I've developed a new fear of my 2025 desktop PC being damaged by a power surge or something, because it would cost at least $2K more to replace than I paid for it, assuming I can even find parts now. Compared to the rest of my adult life when I used to secretly pray for something to fail so I would have a reason to upgrade.
Honestly even in "developed countries" it's not worth blindly trusting that the power in your house/building is clean. It's cheap and easy enough to just put any expensive hardware on a UPS rather than speculating what's going on behind the walls.
These devices are basically autotransformers. So they reduce the noise by providing inductive filtering. But they don't really protect against strong surges by themselves.
So Tripp Lite uses a regular varistor for that, just like any other surge protector. In Europe you'd be far better off buying a voltage relay and adding it to your electrical panel, but it's not usually possible with the non-modular US electrical panels.
I remember hearing somewhere on this site that medical imaging got pretty good at building systems that recycle helium.
Does chip manufacturing not do this or are the losses at their scale are still large enough that you need a substantial constant supply?
The big problem is purity. Fabs use grade 5 and 6 helium where contaminants are 1-10 parts per billion. The infrastructure to get it that pure becomes very specialized and any time the helium goes through a process it picks up so much contamination that recycling it would require the entire purifying and quality control infrastructure for pressure or temperature swing adsorption.
Some fabs are starting to reuse helium in downstream processes but there’s only so much they can do without expanding their core competency into yet another complex chemical manufacturing process.
MRI machines don’t need high purity helium and the contamination doesn’t “gunk up” all the tools so it’s not an issue to recycle it there.
Some of the fabs do recycle as effectively as they can, but MRIs use it in a single process, in liquid form, in a relatively constrained container. Fabs use it for a variety of processes, ranging from wafer cooling to purging environments, to making ultra ultra clean chambers. The scale of what they use is higher, too, so even if an individual process is more efficiently recapturing helium, they might go through a few tons a day, with an MRI only using a few liters and losing 5% or less.
During the year 1986, there was an anomalous increase in LSI memory problems. Electronics in early 1987 appeared to have problem rates approaching 20 times higher than predicted. In contrast, identical LSI memories being manufactured in Europe showed no anomalous problems. Because of knowledge of the radioactivity problem with the Intel 2107 RAMs, it was thought that the LSI package probably was at fault, since the IBM chips were mounted on similar ceramic materials. LSI ceramic packages made by IBM in Europe and in the U.S. were exchanged, but the European computer modules (with European chips and U.S. packaging) showed no fails, while the U.S. chips with European packages still failed at a high rate. This indicated that the problem was undoubtedly in the U.S.-manufactured LSI chips. In April 1987, significant design changes had been made to the memory chip with the most problems, a 4Kb bipolar RAM. The newer chip had been given the nickname Hera, and so at an early stage the incident became known as the "Hera problem."
By June 1987, the problem was very serious. A group was organized to investigate the problem. The first breakthrough in understanding occurred with the analysis of "carcasses" from the memory chips (the term carcasses refers to the chips on an LSI wafer which do not work correctly, and are not used but saved in case some problem occurs at a future time). Some of these carcasses were shown to have significant radioactivity.
Six weeks was spent in the manufacturing process lines, looking for radioactivity, and traces were found inside various processing units. However, it could not be determined whether these traces came from the raw materials used, or whether they were transferred from the chips themselves, which might have been contaminated earlier in their processing. Further, it was discovered that radioactive filaments (containing radioactive thorium) were commonly used in some evaporators. A detailed analysis by T. Zabel of some of the "hot" chips revealed that the radioactive contamination came from a single source: Po210 This isotope is found in the uranium decay chain, which contains about twelve different radioactive species. The surprising fact was that Po210 was the only contaminant on the LSI chips, and all the other expected decay-chain elements were missing. Hundreds of chips were analyzed for radioactivity, and Po210 contamination was found going back more than a year. Then it was found that whatever caused the radioactivity problem disappeared on all wafers started after May 22, 1987. After this precise date, all new wafers were free of contamination, except for small amounts which probably were contaminated by other older chips being processed by the same equipment. Since it takes about four months for chips to be manufactured, the pipeline was still full of "hot" chips in July and August 1987. Further sweeps of the manufacturing lines showed trace radioactivity, but the plant was essentially clean. The contamination had appeared in 1985, increased by more than 1000 times until May 22, 1987, and then totally disappeared!
Several months passed, with widespread testing of manufacturing materials and tools, but no radioactive contamination was discovered. All memory chips in the manufacturing lines were spot-screened for radioactivity, but they were clean. The radioactivity reappeared in the manufacturing plant in early December 1987, mildly contaminating several hundred wafers, then disappeared again. A search of all the materials used in the fabrication of these chips found no source of the radioactivity. With further screening, and a lot of luck, a new and unused bottle of nitric acid was identified by J. Hannah as radioactive. One surprising aspect of this discovery was that, of twelve bottles in the single lot of acid, only one was contaminated. Since all screening of materials assumed lot-sized homogeneity, this discovery of a single bad sample in a large lot probably explained why previous scans of the manufacturing line had been negative. The unopened bottle of radioactive nitric acid led investigators back to a supplier's factory, and it was found that the radioactivity was being injected by a bottle-cleaning machine for semiconductor-grade acid bottles. This bottle cleaner used radioactive Po210 material to ionize an air jet which was used to dislodge electrostatic dust inside the bottles after washing. The jets were leaking radioactivity because of a change in the epoxy used to seal the Po210 inside the air jet capsule. Since these jets gave off infrequent and random bursts of radioactivity, only a few bottles out of thousands were contaminated.
