If the AI bubble bursts most of the western world will be thrown into deep recession again and I hope we don’t get a repeat of 2008 just for cheap RAM or GPUs
What I’m becoming worried about now is all these corporations now realizing that they can simply supply price the average consumer out of owning electronics or any kind of compute. And locking them into renting or leasing access to data center compute and keeping the power of information further consolidated in corporate interests.
That out of context quote takes a lot of shit for something that was supposed to represent a futuristic socialist utopia.
The idea was that 14 years after that article was published, mankind would have such immediate access to services and those services would be free, that people would just sorta stop caring about owning things. For example, since food and necessities would be free, you could go home and print your dinner. If you wanted someone else to cook, you’d get something delivered. But, if you wanted to try something truly novel that most people don’t do anymore in this society, you could rent kitchen equipment and it’d be ready as soon as you need it, and you’d use socialized appliances and utensils. Why? Because your home doesn’t need that clutter. If you wanna cook all the time, you can own whatever you want. But most people will want to use that space for something else, so they’ll just print their meals.
You would have quick and easy access to transport, so why waste the money and space to own a car? You wanna drive? Push a button in your app and a car arrives for free. Or take the free train or bus.
The essay isn’t about “you won’t be able to own anything,” it’s about “you won’t want to own anything, but you’ll have everything you could ever want or need.”
And we’re really headed in the right direction for this amazing future. Except, you know… Corporations are bleeding us dry instead of supporting us…
That does sound lovely, but like every other utopia it’s a fantasy. It’s got the same fatal issue as every other utopia - people. A person can be good and decent, but people suck. I’d say the modern use of that quote is more accurate to reality than the rose tinted view of its origin.
Even if the initial intention is positive, I think this degree of dependency on external services is not realistic even if mega corps were not as bad as they are currently.
Holy cow that’s a very real danger I hadn’t thought of! The industry needs a new trend to reuse all this capacity they built, because AI will likely scale back as many startups fail to reach profit.
Renting your home computer might be the next trend, and it could be gratis at first so people get used to it. Why spy on users when you can actually own their computers?
The vast majority of people who surf the web don’t use a computer to do it. People who do belong to niches. People over a certain age grew up with and still buy computers. People who game still buy computers or consoles. People who stream/create content still use computers and other electronics for that purpose, same with like. Engineers and hobbyists using CAD and other software in creative spaces.
But the smart phone has overtaken the computer as a personal computing device by quite a large margin now. And at every turn companies are trying to make cell phones a den of ad service, slop, and addictive content while stealing any user data that’s not nailed down to increase their revenue and continue the circle.
with being a walled garden i have a feeling we will eventually see phones become genuinely free because you will not have an option to keep your data away from advertisers. AOSP is barely holding on to maintain a safe place for users. when all hardware is locked down we will be stuck.
I’m assuming you mean that phone software will be free, because phones (while they can be heavily subsidized) aren’t free and are getting up to ridiculous prices. I own a phone that retails for $1000. That’s a ridiculous price for a phone. Except that phones now are just very tiny personal computers.
No but I do hold onto old electronics because I grew up with my grandparents and they had WW2 wartime rationing mentality about saving everything. Also my grandfather also an incredibly cheap bastards at times too
theyd have to all collorbate to make that happen though, which is really unfeasable on their end. a BUNCH of companies will go under if they cannot sell product. they arent going to willingly take losses for the sake of a different company.
They don’t really have to collaborate though. They’re proving right now that they can price out consumers by just buying all the hardware capacity up and letting the market take care of the little guys. Hardware manufacturers like Micron are obliging.
the ai companies are but that doesnt talk about the hardware specific companies. for example dell, hp and lenovo run a large business laptop leasing business if they do not get their ram, it will sour their relationships with memory manufacturers . they arent all going to be willing to take losses
for example dell, hp and lenovo run a large business laptop leasing business if they do not get their ram, it will sour their relationships with memory manufacturers
Lenovo is stockpiling memory to try to make it through the RAM winter.
Lenovo stockpiles RAM as prices skyrocket, reportedly has enough inventory to last through 2026 — memory stock claimed to be 50% higher than usual to fight pricing shock
Lenovo is playing it smart and buying up as much memory inventory as it can
I don’t think that Lenovo is getting special deals with memory makers either, or they wouldn’t need to stockpile.
I hope they do, it will just break stuff more and people will be more likely to go with Linux and open source software. My 10 year old computer still is super fast if it’s not bloated.
Linux won’t make bullshit pc part prices cheaper. RAM, SSDs, GPUs are all rising in prices because of the AI bubble, used and new are all being affected. Can’t run Linux if the parts are too expensive to even get in the first place.
