Author Topic: How is Chipageddon affecting you?  (Read 297576 times)

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Offline SilverSolder

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #25 on: May 26, 2021, 05:52:04 pm »
This is bound to cause huge price inflation, eventually...
Inflation was already baked in due to the huge deficit effects of printing money for the "COVID Bailout" programs in countries across the globe. It's a fundamental rule of Economics: When there are more units of currency in circulation, each one has less purchasing power and prices rise accordingly.

It used to be that the political parties out of power at the moment decried deficit spending for political advantage. Now it appears everyone is jumping on the short-term gravy train. "Spend Money" is the mode o' the day. In the very short term a cash infusion may make you feel "flush" but prices catch up eventually, and it's a one-way ratchet.

Inflation is coming. Plan your personal financial life with it in mind.

Not sure what you can do to help your personal financial life...  when prices go up, your standard of living will drop until your own company can "claw back the loss" and increase wages again, it is what it is.

Usually inflation is considered a "bad" thing...   what seems to have happened is that the last generation to experience real inflation must have retired or even died...
 
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Offline IDEngineer

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #26 on: May 26, 2021, 07:16:10 pm »
Not sure what you can do to help your personal financial life...  when prices go up, your standard of living will drop until your own company can "claw back the loss" and increase wages again, it is what it is.
The historical reaction to inflation is to get out of cash and into hard assets. Ultimately, currency is simply a conveyor of wealth. If the perceived value of one item is the same as one piece of another item, absent artificial manipulation their "price" (in the terms of whatever currency is in vogue at the time) will equalize.

A currency has value only because 1) society agrees it conveys wealth, and 2) there's a restricted supply of it. If you suddenly flood the economy with 100X as much currency, the perceived value of those two pieces won't change but their price - expressed in that currency - will increase by 100X because it takes 100X as much of that currency to transfer the same amount of wealth between buyer and seller.

This is why hard assets are popular in times of rampant inflation. There's an old story about the currency in some country being so worthless that a guy used a wheelbarrow to carry enough of it to the store to buy a loaf of bread. It wouldn't fit through the door so the guy left it outside, confident it was so worthless that no one would bother stealing the money. When he came back out, his money was in a huge pile on the ground - and someone had stolen the wheelbarrow!

Note that rampant inflation is only possible with fiat money - money backed by nothing inherently valuable. If your coins are made from precious metals their value can never drop below the value of the metal each coin contains. If your paper/cloth scrip is freely exchangable for gold or silver (think: gold and silver certificates) its value can never drop below the equivalent amount of that precious metal. But when coins are made from zinc, aluminum, etc. and your scrip is not redeemable for precious metals, its "value" can be freely manipulated by (at least) the issuer.

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Usually inflation is considered a "bad" thing...   what seems to have happened is that the last generation to experience real inflation must have retired or even died...
Inflation favors borrowers by allowing them to pay back their debts with less value. A dollar borrowed today is worth a more than a dollar paid back 20 years from now, due to inflation. If you're comfortable with debt, now is a great time to borrow money because interest rates haven't yet internalized the actual inflation rate. Disclaimer: I am not comfortable with debt and do not encourage others to take on debt. I've seen what happens to indebted people when the economy gets into even mild trouble, and my parents grew up during the Depression which left a scar on them that transferred to me. YMMV, make your own choices, etc. This is just a fun conversation about armchair economics and not financial advice.
 

Offline T3sl4co1l

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #27 on: May 26, 2021, 07:42:26 pm »
It used to be that the political parties out of power at the moment decried deficit spending for political advantage.

They haven't been "fiscally conservative" for at least a generation.  I'm not sure that they ever were, as such... but I'm not a big scholar on last-century policy.

Their distinguishing characteristic is, nothing to do with policy as such.  They're strongly defined by their followers, who believe in a preordained natural order, and will follow anyone who pays lip service to that.  Representatives, in turn, present whatever collection of claims gets them enough followers, and make up the slack with whatever tools they can bring to bear (gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc.).  Representatives themselves, have no particular guiding principles other than self-promotion.

