ASML's Best Selling Product Isn't What You Think It Is

I'd say play is of fundamental importance at the bleeding edge of knowledge and technology. Without play, there's no appetite for failure. Without appetite for failure, there's no progress, no novel solutions, no creativity.

OneDeuxTriSeiGo• 3 months ago

I immediately have to reach for a quote from the game "The Talos Principle" as I think it just perfectly sums up my view on how core play and games are to humanity and how they are essential to what makes us as a species special:

The answer that came to me again and again was play. Every human society in recorded history has games. We don’t just solve problems out of necessity. We do it for fun. Even as adults. Leave a human being alone with a knotted rope and they will unravel it. Leave a human being alone with blocks and they will build something. Games are part of what makes us human. We see the world as a mystery, a puzzle, because we've always been a species of problem-solvers.

https://taloswiki.org/images/3/36/Scientist-02_ProblemSolver...

voidUpdate2• 3 months ago

I'm not particularly surprised that the $600 Lego set sells better than the $400 million lithography tool...

mrweasel• 3 months ago

It's $200, otherwise I think it would be a bit on the high end in terms of price per piece. $600 is the cheapest version on eBay.

Unless you need the box, you can get the instructions online (https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-215601/NightHawk11991/asml-...). Though that might be a recreation.

voidUpdate2• 3 months ago

(I couldn't see a listed price in the article, so I just went for the cheapest resale price they said. Thanks for clarifying)

shubhamjain• 3 months ago

The kind of garbage that gets to the front-page is mind-boggling. Okay, maybe there's some useful trivia here, but combined with the headline, it's just trash clickbait.

nikitaga• 3 months ago

Employee Only: You cannot buy these in stores. They are sold exclusively to ASML employees with a strictly enforced “one per person” rule.

Wonder if they include this lego set as a gift with their real machines? Or are they like – our commercial agreement is worth $400M and not a lego set above that.

2ndorderthought• 3 months ago

"why does this matter?" Oh hello AI slop how are you today?

johncole7• 3 months ago

Is this some sort of ai indicator now?

skrebbel• 3 months ago

Yep

masfuerte• 3 months ago

Any of these things on their own do not indicate AI but this article is riddled with tells, including this one.

markovBaj• 3 months ago

for me it was the 3 bullet point list, esp. the "The Sales Gap"

amelius• 3 months ago

Maybe. At some point, humans will start sounding like AI.

mschuster91• 3 months ago

They already do, I recently heard people literally talk like tiktok videos in real life...

AntiUSAbah• 3 months ago

"Why it matters"

No it doesn't.

And the only thing it does again, to remind me, that this is cool as hell but i'm not able to buy it...

bux93• 3 months ago

Two words. Volkswagen sausage.

johncole7• 3 months ago

Never heard of this, what does this refer to?

j_maffe• 3 months ago

Can we please do something about these AI slop articles? It's becoming really sadenning having to open a frontpage link only to find the same, meritless, braindead article one time after the other.

planb• 3 months ago

You're absolutely right! "Why Does This Matter?" was a dead giveaway that this article was not written by a human — it was written by a large language model.

But really: "Why does this matter?" When looking at an article like this, I rarely read the text. This is just fluff no matter if AI-generated or hand written. The info is "there's a LEGO set of that ASML machine" and the picture of that set. That's all I want to know before clicking the back button.

john_strinlai• 3 months ago

and then open up the comments section, just to see several identical "ai slop" comments and someone inevitably making a "you're absolutely right" joke.

girvo2• 3 months ago

I’m flagging them, but it’s not enough. Front page is full of it these days. Sad times.

btown• 3 months ago

For those interested in ASML, and how much engineering goes into being able to make EUV lithography work reliably at scale for 3nm nodes (by hitting individual droplets of tin with highly accurate lasers and turning them into plasma!), I highly recommend this recent (Dec 2025) Veritasium video about them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUHjLxm3V0

For more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ultraviolet_lithograph...

(There's something incredible and downright "alchemical" about the fact that the reason our sand can "think" is because we use light to vaporize tin which then carves intricate glyphs into the sand!)

keernan• 3 months ago

They sell fewer than 400 machines a year.

https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/q4-2025-fin...

throwaway2037• 3 months ago

1) Why is this entry flagged?

2) For once, I had a good laugh from the obvious clickbait title. Hat tip. You nerd sniped me good!

3) What do you think ASML had to pay Lego to design and create this model? Or maybe Lego has a small division that does custom models like this? Do we know the employee cost for the Lego set? I have not access to this company store link: https://asmlstore.com/products/twinscan-exe-5000-lego-set

4) How long until someone on YouTube creates a functioning lithography tool (say, 1 million nanometers grade) using only authetic Lego materials?

girvo2• 3 months ago

It’s flagged because it’s obvious AI slop

johncole7• 3 months ago

No because of Russian trolls.

gangstead• 3 months ago

3) What do you think ASML had to pay Lego to design and create this model? Or maybe Lego has a small division that does custom models like this? Do we know the employee cost for the Lego set?

I've done my own small scale version of this where I made models for internal distribution of the specialty equipment my employer uses. I doubt they paid Lego anything.

There is software to design your own lego set. Bricklink Studio is what I used. It's essentially Lego CAD software with a component library of Lego pieces. You can do high quality renderings, generate instruction sheets and BOMs.

Lego has a Pick-a-brick service where you can get new parts from a very limited selection at great expense. At third party marketplaces like Bricklink you can upload BOMs and they will assemble shopping carts from different seller's inventories of used pieces. Price and selection is better than Pick-a-brick but shipping / order fees / minimum lot size drive up the cost. I've tried many times but even the smallest 200 piece build ends up needing orders from 3 sellers across the world. There's always some part that was only ever sold in one rare set from 30 years ago and is unobtanium (the CAD program makes it easy to include a piece regardless of actual availability).

There are also businesses that will give you a turn key product that looks very retail-like with parts bagged by step, printed instructions, real Legos, box art, etc.

If you're willing to go with "lego compatible" third party bricks like GoBricks there are many sites that can source your entire build at once with new non-lego pieces. Part quality ranges from "good enough" to "indistinguishable" and the price and ease of ordering is loads better. You get a box of unsorted parts and spend lots of time grouping the pieces into kits.

johncole7• 3 months ago

This is such a great business idea.

ASML's Best Selling Product Isn't What You Think It Is

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