My point is that there is existing hardware already out on the secondary market for cheap, and can run most of what anybody needs. All those machines that aren’t up to snuff for Windows 11 standards don’t need to go into the landfill.
Keyboard prices soared this month, as tech giants pivoted from failed AI projects to employing hordes of monkeys typing randomly. One CEO was quoted as saying, “Just a few trillion more dollars, and I think our random typing model could reproduce the lost contents of the Library of Alexandria.”
Even when the bubble bursts, they’re going to have an insane amount of computing power just sitting there, it will get sold off in bankruptcy proceedings, and some company will gobble it up and operate at a loss while continuing to secure future supply contracts.
There’s a very real chance that we’re witnessing the slow death of home computing.
The way things shake out it might end up being prohibitively expensive compared to cloud computing, and once that’s the norm they price gouge like Walmart did to destroy small businesses.
Instead of dropping a couple grand for a PC every couple years, we’ll have steady contracts paying for month at a time indefinitely.
Nah. Web devs will create even more bloated web pages to keep home computing in business.
For real though, most people don’t need that much computing power, and we reached the plateau 12 years ago. That’s why we’re seeing crypto and AI grifts happen. They recentralize decentralized systems. The elites are striking back.
You know the saying“information wants to be free; information wants to be expensive”? This is the expensive part where people try to horde knowledge by making it inaccessible to everyday people.
I think it’s a lost cause. Essentially both crypto and AI were big because someone figured out how to offload shit to a GPU efficiently. There’s probably a ton of other appllications for GPUs we haven’t even tapped.
Serial compute isn’t doing the double-every-18-months-in-speed since something like the early 2000s.
Unlike with serial compute, not all problems can be solved, run faster, with parallel compute. But at some point, unless we figure out some sort of new way to play with physics, we pretty much have to move to parallel compute where we can if we want much more performance.
I can only hope that the A.I. bubble bursts in time when I need to buy a new computer.
If the AI bubble bursts most of the western world will be thrown into deep recession again and I hope we don’t get a repeat of 2008 just for cheap RAM or GPUs
It’s already there for most of us. It only a few rich companies getting richer that’s making the line go up.
What I’m becoming worried about now is all these corporations now realizing that they can simply supply price the average consumer out of owning electronics or any kind of compute. And locking them into renting or leasing access to data center compute and keeping the power of information further consolidated in corporate interests.
“You will own nothing and be happy”
That out of context quote takes a lot of shit for something that was supposed to represent a futuristic socialist utopia.
The idea was that 14 years after that article was published, mankind would have such immediate access to services and those services would be free, that people would just sorta stop caring about owning things. For example, since food and necessities would be free, you could go home and print your dinner. If you wanted someone else to cook, you’d get something delivered. But, if you wanted to try something truly novel that most people don’t do anymore in this society, you could rent kitchen equipment and it’d be ready as soon as you need it, and you’d use socialized appliances and utensils. Why? Because your home doesn’t need that clutter. If you wanna cook all the time, you can own whatever you want. But most people will want to use that space for something else, so they’ll just print their meals.
You would have quick and easy access to transport, so why waste the money and space to own a car? You wanna drive? Push a button in your app and a car arrives for free. Or take the free train or bus.
The essay isn’t about “you won’t be able to own anything,” it’s about “you won’t want to own anything, but you’ll have everything you could ever want or need.”
And we’re really headed in the right direction for this amazing future. Except, you know… Corporations are bleeding us dry instead of supporting us…
That does sound lovely, but like every other utopia it’s a fantasy. It’s got the same fatal issue as every other utopia - people. A person can be good and decent, but people suck. I’d say the modern use of that quote is more accurate to reality than the rose tinted view of its origin.
“To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem.”
The link doesn’t work for me.
Even if the initial intention is positive, I think this degree of dependency on external services is not realistic even if mega corps were not as bad as they are currently.
Thank you. This is the first version I heard so I was confused why it’s bad and people being against it.
Holy cow that’s a very real danger I hadn’t thought of! The industry needs a new trend to reuse all this capacity they built, because AI will likely scale back as many startups fail to reach profit.
Renting your home computer might be the next trend, and it could be gratis at first so people get used to it. Why spy on users when you can actually own their computers?
Username unfortunately checks out
Aren’t we already seeing that though?
The vast majority of people who surf the web don’t use a computer to do it. People who do belong to niches. People over a certain age grew up with and still buy computers. People who game still buy computers or consoles. People who stream/create content still use computers and other electronics for that purpose, same with like. Engineers and hobbyists using CAD and other software in creative spaces.
