles far more traffic and weight than was ever even conceived. No question it's had issues, needed repairs, improvements, etc., but it was built to last, and was repairable (and long before motor vehicles existed).
Look at more "modern" (so much better!) buildings, bridges, airplanes (737MAX) that all failed, people died, were maimed, etc., all in the name of cost savings.
It's all a big gamble: "let's cheapen things as much as possible and until something really bad happens, and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it" (pun sort of intended).
I'm not disagreeing with your use case, as long as a tool failing doesn't result in someone getting hurt. But my point stands: it has gone too far (did a long time ago) and the cost savings concept is applied too much to everything.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 22 2022, @02:13PM (2 children)
The problem is because many of us have bought expensive crap before. Where it was claimed that the expensive crap was not crap. So if we are probably gonna get crap anyway we might as well get the cheaper crap.
Plenty of manufacturers have intentionally made stuff to not last.
I'm willing to pay more for quality when I know I'm gonna get it. My CPU, RAM, SSDs, HDDs aren't cheap China crap (there are Chinese SSDs which report 40C whether the SSD is warmer or colder...).
But I've paid more for shoes and socks and they didn't last. As far as I'm concerned if they can make car tyres last for tens of thousands of km under harsher conditions than shoes have to cope with, they should be able to make shoes that last longer than 3 years that don't cost more than a car tyre.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday October 22 2022, @05:39PM (1 child)
Excellent points, thanks. To augment your points, I've noticed a far too frequent business strategy is to make a really good quality product and/or service, establish a really good name and reputation, and then cheapen it and reap the profits. ...often pouring on the advertising, including claiming to adhere to the tradition of quality.
"Chinese SSDs"??? You mean there are SSDs not made in China?
I used to try to buy better quality, preferring made in America. But that said, I'm all for international trade- in proper trade balance. But many things are only made outside of the US. Even if they were made in the US, I doubt the quality would be proportional to the price.
Case in point- 10-ish years ago I bought a pair of Nike sports shoes and they lasted 5 months. I have somewhat wide feet, and the shoe salespeople always tell you they're made narrow, so if you have normal feet, buy the wide shoe. But what if you have wide-ish feet? Buy them too big? so that the shoes flop around? Anyway, the ~$100 Nike shoes blew out- side separated from the base, in less than 5 months. They were made in China of course.
Sneakers I'm wearing now were $15 Walmart clearance. Very thin sole tread, which is now worn flat, and they look a bit worn so they're mostly around the house shoes. Point is, like you said, why bother trying to buy quality. I have another pair (new-looking, clean, presentable) that were $20. Sigh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 22 2022, @09:34PM
> ... a far too frequent business strategy is to make a really good quality product and/or service, establish a really good name and reputation, and then cheapen it and reap the profits
In my limited experience this might be tied to a change of management or ownership--the originators clearly knew what it took to make good quality, but the MBAa got into the company and bean-counted their way out of the business. I can think of a few companies started by engineers that have ended up this way. As you say, they can coast for awhile but likely not forever.
Corollary to this came from a wise old friend: "Anything good goes out of the market."
What he meant was, any new product that is good will almost always attract cheap copies. The cheap copies in turn will undercut the the original maker, who will most likely be put out of business, or be forced to cheapen their product if they choose to compete. Classic race to the bottom.
If you like something of quality (and it's likely to wear out), then buy a spare(s) now while the quality is still good!!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 21 2022, @12:45PM
That isn't exclusive to China, of course. I watched our own QC department play games with customer inspectors. Funny thing, "what they can get away with" changes over time.
We had thousands of parts, produced over a period of weeks, that failed inspection when they were shipped to the customer. They all passed stress tests, fit, everything that matters, but were rejected for color, and a few stretch marks. Plant manager had all those pallets put up on the top shelves in the warehouse, and saved. When the hectic busy season came around, orders increased, and those pallets were shipped again. Not one was rejected by the customer, because they needed the parts.
Which was kinda nice, in our plant. The busy season didn't impact us quite as much, because we had that cushion sitting in the warehouse.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Friday October 21 2022, @02:52PM
That's definitely not confined to Chinese products.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday October 21 2022, @03:08AM (6 children)
Umnh..
The summary specifically stated that a lot of the purchases were "grey market". I think it probable that a lot of those are outright fakes.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by kazzie on Friday October 21 2022, @05:30AM (5 children)
Many could be actual chips, but relabelled to match whatever the Russian buyer is asking for.
A few years back I had a supposed 65C02 passed to me. The top of the package was etched as if it were a 10Mhz UMC W65C02, but a drop of IPA on the top washed away some black muck and revealed the original white paint label: an NEC D765-AC Floppy Controller.
