which is why there is no hoarding of all the computers and RAM for data centers that don’t even exist.

John

Also long before people stop having computers they will start recycling and reusing tech rather than throwing it away.

John

There are already groups in every major city that refurbish computers for free and run component libraries. They will simply become ubiquitous

Phones and PCs no longer lose value. People will no longer demand 100x the computing power they actually need. Brick phones will proliferate

The panopticon will...have nothing to look at

FAANG will cease to exist, but so will Palantir and all the other data scrapers. LLMs will fail for lack of published human-made material

mahadevank

@blogdiva well, they will be severely limited, because you can't get on the cloud without a PC of your own anyways, and they have lousy memory hog software so they can't push things up too much.

In the worst case they raise it to the point where its hard to buy exotic hardware. But then, it would create a reverse revolution of open-source thats more hardware optimized.

The tech bros are really, really dumb.

warkolm

@blogdiva I wouldn't attribute malice to their incompetence, but who knows

Havoc BSc MSc 💚

@blogdiva are they out to kill the fediverse too? Server costs are going up because of all this. Is the ultimate aim to price us out of existence?
https://mementomori.social/@rolle/116125657344469470

CockneyLaurie

@blogdiva

It's better than that...

Prevent new high level computers at a competitive price so companies do more of their computing remotely on AI computers.

Sonikku

@blogdiva
Pretty much this

your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦

@blogdiva

And it is what might kill Windows and Microsoft, if people cannot upgrade their hardware to match Windows "upgrades" they will seek OSs that run on less computing power.

Ironic that t takes multiple orders of magnitude more computing power to run a video game about putting a man on the moon than it did to put a man on the moon.

xro

@blogdiva

That was also one of my first reactions, but on reflection I don't think it's accurate.

I think they mainly want to hamper their direct compentation.

The damage to the PC market was originally unintended, but as always, those bros try to exploit all new circumstances to their benefit.

So, yes, they might double down on that now.

Thankfully there are still big Interests aligned with a thriving PC market. Nvidia might have abandoned the consumer but not everybody did yet

xro

@blogdiva
However,

This DOES give us a glimpse into a future, where goods are no longer produced for consumers but only for big tech.

Where the consumer and small businesses will no longer have the option to buy what they need, but will have to make due with whatever scraps are left to buy at unreasonable prices.

Bobo_PK 🦄

@blogdiva maybe the long term plan is to kill all smaller hosters and only be left with a oligopolous hosting market.

craignicol

@blogdiva so like OPEC in the 70s then? That went well

your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦

@craignicol and by the same OPEC people. literally. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are behind this AI madness. they just wanna make sure they keep on pumping that petrol and methane.

10x Electrical Engineer

@blogdiva I don’t think you are correct. There is both a DRAM shortage and NAND shortage, like what you said, and it’s due to techbros, but it’s not a tech collusion to create PC tech shortage.

The memory companies (Sk hynix, Samsung, Micron, etc) have moved all their production and manufacturing capacity for the next few years for AI related hardware (HBM and eSSDs). Because of this, there’s no production space for consumer-grade memory.

🧵️

10x Electrical Engineer

@blogdiva Companies like OpenAI and Google have bought all the supply for the next couple of years. You can see proof of this from the closure of Crucial’s consumer brand, Micron. They get more profit from AI companies than tech enthusiasts or gamers.

The issue is the AI bubble. It’s a circle jerk of companies just paying each other to keep their shareholders happy, and when a company goes down the US government buys them back in.

Toni Aittoniemi

@blogdiva They want you on shit computers that can’t do anything but act as terminals for their cloud.

A cloud where they control and surveil everything.

Toni Aittoniemi

@johnzajac @johntimaeus @blogdiva It’s still an interesting gamble:

They are trying to convert a consumer economy into an elite economy. (Back to feudalism essentially)

They are betting that they don’t need demand from us any more, but can just keep selling ultra-expensive things to the ultra-rich.

That’s what’s going on IMO.

John

@gimulnautti @johntimaeus @blogdiva

Yeah, they aren't terrible wise, are they?

Jargoggles

@inthehands @blogdiva @flipper
Counterpoint: volcano hungry

js

@blogdiva Except that is not how it works. What happens is that HBM as used in datacenters has a MUCH higher margin than consumer grade DDR RAM. But capacities on wavers are limited. So those memory companies optimize for most money per area of waver. And since the margin for HBM is so much higher, they make almost no regular consumer grade DDR RAM at all anymore. So now the demand for the little DDR RAM that is being produced is vastly higher than what is produced, so there ends up a bidding war over the little DDR RAM that is being made. AI companies are not buying up DDR RAM and not using it - they’re buying the HBM and don’t care about your DDR RAM at all.

I hate the situation right now as much as everybody else, but spreading misinformation about it is not gonna help. If there’s anyone to blame, it’s capitalism and the memory companies having no reason to make DDR RAM with a lower margin.

// Edit: This is also the reason for the increase in SSD prices, because the companies that make memory and the companies that make SSDs are an almost perfect overlap. They just all only produce what is currently by far the highest margin for them.

Wandering Adventure Party

which is why there is no hoarding of all the computers and RAM for data centers that don’t even exist.