Blamed?
More like responsible. Alongside big tech
this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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The irony is as they bid up the price of all the hardware, they are probably making their AI platforms more likely to fail due to being more expensive than their value.
We can only hope that their businesses crash hard before any of these deals come to fruition and then when the hardware has nowhere to go we can all "buy the dip" so to speak.
To be clear, I know most of this stuff will be specialized server hardware, but hopefully it all crashing down will help get more people into self-hosting and working on community resources and networks instead of having everything live in the cloud.
I know most of this stuff will be specialized server hardware
it actually won't be, at least not for the hard drives. the prevailing strategy for quite some time now is to just use the cheapest available disks and deal with the failures on the software level. those disks will ultimately fail anyway and the increased price for some super-duper enterprise reliability server disk is not really worth it.
I'm currently hosting everything on old desktop PCs and SBCs but fuck it, I'll swipe some closeout hardware and upgrade to a proper server rack.
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Western Digital chief Tiang Yew Tan told analysts "We're pretty much sold out for calendar '26. We have firm purchase orders with our top seven customers."
the dow is 50k and 37% of the market is made up of those seven
freaking financial human centipede
I can't wait for it to crash and burn, this bubble is getting so ridiculous.
that crash and burn will be the onus of the consumer not being able to consume.
we will lose access to free range computing and have to live with asking AI for permission to use the computing power and network resources to play a game or pay our bills online. And paytoll for that permission.
that will be the crash and burn victims here.
It needs to crash. If it doesn't crash soon, things will only get worse and worse for consumers. We're already over the edge of the cliff (imo), it's just a matter of how far we have to fall now. If it crashes hard enough, we won't have to live with "asking AI for permission to use the computing platform". By the way, an LLM isn't really capable of that at the moment, and the sooner it crashes, the less likely anything like that will happen.
I brought my 2003 laptop back to life for shits and giggles recently. It's made me realize how bloated software has become. It's still just as usable as it was 20 years ago when you remove all the fancy crap and use programs designed for tasks rather than living in a web browser. Sure its not fast, but once I replaced the spinning drive with an ssd, it became pretty damn usable in a modern day scenario. I really thought I would just upgrade as far as I could for fun, then slap an old archived distro on there from my college days for some good old PTSD/nostalgia. But it's actually usable so I occasionally pull it out and do stuff on it. I'm ready to slap jaunty jackalope on it and relive going to my uni's library to write a 10 page research paper thats due the next day, but it's still ready to rock in modern times.
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These companies are publicly traded...
The people who run/own the AI companies would have been complete idiots to not invest in the hardware companies they were going to make these purchases from before making those purchases.
But 100 million in Seagate stock, then announce you just signed a contract buying up supply.
Your company may overpay, but you personally just made a shit ton of money. Which is the why you want your company to succeed
As a bonus, the news that you're overpaying to buy up all the hard drives, doesn't hurt your company it helps it.
There's no way to monetize it anyways, the product is the stock price. And this move makes the company seem confident, which raises stock price.
That's not even getting into the long term problem that even if AI fails, were seeing a huge migration in computing power from individuals to private corporations. That's a big deal even if AI dies tomorrow. And they have a lot of motivation to never let us get it back.
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This framing is journalistic malpractice. Using the term blamed implies room for doubt where there is none, it's a clear and provable driver of this issue. We desperately need public funding for journalism, as long as outlets rely on private investment to function there will always be this kind of manipulation and bias infused into news media.
Funny thing, we had that back before the 80's. Yeah Republicans killed it. and now we're in the shit show you see all around.
Huh, I wonder why they would do that... So Weird (tm). Surely unrelated to the tRump republicans axeing PBS funding in this current term...
so much wrong with this title.
- it's not AI, it's LLM slop bullshit
- it's not the software at guilt here, it's the sacks of shit running those companies who plan such data centers
- blamed? No, those shitheads are totally and absolutely responsible for this clusterfuck.
They've gone so far as to claim responsibility.
You mean brag about it?
I was trying to use the same language the news uses when a political group claims resposibilty for a bombing.
those who promote ai usage and even pay for it ought to be blamed too.
While I can see some benefits in using llm for some things, way things currently are the negatives way outweigh the positives. Using it should be something to be ashamed about so this shit collapses sooner and maybe we can get some peace. Maybe once all the commotion dies down llm could become useful tool, but if its tied to destruction of our way of life (planet dying, economic disruption, no components for regular people) then it just has to go.
Alternative is we just submit and hope our owners dont abuse us too much.
This is how they kill home computing and force everyone to bezos net with your drumpf Gold terminal ($390/month with KKK membership)
Fuck ALL these peoole.
On the upside, homelabs are going to have a glut of high capacity, barely used server hard drives to choose from then this AI/data centre bubble eventually bursts?