Obviously an obscure floppy controller isn't as valuable as a modren 65C02 chip, so relabelling it turns quite a profit.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @06:52AM (2 children)
Fair enough, but why are you dowsing your chips with India Pale Ale?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @11:16AM (1 child)
His India Pale Ale is very high alcohol content, so high it's labeled Isopropyl Alcohol 91%.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @04:03PM
> Iso Propyl Alcohol 91%
Forbidden IPA.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday October 22 2022, @02:47AM (1 child)
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday October 24 2022, @05:21AM
The Commodore 64 did use a 6502 in it's floppy drive (and also as a main processor), but that wasn't a common arrangement to my knowledge. (The fact that Commodore ended up owning the 6502 design probably helped encourage this). Most machines I know of used some dedicated floppy controller chip, other than the Apple II which famously got rid of most of the control sensors in the drive, and controlled it all in software instead.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 21 2022, @10:15AM (13 children)
China, and everyone else, has basically infinite quality grades: more or less what the customer is willing to pay for and capable of inspecting and rejecting.
If, like WalMart, low low supplier prices are demanded, costs will be reduced any way the supplier can while staying in business. WalMart's initial innovation may have been in distribution, but for the past decade and more it has been in reducing cost of goods without killing sales or bankrupting too many suppliers. They have become the Harbor Freight of clothing, housewares and beauty products.
A lot of yachts are built in China for the low labor costs. The best Chinese built yachts are equal or better in quality to the best yachts built in Europe or the US because they demand the best quality components, materials and methods in their construction, so they are also only a little less expensive than their US and European made counterparts, because construction labor is just a small part of the overall cost.
The main thing you can get in China that's harder to find in the more regulated world are companies willing to cut corners, use the cheapest materials, components and methods, because they know their brand means little to the customers, they are in it for the single contract - more business will always find them because they won't be shut down by regulators and they are always the least expensive.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday October 21 2022, @01:06PM (12 children)
If only. You DO have to be careful about things ordered from China, quality can be quite variable. But when you do get quality from China, it costs less than half the price of ordering the same thing from a Western company even though they in-turn have it made in China probably in the same factory.
Really, it looks like the real issue is that top heavy management, posh executive suites, company jets, and perhaps carpet bombing consumers with ads are very expensive and the costs are cheerfully passed on to the customer.
Consider, the BOM for a modern iPhone runs about $250. With 240 million iPhones shipped this year, the amortized development cost is not going to be over $10. Most of the assembly can be done by machines.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 21 2022, @02:11PM (11 children)
Re-emphasize: YOU have to be careful about things ordered from China. As an individual or small business, you've got little to no control of the supplier beyond inspection of the incoming product.
If you (generic reference to anyone) want consistent quality out of China, you need to go there, install some of that top-heavy management including quality controls, and yes, it does reliably add cost. Done well, it can also increase quality and consistency.
With 240 million iPhones shipped this year, posh executive suites and company jets amortized across products sold is not going to be over $5 per unit. One might argue that overspend on advertising and brand building needlessly inflate costs and therefore consumer prices, and I would tend to agree - were it not for Apple's persistent status as one of the world's most highly valued companies.
20-ish years ago, I was trying to get some face-time with a VP of a home products design group, it was hard because he was spending so much time on those corporate jets to and from China, managing stuff.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday October 21 2022, @02:50PM (10 children)
All in all, the extra quality control isn't providing bang for the buck in most cases, just inflation. I have consistently gotten perfectly acceptable "no name" devices for a fraction of the name brand cost just by checking a few reviews to avoid the obvious junk. I'm all for supporting domestic business but I'm not going to take it up the ass for the privilege.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 21 2022, @04:05PM (8 children)
>All in all, the extra quality control isn't providing bang for the buck in most cases, just inflation.
Which is why there is a market for "Chinese junk". Plenty of people are willing to have their stuff crap out once in a while in exchange for lower prices.
As systems get more complex, they rely on most to all of the parts not crapping out. If you want to build a car, you've got on the order of a million things that can go wrong, many of them in more than annoying fashion leading to issues from life safety on the highway to the damn thing burning your house down while you are sleeping. You can't make a reasonable system that complex out of crappy components with unreliable quality. Move up from cars to fighter jets, orbital launch rockets: more complexity and more criticality.
>checking a few reviews to avoid the obvious junk
I read the reviews too. Sometimes the shills (pro and con) are obvious, sometimes not so much...
>supporting domestic business but I'm not going to take it up the ass for the privilege.