An excerpt from:
Ziegler, James F., et al. "IBM experiments in soft fails in computer electronics (1978–1994)." IBM journal of research and development 40.1 (1996): 3-18
Helium for party balloons is low grade and not pure enough for chip fab use, so stacking up birthday tanks won't keep TSMC running. Industrial grade helium has a restricted and oddly international supply chain thanks to regulation and a few weirdly-placed depots. The US 'helium stockpile' isn't really a menu you can just order from when a factory across the planet runs dry, especially if offtakes and logistics are tied up by decade-old government contracts. If you want to see supply chain fragility, try pricing MRI-grade helium after a shutdown and watch everyone in medical procurement panic quitely.
All natural gas deposits contain helium at various concentrations, it's only commercially worth harvesting above a certain percentage but speculate the problem is the US can't just fill the Qatar loss in supply immediately since we have plentiful natural gas.
We have so much gas where I live that there are places it’s just flared off and burned, because it’s less greenhouse emissions than it escaping unburned.
Depending on who you go to, some places will not sell you tanks of Helium. We did a balloon launch expecting to use Hydrogen because Helium was going to be problematic. The sales rep at the supply place took a look at the group of us knuckleheads with absolutely no Hydrogen experience and ended up selling us the Helium while also exchanging all of our connectors. Hydrogen tanks use specific connectors different from all other tanks to make using a hydrogen take by mistake very difficult. I was nervous about using hydrogen and had no issue with the higher price for the helium knowing I wasn't going to catch on fire.
Grade 6 (6.0 helium = 99.9999% purity)
The closest to 100% pure helium, 6.0 helium is used in the manufacturing of semiconductor chips –
Grade 5.5 (5.5 helium = (99.9995% purity)
Like 6.0 helium, 5.5 ultra pure helium gas is typically considered “research grade,” also used in chromatography and semiconductor processing
Grade 5 (5.0 helium = 99.999% purity)
This high purity grade helium is also widely used for gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, and specific laboratory research when higher purity gases are not necessary, as well as for weather balloons and blimps.
Grade 4.8 (4.8 helium = 99.998% purity)
The highest of the “industrial grade” heliums, 4.8 grade helium is often used by the military. The rest is classified...
Grade 4.7 (4.7 helium = 99.997% purity)
A “Grade-A” industrial helium, 99.997% helium is mostly used in cryogenic applications and for pressurizing and purging
Grade 4.6 (4.6 helium = 99.996% purity)
Grade 4.6 industrial helium is used for weather balloons, blimps, in leak detection
Grade 4.5 (4.5 helium = 99.995% purity)
Often the grade most commonly referred to when people say “industrial grade,” 99.995% helium is most commonly used in the balloon industry
Grade 4 (4.0 helium and lower = 99.99% purity)
Any helium that is 99.99% and down into the high 80 percents is within the range of purities referred to collectively as “balloon grade helium.”
I believe that that's the stuff you buy in the shop, the non-refillable containers. If you buy a proper refillable balloon gas cylinder it's the higher grade stuff. Source: bought the shop stuff, got disappointed, bought the cylinder, happy.
You sure about that? Everything I've ever heard says that balloon gas is generally grade 4, which is 99.99% pure. Not good enough for MRI, but quite a lot better than 80%.
What is the reason that MRI needs grade 6 vs grade 4 helium? I'm imagining that the superconducting wire is within a cryostat filled with liquid helium. Doesn't seem like there would be any appreciably partial pressure of things like nitrogen or oxygen at 4 Kelvin. I imagine the reactivity of oxygen is pretty low at 4 K as well. How much dissolved oxygen or nitrogen can liquid helium support? And how much solidifies out and sinks to the bottom of the cryostat?
Economically I expect it wouldn't be that pure, since it doesn't have to be that pure to provide lift, and party balloons are not trying to maximize lift.
Out of curiosity I did a minor amount of research to get an idea.
Turns out that you are right, some balloon gas is 80%. Specifically, the "Balloon Time" tanks you can buy at places like Target say "not less than 80%" helium.
On the other hand, I went to AirGas and a few other suppliers and they seemed to have 95%-97.0% helium gas as their definition for balloon grade.
My guess is that places like AirGas aren't really supplying many weather or research balloons. I suspect the easier answer is 'Balloon Time is low grade crap aimed at people who don't know any better and just want to pick up some balloon gas while grocery shopping.' It's like the difference between people who go to a gas station to refill propane tanks, and people who swap them at Home Depot. (though the smart fellers do swap at Home Depot occasionally, if they need a fresher tank...)
Definitely worth knowing what you're getting, in any case, so you don't get ripped off, and so you can actually get that lawn chair contraption into the sky.
Would you like to offer a rebuttal more well reasoned and thought out than "nuh-uh"?
You have the entire collected knowledge of mankind at your fingertips. You could do 30 seconds of research and find an answer better than "I don't think that sounds right".
Nitrogen? That's basically just air, what good would a balloon be using nitrogen? Might as well just blow it up with your lungs. It's certainly not going to float in any case.
Technically yes, but practically no. Air is 78% nitrogen. Nitrogen is 3.3% lighter than air. Helium is 86.2% lighter than air. Hydrogen is 93% lighter than air.
Good old JIT stock management for essential materials, right?
One’d think that they’d keep more than a couple of weeks’s supply of critical materials —to bad many copied Cook’s and others’s JIT inventory management for everything.
The Helium Privatization Act of 1996 (HPA) required it. It passed to House on a voice vote and the Senate by unanimous consent and was signed by President Clinton.
