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Submission + - Hurricane Helene Took Out NC Town the Entire Tech World Relies On (axios.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Spruce Pine is one of the only places in the world to mine high-purity quartz. The mineral is an essential ingredient of chips in countless products, including medical devices, solar panels, cellphones and the chips powering the latest tech craze: artificial intelligence. It's difficult to underscore the significance of Spruce Pine — a town of about 2,000 people, known for its charming downtown and blossoming arts scene — to the global economy. Economics editor Ed Conway put it best in his 2023 book "Material World," writing: "It is rare, unheard of almost, for a single site to control the global supply of a crucial material. Yet if you want to get high-purity quartz — the kind you need to make those crucibles without which you can't make silicon wafers — it has to come from Spruce Pine."

The Quartz Corp and Sibelco both export high-purity quartz from Spruce Pine. While there are other places to find the material, such as Russia and Brazil, this mountain town has the highest quantity of the highest purity, says Conway. A few weeks of shutdown is not the end of the world, Conway tells Axios. However, longer than that could put the industry into "another crisis." The semiconductor industry would need to find alternatives. [...] The mines in Spruce Pine are still accounting for their workers and families, the international companies stated. The level of destruction at the sites is unknown. However, even if the facilities are intact, the railroads that move the quartz will likely need drastic repairs.

Comment Re:Well paying jobs (Score 1) 138

Extremely unlikely that these jobs will go offshore:

1. Even unclassified government contract jobs go require citizens or green cards. Classified jobs require citizenship.

2. The Salt Lake City area is lower in cost compared to alternative areas.It already gets companies that want cheaper workers, but needs them in the US.

Comment Re:Tech / IT needs some kind of apprenticeship sys (Score 1) 512

The University of Cincinnati Engineering College and several other Engineering Colleges have, for the last century, used the Co-Op model. In this system, students alternate school terms with work at companies. It is generally paid, and is in the student's area of study. It is fairly common in Engineering schools, especially in the Midwest USA.

Comment Re:It is about not lettting ideas be silenced (Score 1) 194

To a point. Beyond a certain point, however, an organization of people can amass the ability to speak at sufficient volume (both in loudness and in quantity) to effectively drown out dissenting voices. Thus, in order to guarantee free speech for the individual, to some degree, the speech of large groups must be kept in check.

Similarly, commercial speech (e.g. advertising) has limits that require a degree of truthfulness.

Clearly you weren't paying a lot of attention to the ads associated with the presidential campaign that just concluded in the US. The Supreme Court was pretty clear in Citizens United opinion (Google it) that an organization's right to free speech/expression cannot be limited by government in the form of limits placed on donor contributions, or how those contributions are used. This case essentially gives any non-corporeal legal entity the protected right to say whatever the hell it wants.

Comment Solar Power Satellites (Score 1) 481

The idea of building Solar Power Satellites, where solar energy is produced in orbit and beamed back to earth as microwaves, has around since the 1970's. Using spaced-based resources, like an asteroid, is likely to reduce the costs substantially. For more, check-out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power.

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