Agreed, but domestic businesses are just as capable of producing unreliable junk - or more likely: importing cheap junk and marking it up in exchange for their "local customer service."
Personally: I don't want to be "serviced" I want my stuff to work and not end up on the way to the landfill every couple of years because it is designed to fail. Unfortunately, design for failure at warranty + 1 has been refined from art to science and most of the bigger businesses in the world are practicing it. That's part of the attraction of buying stuff from a smaller (often domestic) startup, with bad efficiency, high prices, etc. - occasionally you get lucky and they didn't manage to design their product to self destruct on cue, so you get a thing that lasts a long long time.
Functional antiques aren't so good because "they don't make 'em like they used to" - they made plenty of crap back in the day, it's just the survivors that are still around today making products from years gone by look better than they did at the time.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday October 21 2022, @07:34PM (7 children)
You're kinda hinting at my point with "...domestic businesses are just as capable of producing unreliable junk - or more likely: importing cheap junk and marking it up in exchange for their "local customer service."
They tend to mark it up by a few hundred percent. Why buy one device that may be crap from a U.S. company when I can buy from a Chinese company with the same chance of being crap and have money left over to buy 4 replacements.
Even better when you can buy an open and repairable device made from off the shelf parts from China. Few Chinese companies are selling that, but NO U.S. companies are.
As for "local support", you dial a number that appears to be in the U.S. and get someone with a heavy Indian accent who claims his name is "Bob". If it's not in the flip book, you're SOL.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 21 2022, @08:21PM (6 children)
Oh yeah. Back in 1991 Microsoft actually had a support number you could call for problems with their C compiler. I dialed one day, waited on hold for literally 4+ hours (starting at 8AM Redmond time, as they said was their service hours) and got some Microsoftie, probably named Bob, who asked "what seems to be the problem?" "Well, I don't know why, but I'm getting an Error 63 message, and I don't know what that means, can you help?" Bob: "Sure, let's see here (flipping noises), hmm.... there aren't any error numbers defined above 61." Me: "Yes, thus my call..." Predictably, that mystery was never solved.
The superiority of Indian tech support is: A) I wouldn't have to wait until 11am local time to call, B) I wouldn't be waiting on hold for 4+ hours, and C) they _might_ actually have a functional escalation system.
In 2006 I had a MacBookPro eat itself due to power-interrupted shutdowns while using FileVault. Apple did actually answer within a short-ish time on hold, and escalated my call to Jose' - who called me the next day and really seemed like he knew what he was doing, which made it all the more frustrating when his best suggestion was to wipe the system and reinstall. See, the power interrupted shutdowns weren't by choice - bugs in their drivers meant it would hang on shutdown and interrupted power was the only way out, but FileVault (in 2006, they swear they have it fixed now, but c'mon: encrypted file systems have been kicking around since before 1996... if you can't get it right after 10+ years...) doesn't play well with being interrupted, not well at all: loss of all encrypted data not well. That's something India might have had trouble communicating, unless they escalated me back to Jose'.
But, consider that they chips you test and accept are only known to be working when you test them. That's the very front end of the bathtub curve - there are still plenty of early-life failures after initial testing, particularly with cheaply made, poorly stored parts.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday October 21 2022, @08:51PM (5 children)
It still comes down to the Western company adding nothing but a rapacious mark-up.
Add in that the products designed by western companies are far more likely to have anti-repair features built in (funny screws, glued cases, blown fuses on debugger connections, etc), all of which add to the cost while subtracting from the value.
None of this is unavoidable, Western companies could reform and make it possible to support domestic companies without taking it up the ass, but they don't want to.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 21 2022, @10:20PM (4 children)
I don't think the West has any corner on the hard to repair market, iPhones after all are an exclusively made in China product.
It's unregulated business that builds stuff to not last, and they have gone far enough that Western governments are starting to step in with right to repair, etc. Not fast enough as far as I am concerned. If they don't want to make products repairable, then maybe they can start paying for responsible recycling and disposal of their junk up front.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday October 22 2022, @03:39AM (3 children)
iPhones are made to the exact specification of Apple, a Western corporation. Actual Chinese products made in China tend to be much easier to fix or modify.
Strong right to repair laws would be a good thing and would be exactly the sort of wake up call to western corporations that has been long needed.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 22 2022, @01:27PM (2 children)
>Actual Chinese products made in China tend to be much easier to fix or modify.
Don't worry, their capitalism is young. As it matures it will learn the lesson of what happens when you fail to plan obsolescence. First signs of this are products with strong income from disposable components, but eventually the "capital" equipment itself starts being engineered for a 10-15 year lifespan.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday October 23 2022, @07:52AM (1 child)
We could stand a bit less of that sort of maturity.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 23 2022, @12:40PM
We had it going on in the 1950s and 60s with automobiles built to wear out in 50,000 miles or less.