After sales paid off the debt that has been incurred from the expansion of scope of the helium program in the 1960 Helium Act, which was one of the main points of the HPA, it was update by the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013 (which passed the House 394-1, and the Senate 97-2, and was signed by President Obama).
Ideological idiocy, the dismantling of anything public turning into private hands is ideologically pure for libertarian-inclined folks, no matter how strategically stupid it might be.
I feel that as soon as the existential threat easened with the splintering of the Soviet Union, the US started doing some self-harming libertarian flavored shit to itself.
In the 1980s, I assume getting rid of the "strategic reserve" of anything would have met more pushback, because of primal fear overriding greed.
"Current law (cira 2013) requires BLM to sell off the crude helium remaining in the Federal Helium Reserve in order to repay the U.S. Treasury the $1.3 billion debt incurred creating it. This debt will be repaid this fiscal year and that, as a consequence, the helium program will terminate at the end of the current fiscal year (October 1, 2013), absent Congressional action.
Currently, the Federal Helium Reserve supplies roughly 40% of domestic and 30% of global helium demand. Loss of access to the Federal Helium Reserve would result in significant disruptions to a large number of critical U.S. industries." https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/494b2f9e-c8f5-4...
BLM was required (to sell it) by Congress in the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013, as the alternative was to not offer any H to the market due to the authorization to sell expiring. Sponsored by a Republican and passed basically unanimously with the proceeds used to pay of the debt (back when we cared about that)
The idea of selling things like our strategic helium supply for $460M to "pay off the debt" would be like me selling bricks from the foundation of my house for a penny to "pay off my mortgage".
$460M was for what was left after the large majority had already been sold.
In the best case, "strategic reserves" are the government speculating on commodity prices. They use tax dollars to buy a commodity -- raising the price on everyone so they can hoard it -- and then more tax dollars to pay for a storage facility, and if they're lucky the price goes up by enough to pay for the storage and the time value of money by they time they sell it again. That frequently doesn't happen.
In the common case it's the government subsidizing corporations -- including foreign ones -- by using tax dollars (at government contractor rates) to operate a storage facility at a loss so the industry doesn't have to do it themselves. Then, when they go to unload it, they generally unload enough to lower the market price on purpose, practically guaranteeing that the taxpayer is getting a below-market return. This unloading also has a statistical correlation with the election cycle (see also "strategic petroleum reserve") which is extra stupid. And the expectation that it will happen deters others who aren't paying government contractor rates from storing the commodity, so you don't get anywhere near as much of a buffer as you're paying for.
If the tech industry wants a reserve of helium then they should buy some land, install some tanks and fill them with helium in years when there isn't a shortfall.
What if it's not actually your house, but some unspecified "somebody else's", and you only stand to profit from it? Starts to make sense why some unscrupulous people would go that way, shitty as it is.
I had an eye opening discussion with an IT admin who stated with a straight face that their “patching strategy was not to patch”.
They have a patch strategy! They considered requirements when deciding the strategy! They have a documented strategy, it’s just very brief. (“Don’t.”)
The Trump admin may have similarly thought about this issue for a few seconds, shrugged their shoulders and decided that this might force manufacturers to go on-shore.
You and I know it won’t, certainly not in the immediate future, which means massive disruption to industry, but that’s not the same as “no plan”.
Somewhat tangential question - for the "Just Stop Oil" folks - is it the extraction of oil that is the problem, or the burning of it? If the former, then we have an opportunity to investigate more renewable sources.
Okay, but while technically correct, it does nothing to change the situation. They are punching holes in the ground to extract the sweet sweet nectar. They have to store what has been extracted. When that storage is full, what does one do? Stop the input into the storage.
And I say that with his permission, since he’s on camera asking to be called out if he did exactly what they did with the Supreme Court not four years later.
That isn't true. There's actually a large number of people, probably in the millions, but probably not a majority of those who voted for him, who no longer support him in any way. And of the ones who remain, yes: they're pretty dense to still support him now. There are some lunatics who genuinely believe that the US has the right to dominate and exploit all other nations, but the majority of them simply believe the lies he's telling. I've already seen that when they are confronted with the facts about, say, Gaza, some of them can change their minds. It would be a mistake to turn them away instead of treating them like potential allies. There really is something more important at stake.
For better or worse, Donald Trump has absolutely earned his place in the history books. There will be so many lessons from this era, though I think it is very much open to debate what form those lessons will take and which ones will be the most consequential.
To be honest, much of the lessons of this were something that we could've already looked back during all the wars humanity has fought all throughout history to learn from.
We are in here, because we didn't learn from our history. You feel this way because this is recent and its hitting everything all at once but I do feel like these were all very avoidable lessons. Being honest, I don't feel like we learnt anything new aside from seeing how the world is still trying to clutch itself back to stability even after all the instability Donald Trump is causing within the world (for better or for worse) and seeing how the world reacts to all of this live.
But I am not quite sure if future will learn from these lessons given that its feeling to me like history doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes and we somehow don't really learn from the history to be honest.
We live in the dumbest possible timeline. As someone who came of age in the late 80s and was lucky enough to fully experience the 90s and 2000s ... what we have done in the last 20 years makes me sad. I never saw this coming. I admit that I maintained my delusion even though I was in OKC in 1995. Should have been a wake-up call.
Could you define the acronym "e/acc"? DDG seems to think it means: "What Does E/Acc Stand For, And What Does It Mean? E/acc stands for the phrase effective accelerationism, and it basically indicates one's personal ideological belief that artificial intelligence will one day become an all-powerful being that can fix the vast majority of humanity's problems."
