The unadmitted reason this is happening (and the AI bubble besides): Moore's Law *has ended*.
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I just noticed I have 18Tb of storage plugged into my desktop (a laptop with its own 2Tb of built-in SSD) and WTF am I doing with it all?!?
@cstross /dev/random > randomnes_store_for_later_use.txt
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@cstross (unless it kills the industry)
@Kierkegaanks It probably *will* kill the industry. A lot of smaller VARs will go out of business, bigger ones will see sales stagnate and be forced to put up prices b/c the data center futures bids are ramping prices, then the bubble will burst and we're in Great Depression 2.0. Not much will come through that intact.
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I just noticed I have 18Tb of storage plugged into my desktop (a laptop with its own 2Tb of built-in SSD) and WTF am I doing with it all?!?
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@markdennehy @blogdiva Actually most of that storage is redundant backup drives
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@cstross I am willing to entertain the "we're going to get rid of consumer computer hardware that isn't rented" scenario.
In the 1970s, there was a thriving market for making, selling, and applying custom/aftermarket car parts. The entire auto industry systematically murdered it by successively moving cars into a space where you couldn't do that. It's not like we don't know a large market can't be expunged.
The incumbents have a strong general incentive to keep people from having options.
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@cstross /dev/random > randomnes_store_for_later_use.txt
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@cstross Yeah, I recently came to a similar conclusion.
I had replaced the fans in my 4 year old laptop and now it is ... just fine. Like I'm actually no longer even considering replacing it.
Now I did buy a ridiculous laptop 4 years ago, but still.
I wonder how many people could extend the life if their machines by just cleaning out the dust/replacing the fans.
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@markdennehy @blogdiva Actually most of that storage is redundant backup drives
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/116127740444038853
The unadmitted reason this is happening (and the AI bubble besides): Moore's Law *has ended*. The only way for hardware sales to go in future is *down* because your next PC or Mac will work just fine until it breaks or dies of old age. So by ramping prices artificially via this RAM/SSD futures bullshit, they're keeping profits high for as long as possible.
@cstross ...which only works for as long as nobody else can start producing alternative hardware.
And, come on: decades-old DDR3 is barely 5 times slower than modern DDR5. For most practical uses, cheap and somewhat slower than top-end memory would be perfectly fine.
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@jackwilliambell @cstross you could just /dev/random > /dev/null
But if we talk TB you might want to switch to a managed service like
https://devnull-as-a-service.com/ -
@furicle @cstross It is not what it was and a whole lot of effort has gone into, e.g. doing things with on board computers to prevent off-brand parts. (Not, in autos, as much as in heavy machinery including farm machinery.) "Right to repair" didn't start with small electronic gadgets.
Or look at the cost of replacing a headlight; lots of effort has gone into making you buy the big assembly and not either a standard headlight or replacing a bulb.
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I just noticed I have 18Tb of storage plugged into my desktop (a laptop with its own 2Tb of built-in SSD) and WTF am I doing with it all?!?
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@furicle @cstross It is not what it was and a whole lot of effort has gone into, e.g. doing things with on board computers to prevent off-brand parts. (Not, in autos, as much as in heavy machinery including farm machinery.) "Right to repair" didn't start with small electronic gadgets.
Or look at the cost of replacing a headlight; lots of effort has gone into making you buy the big assembly and not either a standard headlight or replacing a bulb.
@graydon @furicle This goes back a long way, though. I remember being appalled in 1991 when the windscreen wiper on my car packed up and discovering it needed a sealed assembly with motor, gearing, and two arms to fix it—it wasn't designed to be repairable. (I shared a house with a car kitbasher, though, so he got it working again: opened it up and replaced the stripped plastic gear.)
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I just noticed I have 18Tb of storage plugged into my desktop (a laptop with its own 2Tb of built-in SSD) and WTF am I doing with it all?!?
it’s been so cheap to add another drive or RAM, IF YOU HAVE THE MONEY.
since my divorce, been so broke, everything i have is a hand-me down or refurbished.
that’s why i switched to linux. i’ve squeezed the proverbial blood from Dell Inspiron bricks with SOLDERED RAM. i have ran webservers on tablets meant for kids to play CandyCrush.
don't matter if the tech is cheap if i got no money to spend.
it’s why i can see the scarcity they are creating.
it’s like a divorce.
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@cstross I am willing to entertain the "we're going to get rid of consumer computer hardware that isn't rented" scenario.
In the 1970s, there was a thriving market for making, selling, and applying custom/aftermarket car parts. The entire auto industry systematically murdered it by successively moving cars into a space where you couldn't do that. It's not like we don't know a large market can't be expunged.
The incumbents have a strong general incentive to keep people from having options.
@graydon @cstross and you know they probably won’t even have to tell governments that they will implement whatever sort of age gating or identity verification/tracking governments want on those systems. Because the governments will easily be able to force them to even assuming the system owners don’t want to in the first place.
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/116127740444038853
The unadmitted reason this is happening (and the AI bubble besides): Moore's Law *has ended*. The only way for hardware sales to go in future is *down* because your next PC or Mac will work just fine until it breaks or dies of old age. So by ramping prices artificially via this RAM/SSD futures bullshit, they're keeping profits high for as long as possible.
@cstross There was a nice analogy for this on Greg Jenner’s You’re Dead to Me history programme;
back in the days of the viciously colonial spice trade, the Dutch tried to maintain high prices by burning spices in the Amsterdam docks; no matter that thousands of islanders had been killed, and hundreds of sailors drowned to get them, they burned them rather than accept a less than stratospheric price, while also starving their competition of product. -
@furicle @cstross It is not what it was and a whole lot of effort has gone into, e.g. doing things with on board computers to prevent off-brand parts. (Not, in autos, as much as in heavy machinery including farm machinery.) "Right to repair" didn't start with small electronic gadgets.
Or look at the cost of replacing a headlight; lots of effort has gone into making you buy the big assembly and not either a standard headlight or replacing a bulb.
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@graydon @furicle This goes back a long way, though. I remember being appalled in 1991 when the windscreen wiper on my car packed up and discovering it needed a sealed assembly with motor, gearing, and two arms to fix it—it wasn't designed to be repairable. (I shared a house with a car kitbasher, though, so he got it working again: opened it up and replaced the stripped plastic gear.)
@cstross @furicle Back to at least to the 1970s!
The core point I'm after is that collusion across entire industries to prevent unwanted behavior (that is, not giving them maximal money) has a deep history of being found completely legal and proper and more or less working.
A combination of pricing people out of the market and pressure to make every device a managed device has been going on about personal computing hardware for at least ten years. Turning that up to 11 isn't implausible.