I have a 1940s design, early 1950s built blender, the damn thing just won't die. Modern equivalent products last a couple of years on average.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @04:10PM
> I'm all for supporting domestic business but I'm not going to take it up the ass for the privilege.
Bah, safety? Who cares about that. Give me the one that catches fire occasionally. Don't want no fancy overpriced ass rape.
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Friday October 21 2022, @04:57PM
I've heard exactly the opposite. they treat their own people worse and their own people are conditioned to expect absolute crap.
if they sell the bottom grade to the US, the US finds other places to buy from or other sellers. china buyers have much less choice.
I think it was on eevblog, about test gear, that rigol was saying their local for-sale goods are not up to the export ones.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by number11 on Friday October 21 2022, @05:27PM
Hey, it's a great way for Chinese vendors to get rid of the stuff that otherwise would have ended up in the scrap bin. And it's not like Russia is in much of a position to do anything about it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 21 2022, @07:53PM (1 child)
Germany definitely has this 2 tier quality system: for their domestically produced wines.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @09:35PM
>. Germany definitely has this 2 tier quality system
California too. When I visit CA, every damn avocado I try is perfect. Here (Great Lakes region) it might be 50% at best, the rest are rotting before they ripen, or have those awful black veins.
I think the Californians are keeping all the good ones for themselves.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by c0lo on Friday October 21 2022, @02:04AM (7 children)
I wonder how come the chips in washing machines are good for what Russia asks but the chips in, say, older iPhones are not?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @02:53AM
Might be a lot harder to remove the chips from an older iPhone -- aren't they packaged much tighter given the overall size of the phone?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday October 21 2022, @05:52AM
They might be good enough, but maybe far too complex hw and sw. But there are lots of discarded electronics that would have simpler CPUs, including (much) older cell phones, probably almost anything digital from the past 40 years. Doesn't a lot of that stuff end up in e-waste dumps around the world?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Opportunist on Friday October 21 2022, @06:23AM (3 children)
Probably the same reason you find ancient hardware in modern space stuff: It deals better with stress.
Modern ICs are quite delicate. They need the precise voltage, precise timings, cooling and so on. Ever looked at a 8088? Put some voltage on it, give or take, feed it information at certain intervals and don't operate it in the blast furnace directly (next to it is fine) and you're golden.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @06:37AM (2 children)
Unfortunately it's like the Pyramids. Nobody knows how to build them any more. Some say it was Borg technology from the future.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Opportunist on Friday October 21 2022, @07:41AM
8088s? If you don't konw how to build them, take an existing one apart and examine it.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Friday October 21 2022, @05:29PM
They know how to build them. But building fabs for that tech is not where the money is.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 21 2022, @08:04PM
The 6502 was originally designed to run household appliances, like toaster ovens.
It was implemented using ~4500 transistors in a die space of ~20mm^2, running at a clock speed of ~2MHz using an 8000nm process.
Compare that with modern chips that have literally ~1,000,000x the number of transistors, on dies little more than ~5x the area, running at clock speeds ~1000x higher, using a processes with feature sizes ~2000x smaller.
It's pretty easy to guess which one will be more fussy about clean power, EMI, thermal control, etc.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 5, Interesting) by quietus on Friday October 21 2022, @05:27AM (1 child)
Kommersant is definitely *NOT* a pro-Putin newspaper: their trademark is to mock and ridiculize Putin and his circle at every turn. Fer chrissake, a fixture of their very frontpage each and every day since day two of the war are pictures of destroyed buildings and civilian casualties, as a counterpoint to the official rhetoric of precision strikes and limited operations.
Putin simply doesn't dare to close them down, and they use that space to the max.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @05:53AM
The court jester gets executed too.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Opportunist on Friday October 21 2022, @06:25AM (2 children)
Great news, people, our pile of electronic waste is gonna go away, I found a place we can dump it. And they even pay for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2022, @04:13PM
Hey.... why is the ocean full of electronic waste? It's as if the cheap place I found to dump it is just tossing it in the... whyIoughta!!!!!!!!!!!
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Friday October 21 2022, @04:59PM
boris does not know that we swap plus and minus on everything (chips, boards); then battery-test it before we ship it out to them.
here's your chips and boards, boris.
lol
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Friday October 21 2022, @10:00PM (1 child)
Russia has a 100% defective native leadership problem, too.
(Score: 1) by Peristaltic on Friday October 21 2022, @11:59PM