I don't think I have ever heard a MAGA talk about AI.
> I don't think I have ever heard a MAGA talk about AI.
Lots of ex-Bitcoin-bros turned AI hypemen went all-in on maga for Trump II. Even the silicon valley C-Suites and VC-class went mask-off around February 2025. Some have tried to walk it back since then, after realizing the administration they had hitched their wagons to didn't have the mandate or levels of public support they had hoped for - thankfully, the internet never forgets.
I will dare to admit aloud that I think maybe the founders were making a rational choice when they decided that only certain citizens would have the right to vote. As awful as that sounds, there are halfway decent arguments in favor. Maybe not just restricting to white wealthy landowners, but sometimes I do wonder if we would benefit from a filter that adequately screens for people 1) with real skin in the game and 2) a plausible claim to being well informed.
That is just a thought experiment, though, I do not believe it would play out beneficially if we tried to implement it in real life.
I like this idea in theory. In practice, the problem is that someone gets to decide who is allowed to vote and on what grounds. If that institution is corrupted, it leads to worse outcome than allowing everyone to vote. And the bad actors would have all the incentives in the world to corrupt that institution.
> Maybe not just restricting to white wealthy landowners,
Some of those people are not white and/or not straight. They - very incorrectly - think that wealth will shield them from the sharp teeth of White Christian Nationalism. They should consult with the Log Cabin Republicans and women who voted for both Trump and enshrining abortion into their state's constitution on the same ballot.
However Qatar stopped production before the straits were officially closed and their stated reason is "due to military attacks", also Russian or Chinese ships can pass
There is no such thing as "officially closed". The moment people start shooting there, driving a ship across becomes dangerous. This was an absolutely predictable consequence of the attacks on Iran, you didn't need to wait until several tankers were burning to know these attacks were likely to happen and the strait would become essentially too risky to pass.
Back then there were only two ships attacked in the straits, and one was an Iranian shadow fleet ship. I am not sure that is "closing the straits" in any shape or form
So if there's an active shooter on the one alley to your workplace you should still be at work in time, right? :)
Or let's make the analogy clearer: if your Uber driver cancels the ride because there's an active shooter on the only road between him and you, it's their fault not the shooter's?
no, but if two ships were hit, while one clearly by mistake, it is very early to say the straits are going to be closed as opposed to incorrect targeting
your analogies have went past me though, generally although a common misconception, countries are not people and wars are not comparable to crime
You don't even have to scare everyone. You just have to scare the insurers. Without insurance ships won't sail. The exposure is huge, so a small blip in risk makes all the modeling go kerplooie. Traffic stopped when the insurers said drop the anchors.
To restore traffic, we need that risk to return to previous levels, which requires diplomacy and trust. I don't expect resolution any time soon.
Are Russian or Chinese ships actually passing? Junior just released a decree saying not one liter of oil will pass. It didn't have an asterisk allowing Russian or Chinese ships.
I also find it funny that we just decided to allow Russia to pad its coffers by temporarily lifting sanctions on sale of Russian oil. Sorry Ukraine!
Shutting down production doesn't pressure the US at all since the oil and gas can't go anywhere anyway. They're shutting it down because they have to, there's nowhere to put the oil.
Even if this nonsense was true it is absolutely normal tactic used by the US when bombing is out of question. Use economic pressure by way of tariffs and sanctions until vassals are put in their place. So what's your problem
I've developed a new fear of my 2025 desktop PC being damaged by a power surge or something, because it would cost at least $2K more to replace than I paid for it, assuming I can even find parts now. Compared to the rest of my adult life when I used to secretly pray for something to fail so I would have a reason to upgrade.
Living in developing countries taught me to never plugin expensive computers without a surge protector UPS.
Honestly even in "developed countries" it's not worth blindly trusting that the power in your house/building is clean. It's cheap and easy enough to just put any expensive hardware on a UPS rather than speculating what's going on behind the walls.
Silver lining: literally all Macs are a total steal right now.
Good Mac Pro models are still spendy, but the M3/M4 laptops are great if your software use-cases are met. =3
We used those Tripp Lite LC1200 to knock down the noise floor (14dB) on remote equipment.
These line-conditioners actually perform well given the cost, but never buy used surge-arresters given the finite spike hit-count. Best of luck =3
These devices are basically autotransformers. So they reduce the noise by providing inductive filtering. But they don't really protect against strong surges by themselves.
So Tripp Lite uses a regular varistor for that, just like any other surge protector. In Europe you'd be far better off buying a voltage relay and adding it to your electrical panel, but it's not usually possible with the non-modular US electrical panels.
I remember hearing somewhere on this site that medical imaging got pretty good at building systems that recycle helium. Does chip manufacturing not do this or are the losses at their scale are still large enough that you need a substantial constant supply?
The big problem is purity. Fabs use grade 5 and 6 helium where contaminants are 1-10 parts per billion. The infrastructure to get it that pure becomes very specialized and any time the helium goes through a process it picks up so much contamination that recycling it would require the entire purifying and quality control infrastructure for pressure or temperature swing adsorption.
Some fabs are starting to reuse helium in downstream processes but there’s only so much they can do without expanding their core competency into yet another complex chemical manufacturing process.
MRI machines don’t need high purity helium and the contamination doesn’t “gunk up” all the tools so it’s not an issue to recycle it there.
Some of the fabs do recycle as effectively as they can, but MRIs use it in a single process, in liquid form, in a relatively constrained container. Fabs use it for a variety of processes, ranging from wafer cooling to purging environments, to making ultra ultra clean chambers. The scale of what they use is higher, too, so even if an individual process is more efficiently recapturing helium, they might go through a few tons a day, with an MRI only using a few liters and losing 5% or less.