But the smart phone has overtaken the computer as a personal computing device by quite a large margin now. And at every turn companies are trying to make cell phones a den of ad service, slop, and addictive content while stealing any user data that’s not nailed down to increase their revenue and continue the circle.
with being a walled garden i have a feeling we will eventually see phones become genuinely free because you will not have an option to keep your data away from advertisers. AOSP is barely holding on to maintain a safe place for users. when all hardware is locked down we will be stuck.
I’m assuming you mean that phone software will be free, because phones (while they can be heavily subsidized) aren’t free and are getting up to ridiculous prices. I own a phone that retails for $1000. That’s a ridiculous price for a phone. Except that phones now are just very tiny personal computers.
I hope it means the return of old, old hardware and the software that comes along with it. This is why projects like collapseOs are important.
“Please insert more corpo-coin for compute access”
Hope my verification can still works!
Wouldn’t the chinese or whoever doesn’t chose to do that gain market share?
The competence can be drowned in irrelevancy, like Microsoft and IE
Anybody hold onto all their old electronics just in case in spite of the financial/resource “waste”?
No but I do hold onto old electronics because I grew up with my grandparents and they had WW2 wartime rationing mentality about saving everything. Also my grandfather also an incredibly cheap bastards at times too
theyd have to all collorbate to make that happen though, which is really unfeasable on their end. a BUNCH of companies will go under if they cannot sell product. they arent going to willingly take losses for the sake of a different company.
They don’t really have to collaborate though. They’re proving right now that they can price out consumers by just buying all the hardware capacity up and letting the market take care of the little guys. Hardware manufacturers like Micron are obliging.
the ai companies are but that doesnt talk about the hardware specific companies. for example dell, hp and lenovo run a large business laptop leasing business if they do not get their ram, it will sour their relationships with memory manufacturers . they arent all going to be willing to take losses
Lenovo is stockpiling memory to try to make it through the RAM winter.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/lenovo-stockpiles-ram-as-prices-skyrocket-reportedly-has-enough-inventory-to-last-through-2026-memory-stock-claimed-to-be-50-percent-higher-than-usual-to-fight-pricing-shock
I don’t think that Lenovo is getting special deals with memory makers either, or they wouldn’t need to stockpile.
I hope they do, it will just break stuff more and people will be more likely to go with Linux and open source software. My 10 year old computer still is super fast if it’s not bloated.
Linux won’t make bullshit pc part prices cheaper. RAM, SSDs, GPUs are all rising in prices because of the AI bubble, used and new are all being affected. Can’t run Linux if the parts are too expensive to even get in the first place.
Software needs hardware Linux dose nothing but make it easier for them.
Can I introduce you to a concept of installing Linux on a dead badger?
My point is that there is existing hardware already out on the secondary market for cheap, and can run most of what anybody needs. All those machines that aren’t up to snuff for Windows 11 standards don’t need to go into the landfill.
How’s your 10 year old computer going to look when it’s 30 years old?
Only if you use their products and allow them to profit from it.
First it was GPUs because crypto, then this. Wonder what useless thing the tech bros will cover up with in a few years!
Article in 2027:
When in a gold rush, be the one selling shovels.
I’m off to buy stocks in bananas.
Good luck…
Even when the bubble bursts, they’re going to have an insane amount of computing power just sitting there, it will get sold off in bankruptcy proceedings, and some company will gobble it up and operate at a loss while continuing to secure future supply contracts.
There’s a very real chance that we’re witnessing the slow death of home computing.
The way things shake out it might end up being prohibitively expensive compared to cloud computing, and once that’s the norm they price gouge like Walmart did to destroy small businesses.
Instead of dropping a couple grand for a PC every couple years, we’ll have steady contracts paying for month at a time indefinitely.
Nah. Web devs will create even more bloated web pages to keep home computing in business.
For real though, most people don’t need that much computing power, and we reached the plateau 12 years ago. That’s why we’re seeing crypto and AI grifts happen. They recentralize decentralized systems. The elites are striking back.
You know the saying“information wants to be free; information wants to be expensive”? This is the expensive part where people try to horde knowledge by making it inaccessible to everyday people.
People thought they’d hang onto CDs and DVDs too…
Those GPUs fry themselves in a year or two, and utility prices will put pressure on governments to concept datacenters
I think it’s a lost cause. Essentially both crypto and AI were big because someone figured out how to offload shit to a GPU efficiently. There’s probably a ton of other appllications for GPUs we haven’t even tapped.
I’ve got this crazy idea where we can use GPUs to render 3D scenes efficiently.
Serial compute isn’t doing the double-every-18-months-in-speed since something like the early 2000s.
Unlike with serial compute, not all problems can be solved, run faster, with parallel compute. But at some point, unless we figure out some sort of new way to play with physics, we pretty much have to move to parallel compute where we can if we want much more performance.
Right? Feel bad for anyone that just had a system fry or have been saving up to upgrade.
Same