<story><title>EU countries team up for semiconductor push</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/eu-tech-semiconductor-idUSKBN28H1HV</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nixass</author><text>While Irish&amp;#x2F;Gaelic language is a thing it&amp;#x27;s mostly ceremonial and people on the street know it poorly, with no knowledge to even superficial conversation. Irish language has no use in Ireland. Even tho it is &amp;quot;official&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s useless</text></item><item><author>rgblambda</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt;the English language can become the lingua franca with less resistance as it is no ones language(Well, there are the Irish but it&amp;#x27;s a small country).&lt;p&gt;Malta also has English as an official language, though again, it&amp;#x27;s an even smaller country. On the other hand, in neither Ireland or Malta is English the &amp;quot;first&amp;quot; official language.</text></item><item><author>mrtksn</author><text>Europe has some successful international projects like CERN or Airbus. Besides, what are the other options?&lt;p&gt;Europe is in this strange place where collectively account for enormous wealth and power but individually no country is a match to the big boys like USA&amp;#x2F;China when simultaneously are super unoptimised  due to cultural&amp;#x2F;lingual differences.&lt;p&gt;The younger Europeans I met were all very eager to learn English, so who knows, maybe as the UK is out of the EU the English language can become the lingua franca with less resistance as it is no ones language(Well, there are the Irish but it&amp;#x27;s a small country).&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, those large Eurpoean projects bring a lot of good. Be it political or simply keeping some talent in Europe. I am also hopeful for some competition from the UK :) Since the collapse of the USSR, finally there&amp;#x27;s a competition.</text></item><item><author>rossdavidh</author><text>So, as someone who used to be an engineer in semiconductor manufacturing facilities, this reminds me a lot of Sematech.  That was a joint venture between American companies in the 90&amp;#x27;s, when there was a concern that we were falling behind Japan.  I&amp;#x27;m sure there will be people who try to claim otherwise, but my view from inside AMD (at that time still doing its own manufacturing) was that nothing much ever came out of Sematech.  It was a lot of hype, but not much result.&lt;p&gt;If, at the time of the founding of TSMC, you had tried to get a consortium of companies, much less nations, to agree on the idea of a semiconductor foundry, you would not have been able to get agreement to do it.  Consortiums can help to pool resources when everyone knows what needs doing, but even Intel has had a problem getting the latest generation of semi manufacturing going, and their problem sure wasn&amp;#x27;t a lack of resources.  Sometimes the problem is the speed of innovation, and the more parties you have involved the harder it is to get agreement to try any given thing, especially if it is innovative (i.e. not certain to work).&lt;p&gt;I wish them good fortune, it would be good for the stability of the world economy not to have all the world&amp;#x27;s advanced semiconductors made in one region, but I am skeptical of whether or not this can make a big difference, no matter how much money is spent.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dbspin</author><text>Just want to confirm this as an Irish person. The language is of symbolic &amp;#x2F; nationalist importance only. It&amp;#x27;s not used in everyday life except by hobbyists or residents of a few tiny &amp;#x27;gaeltacht&amp;#x27; areas.&lt;p&gt;In other words, English is in practice the first language of virtually every Irish person, the vast majority of media, and all business in the country.</text></comment>
<story><title>EU countries team up for semiconductor push</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/eu-tech-semiconductor-idUSKBN28H1HV</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nixass</author><text>While Irish&amp;#x2F;Gaelic language is a thing it&amp;#x27;s mostly ceremonial and people on the street know it poorly, with no knowledge to even superficial conversation. Irish language has no use in Ireland. Even tho it is &amp;quot;official&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s useless</text></item><item><author>rgblambda</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt;the English language can become the lingua franca with less resistance as it is no ones language(Well, there are the Irish but it&amp;#x27;s a small country).&lt;p&gt;Malta also has English as an official language, though again, it&amp;#x27;s an even smaller country. On the other hand, in neither Ireland or Malta is English the &amp;quot;first&amp;quot; official language.</text></item><item><author>mrtksn</author><text>Europe has some successful international projects like CERN or Airbus. Besides, what are the other options?&lt;p&gt;Europe is in this strange place where collectively account for enormous wealth and power but individually no country is a match to the big boys like USA&amp;#x2F;China when simultaneously are super unoptimised  due to cultural&amp;#x2F;lingual differences.&lt;p&gt;The younger Europeans I met were all very eager to learn English, so who knows, maybe as the UK is out of the EU the English language can become the lingua franca with less resistance as it is no ones language(Well, there are the Irish but it&amp;#x27;s a small country).&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, those large Eurpoean projects bring a lot of good. Be it political or simply keeping some talent in Europe. I am also hopeful for some competition from the UK :) Since the collapse of the USSR, finally there&amp;#x27;s a competition.</text></item><item><author>rossdavidh</author><text>So, as someone who used to be an engineer in semiconductor manufacturing facilities, this reminds me a lot of Sematech.  That was a joint venture between American companies in the 90&amp;#x27;s, when there was a concern that we were falling behind Japan.  I&amp;#x27;m sure there will be people who try to claim otherwise, but my view from inside AMD (at that time still doing its own manufacturing) was that nothing much ever came out of Sematech.  It was a lot of hype, but not much result.&lt;p&gt;If, at the time of the founding of TSMC, you had tried to get a consortium of companies, much less nations, to agree on the idea of a semiconductor foundry, you would not have been able to get agreement to do it.  Consortiums can help to pool resources when everyone knows what needs doing, but even Intel has had a problem getting the latest generation of semi manufacturing going, and their problem sure wasn&amp;#x27;t a lack of resources.  Sometimes the problem is the speed of innovation, and the more parties you have involved the harder it is to get agreement to try any given thing, especially if it is innovative (i.e. not certain to work).&lt;p&gt;I wish them good fortune, it would be good for the stability of the world economy not to have all the world&amp;#x27;s advanced semiconductors made in one region, but I am skeptical of whether or not this can make a big difference, no matter how much money is spent.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>s_dev</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t agree it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;useless&amp;quot; but I can see your point. We don&amp;#x27;t learn it for commerce or for historical&amp;#x2F;cultural insight. We learn it to know who were are.&lt;p&gt;Imagine telling a bunch of Jews that Hebrew was a load of nonsense and they&amp;#x27;re better off learning German, French or Spanish. I would agree though that the level of spoken Irish amongst the general population of Ireland is poor.&lt;p&gt;For them it&amp;#x27;s not about more opportunities it&amp;#x27;s about preserving something meaningful. Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam.</text></comment>