I realize it isn't completed yet but I don't think anyone is buying sites for something that's impossible to build.
Here's another one: https://www.bosch-semiconductors.com/roseville/
The Infinera one is described as a "new fab" though (https://www.nist.gov/chips/infinera-california-san-jose) and the Bosch one is adding a new type of fabrication to an existing site. If you can do all that without getting new permits then that makes California sound like a pretty lenient place to do business. I'm assuming they did have to get new permits though.
This might be a refutation but it's not super clear. It's definitely not a commercial semiconductor fab but it might do all of or some subset of what a commercial fab does at R&D scale. Hard to know for sure how this jives with the claim in the main website.
> If you can do all that without getting new permits then that makes California sound like a pretty lenient place to do business.
Being able to retool under original zoning/permitting is specifically lenient? That's extremely basic. If you're a co-Californian with me, though, it does help to understand that many people think that anyone doing anything without a permit is "lenient".
> I'm assuming they did have to get new permits though.
Well, that makes it really easy to be "right". I should try this more.
As others have pointed out, the article itself fails to provide any direct citations of the regulations either. This is classic Russell's teapot territory; the one making the initial claim shouldn't have a lower burden of evidence than the one refuting it.
> so obviously his point can’t be true > so obviously he’s biased and we can’t do the mental work of sifting > so obviously I can dismiss this as teleologically false.
Please don’t be so lazy you guys. There is something to be gained here.
The article contains no citations, and so may be presumed 100% false by default.
"may be presumed", as in, sure it might actually contain some other mix of true and false, but it doesn't matter what that mix actually is. That only matters in some other article written by someone else that citates any of it's assertions.
This piece is the same as if monkeys typed stuff at random and some of it could possibly happen to be the same as something true. It doesn't mean the monkeys made a valid point, and no one should spend one second either defending or refuting it.
This guy, with an obvious bias, created a website that misrepresents the situation in California (by implying things are banned or "nearly impossible" when in actuality they just take time/effort), while also failing to show the specific regulations or requirements for any of it. Without supplying that kind of information this website is little better than "It's banned. trust me bro". It's not our responsibility to try to dig up evidence to support or verify this guys claims just because he can't be bothered to do it.
His motivations, his framing of the problem, and his failure to back up his own statements makes the site pretty damn easy to dismiss and I don't even doubt that there might be instances where bad regulation exists, especially regulation that protects the profits of established players in certain industries by keeping out competition. I'm entirely sympathetic to the idea that it might be happening, but if there is something to be gained you aren't going to find it on this guys website. Serious coverage on this topic would include actionable information we can use to identify and solve specific problems. This is just anti-regulation propaganda.
Your downvotes are invalid.
There are a ton of CNC machining (AL and otherwise) and anodizing shops in the Bay Area.
I'm actually quite surprised by the number of people who have fallen for this. There aren't even any concrete claims here – just the vague assertion that some things are "impossible".
But lumping that in with semiconductor fabs, which are extremely toxic, makes me wonder how many of these banned industries I don't want in my state. I think if we want to build them in the US maybe don't build them in the most agriculturally productive and highest population state. Or first figure out how to do it without turning the US into China with its "cancer villages" from poisoned river water.
I'm not defending the dysfunctional CA bureaucracy, but the site should probably focus on specific cases of government-produced insanity than a general complaint that certain industries are banned from operation.
Wait, hold on - I watched all the seasons of "Rust To Riches" on Netflix, about a small shop that flips cars.
They routinely painted cars.
They'd paint in this sealed-up room/garage thingee, the guy would wear and industrial-grade mask, and the camera would slide past as he expertly painted the car. The 30 second montages looked awesome!
That show took place in Temecula, California. So there's no way that site is accurate.
And, more to the point, if they want to show that they are accurate they should be linking to the rules & regulations that actually prohibit these things instead of just making a claim & calling it a day.
Secondly, it says you can't permit a new auto paint shop in CA, but it specifically mentions the Bay Area AQMD as the reason. But, as its name implies, the Bay Area AQMD only regulates within the San Francisco Bay Area. It is only one of 35 air districts in California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_air_distric...
So, it is impossible to permit a new auto paint shop in all of these districts, or just the bay area? Because those are very different. It also labels starting a new paint shop as "impossible", but then says it's "nearly impossible". So is it actually impossible, or just nearly impossible?
The site provides no citations, no evidence, so there’s no need to defend the count argument or honestly even make it.
The sit isn’t just false, it is flat out disrespectful to all the workers, engineers, founders, and everyone else involved in the industries he says don’t exist that actually do exist. The site is basically “I think this is hard so no one else could possibly do it”.
So the right thing is to outsource the dirty jobs to countries that can’t afford to be picky?
Wouldn’t it be better for the world if we used our wealth to develop methods of safe semiconductor manufacturing with low environmental impact, and proudly built those facilities in California?
It's not like the laws are simply "you can't make semiconductors here". The laws ban the harmful externalities of the process. The companies that want to make semiconductors don't want to find a way to make the processes less harmful: it's cheaper and easier to just go somewhere where they can pollute instead.
There's a large middle ground between "Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone" and letting blatant polluters turn your neighborhood into a Superfund site. California solved the latter problem by going too far in the other direction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Cal...
https://www.epa.gov/superfund/search-superfund-sites-where-y...
I go by a paint shop every now and then. It’s not nearly as smelly as a quite of a few of the nearby restaurants.
There are. They just cost more and take more time.
> But lumping that in with semiconductor fabs, which are extremely toxic
People say this all the time, but semiconductor fabs simply aren't very toxic compared to just about every other industrial manufacturing process. Mostly this is because everything is sealed and sealed and sealed some more.
Yes, they handle stuff like arsenic gas (arsine AsH3), but they really try to reclaim it all. The semiconductor waste stream is often purer than most industrial inputs. Yeah, old plants would just dump crap into the environment. However, for modern semiconductor facilities, it is generally more economic to reprocess your waste than try to purify from primary sources.
Now, PCB manufacturing, on the other hand, is quite terrible or at least it used to be. I don't know if people have sealed and automated that yet.