Even if the FX is notionally "free" they pick the rates. So they can set those rates to generate exactly the same profit for them as with fees.
You will probably not see rates that are even competitive with a dodgy FX cash place at an airport, let alone with the numbers you've seen on financial networks for what FX transactions by banks cost, but you feel happy because there was "no fee".
>> Your bank may or may not use the rate indicated by this calculator to bill you
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(As a side note: the fine print follows up with this:
>> If your transaction is converted by the merchant or ATM operator, the exchange rate indicated by this calculator will not apply.
Don't ever let a merchant or ATM do foreign currency conversion for you. They charge astronomically high fees without exception. Pay in the foreign currency and let your card do the conversion.)
Huh. I wonder how long that's been true. I guess I haven't been to America since last century, but I could have sworn I had zero fee but unreasonable FX rates when I was in Poland which can't have been more than 25 years ago.
> You will probably not see rates that are even competitive with a dodgy FX cash place at an airport
You're crazy.
I have a Capital One account because they advertised "no foreign transaction fees". I checked on my foreign-currency payments and was always charged an amount that looked eerily similar to "1% more than you would have paid at the published exchange rate", so it's not clear to me why they say "no fee" and not "1% fee".
But the 1% fee that they actually have is very reasonable. An airport stall is in an entirely different league.
This is flat out incorrect. It's actually quite difficult to get a cash FX rate that's even close to as good as the standard credit card FX rate, which is also set by Visa/MC and not the banks.
Where the banks do get their pound of flesh, though, is the foreign transaction surcharge, which is often around 3%. No-fee cards exist but you need to look for them. And a whole new set of charges applies to doing a foreign cash advance on a credit card.
This is misleading. Banks put a fee on foreign transactions, many do this even if the transaction is in the card's native currency.
The card companies always add a margin to FX conversions, usually in the 0.5% range. This is fairly benign since the market rate can move between the transaction and the settlement, so sometimes you save money.
I think this is generally mitigated: When traveling, people use the card that doesn't have this fee. You have cards A and B. Has a fee; B doesn't. At home you use either. When traveling, you use B.
Is that actually the silicon that's on top of a cpu?
I've always assumed the silicon is super thin - "wafer" thin. And then some material is added where the bonding wires etc are embedded in and the pads or pins are attached to.
For sure it's like this on newer CPUs, where there is not a single piece of silicon bit rather multiple ones with interconnect between them.
Chips are made from silicon wafers that are ~0.8mm thick. The transistor layer is built on one side of the wafer (because the transistors need to be built from epitaxial silicon, that is, where all the atoms are neatly arranged, and you cannot deposit a perfect epitaxial layer). Then the metal layers are built on top, by depositing copper and dielectric (traditionally silicon dioxide, that is, glass, but these days some more exotic stuff is used too).
Then that chip is flipped around, so the transistors and metal layers face the pcb. Most of the chip on the upside is just bulk silicon, and there for structural and heat spreading purposes, it's not needed for operation.
When chips are built out of multiple stacked layers, typically they thin the chips that go below and leave a thick bulk layer on the topmost one. IIRC, for some AMD chips they needed to use a separate, unprocessed bulk heat spreader layer for bonding reasons.
I would guess that the effective layers are super thin. But such super thin parts do not have much structural integrity. So you leave material under it so that you can handle it. And then just drill to those parts as needed.
No, that’s the die sawed out of a wafer. Those are wafer-thin, i.e. about 0.8mm. On some newer CPUs the wafer is ground down to improve thermals. In normal C4 packaging like here the active layer is sandwiched between the metal layers (which sit on the interposer PCB) and the bulk silicon (95% of the thickness upwards, to the camera). Silicon is not a great heat conductor.
There was just this video [0] yesterday showing the whole process for a GaN LED, it's fascinating how crude the post processing can be in contrast with the ultra precise etching and layering.
On the bottom [0], youtuber/cooling specialist/tuner der8auer did an interview with an intel engineer a few years ago. One of the points they bring up is that it's not a pure gain to have less silicon between the logic and the next interface to another material conducting heat away as the silicon itself acts as a conductor/spreader, i.e. sideways as well as upwards, so there's a balance.
Yeah, I was looking at the same chart and was very surprised at where the curve is relative to opus... Feels like sonnet 5 is "what if opus had an extra-low effort level"?
Fun fact: back in 1600s the Swedish government wanted to make our old history grander than perhaps it had been. As part of that they instituted a law that if you find gold or ancient things on your grounds you would be paid more than the worth of it if you brought it in:
https://www.icomos.se/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/1666-Placat...
> As part of that they instituted a law that if you find gold or ancient things on your grounds you would be paid more than the worth of it if you brought it in
> It's still in effect, and still pays higher-than-melting prices
But the melting price of an ancient bronze sword is nothing. Most ancient artifacts have no material value.
That's the original definition. I think now first, second, third are used to annotate which level of development a country is at. Especially that now, not all developing countries are equal.
It's more nuanced than that. First was the USA, the first nuclear state (and the west / allies). Then the Soviets. The Third World was the anticipated rise of the nations that would join us on the world stage, a hopeful and optimistic term[0]. Then we deliberately sabotaged them and kept them under our boot to extract resources.
Third World is now a slight for developing nations.
The commenter doesn't recognize that nordic countries have exceptionally high quality of life despite less sunlight (a common cause of depression) than whatever country in which they likely reside. They aren't curious about the world enough to learn about others.
Solar is already by far our cheapest source of energy. As solar expands, the learning rate means solar will be even cheaper. We should expect solar to be the single largest source of energy on earth by 2035.
A shame electricity is not the whole picture when it comes to energy. The resurgence in EV sales off the back of high gas prices is awesome, but almost 100% of bulk transport costs still rely on oil. Also, unlike EV's which can be plugged in at home for most of their needs, bulk-transport will require considerable new infrastructure to make the transition. Still a way to go.
It's a couple of months since I did the calculations, but I do believe 2035 is for all energy, not just electricity.
It's easy to drag out a flat line in an exponential graph - but the line better start bending soon or we'll end up with a truly mind boggling amount of solar energy.
Of course inmates should have decent drinking water.
But I strongly disagree with "human rights" that are defined this way - something someone has to go out and bring to you.
A human right is something that someone cannot take away from me. Free speech is a human right. The right to life.
A "human right to water" combined with a "human right to housing" implies that if I walk aimlessly into a desert and decide to stay there, it is my human right to have people bring we water and a place to stay. Other people not doing so is against my human rights.
Caged people are actively denied access to clean water that is readily available in their vicinity. They aren't in these cages due to aimless wandering in the desert - the state put them in there.
See, this is why I put "inmates should have decent drinking water" first in my comment, and "inmates should have clean water" as the very last words.
It seems to me you are making the exact error in argument I react against. Stop making everything a "human right". You see, in the end, when you've made everything "human rights", the whole "human rights" concept will cease to have any meaning whatsoever and you will have lost.
The ability to convey oneself to water, collect it, and drink it is a natural right. If this right is removed by state incarceration then the state needs to provide a safe substitute, unless laws provide for punishment through dehydration (which seems cruel and unusual to me).
This isn’t cleanly mapped to typical notions of human rights, but it’s still a question of rights.
This feels like a potential arbitrage opportunity... I live in Sweden, but if I can use a US credit card I can get high rewards?