Also fab companies have had to learn to be incredibly conservative about perceptively meaningless changes.
Most famously illustrated by Intel's "Copy Exactly" methodology. https://duckduckgo.com/?q="copy%20exactly"+Intel
An adjacent IBM story that kinda explains why:
An excerpt from: Ziegler, James F., et al. "IBM experiments in soft fails in computer electronics (1978–1994)." IBM journal of research and development 40.1 (1996): 3-18Tech divers are also probably gonna be having a Bad Time. Helium mixes are already pretty expensive, I assume this will make it far worse.
Also, copper welding involves the use of helium as shielding gas. Helium shortage is painful
So the RAM prices are going to skyrocket again?
Of course, everything at the moment regardless of good or bad means higher RAM price.
Aren’t there huge stockpiles of helium in the US? I can buy party sized tanks at Target or big tanks at the usual places like welding supply places.
Helium for party balloons is low grade and not pure enough for chip fab use, so stacking up birthday tanks won't keep TSMC running. Industrial grade helium has a restricted and oddly international supply chain thanks to regulation and a few weirdly-placed depots. The US 'helium stockpile' isn't really a menu you can just order from when a factory across the planet runs dry, especially if offtakes and logistics are tied up by decade-old government contracts. If you want to see supply chain fragility, try pricing MRI-grade helium after a shutdown and watch everyone in medical procurement panic quitely.
after what kind of shutdown?
All natural gas deposits contain helium at various concentrations, it's only commercially worth harvesting above a certain percentage but speculate the problem is the US can't just fill the Qatar loss in supply immediately since we have plentiful natural gas.
Makes sense.
We have so much gas where I live that there are places it’s just flared off and burned, because it’s less greenhouse emissions than it escaping unburned.
If it's being burned, it isn't helium.
Depending on who you go to, some places will not sell you tanks of Helium. We did a balloon launch expecting to use Hydrogen because Helium was going to be problematic. The sales rep at the supply place took a look at the group of us knuckleheads with absolutely no Hydrogen experience and ended up selling us the Helium while also exchanging all of our connectors. Hydrogen tanks use specific connectors different from all other tanks to make using a hydrogen take by mistake very difficult. I was nervous about using hydrogen and had no issue with the higher price for the helium knowing I wasn't going to catch on fire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve
Balloon gas is ~20% oxygen, so your kids don't go unconscious while doing the funny voices.
https://www.bocgases.ie/files/balloon_grade_helium_factsheet... says 95% helium and 1% oxygen while https://dan.org/alert-diver/article/helium-gas-purity-what-i... says 97.5% helium but very unlikely for it to be as low as 80%
"An overview of the different common grades of helium" - https://zephyrsolutions.com/what-are-the-different-grades-of...
Grade 6 (6.0 helium = 99.9999% purity) The closest to 100% pure helium, 6.0 helium is used in the manufacturing of semiconductor chips – Grade 5.5 (5.5 helium = (99.9995% purity) Like 6.0 helium, 5.5 ultra pure helium gas is typically considered “research grade,” also used in chromatography and semiconductor processing
Grade 5 (5.0 helium = 99.999% purity) This high purity grade helium is also widely used for gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, and specific laboratory research when higher purity gases are not necessary, as well as for weather balloons and blimps.
Grade 4.8 (4.8 helium = 99.998% purity) The highest of the “industrial grade” heliums, 4.8 grade helium is often used by the military. The rest is classified...
Grade 4.7 (4.7 helium = 99.997% purity) A “Grade-A” industrial helium, 99.997% helium is mostly used in cryogenic applications and for pressurizing and purging
Grade 4.6 (4.6 helium = 99.996% purity) Grade 4.6 industrial helium is used for weather balloons, blimps, in leak detection
Grade 4.5 (4.5 helium = 99.995% purity) Often the grade most commonly referred to when people say “industrial grade,” 99.995% helium is most commonly used in the balloon industry
Grade 4 (4.0 helium and lower = 99.99% purity) Any helium that is 99.99% and down into the high 80 percents is within the range of purities referred to collectively as “balloon grade helium.”
I wonder if one of you could be going by number of atoms, and the other could be going by weight?
I believe that that's the stuff you buy in the shop, the non-refillable containers. If you buy a proper refillable balloon gas cylinder it's the higher grade stuff. Source: bought the shop stuff, got disappointed, bought the cylinder, happy.
You sure about that? Everything I've ever heard says that balloon gas is generally grade 4, which is 99.99% pure. Not good enough for MRI, but quite a lot better than 80%.
>99.99% pure. Not good enough for MRI
What is the reason that MRI needs grade 6 vs grade 4 helium? I'm imagining that the superconducting wire is within a cryostat filled with liquid helium. Doesn't seem like there would be any appreciably partial pressure of things like nitrogen or oxygen at 4 Kelvin. I imagine the reactivity of oxygen is pretty low at 4 K as well. How much dissolved oxygen or nitrogen can liquid helium support? And how much solidifies out and sinks to the bottom of the cryostat?
Economically I expect it wouldn't be that pure, since it doesn't have to be that pure to provide lift, and party balloons are not trying to maximize lift.
Out of curiosity I did a minor amount of research to get an idea.
Turns out that you are right, some balloon gas is 80%. Specifically, the "Balloon Time" tanks you can buy at places like Target say "not less than 80%" helium.