If it bursts, that is. I have a fear that people behind AI have grown so savvy of the bubbles, that they have a complicated plan to avoid it, and artificially uphold it with the help of bribed/blackmailed politicians.
Pretty much. So much trading is done automatically by algorithms. There's no panic selling anymore because the human factor is gone.
Of course something will have to break eventually.
As every industry before them did.
It's nice how AI datacenters step by step swallow virtually all available hardware resources to provide digital services to users who won't be able to use those services due to the lack of available hardware.
Hardware will be available, silly. ^†^
You will have the "freedom" ^‡^ to choose from the hardware vendor* you want. Like always! ^‡‡^
^†^ ^For^ ^$49.95^ ^per^ ^month.^
^Terms and conditions and government social score apply.^
^‡‡^ ^Authorized and approved by the department of national security and intelligence gathering agencies and the billionaire technofascist bros clubh^
I doubt offering AI services to the public is their goal.
that's okay they will replace users with AI. it's going to be AI all the way down
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Fuck AI
I get paid on the 27th, I need two more 8TB drives to complete my NAS, my local retailer had 50+ in stock earlier this week, and now the drives are no longer even listed.
Fuck sake...
I bought 2 8TB drives last week and had to check if they were still in stock at the same retailer and they are, but the price have gone up with 23%...
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I recently checked on the price of the used 12TB server drive I bought a couple years ago. It was 80 then. It's 260 now. Same seller.
Good idea. I just looked at a drive I bought six months ago and it's up 40% or so. Wish I'd have got two now.
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I will absolutely remember the companies that are saying “fuck the consumer” when I go to purchase anything going forward.
I'm glad I bought an 8 TB HDD about a year ago as an investment, it's now $50 more expensive a year later. I don't plan on ever filling it up, but it's been helpful, and good insurance to have if I ever create a project that requires that space.
Apparently there is a huge demand for storage, both RAM and disk. Oh, and GPUs... So what happens when large number of people are looking to buy stuff? In time, I think there is a silver lining here...
Demand went up but supply hasn't adjusted, and maybe won't, to meet it. I'd imagine the parts manufacturers would be worried about the bubble bursting as much as we are cheering it on.
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I bought a 22tb hdd from serverpartdeals in late December of 2025. Its now $100 more expensive, I'm glad I read the tea leaves in time but this sucks.
I got a 16TB HDD for 300€, yesterday I looked at it and it was 800€ (apparently discounted from 1000€ lol)
28 TB is now sold out in serverpartsdeals, guess we have to wait till the bubbles pops.
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I was able to update 2 of 3 devices early last year, but couldn’t upgrade my old custom build. I did that due to possible tariffs; didn’t even think about this “AI” BS. Thought may as well just buy a custom build now. Wanted to wait another year, but I won’t be upset no matter what happens with prices if I get it now. I’m not sure my old girl can outlive the return of easily available PC parts. At least I also bought some extra storage over a year ago.
So with all the news on hardware shortages...someone is building skynet..and we just don't know about it.
Less skynet and more a surveillance state thats gonna put England and even CCP to shame.
They need the hard drives because they're storing everything about us. Every time we drive by a camera, gps paths of our cell phones constant travel, every bank transaction including small purchases, every social media comment, page we view from WiFi or cellphone, all our connections to everyone else, tags for various groups.
Not even just the people we know we know, they'll know who's usually next to us in traffic on commutes and when, who makes our sandwich from the deli we go to every other Tuesday, what cops would be most likely to respond to a call to our house at a certain time...
Like, "skynet" is useful because everyone knows the term.
The real danger is what humans will do with access to that much information on everyone, and what a normal human would do to/for a stranger to protect all their darkest secrets.
Imagine if tech was 20 years ahead right now with trump in office, do you think someone like him would hesitate to start wide scale blackmail?
You think they're above telling a couple thousand people in highly targeted districts that they had to vote a certain a way or else?
It's not the AI we need to be scared of, it's the data.
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Buy used ETA: and prevent waste
I meant from individuals, not corporations with a profitable refurbishing outfit. e.g.: eBay, thrift shops, the swap shop at your local dump (if you're lucky to have one), yard sales, etc.
One of my favorite things in life is rescuing hardware from the landfill, or bringing a relative's dusty old machine back to life. There are still loads of people out there who have never opened a PC case before, and think the whole machine is a loss just because it won't boot, or is "old".
Wild that people were down voting you. Hard drives can last decades and are replaced from enterprise servers long before they're close to failing.
Especially with lowered use compared to a server, you won't see much functional difference between brand new consumer grade and used server grade.
Pretty sure caches and everything are better on used server grade still anyways.
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Welp, I guess I'm all out of money for new tech. Time to travel or find a new hobby.
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