Followed a couple of links and ended up on his brother's page, reading about another example of the anti-immigrant insanity that's taken hold of this country: https://adam.zeloof.xyz/2025/04/01/karim/ . So sad.
dented42 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It’s heartbreaking.
actionfromafar [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The US concentration camp industry is booming though.
teaearlgraycold [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I’m curious on the details. Isn’t marrying a citizen an instant path to residency and presumably rather quick way to get authorized for work? Are they holding him for having previously been in the states on an expired visa?
charcircuit [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Enforcing the law is not anti-immigramt insanity.
perching_aix [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> Enforcing the law is not anti-immigramt insanity.
Interesting you mention that, a few threads ago you were adamant that the EU wanting to enforce their speech laws on Twitter was 100% anti-free-speech insanity though.
It would seem that for you the insanity of the sheer fact of enforcement (since you clearly weren't talking about the character of enforcement) depends on your underlying sentiment on the given topic. Is that really intentional on your part? Sounds a bit perilous to me reasoning wise, if so.
taneq [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The enforcement isn’t the insanity, the law is.
pastage [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The enforcement is the problem if it is not secure legally. If you want to handle it with an iron fist like a dictatorship sure you can create laws to that effect, but there should be some human values on the books that makes those laws humane.
oilkillsbirds [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It's basically an objective fact at this point that excessive immigration is really, really bad, just look at all the politicians flipping sides on the issue. Look at the stats on European countries with the highest immigration rates vs those with the lowest (e.g. Poland)
jjk166 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
By what metric are you looking at european countries and determining Poland is doing the best? If given the choice between say Ireland and Poland, which place would you prefer to live?
Look at RATE of growth (GDP, employment, safety, etc.) since immigration started getting bad in places like the UK - compare it's growth directly to the UK, or even the entire EU
adrianN [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I’m no expert, but reducing something as complex as a whole country’s economic outlook to just the variable „immigration“ seems like an oversimplification to me.
N_Lens [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Replicating late 70s chip fab in one's parents' garage. Incredible honestly, given that the microprocessor is probably the most complex human invention.
mwcz [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The timing of this share is crazy, since I was just looking around a few days ago to see if there were any guides or even kits for doing photolithography at home. It's part of my mission to demystify modern technology for my kids. I couldn't find anything, so this is excellent to see. Far too complex for my kids ages, but it might be cool to replicate at least part of this amazing project when they're older.
Silk screen printing is probably the easiest way to introduce the concepts to kids. There are a lot of maker spaces/artist collectives and classes that have the basic tools and resources to do it.
It's not lithography, but you can build a working processor out of small surface mount chips, and you can solder these chips with lead-free solder. That seems very achievable for a motivated engineer, and probably involves much less toxic chemicals?
semi-extrinsic [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Or even gel plate printing, where you get to build multiple layers, one of them being a laser printed photo that is used as a resist.
Joel_Mckay [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Cyanotype Paper is safe fun for kids to try Sun printing silhouettes.
Another project is growing large salt crystals in saturated solution.
The Unitech Electric Static Wand Toy off amazon was also popular last year (poorly built mini Van de Graaff generator.)
Glow in the dark wall paint and a 5 second strobe light is also a classic silhouette demo.
Could also look for linear polarizing sheets, thermochromic sheets, and "Magnetic Viewing film".
Some will like this stuff, others only want to stare at a screen. =3
This is impressive work. Every time I see hobbyist-scale semiconductor projects, it reminds me how much innovation still happens outside big labs. Curious how far this approach can scale.
adrian_b [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The semiconductor device industry and Silicon Valley would have never appeared if the early companies working in this field would have been controlled by people obsessed about secrecy and "IP protection".
During the fifties and the sixties, and even until the early seventies, it was common for everyone to publish research papers very unlike those that are published today, where the concrete information is minimal.
In the early research papers about semiconductor devices and integrated circuits, it was normal to give complete recipes, including quantities of chemicals, temperatures and times for the processing steps and so on. After reading such papers, you could reproduce the recipes and make the device described and you could measure for yourself to see how true are the claims presented in the paper.
That open sharing of information has led to a very quick evolution of the semiconductor technologies during the early years, until more traditional business-oriented management has begun to restrict the information provided to the public.
It is said that such sharing of information still exists in China in many fields, and it is the source of their rapid progress.
goku12 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> until more traditional business-oriented management has begun to restrict the information provided to the public.
Curious to know why you think this cutthroat approach is 'traditional'. Is there another historical background to it? Every account that I've seen, including the origin story of free software (at MIT) and even the rest of your own explanation, seem to suggest that such institutionalized confiscation and hoarding of knowledge is a recent phenomenon - since about the 70s. Am I missing something?
GianFabien [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Awesome! I wouldn't have thought that it is possible to make ICs in a garage. Of course it requires a lot of knowledge, etc. But still, not a multi-billion dollar clean room with specialist equipment.
adrian_b [3 hidden]5 mins ago
You could make in a garage some decent analog integrated circuits, e.g. audio amplifiers or operational amplifiers or even radio-frequency circuits for not too high frequency ranges.
However you cannot make useful digital circuits. For digital circuits, the best that you can do is to be content to only design them and buy an FPGA for implementing them, instead of attempting to manufacture a custom IC.
With the kind of digital circuits that you could make in a garage, the most complex thing that you could do would be something like a very big table or wall digital clock, made not with a single IC like today, but with a few dozen ICs.