On the other hand, I went to AirGas and a few other suppliers and they seemed to have 95%-97.0% helium gas as their definition for balloon grade.
Perhaps "balloon grade" here is not "party balloon grade". Weather balloons? Research balloons?
My guess is that places like AirGas aren't really supplying many weather or research balloons. I suspect the easier answer is 'Balloon Time is low grade crap aimed at people who don't know any better and just want to pick up some balloon gas while grocery shopping.' It's like the difference between people who go to a gas station to refill propane tanks, and people who swap them at Home Depot. (though the smart fellers do swap at Home Depot occasionally, if they need a fresher tank...)
Definitely worth knowing what you're getting, in any case, so you don't get ripped off, and so you can actually get that lawn chair contraption into the sky.
source? the value I found is 97.5%+ helium for party balloons: https://www.grecogas.com/learn-our-industry/your-complete-gu...
People commit suicide with it because it's supposedly painless and quick.
We're dumb enough now to have forgotten history.
Moar hydrogen party balloons. Making partying fun again!
This is very likely not true.
Would you like to offer a rebuttal more well reasoned and thought out than "nuh-uh"?
You have the entire collected knowledge of mankind at your fingertips. You could do 30 seconds of research and find an answer better than "I don't think that sounds right".
> You could do 30 seconds of research
So could you, right?
not just. huge deposits opened (actively being exploited) up in colorado, utah in the past few years and Minnesota this year
A lot of the balloon use has switched to nitrogen (helium became much, much more expensive after the strategic helium reserve was sold off)
Nitrogen? That's basically just air, what good would a balloon be using nitrogen? Might as well just blow it up with your lungs. It's certainly not going to float in any case.
> balloon use ... helium became much, much more expensive
More than just from inflation? (sorry, not sorry!)
Is lifting gas? That’s pretty cool.
Technically yes, but practically no. Air is 78% nitrogen. Nitrogen is 3.3% lighter than air. Helium is 86.2% lighter than air. Hydrogen is 93% lighter than air.
No.
Good old JIT stock management for essential materials, right?
One’d think that they’d keep more than a couple of weeks’s supply of critical materials —to bad many copied Cook’s and others’s JIT inventory management for everything.
Messer Completes Acquisition of Federal Helium System from BLM https://www.messer-us.com/press-releases/messer-completes-ac...
Why did we sell it instead of lease? This seems like something that should be in public hands.
The Helium Privatization Act of 1996 (HPA) required it. It passed to House on a voice vote and the Senate by unanimous consent and was signed by President Clinton.
After sales paid off the debt that has been incurred from the expansion of scope of the helium program in the 1960 Helium Act, which was one of the main points of the HPA, it was update by the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013 (which passed the House 394-1, and the Senate 97-2, and was signed by President Obama).
Ideological idiocy, the dismantling of anything public turning into private hands is ideologically pure for libertarian-inclined folks, no matter how strategically stupid it might be.
This. 1000x this.
crypto-libertarian "government bad" ideology is one hell of a drug.
well it was signed into law by obama, so there's that.
yes the president is the law giver, he who conceives, imposes, and bears in perpetuity all responsibilities for all laws passed during his term
I like the guy, but he was GOP-lite as a president, served corporate interests.
I'm no partisan. Politicians elected to serve corporate interests come in your choice of red or blue.
of course but i think characterizing obama as a Crypto-Libertarian is a disservice to carter, who was actually a crypto-libertarian
sorry thats too far left wing an opinion in america today
The sale was completed in 2024.
I feel that as soon as the existential threat easened with the splintering of the Soviet Union, the US started doing some self-harming libertarian flavored shit to itself.
In the 1980s, I assume getting rid of the "strategic reserve" of anything would have met more pushback, because of primal fear overriding greed.
Wasn’t the original purpose of the strategic helium reserve to build fleets of zeppelins?
> We are going to do a terrible thing to you — we are going to deprive you of an enemy.
– Georgi Arbatov, Soviet political scientist, 1988
Yes, Reagan was noted for his desire to avoid privatization of anything. /s
Kidding aside, the US has had libertarian pipe dreams for the better part of its history. The aberration was the New Deal period up until the mid 60s.
For those who don't understand, Biden sold the Helium not Trump - he took office on Jan 20, 2025.
"Current law (cira 2013) requires BLM to sell off the crude helium remaining in the Federal Helium Reserve in order to repay the U.S. Treasury the $1.3 billion debt incurred creating it. This debt will be repaid this fiscal year and that, as a consequence, the helium program will terminate at the end of the current fiscal year (October 1, 2013), absent Congressional action. Currently, the Federal Helium Reserve supplies roughly 40% of domestic and 30% of global helium demand. Loss of access to the Federal Helium Reserve would result in significant disruptions to a large number of critical U.S. industries." https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/494b2f9e-c8f5-4...
Sounds like Obama kept the gas taps flowing, instead of locking it up because authorization to sell it had expired. Here is the whole record: https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/527/...
> too far left wing
> biden
uhm...
His admin was by far the most left wing in history, only the actual far left think otherwise
How does he compare with Nixon, who created the EPA?
Please don't call everyone who doesn't disagree with you, names.
There are billions of people in the world, and you are one, and you have your one set of opinions out of billions.
Nobody endowed you or your opinions with any sort of infallibility or superiority over others.
Foi de vasco (died).
Great timing that the US recently sold its strategic helium supply.
BLM [(Bureau of Land Management)] completes $460M sale of federal helium reserve to private company | 12/12/2024 | https://www.eenews.net/articles/blm-completes-460m-sale-of-f...