They seem to reject externalities, and disregard the effect of relationships between people or groups (let alone anything in the abstract, like corporations and markets).  It makes them look very selfish; actually on a personal level, they aren't, but it's also limited to that up-close, typically familial range.


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Now it appears everyone is jumping on the short-term gravy train. "Spend Money" is the mode o' the day. In the very short term a cash infusion may make you feel "flush" but prices catch up eventually, and it's a one-way ratchet.

Inflation is coming. Plan your personal financial life with it in mind.

Inflation is a long solved issue.  The fed controls interest rates and money supply to regulate inflation, and it's that simple, as far as I know.  It is exactly at times like these when that apparatus is needed most, to smooth out the bumps from recessions, bubbles -- especially emergencies like last year's.

It's strange that some people demonize the practice (especially such mechanisms as "quantitative easing"); I suppose it fits into the "natural order" above?  I doubt that such people really believe we should undergo devastating boom-and-bust cycles, damn the consequences; they just don't see the causality, or they think it's the wrong way around and will lead to positive feedback (nevermind it's been effective negative[i/] feedback for the better part of a century).

Spending, is something the government has almost unlimited capability for; as long as the economy continues to grow, revenues can always be made back.  It might take an extraordinary time to do so -- some war debts have taken over a century to settle -- but that's something only an entire country can do, for us.  Good luck finding a lender for a >100yr maturity, personal loan!


A currency has value only because 1) society agrees it conveys wealth, and 2) there's a restricted supply of it. If you suddenly flood the economy with 100X as much currency, the perceived value of those two pieces won't change but their price - expressed in that currency - will increase by 100X because it takes 100X as much of that currency to transfer the same amount of wealth between buyer and seller.

...Is someone printing that much money?  They probably shouldn't, though they may have a reason (likely a bad reason) for doing so.

Hyperinflation is completely intentional, as far as I know.  Weimar Germany did it to discharge war reparations; Zimbabwe did it to tighten dictatorial power.

As long as we have an open, liberal government, we will have these stabilizing mechanisms in place (as mentioned earlier).  It's not an abuse of power, no one personally gets the deposit from the fed when they increase the money supply (nor pays them back when they reduce it!).  Well... shouldn't anyway, but last year's hasty unchecked loans are a prime example of why government must be open to public scrutiny, with oversight bodies in place and empowered (as they were, very specifically and intentionally, disabled last year).


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This is why hard assets are popular in times of rampant inflation. There's an old story about the currency in some country being so worthless that a guy used a wheelbarrow to carry enough of it to the store to buy a loaf of bread. It wouldn't fit through the door so the guy left it outside, confident it was so worthless that no one would bother stealing the money. When he came back out, his money was in a huge pile on the ground - and someone had stolen the wheelbarrow!

He'd just as well be disappointed to hear that, in the time it took him to get to the checkout line, it inflated enough that he could no longer afford the loaf...

But again, apocalyptic circumstances, and only due to apocalypses even the government isn't large enough to handle -- or that it intentionally practices in order to screw everyone over.


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Note that rampant inflation is only possible with fiat money - money backed by nothing inherently valuable. If your coins are made from precious metals their value can never drop below the value of the metal each coin contains. If your paper/cloth scrip is freely exchangable for gold or silver (think: gold and silver certificates) its value can never drop below the equivalent amount of that precious metal. But when coins are made from zinc, aluminum, etc. and your scrip is not redeemable for precious metals, its "value" can be freely manipulated by (at least) the issuer.

Well, no.  Metal is useful to a point, but the value of gold is greatly overstated compared to its value.

Doesn't matter what your money is, it obeys the same economic laws.

Ancient Rome, at one point, coined so much money that they diluted their own value; as well as growing the money supply, composition was diluted from mostly silver, to mostly copper.  (I don't remember the specifics of this, like over what period it happened, alas.  Should be easy to find on a search.)

The Mali empire (~1300) was unimaginably wealthy.  "Musa [the emperor] is said to have brought several tonnes of gold to Mecca when he made a pilgrimage there in 1324, deflating the value of gold across much, if not all, of North Africa."

