Technology

I'm reading all of these comments with the helium-voice in my head.

So THIS is how they hallucinate.

Never mind AI, MRIs are more important.

At least we have the US Helium Res— dammit, Biden!

The U.S. just sold its helium stockpile. Here’s why the medical world is worried

I realize there are benefits to attacking Iran, but it's still wrong.

Critical for AI

It's critical for lithography, the process that makes all of the magical chips that make the modern world function.

what do I laugh when I think about helium and choking

Can I remind everyone that it is impossible to produce helium in a practical way?

It is literally only produced through a fusion reaction, and that happens in stars and in incredibly tiny quantities in fusion reactors.

Whenever it's released, it basically just floats away into space and is lost forever.

So it's going to be rerouted from the MRIs I take it…

This is bad news that feels like good news. Like when your house burns down, but it kills your abusive parents, so you’re kind of happy about it because it means you didn’t have to go through with your plans, and it means you don’t have to become a murderer after all.

And you have all that money saved up, and you already got that scholarship to college, and you can just move on with your life without any of those chains tying you to them in your former life…

So, really, what’s the actual fucking problem here? no more birthday balloons? Boo fucking hoo. My shitty parents never threw me a birthday party anyway.

At least some positive news! Fuck AI

This sounds like good news.

I'd guess that most industrial users of helium don't consume it and could theoretically recover it from whatever process it's involved in rather than just releasing it.

EDIT: Hard drives being an exception, as apparently some ship helium-filled; there, it's actually being consumed during the manufacture.

EDIT2: I'd also point out that in the long run, we probably do have to be more conservative with our helium supply. We get it from pockets in the earth. It's actually not all that common; it just happens, though, that we go to a lot of effort to extract natural gas, and that happens to sometimes also come up with helium, so we get that supply. But because it's not reactive, it doesn't bond to anything

it stays in gas form. When we let it go, it heads to near the top of our atmosphere and eventually gets lost to solar wind. Many users who today just release it

because why not, as the natural gas people will be providing more, and it's cheaper that way

probably will need to capture what they're using if we want helium to continue to be available.