This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The reason RAM prices went up 4x is that a massive amount of not-yet-manufactured memory was bought with money that doesn't really exist to be put into GPUs that haven't been made yet, to be installed in data centers that haven't been built, powered by infrastructure that may never exist, to satisfy demand that isn't actually there, in order to generate profits that are mathematically impossible.
π
All that to create Artificial Intelligence that isnβt really intelligent.
What do you mean?
Just walk the car wash!
I think calling it a RAM shortage is a bit incorrect. It is not like we are running out of raw materials or something else in the supply chain is broken. It's shitty AI companies buying RAM that is not existing yet with money they don't have. Unfortunately there's no good term for that, I guess.
Itβs called Imaginary Economics.
It tends to happen right before a capitalist system fails.
It tends to happen right before a capitalist system fails.
How often does this happen that we can claim this correlation? π€
The term was well established centuries ago.
FRAUD
Yes there is: it's a Ponzi scheme (AI companies will fail when they get no new funds to pay off the stockholders)
I like electron finance
Their exact location cannot be pinpointed; instead, they exist in a probability cloud where they are likely to be found at any given time.
That's what this hype cycle is founded on. If I lend you $5, you have $5 you can lend further. Now, we each still have a right to $5, so we can lend that debt obligation again for $4.50. Now we have, somehow, a market value of $19.
Until someone looks, then it's probably 0.
Going to be fucking hilarious when all the western companies get fucked by China taking over the market they don't seem to care about.
Theyβre wealthy but absolute fucking morons. The people who fall for the βthey have money so they must be smartβ are such gullible buffoons. CCP is much more competent than American oligarchs, running what couldβve been great with better policy into the ground.
Back in my day, we downloaded ram. 8GB at a time.
Which was used to then download a car.
MY CLASSIC SCI-FI SOFT COVER BOOKS!!??!1
Edit: MY CLASSIC CONSOLE COLLECTION?!
The things I love the most don't have RAM, or I already have them π€·
What I'm surprised hasn't happened yet is RAM ICs being recycled at the retail level. As in, you could bring in an old laptop or phone with 32GB of soldered RAM and it would be desoldered and sold for cash or possibly even soldered into a new device you buy from that retailer.
I wonder how close we are to that business model arriving.
And they told me I was crazy for putting 64 gigs into my machine back in early 2021. I "only" paid about 200 USD
Does this mean no smart fridges?
Coz that would be cool
i'd be willing to suffer another year of ram shortage if that meant all smart devices fucked off
maybe we could even see actual physical buttons on devices again! i miss buttons and toggles
My most recent hobby has been an old Suzuki Samurai that I dragged out of the woods a few years ago. It doesn't use much RAM. It doesn't even have fuel injection.
I've also been getting back into archery with my kid.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think that making it harder to get a computer and play games is a huge miscalculation. If everyone is distracted by Call of Battle: Dutyfield then you have fewer bored assholes casting about for something to do, and if people can still play Factorio, you don't end up with bored, autistic, organized assholes casting about for something to do.
Donβt be fooled: if RAM had the chance it would kill everyone and everything youβve ever loved.
Frustratingly this is not just affecting the current generation of devices, but the previous one too. DDR4 RAM (which I use in my desktop) has gone up 300% since I bought it a few years ago.
Here's hoping that nobody needs to replace current or previous gen hardware if it breaks in the next 2 years...
Go ahead, make a lucrative market for consumer ram, see how fast china figures out how ot start filling that need :)
I wish Sam Altman to encounter difficulties every time he had to use bathroom and increased chance of his phone fell to the toilet all the time.
. . . And then the market will be flooded with RAM that companies preordered and can't pay for, because the AI bubble burst before it could be manufactured.
Hey, I can dream, right? And seriously, I would be quite happy if this causes an increase in dumb appliances, devices, and cars in the meanwhile.
Most of the lithography that is dedicated to RAM is being done for HBM modules, which are not consumer grade. So more likely it will end up in landfills.
I'm so glad I bought this book years ago
I was saving it for a retirement hobby project but looks like I will have to open it sooner than I thought.
AI's are more important than humans now. I guess we should get used to this. Line must go up.
Fuck Sam Altman
"everything you care about" - Time to change hobbies and care about things that don't have RAM then.
I would LOVE to believe this will force automakers to return to using buttons instead of touchscreen.
Yeah, I know. But I'd sure love to believe it.
What if the unintentional consequence of hardware hoarding by AI companies is we have fewer devices being made that spy on us, like smart TVs and appliances.
The idea is that in the future your "personal computer" will be a streaming stick that you plug into a monitor to access your Microslop Copilot Windows 12 OneDrive Azure Cloud Virtual PC for $99 a month.
