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Comment by nom

12 days ago

Making featureless metal balls seems very easy, they have only one dimension and are perfectly symmetric.

.. until you realize that:

- they have extremely tight tolerances - they function together, a single defect one ruins the whole assembly - you have to make millions of them for cheap

Some things are deceptively hard. For a related fun fact, check out China's ballpoint pen adventures.

>China's ballpoint pen adventures

True. Though they've moved up in the world since then. They now have their own semiconductor fabs. Chinese industry of today is way more advanced than the China of the 90's making low margin nick-nacks.