this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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Fuck AI
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AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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They are at war against ownership (not raspberry pi org, but the general oligarchy). It's the next step coming after "every software is a cloud service subscription". We are heading towards the "you can't own a computer, just rent one from the cloud". In this day and age, computers are necessary, for everything, for education, public services, employment, entertainment. Once we have to pay taxes to the Lords in order to have access to our mean of substance, we are essentially in a new era of feudalism.
One could call it "technofeudalism".
That's exactly where this is headed. Modern day slavery. They take away the usability of offline devices so we only use their devices to use their apps and work for their companies, and anyone trying to circumvent this (VPNs, refusing Age Verification, Piracy, FOSS) gets visited by the technofeudalists' friends at ICEstapo.
yeah it's the "war on computation" that's the other term Cory Doctorow coined apart from "enshitification"
The end goal is to destroy all consumer available general purpose computing.
I'm not too worried about this. It sucks for the time being, and who knows how long they economy will suffer when the US fully collapses. The silver lining is that the actual cost of producing the hardware doesn't match the inflated evaluation of it. The drivers of this won't be able to sustain the hoarding. Don't get me wrong, it's bad. Anyone with a time machine would probably chose to give Peter and Sam a visit.
I don't know, people said the same about videocard prices during the crypto boom, the 2020 shortage and every time prices just went up. I doubt prices will go down
Prices going up has to match the demand for the supply. Price goes too high, then there is enough incentive for competitors to come into the market and increase supply. In the long run, it hurts the hoarders.
So when will GPUs get cheaper again?
In the case of competitors popping up, painfully long time. But acutely things are looking good. There is no money backing up these bullshit contracts.
It's been what, 10 years? Since GPU prices first sharply rose due to Bitcoin miners. Competitors haven't popped up so far. I don't believe this will change.
IT people have been saying that everything would be run in the cloud for the last 25 years. The truth is that processing is not profitable. They will not offload all processing into the cloud nor do they want to. The struggle is against right to repair/modify and ownership/control of software.
They can make "processing" profitable when their service is the only available option and they can charge whatever price they want for lackluster quality of service.
You said we're heading to "you can't own a computer, just rent one from the cloud".
What I'm saying is that since at least the 1990s / early 2000s we have had dumb terminals that connect to the server that does all the processing and provides the video signal. People were saying this was what everyone would be using in the future. The fact that you are still saying this makes me really skeptical. When will this be?
The Data-Terminals and mainframe architecture of the time was a technical solution emerging from limitations of the time, bulky and pricey electronics. Also, computers at the time were used for special tasks.
Today, we can fit an ultra powerful computer in your pocket, no problem. You practically can't survive without a smartphone (or computer), or yes you can survive, but you can't be part of society without one.
Today's trend to takeaway the computing power off the hands of normal citizens, when it's so cheap and practical to have it, is not driving by technical limitations (or improvement of technology). It's driven my the goal to extract every bit of money, ownership and finally freedom that we have have citizens.
Why would they give you the option to buy a top of the line 2000€ laptop and let you use it with Linux for everything you need until the heat-death of the universe when they can can extort you of 200€/month instead? Much more profitable. They can change the price whenever they want and you will have no choice but pay, because you can't even find a single DDR3 RAM stick to buy anywhere! Why would they just let you use the heated sits in your car when they can extort you of a 60€/month subscription for it, on top of the 70k€ buying price ?
It's not a technical trend, it's an ideological one.
You really think "they" are going to make computers and Linux illegal so they can force you to pay $200 a month for their own platform? Hilarious that people agree with you
They don't have to make alternative OS illegal, they can simply make it unusable.
It's not necessarily done my pure evil intent, it just happens as a side effect of other decisions.
One example right now is how Google is locking down the Android platform by making side loading mode difficult in the name of security. But more generally with the example of Android, how Google set the standard by providing frameworks and development tools in their terms, that become the defacto standard without any kind of industry wide consultation, is a big problem. My banking app use to have its own implementation of the NFC payment, it worked perfectly fine with GrapheneOS, now they updated the app and decided to just integrate the Google Wallet instead of maintaining their own implementation of the feature. Now it can't be used with GrapheneOS. In this example, Google is in full control, and I, can't do anything about it even if I am savvy enough to use custom ROM on my phone. Google didn't act evil, they provide some tools and service, the bank didn't act evil, they are just make technical choices that make financial sense, but in the end it contributes to take away our rights. I can either decide NFC payment with my phone is not worth signing a contract with Google and give up the feature, or I can decide my privacy is not worth the hassle and move back to the Google "certified" version of Android.
In the end, if a corporation can make more money, they will cease the opportunity. And they will absolutely make it illegal for you to own things or make choices if they have enough political leverage. Just look at all the DMCA and other anti "piracy" laws out there! In the USA it's a federal crime to break a digital lock even on a product you bought and paid for ! It is defacto illegal to do what you please with something you "own".
Yes, if I was a tech CEO I'd promote you for that idea right now!
This is exactly the plan. How can you not see it?
I remember it too, the dreaded thin clients are coming to kill your desktop. Honestly I'd love it if there was a viable option. You just can't do it though - look at Stadia. Until graphics can be processed without a local card you're only catering to net nanny's and the slightly Amish. Ahhhh Web TV.
Have you heard about AWS and Azure?
I suppose the point is that those are mostly selling location and networking, the processing is essentially incidental.
They don't have reason to mind consumers being able to have lots of processing, memory, and storage. They have plenty of hooks to track the users and gain control of their data, and tracking users and holding their content hostage is very profitable without having to fight users.
Self hosting isn't a threat to them, local gaming rigs isn't a threat.
Web servers have definitely moved from on-premises to the cloud, but there are also things that haven't, and a lot of that was because of consumer pushback. Google Stadia was a flop, even though it was being talked about like it was a foregone conclusion that no one would want/need a console after Stadia came out.
I think that what workerONE is saying is probably right: the industry will let you own a powerful device (probably a heavily locked-down phone), and they'll still be able to charge you for access to cloud storage and services. That's the most profitable thing for them to do (and of course anti-consumer), so they'll do it. They won't need to prevent you from owning hardware, they can just charge you a monthly fee anyway, even though you have access to hardware yourself. The restrictive phone OS means you won't even be able to do much with that powerful CPU in your pocket.
Stadia failed because it had huge issues with latency and video compression. Nvidia and Xbox are doing the same now and they do have people actually using it. The whole strategy from Microsoft is building a subscription gaming empire, both in software and hardware.
Stadia also had people, question is whether it becomes the majority.
They can and do drm their way to subscribing to the game content but still letting the end devices run the game. Cheaper for them compared to hosting, so long as they assure themselves that games can't be cracked offline, but for multiplayer games they further control the online aspects.
Yeah I worked in IT for 20 years managing servers and networks and have deployed servers in AWS.