Asianometry

By Jon YTechnology

Asianometry episodes

July 16 The Cochlear Ear Miracle
Here’s an idea. A machine that translates sounds into electrical signals, and then stimulates the auditory nerves to send that sensory data to the brain. Can it work? And can it convey actual words? For many years, people didn’t believe it. Eminent auditory scientists like Dr. Merle Lawrence stated that speech comprehension was “not feasible”. The inner ear was too complex. Too many nerves. We knew too little about how it works. And the surgical trauma and electrical stimulation will kill the nerves, anyway.
Yet they did it. And now, hundreds of thousands have had their lives improved with this device. In this video, the long and winding road to the cochlear ear implant.
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34 min
July 09 RCA and the Vacuum Tube’s Last Stand
The emergence of the transistor shook the world. It certainly shook the vacuum tube makers. Some believed that the category was a dead man walking. The transistor was going to replace the vacuum tube everywhere.
But the iconic American company RCA believed that vacuum tubes still had a future. And in 1959, they poured all their skill and knowledge into one “revolutionary” tube. In today’s video, RCA and the vacuum tube’s last stand.
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23 min
July 05 The Debt-Fueled Collapse of China’s Top Machine Tool Maker
In December 2012, Guan Xiyou, Chairman of Shenyang Machine Tool Group, was honored by Chinese state media CCTV as one of its 2012 China Economic People of the Year. Guan received the award for taking control of a failing machine tool company and turning them around into a $2.8 billion giant. Or so it seems. Even as Guan received this award, his company was on the decline and eventually fall into insolvency. In today’s video, we profile the debt-fueled fall of a Chinese machine tool giant.
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38 min
July 02 The 40-Year Mystery of the Iron Nitride Magnet
In 1972, two scientists reported the discovery of a very strong magnet. Their paper said:
We found a new magnetic material which has the highest saturation magnetization at room temperature...among those of all the magnetic materials.
Not only is this material one of the most magnetic objects known, it is made from two very ordinary elements: Iron and Nitrogen. For forty years, people went back and forth on whether this magnetism was real. In this video, we explore the decades-long mystery of the Iron Nitride magnet.
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21 min
June 28 TOTO: From Toilets to E-Chucks
In early 2026, a British hedge fund sent a letter to the Japanese company TOTO. Yeah. The company making tubs, sinks, and those high-tech bidet toilets. Not because TOTO was doing particularly bad in those businesses. But because TOTO also has an advanced ceramics division that is the world’s leading supplier of electrostatic chucks for the 3D NAND industry.
Now, I know what you guys are thinking. How did a Japanese toilet company get involved in semiconductors? The answer is that TOTO doesn’t see itself as just a toilet company. In today’s video, we travel with TOTO, the Porcelain King.
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.
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39 min
June 21 Embedded Memories: The Next Generation
As chips speed up and get more capable, they must also fetch more data and get it faster. Most of the time, that means going off-chip to some external memory module. It slows things down and uses energy.
One alternative is to “embed” some memory right alongside the logic circuits on the chip: Embedded memories. For years, two types of embedded memories dominated. But things are changing. In today’s video, we take a look at those, plus some of the next-generation memories coming down the pike.
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.
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20 min
June 18 The “Miracle” Rice
Rice is Asia’s single most important food crop. And in the 1950s and 1960s, the fear was that Asians would not get enough of it. In the 1950s, Asia was adding 11 million new people each year. All those people needed calories. They needed rice.
But those countries faced a brutal equation: The only way to produce more rice was to make more rice paddies. Then in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new generation of high-yield rice hybrids forever changed the rice production equation. In today’s video, we return (yet again!) to my favorite carb and wolf down the Miracle Rices.
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23 min
June 14 Sri Lanka’s Organic Fertilizer Debacle
In April 2021, the Sri Lankan government banned imports of all chemical fertilizers. They were the first country to do this. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa explained in a speech:
If we are to preserve the health of our planet and ensure human sustainability, governments all over the world must not hesitate to adopt bold policies
The import ban turned out to be a bit too bold. Amidst plunging farm yields and soaring food inflation, the ban did not last the year. I covered Sri Lanka’s economic crisis in a prior video three years ago, but did not mention the fertilizer ban. So let me do it this time. In today’s video, the disastrous Sri Lankan fertilizer import ban.
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.
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26 min
June 07 The EU Chips Act is a Failure
People have been so busy with AI data centers and surging memory prices that they forgot about the EU Chips Act. And to be honest, I did too until I traveled to Antwerp for ITF World 2026 and someone at the media session mentioned that a Chips Act 2 is coming.
But second breakfast so soon? In December 2025, the EU Court of Auditors released its special report on the first Chips Act. A quick read of this and other recent events says that Europe’s current chip policy must change. It is not working. In today’s video, a brief check-in on the EU Chips Act.
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.
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23 min
May 31 Taiwan’s DRAM Failure
We often associate Taiwan with chips. Taiwanese chips. It’s their thing right? But Taiwan’s strength is actually only in logic chips. In the industry’s other big sector, memory and DRAM memory in particular, Taiwan is second-tier. Hardly a player.
It’s not that the Taiwanese haven’t tried to break into DRAM before. In fact, they spent billions trying for two decades. They just keep losing at it over and over again. In this video, we look at Vanguard, TI-Acer, Taiwan Memory Corporation and Taiwan’s DRAM failure.
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.
38 min

About Asianometry

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Newsletter for the Asianometry channel. Studies on Asia - Financials, semiconductors, history, demography, development and other stuff.

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