The California Gold Rush had a similar effect: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gold-rush-california-was-much-more-expensive-todays-dot-com-boom-california-180956788/

And, rest assured, it will happen again in the near future, when abundant PGMs rain down from the sky -- as asteroid mining start up.  (Interestingly, gold isn't very abundant in asteroids, making it an okay store of value in the mean time, I would guess.  Personally, I'm stoked as hell and can't wait to see iridium pipe in the McMaster Carr catalog for relatively affordable prices.  That shit would be useful as hell, if it weren't so rare down here!)

Historical examples abound; value is simply what everyone thinks it is, regardless of material.  So it's quite convenient to use something completely irrelevant and meaningless, like paper, or digital bits!

Tim
« Last Edit: May 26, 2021, 07:45:16 pm by T3sl4co1l »
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Offline MathWizard

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #28 on: May 26, 2021, 07:45:52 pm »
As a seller of Arduino stuff... Pro Micros from China (ATMega32U4) have basically doubled in price, that's if the vendor actually has them rather than just saying they have them.
That's crazy

I'd love a GPU upgrade, I have a 155Hz 1440p monitor for games and i hate turning down the settings.

The GPU market has gamers, scalpers, crpto-miners, and some scienists and ohers tht use them.......and basically everyone is always sold out of even mid-range cards, and the prices have skyrocketed, and the price of old used cards is way up too.....and I already have a pretty high end GPU, so there's only a few more powerful than it anyways.
 

Offline tszaboo

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #29 on: May 26, 2021, 11:03:03 pm »
How the fuck are we supposed to design anything when parts simply vanish overnight without warning?!
Repeat after me:
"This is some else's problem."
Say it every day 3x while looking into the mirror in the morning.

I place alternative part footprints, and compatible parts on the PCB. And look for an alternative which is in stock, when they ask me to do so. Otherwise this is what you say to managers:
"What do you want me to do? Give birth to a reel of ICs?"
 
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Offline IDEngineer

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #30 on: May 27, 2021, 12:31:48 am »
It used to be that the political parties out of power at the moment decried deficit spending for political advantage.
They haven't been "fiscally conservative" for at least a generation.  I'm not sure that they ever were, as such... but I'm not a big scholar on last-century policy.
I didn't say they were fiscally conservative. I said they picked on deficit spending when it furthered their political interests. Trust me, I have no illusions about politicians actually having core values - regardless of their supposed political affiliations, which also are based on political calculations.

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Spending, is something the government has almost unlimited capability for; as long as the economy continues to grow, revenues can always be made back.  It might take an extraordinary time to do so -- some war debts have taken over a century to settle -- but that's something only an entire country can do, for us.
There doesn't seem to be any plan for "settling" the USA's national debt. It would be entertaining to see a "balanced" budget that actually had zero debt projections, regardless of time scale. Political suicide for whomever proposed it.

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Is someone printing that much money?  They probably shouldn't, though they may have a reason (likely a bad reason) for doing so.
Not to my knowledge in the first world. Maybe Venezuela? I used a big ratio to help illustrate the relationship over a brief time period. The same rules apply over longer periods, but with small enough ratios that the frog doesn't realize it's being cooked.

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Well, no.  Metal is useful to a point, but the value of gold is greatly overstated compared to its value.
"Value" is the price a willing seller accepts from willing buyer. Things like price controls may seek to artificially manipulate prices but that doesn't change the rule, it just temporarily distorts the market. And generally the market finds a way around the corruption. Think BGP for economics! It routes around the damage.

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Historical examples abound; value is simply what everyone thinks it is, regardless of material.
Agreed, which is what I said above. But dump a bunch of that material into the market and its value per unit will drop because of its lack of scarcity. Your hope for economical iridium is a perfect example. Nobody values that which is abundantly available because everyone else can get it just as easily. By the way, this is the main reason the US Gov't polices counterfeiting... if scarcity of currency didn't matter they wouldn't care. But it does, so they do.
 

Offline VK3DRBTopic starter

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #31 on: May 27, 2021, 01:11:53 am »
The 4kV isolated switching transformer from Wurth 750315240 I used on one product. Nil stock world wide. No lead time. No alternatives.

