Asianometry

In early 1996, the FDA approved a revolutionary new HIV drug. Immediately, Abbott Labs began producing it for tens of thousands of HIV-infected people. And for 240 lots, drug tablets were produced without incident. Then in early 1998, a new form of the drug spontaneously appeared. And it rapidly spread through the whole factory, cutting off tablet production. Sounds like a science-fiction story, right? In this video, we look at the curious case of the transforming HIV drug. Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year. Listen to Stratechery. Listen to Dithering. Listen to Sharp China. Listen to Sharp Tech. Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.

In 1968, the Republic of Korea was totally dependent on firearm and ammunition imports from the United States. South Korean firms only produced uniforms and related goods, not rifles, mortars, grenades or ammunition. The South Korean army still used vintage American M-1 rifles left over from World War II. Their total stock of ammunition was estimated to last just three days. So when the United States announced a plan to maybe withdraw all of its troops from the Korean peninsula by 1975, the South Koreans went on high alert. In just a few years, they needed to build a domestic defense and military arms industry. Starting from almost literally nothing. They did it. In this video, we look at how South Korea founded what is today one of the world's biggest military arms industries. Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year. Listen to Stratechery. Listen to Dithering. Listen to Sharp China. Listen to Sharp Tech. Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.

From 1975 to 1980, Iran's total fertility rate averaged about 6.2 children per woman. Thirty years later, that rate had fallen to just 1.76 per woman, a 70%+ decline. The majority of this decline took place between 1986 and 1996, when the Iranian government implemented a major family planning program. In other words, Iran, seen as one of the more traditional, conservative Muslim societies today, engineered one of the most rapid fertility declines in modern history. Today, the country struggles to raise those rates once more. In this video, we take a look at the history of Iran’s population and family planning policies. Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year. Listen to Stratechery. Listen to Dithering. Listen to Sharp China. Listen to Sharp Tech. Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.

Between 1947 and 1953, Yugoslavia poured some $53 million - a staggering sum - into the pursuit of an atomic bomb. Edvard Kardelj, one of Marshal Josip Tito's closest associates, said in 1950: "We must have the atomic bomb. We must build it even if it costs us one-half of our income for years" Yugoslavia was uniquely positioned to achieve the bomb. But in the end, they didn’t. The bomb project in all practicality ended in 1970. In this video, we look at Tito's drive for the atomic bomb. And why it failed. Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year. Listen to Stratechery. Listen to Dithering. Listen to Sharp China. Listen to Sharp Tech. Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.

Using DeoxyriboNucleic Acid or DNA for digital data storage is perhaps the most intriguing digital biology idea I have come across in a while. It sounds crazy but it can work. In 2020, Twist Biosciences collaborated with Netflix to encode the first episode of a recent TV show Biohackers into synthetic DNA. One 2020 study probed the theoretical storage limits and postulated a density of 17 exabytes per gram of DNA. And that DNA is sturdy. The molecules can last many years. We even mined it to bring back the dinosaurs! So the pitch is that we turn DNA into a super long-term, write-once-never-read form of cold storage. I love stuff like this. In this video, we explore a strange but feasible storage technology. Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year. Listen to Stratechery. Listen to Dithering. Listen to Sharp China. Listen to Sharp Tech. Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.

In January 2024, researchers from Tianjin University and Georgia Institute of Technology published a paper on semiconducting graphene. Graphene is an interesting material. And people have been looking at how to incorporate it into transistors and create the next generation of electronics. When this research was first published back in January, it got a lot of attention. I was asked to take a look. It took some time, but here we are. In this video, we break down this recent discovery and also examine the dream of the GFET. Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year. Listen to Stratechery. Listen to Dithering. Listen to Sharp China. Listen to Sharp Tech. Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.

I was listening to a podcast, and the guys on the show started talking about TSMC. They noted that the majority of TSMC's customers are American tech giants - Apple, Nvidia, AMD, so on...so they said, what if those American companies came together to invest in and buy chips from a startup American foundry? They liked the idea. But discounting the anti-trust kerfuffle that will inevitably follow, I must say that I have heard something like it before in history. In the second half of 1989, near the end of a decade of US-Japan semiconductor tensions, there was a major push for something similar. It failed. In this video, we look at US Memories, the American memory production consortium. Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year. Listen to Stratechery. Listen to Dithering. Listen to Sharp China. Listen to Sharp Tech. Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.

Today, the hard disk drive industry and its big three companies - Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba - are in decline. The Solid State Drive or SSD is on the rise. SSDs are faster, more reliable, and consume less power. Something that began 30 years ago with replacing audio tapes in telephone answering machines - remember those? - has grown to power a $60 billion market per the IEEE. HDD unit volume sales will never be as they were before. Consumers no longer buy HDDs for their iPods, laptops or even desktops. Sad. But the HDD's march towards oblivion has been arrested by a new market: Growing demand from enterprise companies storing data for "nearline" storage. Nearline, referring to data that the customer needs accessible but not so frequently nor immediately. This market is real. Companies in all sorts of fields are producing data at a far faster rate than they can afford to store it. Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year. Listen to Stratechery. Listen to Dithering. Listen to Sharp China. Listen to Sharp Tech. Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.

Throughout his long career, Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka presided over many special devices. The one he was most proud of? A color TV, of all things. No product better explains Sony's engineering prowess and tenacity. It took Sony nearly eight years to bring it to the market. But when it came out, no one else’s color TV could compare. In this video, we look at Sony's breakthrough color TV, the Trinitron. Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year. Listen to Stratechery. Listen to Dithering. Listen to Sharp China. Listen to Sharp Tech. Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.

Get all episodes of Asianometry, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Stratechery Updates and Interviews, Greatest of All Talk, and Dithering as part of Stratechery Plus for $15/month or $150/year. Listen to Stratechery. Listen to Dithering. Listen to Sharp China. Listen to Sharp Tech. Listen to Greatest Of All Talk.