Technology

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.

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.

😎

Don’t be fooled: if RAM had the chance it would kill everyone and everything you’ve ever loved.

Does this mean no smart fridges?

Coz that would be cool

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...

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.

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.

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.

Fuck Sam Altman

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.

. . . 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.

And they told me I was crazy for putting 64 gigs into my machine back in early 2021. I "only" paid about 200 USD

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.

"everything you care about" - Time to change hobbies and care about things that don't have RAM then.

First the rich took our data. Then ownership, privacy, money, rights, now RAM. next will be our organs.

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.

AI's are more important than humans now. I guess we should get used to this. Line must go up.

Go ahead, make a lucrative market for consumer ram, see how fast china figures out how ot start filling that need :)

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 🤷

It’s not just desktops, it’s phones and laptops and consoles

Good thing I don't care about any of those things enough to pay the rip-off prices. I'm fine with my 4 year old phone and 10 year old PC. If they crap out then I'll replace them with some cheap old crap. I don't need high specs, there isn't much worth running these days.

If I become anarchist, trying to burn data center with AI inside, will I be Robin Hood?

Our last, best hope for the subsidy model was Valve, a company that famously rakes in money hand over fist and launched the original Steam Deck at the unbeatable price of $399 through a “painful” amount of subsidy. If Valve did the same for the upcoming Steam Machine, it could have legitimately competed with the PlayStation and Xbox for your living room TV.

But Valve has all but dashed those hopes through a series of moves. In late December, it discontinued the $399 Steam Deck, raising the starting price to $549. In early February, it announced that the Steam Machine had been delayed due to the memory shortage and that the company would have to reset expectations on pricing. And now, even the $549 Steam Deck OLED is out of stock specifically because of the memory crisis.

I was pretty confident that Valve was not going to subsidize the Steam Machine from the start, even before Valve said that it would be priced comparably to a PC and even before it said that it was delaying determining pricing (which was a good sign that it hadn't locked in a contract price on components). I commented along those lines here.

Consoles can do the razor-and-blades model because they are a closed platform. If you buy a Playstation, it doesn't do you much good unless you use it to buy Playstation games. So each Playstation purchase is very, very probably going to be used to purchase Playstation games. Sony can crank up prices on those and make their initial loss back.

But the Steam Machine is open. I can go run whatever on it. I can just take the thing and, say, make it a media server or whatever. And if Valve subsidizes it, people will just buy it instead of a comparable PC and then run whatever they want on it. Doesn't make much sense for Valve, just because of the nature of the machine.

I'm aware, thanks.

Now I'm just contemplating whether I should upgrade from 32 GB DDR4 to 64 or 128 while it's still within the realm of possibility, or bet on memory prices coming back down within the next few years, and upgrade to an entirely new platform with DDR5 then.

At least I'm not planning on buying a brand new car anytime soon, or even a nearly new one. And my phone's fine for a few more years.