Have seen similar parts like this,
https://productfinder.pulseelectronics.com/api/open/product-attachments/datasheet/ph9185.034nl
though not the low inductance.  If you're desperate, maybe slap an inductor in parallel with one winding? ::)

At least for transformers, there's nothing stopping you quoting a custom run from someone else in just a few weeks.  Oh, or hmm, Coilcraft might have an equivalent, no idea.

Tim

Thanks for the tip, Tim. Your solutions are Wurthless, but not worthless ;D.

The footprint is not compatible unfortunately. The board would need a respin, unless I make a mezzanine board if the enclosure will fit it. I do have a contact here in Australia who is the Wurth FAE. Maybe, just maybe, they have some stashed away internally at Wurth somewhere on the planet. This transformer is specifically designed to pair with TI's SN6505A. Works a treat. For what its Wurth, I will check Coilcraft too.... good suggestion, thanks.

By the way, if I had to substituted it, I would need to do a lot of testing. There might also be EMC implications, as well. Medical products can be a pain.
 

Online radar_macgyver

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #32 on: May 27, 2021, 05:12:26 am »
Cypress PSoC 5 is now unobtainium, lead time from Digi-key is 28 weeks. FML.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #33 on: May 27, 2021, 07:24:43 am »
Ironically once a few things get in short supply, people stocking up in response makes loads of other parts dry up overnight that would have otherwise been plenty of stock, and pretty soon we have the toilet paper fiasco all over again. It doesn't even have to be anyone buying obscene quantities of stuff, all it takes is a whole bunch of people buying a few extra at the same time and suddenly everyone is sold out.
 
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Offline eti

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #34 on: May 27, 2021, 07:38:00 am »
A shortage, you say; a SHORTAGE? I’d better  buy EVERYTHING in case the sky falls in. What’s that you say - my buying EVERYTHING will ironically cause MORE shortages? Oh well.

Human logic = ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

« Last Edit: May 27, 2021, 07:43:29 am by eti »
 

Offline DC1MC

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #35 on: May 27, 2021, 11:27:55 am »
A shortage, you say; a SHORTAGE? I’d better  buy EVERYTHING in case the sky falls in. What’s that you say - my buying EVERYTHING will ironically cause MORE shortages? Oh well.

Human logic = ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Doomed if you do (how dare you buy in advance the chips that you need, you shoul only buy them in the last possible moment...), doomed if you don't (heh, heh, you've seen that the electronic parts chain supply is having troubles and you didn't stock, how stupid can you be...).
So, out of two wrongs I choose to get some stock, they will be used or sold sooner or later, the prices once going high will not just fall immediately, assuming that actually the stock come back, many will not.



 
 

Offline JPortici

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #36 on: May 27, 2021, 11:31:02 am »
I place alternative part footprints, and compatible parts on the PCB. And look for an alternative which is in stock, when they ask me to do so. Otherwise this is what you say to managers:
"What do you want me to do? Give birth to a reel of ICs?"

you can also say buy the god damn part when i tell you to
we are stocking components on our own also because the contractor has to go through a lenghty process. Not good when the part available at a moment is vanished 4 hours later when the approval process has ended
 

Offline VK3DRBTopic starter

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #37 on: May 27, 2021, 12:31:58 pm »
Cypress PSoC 5 is now unobtainium, lead time from Digi-key is 28 weeks. FML.

I am using the Cypress CYBLE-222014-01 (PSoC 4) in a design at the moment. No problems getting them. There are only about 1K of them available from the usual channels and 15K from a Chinese vendor I have never heard of. I have alerted the client to buy some in before it gets ugly.

Great little device, and PSoC Creator is a really good IDE except the debug mode is a little dodgy.
 

Offline VK3DRBTopic starter

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #38 on: May 27, 2021, 01:12:06 pm »
Ironically once a few things get in short supply, people stocking up in response makes loads of other parts dry up overnight that would have otherwise been plenty of stock, and pretty soon we have the toilet paper fiasco all over again. It doesn't even have to be anyone buying obscene quantities of stuff, all it takes is a whole bunch of people buying a few extra at the same time and suddenly everyone is sold out.