Messer Completes Acquisition of Federal Helium System from BLM | June 27, 2024 | https://www.messer-us.com/press-releases/messer-completes-ac...
BLM was required (to sell it) by Congress in the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013, as the alternative was to not offer any H to the market due to the authorization to sell expiring. Sponsored by a Republican and passed basically unanimously with the proceeds used to pay of the debt (back when we cared about that)
The idea of selling things like our strategic helium supply for $460M to "pay off the debt" would be like me selling bricks from the foundation of my house for a penny to "pay off my mortgage".
$460M was for what was left after the large majority had already been sold.
In the best case, "strategic reserves" are the government speculating on commodity prices. They use tax dollars to buy a commodity -- raising the price on everyone so they can hoard it -- and then more tax dollars to pay for a storage facility, and if they're lucky the price goes up by enough to pay for the storage and the time value of money by they time they sell it again. That frequently doesn't happen.
In the common case it's the government subsidizing corporations -- including foreign ones -- by using tax dollars (at government contractor rates) to operate a storage facility at a loss so the industry doesn't have to do it themselves. Then, when they go to unload it, they generally unload enough to lower the market price on purpose, practically guaranteeing that the taxpayer is getting a below-market return. This unloading also has a statistical correlation with the election cycle (see also "strategic petroleum reserve") which is extra stupid. And the expectation that it will happen deters others who aren't paying government contractor rates from storing the commodity, so you don't get anywhere near as much of a buffer as you're paying for.
If the tech industry wants a reserve of helium then they should buy some land, install some tanks and fill them with helium in years when there isn't a shortfall.
What if it's not actually your house, but some unspecified "somebody else's", and you only stand to profit from it? Starts to make sense why some unscrupulous people would go that way, shitty as it is.
Wouldn't another alternative be to renew the authorization to sell? This doesn't seem much different from just deciding to sell it.
Republicans believe that the federal government shouldn't be involved in it at all. So a reauth bill would effectively be DOA.
But yeah, that would make more sense.
thanks obama?
Those party ballons were very cheap for a while.
yeah that was completely crazy... never understood why they would do something like that
An explanation is particular political group was ideologically enthralled with privatization.
The same group will later happily blame the government for doing said stupid thing.
This is, according to Hegseth, just something they planned for, since they knew what was going to happen.
I had an eye opening discussion with an IT admin who stated with a straight face that their “patching strategy was not to patch”.
They have a patch strategy! They considered requirements when deciding the strategy! They have a documented strategy, it’s just very brief. (“Don’t.”)
The Trump admin may have similarly thought about this issue for a few seconds, shrugged their shoulders and decided that this might force manufacturers to go on-shore.
You and I know it won’t, certainly not in the immediate future, which means massive disruption to industry, but that’s not the same as “no plan”.
It's almost like war is a bad thing.
Iran will make AI go pop.
We can only hope.
inshallah
let's see if it turns into mashallah :)
Somewhat tangential question - for the "Just Stop Oil" folks - is it the extraction of oil that is the problem, or the burning of it? If the former, then we have an opportunity to investigate more renewable sources.
The goal is to keep the oil in the ground, to not be burned or to be made into plastics.
Isn't the main source of helium from oil production? It's not like we have fusion reactors turning H into He.
The main source of helium is natural gas production, not oil
Okay, but while technically correct, it does nothing to change the situation. They are punching holes in the ground to extract the sweet sweet nectar. They have to store what has been extracted. When that storage is full, what does one do? Stop the input into the storage.
Lindsay Graham has an easy solution to this unnecessary conflict: send your sons and daughters.
This whole administration is such a fiasco.
I recommend anybody looking at the US land invasion proposal to do that with an altitude map of Iran on the side.
Lindsey Graham is a lying sack of shit.
And I say that with his permission, since he’s on camera asking to be called out if he did exactly what they did with the Supreme Court not four years later.
I was not aware of this 'on camera' request. Does anyone have a citation?
Thank deities someone else remembers this.
Remember all the e/acc people telling us to vote for Trump? Some mea-culpas are in order.
The kind of people who voted for trump would never admit they made a mistake. They double down on stupidity instead.
That isn't true. There's actually a large number of people, probably in the millions, but probably not a majority of those who voted for him, who no longer support him in any way. And of the ones who remain, yes: they're pretty dense to still support him now. There are some lunatics who genuinely believe that the US has the right to dominate and exploit all other nations, but the majority of them simply believe the lies he's telling. I've already seen that when they are confronted with the facts about, say, Gaza, some of them can change their minds. It would be a mistake to turn them away instead of treating them like potential allies. There really is something more important at stake.
For better or worse, Donald Trump has absolutely earned his place in the history books. There will be so many lessons from this era, though I think it is very much open to debate what form those lessons will take and which ones will be the most consequential.
To be honest, much of the lessons of this were something that we could've already looked back during all the wars humanity has fought all throughout history to learn from.
We are in here, because we didn't learn from our history. You feel this way because this is recent and its hitting everything all at once but I do feel like these were all very avoidable lessons. Being honest, I don't feel like we learnt anything new aside from seeing how the world is still trying to clutch itself back to stability even after all the instability Donald Trump is causing within the world (for better or for worse) and seeing how the world reacts to all of this live.
But I am not quite sure if future will learn from these lessons given that its feeling to me like history doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes and we somehow don't really learn from the history to be honest.
Hum... He seems to be doing the most accelerationist government from recent history of any large or rich country.
We live in the dumbest possible timeline. As someone who came of age in the late 80s and was lucky enough to fully experience the 90s and 2000s ... what we have done in the last 20 years makes me sad. I never saw this coming. I admit that I maintained my delusion even though I was in OKC in 1995. Should have been a wake-up call.
