It’s related to the AI bubble. The AI companies are trying to make it as difficult as possible to get a good PC, because they know they’re cooked if the general public has access to systems that can run AI models locally, so they’re buying everything up as fast as they can in the name of data centers that will never be built.
As soon as the first one fails, it’s all over. Prices will tumble and memory makers will come crawling back to Valve (and other hardware makers) begging them to buy.
Let’s not forget that almost all memory is made by a cartel of 3 companies known for price fixing. They’re all being as slow as possible about increasing production capacity.
Is that not for good reason though? Only for them really, but if they did ramp up production and then the bubble pops… I wish they would ramp up production, it’s just easy to understand why they won’t.
If there is a demand for ram, which there is in the consumer market, then it shouldn’t be a risk. If DCs get cancelled, then they should have contracts in place for at least a minimum buy, which should offset cost risk. If they don’t have that, then that’s just shitty business. Even still, they can just as easily slow down production if needed. If the bubble pops, either they’ll have inventory that the world will buy and they can throttle back prod, or they don’t have inventory and they will have to throttle prod anyway since demand for DCs as a whole has to be more than just the consumer market.
Idk, it’s probably just the cynic in me, but I think it’s likely this is just manipulation of the prices, especially given the history of these companies doing just that.
They definitely have contracts that ensure the ai companies buy the ordered amount.
However building new production factories is expensive as fuck. They know they need to do that. But why buy a factory for billions and sell RAM at a lower price when you just don’t spend billions and earn even more with less RAM
It’s not the average consumer spending thousands on tokens. Even my work just had a meeting about how “the free lunch is over” now that AI costs are expanding, and they bought their own hardware to investigate hosting local models.
Linux is widely used in the enterprise world. It’s the home consumer world that doesn’t use it as much and even that is rapidly changing as things enshitify.
Also Linux and Windows are pretty different in use cases and capabilities. Meanwhile, local AI models have a very similar user experience. If hardware was cheaper and people could run better LLMs locally, they wouldn’t pay monthly for it.
In the workplace, there are still a lot of domain specific programs that don’t have Linux support. Companies don’t have much of an incentive to port that stuff over. As for the people who just need a web browser, they probably would use Linux just fine if they could buy a computer at BestBuy that comes with Linux preinstalled
Compare that to LLM programs, where it’s a matter of “download this app instead of that one, because this one is free and that one costs $25 a month”
It’s related to the AI bubble. The AI companies are trying to make it as difficult as possible to get a good PC, because they know they’re cooked if the general public has access to systems that can run AI models locally, so they’re buying everything up as fast as they can in the name of data centers that will never be built.
As soon as the first one fails, it’s all over. Prices will tumble and memory makers will come crawling back to Valve (and other hardware makers) begging them to buy.
Let’s not forget that almost all memory is made by a cartel of 3 companies known for price fixing. They’re all being as slow as possible about increasing production capacity.
Is that not for good reason though? Only for them really, but if they did ramp up production and then the bubble pops… I wish they would ramp up production, it’s just easy to understand why they won’t.
If there is a demand for ram, which there is in the consumer market, then it shouldn’t be a risk. If DCs get cancelled, then they should have contracts in place for at least a minimum buy, which should offset cost risk. If they don’t have that, then that’s just shitty business. Even still, they can just as easily slow down production if needed. If the bubble pops, either they’ll have inventory that the world will buy and they can throttle back prod, or they don’t have inventory and they will have to throttle prod anyway since demand for DCs as a whole has to be more than just the consumer market.
Idk, it’s probably just the cynic in me, but I think it’s likely this is just manipulation of the prices, especially given the history of these companies doing just that.
They definitely have contracts that ensure the ai companies buy the ordered amount.
However building new production factories is expensive as fuck. They know they need to do that. But why buy a factory for billions and sell RAM at a lower price when you just don’t spend billions and earn even more with less RAM
Because if you don’t do everything possible to continuously improve your business, others may catch up with you
Hah. That’s the point where a good cartel comes in and ensures that this is not the case.
Yep. Just like how nobody uses Windows since Linux is easily accessible.
Wait
It’s not the average consumer spending thousands on tokens. Even my work just had a meeting about how “the free lunch is over” now that AI costs are expanding, and they bought their own hardware to investigate hosting local models.
Linux is widely used in the enterprise world. It’s the home consumer world that doesn’t use it as much and even that is rapidly changing as things enshitify.
What are you talking about?
The general public adopting open tech themselves instead of using corporate options
Was that not clear?
Having an option vs not having an option
Also Linux and Windows are pretty different in use cases and capabilities. Meanwhile, local AI models have a very similar user experience. If hardware was cheaper and people could run better LLMs locally, they wouldn’t pay monthly for it.
You’re right, the general public doesn’t use Linux due to the lack of ability to browse the web and file their taxes—Windows exclusive functionality.
In the workplace, there are still a lot of domain specific programs that don’t have Linux support. Companies don’t have much of an incentive to port that stuff over. As for the people who just need a web browser, they probably would use Linux just fine if they could buy a computer at BestBuy that comes with Linux preinstalled
Compare that to LLM programs, where it’s a matter of “download this app instead of that one, because this one is free and that one costs $25 a month”