A parallel here with Chipageddon...

After being free of COVID for several months, the state I live in (Victoria) just got into full lock down as of literally 12 minutes ago for at least 7 days (it might be 2 or 3 weeks... who knows), because 26 people in this state of 6 million now have the virus thanks to someone returning from India with the virus which escaped quarantine. Today, the toilet paper panic resurfaced with shelves being stripped bare in the supermarkets. Most Victorians have slacked off as we have been living freely because for months we have been COVID-free in Australia. Now we are caught out and many are scrambling in long queues to get vaccinated. Good luck with them getting toilet paper.

As trillions of dollars were being splashed out, and when the Texas freeze came in, and when COVID caused a massive demand on home computers, maybe we should have expected Chipageddon. Yesterday, I sent an email to all my clients warning them to go through their BOMs and buy parts that are becoming critical low stock with long lead times, or contact me to find alternatives. One just did, with 4 parts in strife.

When the world gets back to some normalcy, my bet its there will be a glut of chips and prices will crash. Just like when there was a glut of toilet paper. Last year, some greedy moron in Adelaide hoarded a massive amount of toilet paper that would fill two houses. When toilet paper become available again, he tried to sell it back to the supermarkets, but none of them would accept it on princple.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-27/victoria-covid-cases-melbourne-outbreak-lockdown-restrictions/100169172
 

Offline Terry Bites

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #39 on: May 27, 2021, 02:45:43 pm »
Thank God I'm retired and sniff glue all day. (Not the cheap stuff either)
Bexigeddon+chipageddon >notageddon!
IT WILL ALL BE OK.
Hipsters with queer coffees in jam jars are ready to create the new ecconomy. Probably from the back of a scooter.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #40 on: May 27, 2021, 05:06:31 pm »
I never really understood the toilet paper thing in the first place. Thankfully we buy it in bulk at Costco because it doesn't go bad on the shelf and had recently restocked with a new case a month or so before it got in short supply but either way I have running water and plenty of rags so I don't really *need* toilet paper. It's nice to have and I'd prefer not to run out, but it's a luxury, not an essential. It has only existed at all for 150 years or so, we survived the vast majority of human history without it.
 

Offline Howardlong

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #41 on: May 27, 2021, 05:08:33 pm »
Remember this?

Other brokers (eg Win-Source) are just taking the piss with bait-and-switch, they advertise at one price, take your money, then tell you "the engineer found problems with that batch, but we still have stock at 2x/3x the price, please send more money" and if you accept, they take your money but won't send you an updated invoice. What's more they take a week to tell you, so holding you up even further. Avoid Win-Source unless you're absolutely desperate: when they finally deliver, the parts are kosher IME.

F***ers.

This time I told them to either ship at the advertised price (that they're still advertising by the way), or immediately refund.



 

Offline Marco

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #42 on: May 27, 2021, 05:25:15 pm »
The only non disruptive way to move an entire industry from JIT to 6 month stock would be rationing.

This is going to take a long time to settle down with a ton of casualties along the way.
« Last Edit: May 27, 2021, 05:27:58 pm by Marco »
 

Offline james_s

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #43 on: May 27, 2021, 08:08:55 pm »
The only non disruptive way to move an entire industry from JIT to 6 month stock would be rationing.

This is going to take a long time to settle down with a ton of casualties along the way.

It needs to happen. Unfortunately the idiots who thought JIT was such a great idea are going to walk away unscathed, it's the little guys who will suffer. JIT is gambling, it's like removing the safety features from a car to make it go faster. It will make the car lighter and faster, but if/when there is an accident you'll probably wish you hadn't done that.
 

Offline Red Squirrel

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #44 on: May 27, 2021, 09:43:49 pm »
Right now it's not affecting me personally but it does worry me about the future.  Right now everything I have/need works, but if something breaks or I need a replacement then I'm kind of out of luck.   This chip shortage has painted a grim picture of how fragile the entire factory to home ecosystem is though.  It's crazy how there is basically zero contingency at all.  Same deal with that ship that was stuck in the canal, it's insane to think that just a few days can really disrupt everything so badly.