Anything more complex than that would need far too many ICs.
goku12 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
What are the factors you expect to limit the integration scale in a garage fab?
pinewurst [3 hidden]5 mins ago
(2021)
itsthecourier [3 hidden]5 mins ago
should have added this happened in 2021
jedbrooke [3 hidden]5 mins ago
oh man, I remember hearing about this back then and I got excited that there had been an update. From what I hear he’s gone off to college now but will hopefully be back to cooking up semiconductors once he graduates
eco [3 hidden]5 mins ago
He founded a company with Jim Keller called Atomic Semi since then.
webdevver [3 hidden]5 mins ago
cant wait to see what his latest venture will bring about
Although this is in 2021, it's great to see that Sam Zeloof also made Atomic Semi [0].
A display of "just doing things", no permission needed and no need for barriers and red tape.
It is another reason why I have huge promise for Substrate [1] founded by James Proud (UK native moved to US) another display of "just doing things".
However in Europe and the UK, it's "this law allows you to do this, this and this", "we've changed the law, here is a massive immediate fine", "ban encryption" (this nearly happened), "ban maths", "we are the first to regulate and ban this".
It is no wonder the US will continue to be great at building things.
It’s also worth seeing how many US superfund sites are on former chip fabs. Intel, AMD, Fairchild etc. all just dumped things down the drains.
Regulations can be bad but they can also stop environmental disasters from happening.
goku12 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> Regulations can be bad but they can also stop environmental disasters from happening.
It makes me wonder how bad the situation is, when you feel the need to start your sentence with 'regulations can be bad', while corporations fight you for their right to release PFAS into your drinking water sources.
nighthawk454 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Of note, Sam’s co-founder in Atomic Semi is none other than Jim Keller (!)
LarsDu88 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
As much as I hate to say it Substrate is probably a fraud
HN.zip
Followed a couple of links and ended up on his brother's page, reading about another example of the anti-immigrant insanity that's taken hold of this country: https://adam.zeloof.xyz/2025/04/01/karim/ . So sad.
Interesting you mention that, a few threads ago you were adamant that the EU wanting to enforce their speech laws on Twitter was 100% anti-free-speech insanity though.
It would seem that for you the insanity of the sheer fact of enforcement (since you clearly weren't talking about the character of enforcement) depends on your underlying sentiment on the given topic. Is that really intentional on your part? Sounds a bit perilous to me reasoning wise, if so.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1541464/europe-quality-l...
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-european-countries-w...
The photographic steps are pretty accessible.
It's not lithography, but you can build a working processor out of small surface mount chips, and you can solder these chips with lead-free solder. That seems very achievable for a motivated engineer, and probably involves much less toxic chemicals?
Another project is growing large salt crystals in saturated solution.
The Unitech Electric Static Wand Toy off amazon was also popular last year (poorly built mini Van de Graaff generator.)
Glow in the dark wall paint and a 5 second strobe light is also a classic silhouette demo.
Could also look for linear polarizing sheets, thermochromic sheets, and "Magnetic Viewing film".
Some will like this stuff, others only want to stare at a screen. =3
During the fifties and the sixties, and even until the early seventies, it was common for everyone to publish research papers very unlike those that are published today, where the concrete information is minimal.
In the early research papers about semiconductor devices and integrated circuits, it was normal to give complete recipes, including quantities of chemicals, temperatures and times for the processing steps and so on. After reading such papers, you could reproduce the recipes and make the device described and you could measure for yourself to see how true are the claims presented in the paper.
That open sharing of information has led to a very quick evolution of the semiconductor technologies during the early years, until more traditional business-oriented management has begun to restrict the information provided to the public.
It is said that such sharing of information still exists in China in many fields, and it is the source of their rapid progress.
Curious to know why you think this cutthroat approach is 'traditional'. Is there another historical background to it? Every account that I've seen, including the origin story of free software (at MIT) and even the rest of your own explanation, seem to suggest that such institutionalized confiscation and hoarding of knowledge is a recent phenomenon - since about the 70s. Am I missing something?
However you cannot make useful digital circuits. For digital circuits, the best that you can do is to be content to only design them and buy an FPGA for implementing them, instead of attempting to manufacture a custom IC.
With the kind of digital circuits that you could make in a garage, the most complex thing that you could do would be something like a very big table or wall digital clock, made not with a single IC like today, but with a few dozen ICs.
Anything more complex than that would need far too many ICs.
https://atomicsemi.com/
allegedly jim keller is one of the investors!
A display of "just doing things", no permission needed and no need for barriers and red tape.
It is another reason why I have huge promise for Substrate [1] founded by James Proud (UK native moved to US) another display of "just doing things".
However in Europe and the UK, it's "this law allows you to do this, this and this", "we've changed the law, here is a massive immediate fine", "ban encryption" (this nearly happened), "ban maths", "we are the first to regulate and ban this".
It is no wonder the US will continue to be great at building things.
[0] https://atomicsemi.com/
[1] https://substrate.com/
Regulations can be bad but they can also stop environmental disasters from happening.
It makes me wonder how bad the situation is, when you feel the need to start your sentence with 'regulations can be bad', while corporations fight you for their right to release PFAS into your drinking water sources.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Semiconductors/s/jpuI772PJB
If Europe has an overregulation problem, the US may also have a grifter problem