chaosCruiser

Cannelloni-Vermicelli Exploration program? You know, to find out what happens if you mix both on the same plate? Will the Italians assassinate you before you can take the first bite? Will the pasta annihilate as soon as they touch? Will it be delicious? Who knows, and now we will never know.

I would argue that being polite also does good to the person writing that line.

Kit cars have been around for ages, and Framework offers DIY laptops. I think we should have kit displays as well. Surely, someone has already made something like that with a raspberry or something.

As long as my 1080p plasma tv works, there’s no need to upgrade. Going 4K would also mean I would have to upgrade my HTPC hardware, because that old APU probably can’t handle resolutions like that.

In the meantime though, I’ll just keep on watching online videos in my living room without ads or interruptions. It’s been great even though all of this hardware is cheap and ancient.

Well what if you need to keep on producing more common metals in the meantime, and REEs are a byproduct. You would need to keep the REE factories running too.

If you end up with 100 tons of terbium and yttrium oxide sitting in bags out in the rain, it’s going to lead to some serious quality issues further down the line. Well, just shove them in a warehouse then?

You’ll need a big warehouse, and you need to keep building more of them every year as the stockpiles grow. Needless to say, there are some serious logistical problems with a total export ban. A partial restriction is more viable, because it gives China some time to figure out how to adapt.

In any case, the rest of the world needs these metals, and they are willing to bend to knee long before China runs out of mitigation strategies. It’s going to be a problem in China as well, but at least they’re not totally screwed.

As opposed to what the headline could make you think, it’s not a complete ban on all REE exports. A total ban wouldn’t make much sense.

The REE business is big, and China can’t keep stockpiling these metals for long. Also, REE production is integrated to the rest of the industry, so you can’t just switch those factories off and expect everything else to keep on chugging along as usual.