And I do agree JIT is such a bad way of doing things... but it's probably the cheapest and that's what all the big head honchos at the top care about unfortunately.
 

Offline E-Design

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #45 on: May 27, 2021, 09:52:02 pm »
Thank God I'm retired and sniff glue all day. (Not the cheap stuff either)
Bexigeddon+chipageddon >notageddon!
IT WILL ALL BE OK.
Hipsters with queer coffees in jam jars are ready to create the new ecconomy. Probably from the back of a scooter.

LOL
 :-+
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.
 

Offline IDEngineer

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #46 on: May 27, 2021, 10:05:25 pm »
JIT is gambling, it's like removing the safety features from a car to make it go faster. It will make the car lighter and faster, but if/when there is an accident you'll probably wish you hadn't done that.
That is an excellent analogy, which I'm going to shamelessly steal and use myself!  ;D
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #47 on: May 27, 2021, 10:28:37 pm »
Right now it's not affecting me personally but it does worry me about the future.  Right now everything I have/need works, but if something breaks or I need a replacement then I'm kind of out of luck.   This chip shortage has painted a grim picture of how fragile the entire factory to home ecosystem is though.  It's crazy how there is basically zero contingency at all.  Same deal with that ship that was stuck in the canal, it's insane to think that just a few days can really disrupt everything so badly.

And I do agree JIT is such a bad way of doing things... but it's probably the cheapest and that's what all the big head honchos at the top care about unfortunately.
OTOH: where are you going to store a week's worth of goods being shipped in?
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #48 on: May 27, 2021, 10:46:32 pm »
OTOH: where are you going to store a week's worth of goods being shipped in?

In a warehouse, storage room, or other appropriate facility. People managed to store weeks worth of inventory in the past, this JIT thing is a recent phenomenon. It costs money, but a company that doesn't store adequate inventory is gambling. Shutting down the production line for a while can cost more than was saved.
 
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Offline VK3DRBTopic starter

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Re: How is Chipageddon affecting you?
« Reply #49 on: May 28, 2021, 01:06:24 am »
Remember this?

Other brokers (eg Win-Source) are just taking the piss with bait-and-switch, they advertise at one price, take your money, then tell you "the engineer found problems with that batch, but we still have stock at 2x/3x the price, please send more money" and if you accept, they take your money but won't send you an updated invoice. What's more they take a week to tell you, so holding you up even further. Avoid Win-Source unless you're absolutely desperate: when they finally deliver, the parts are kosher IME.

F***ers.

This time I told them to either ship at the advertised price (that they're still advertising by the way), or immediately refund.


Win-source is seemingly less honourable than most brokers. Brokers know what parts are nil stock world wide. If they know you need them desperately, the dodgy ones will gouge you. By the way, "Allison" is an alias.

A reputable broker in the USA is Commodity Components International in Peabody, MA. I visited them when I was in the US and found them to be very professional. IBM used them as a trusted source so they don't sell dodgy components. The fact that CCI's CEO gave me tickets to a Boston Red Sox/New York Yankees game with one of their managers did not influence my opinion of them :-+ . I suggest you contact them for your RF amp chip.

Hint: Do not contact more than a few brokers for high volume parts, because that can create an artificial high demand for scarce parts and the price skyrockets.

By the way, we have a PC parts store near me called Computer and Parts Land, which makes the worst brokers look good. From first hand experience, they have charged more than the advertised price if the part is in high demand (illegal). They also charge a 15% restocking fee if something does not work as advertised (illegal), don't honour warranty (illegal), and do a lot of other dodgy stuff. Entertaining reading from disgruntled former customers...https://www.productreview.com.au/listings/computer-parts-land

Maybe there should be a special review site for component vendors (TI Direct, Microchip Direct, Digikey, Arrow, LCSC, brokers etc). Maybe even EEVBLOG could host this. Just an idea.

There is this: https://www.supplierblacklist.com/blacklisted-suppliers/.
 
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