Could you define the acronym "e/acc"? DDG seems to think it means: "What Does E/Acc Stand For, And What Does It Mean? E/acc stands for the phrase effective accelerationism, and it basically indicates one's personal ideological belief that artificial intelligence will one day become an all-powerful being that can fix the vast majority of humanity's problems."
I don't think I have ever heard a MAGA talk about AI.
> I don't think I have ever heard a MAGA talk about AI.
Lots of ex-Bitcoin-bros turned AI hypemen went all-in on maga for Trump II. Even the silicon valley C-Suites and VC-class went mask-off around February 2025. Some have tried to walk it back since then, after realizing the administration they had hitched their wagons to didn't have the mandate or levels of public support they had hoped for - thankfully, the internet never forgets.
The MAGA Web3 bros have all switched to the Clawdbot hypetrain, still flogging courses and slop.
Even the nation's #1 dingleberry Joe Rogan is now turning against Trump. Would be a great time for folks to start admitting they fell for it again.
People are admitting that now. It's happening. There's some hope that something can be done about him.
I will dare to admit aloud that I think maybe the founders were making a rational choice when they decided that only certain citizens would have the right to vote. As awful as that sounds, there are halfway decent arguments in favor. Maybe not just restricting to white wealthy landowners, but sometimes I do wonder if we would benefit from a filter that adequately screens for people 1) with real skin in the game and 2) a plausible claim to being well informed.
That is just a thought experiment, though, I do not believe it would play out beneficially if we tried to implement it in real life.
The answer isn’t less voters, it’s more. Australia’s compulsory voting system has successfully taken the edge off extremist ideology.
I like this idea in theory. In practice, the problem is that someone gets to decide who is allowed to vote and on what grounds. If that institution is corrupted, it leads to worse outcome than allowing everyone to vote. And the bad actors would have all the incentives in the world to corrupt that institution.
> Maybe not just restricting to white wealthy landowners,
Some of those people are not white and/or not straight. They - very incorrectly - think that wealth will shield them from the sharp teeth of White Christian Nationalism. They should consult with the Log Cabin Republicans and women who voted for both Trump and enshrining abortion into their state's constitution on the same ballot.
Everybody should be allowed to vote, except for people who don't want everyone to vote.
Do you remember this quote from wheel of time?
"Let the lord of chaos rule" ...
Qatar is probably intentionally shutting down production of gas and oil in order to pressure the US to stop, independently of Iranian attacks.
In that respect they may be bombed by Iran but they have the same interests
Where are they supposed to put all that gas and oil if they can't transport it? I don't think they have much choice here.
And as far as I understand, helium is a byproduct of the extraction, so they can't choose to keep only the helium.
However Qatar stopped production before the straits were officially closed and their stated reason is "due to military attacks", also Russian or Chinese ships can pass
There is no such thing as "officially closed". The moment people start shooting there, driving a ship across becomes dangerous. This was an absolutely predictable consequence of the attacks on Iran, you didn't need to wait until several tankers were burning to know these attacks were likely to happen and the strait would become essentially too risky to pass.
Back then there were only two ships attacked in the straits, and one was an Iranian shadow fleet ship. I am not sure that is "closing the straits" in any shape or form
So if there's an active shooter on the one alley to your workplace you should still be at work in time, right? :)
Or let's make the analogy clearer: if your Uber driver cancels the ride because there's an active shooter on the only road between him and you, it's their fault not the shooter's?
no, but if two ships were hit, while one clearly by mistake, it is very early to say the straits are going to be closed as opposed to incorrect targeting
your analogies have went past me though, generally although a common misconception, countries are not people and wars are not comparable to crime
Oh, well, if it was by mistake...
That's precisely how you close the straits; by making everyone scared to go through.
You don't even have to scare everyone. You just have to scare the insurers. Without insurance ships won't sail. The exposure is huge, so a small blip in risk makes all the modeling go kerplooie. Traffic stopped when the insurers said drop the anchors.
To restore traffic, we need that risk to return to previous levels, which requires diplomacy and trust. I don't expect resolution any time soon.
Impeachment, and then we could get there. It's not impossible.
As the houthis have long demonstrated, you can screw up shipping from the coast
I'm guessing you watched the Hegseth interview?
--- Hegseth: “The only thing prohibiting transit in [Hormuz] right now is Iran shooting at shipping.”
“It is open for transit should Iran not do that” ---
Oh really? I thought it was because Mercury was in retrograde.
I guess if even Mr. Hegseth is admitting that transit is effectively prohibited in the Strait, he must actually be lying and part of the deep state.
Are Russian or Chinese ships actually passing? Junior just released a decree saying not one liter of oil will pass. It didn't have an asterisk allowing Russian or Chinese ships.
I also find it funny that we just decided to allow Russia to pad its coffers by temporarily lifting sanctions on sale of Russian oil. Sorry Ukraine!
The strait is now mined at least partially. Country of origin doesn't matter when there are mines in the water.
We really are overdue for mines with IFF and can inert themselves temporarily for blue ships.
This is going to be an environmental disaster.
Only if there's no diplomatic resolution - however unlikely.
Shutting down production doesn't pressure the US at all since the oil and gas can't go anywhere anyway. They're shutting it down because they have to, there's nowhere to put the oil.
Even if this nonsense was true it is absolutely normal tactic used by the US when bombing is out of question. Use economic pressure by way of tariffs and sanctions until vassals are put in their place. So what's your problem