I submit exhibit 1: the US monetary supply. [1] We're 'printing' money like there's no tomorrow. Up ~6% in a single year, well over a trillion dollars. That's obviously going to make an economy look increasingly nonsensical.

I increasingly get the same feeling I did as back in the early 2000s when there were endless 'house flipping' shows on TV where somebody would go buy a house on an insta-improved loan, add some granite counter tops and mop the floor, then resell it within a couple of weeks for $20k profit and repeat. Not sure how people didn't see that was basically 'Bubble - The TV Show!'

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

How would you differentiate between currency influence and power influence?

Perhaps it should do that, but it really doesn't, and can never do so in anything like its current form.

It reflects people's perception of reality.

What do you think a casino is?

I hear you about the heresy, but are you sure you aren't being too hard on yourself? mismanagement can turn brilliant, passionate people into aimless zombies through demotivation and throwing you at problems that don't fit you.

also, my old boss thought Larabee was cool as hell when he got to play with it at MSR.

Maybe this is a layperson’s misunderstanding but after seeing Panther Lake hit the consumer scene I have a hard time believing Intel has a talent problem.

I’d even say what Intel is doing with Arc graphics is incredibly impressive. Coming out of nowhere to legitimately compete with a decent set of AMD/Nvidia consumer and workstation graphics cards is no small feat.

ex-Intel engineer here.

> Intel engineers, to put to bluntly: suck.

It hurts, but it is true.

> I took voluntary retirement and went to work for a smaller instrument maker. I’m way happier.

I was not so lucky. I would have loved the voluntary separation package. They did get around to doing straight large layoffs one year. My manager got laid off, I was not so lucky. I wanted the layoff package. I told him I'd happily trade places with him. He tried, but was denied. I ended up leaving anyway. Now, like you, working for a small company and much much happier.

> The fact that something is just too hard for the talent at hand is just never offered up.

Those of us who've worked at less illustrious companies are all too familiar with that. It's definitely unpopular to mention, but it drives a lot of consulting sales.

> They didnt take years to hit profitability because of leadership.

Oh, it wasn't leadership?

> There just isn’t enough talent there because they don’t pay enough.

Ah, so it was leadership.

Fabricating memory requires different techniques than logic, and it would take Intel several years to develop a commercially useful DRAM process.

Memory fabs are quite different from logic chip fabs.

You're absolutely right! And that is why the last couple of years has been fascinating to watch from a geopolitical and trade standpoint.

Watching China push its weight around earlier in the year with REM and REE was crazy. The US, and the rest of the world for that matter, were brought to our knees. Germany's auto industry and weeks of chips left, the US started shipping F35's to allies _without_ radar. Truly astounding trade power to see.

Made it very clear to every nation that you must have a sovereign story to tell about chip manufacturing.

Still, a lot of that lost share went to AMD and that is ultimately a safe thing for Intel compared to losing share to alternative CPU platforms. More than just safe, mutually beneficial for both companies.

Sure, losing Apple was a huge deal, but ultimately Apple still only has ~20% of the consumer PC market and far less in enterprise, and even less than that in more niche applications since their form factors are so limited, and 0% marketshare in data centers.

I’m not sure how hard Intel is trying to get into the enterprise AI data center scene but Intel ARC cards are definitely floating around in the local LLM scene for their stellar value and I’d be surprised if Intel doesn’t see a massive opportunity to take advantage in that area. They are one of three companies who have reasonably modern GPU designs.

Which one would the world miss more if disappeared overnight?

> Very important for business offices but not outside of that niche.

you miss at least several other niches