I don’t think people understand how bad this is going to get.

@thomasfuchs Gotta admit, all those circular deals between Nvidia and their oligopoly friends are starting to work for them (at least until the ai scam bubble pops).

I guess they saw the chip shortage around the COVID era and are doing what's needed to replicate that everywhere they can.

@thomasfuchs This is like having rich people buying up all of the housing stock and renting it back to the rest of us.

@thomasfuchs Isn't it already too late?

@thomasfuchs Hey! I'm a turbo nerd!

@thomasfuchs Agreed that it will get bad. But the issue won't be that we can't afford to upgrade our computers or buy new ones. The tech industry will simply stop manufacturing hardware that gives us any computing autonomy.

We'll be presented with 'thin-clients' in various forms and we'll use them however big tech decides we should.

@thomasfuchs the free market will regulate itself, right?!

@thijs lol

@JoshMurray @thomasfuchs Transmeta Crusoe! Now there's a name I've not heard in a long time... a _long_ time.

@thomasfuchs yeah well...
The end game here is to force people into the cloud for everything. And then crank up prices when there's no more PC on the market suitable to do things offline.

@thomasfuchs If only we knew where a huge cache of memory chips, conveniently gathered into one location that is extremely poorly guarded and designed to be unmanned, happened to be...

@gordoooo_z @thomasfuchs
The prices seems to have stabilized at stores in the last 2 months for the DDR5 kits that I have looked at. Still it is very expensive and I have delayed my planned upgrade until the prices drops or I'm noticing performance loss of my current PC.

200$ for a 32GB kit DDR5 is cheap compared with the prices in my country, here the prices are twice as expensive.

@thomasfuchs

Story time! In September I got a mail from the IT center at my job that my laptop will be replaced. So I ordered a new with high spec and received it in beginning in December which is slower than usually. The laptop works well for me but in the end of January I received a mail that the motherboard could be impacted with bad connection for the charger and the charger could stop working at any time. So the motherboard should be replaced. Unfortunately no motherboards are available.

@thomasfuchs oddly enough, memory can work for decades and I learned to do math in school… in my head! I know!

@thomasfuchs I'm more afraid of the cascading effect that could make suppliers go bankrupt and stuck with hardware unusable in consumer electronics. So next 3-5 years may be optimistic.

@thomasfuchs
It continues to frustrate me that reporting always seems to say "data center" without distinction. I've worked in data centers for decades and, not only are those centers not the problem, most of the companies in them are heavily affected by the problem. Without data centers the internet doesn't exist. Access to components is becoming an issue for the traditional data center.

The problem is specific to AI data centers and AI companies themselves. Those are the data centers being built at an alarming rate and are affecting many of the companies that you don't hear about that keep the internet running.

@thomasfuchs interesting, but on the bright side, this might be the kick that manufacturers need to stop shoving "smart" into everything

@thomasfuchs Humm, so how are end users, who are supposed to start providing an income stream for AI, supposed to buy new hardware...?

#AIBubble

@thomasfuchs this is some insane cross between hyper capitalism and Roko’s Basilisk. This will categorically increase human misery, not diminish it.

@bobkmertz @thomasfuchs
Indeed. There are also data centers that may be considered as niche but that host important applications like weather and climate forecasting. Those will also suffer.

@kim_harding @thomasfuchs
And even if the AI bubble makes it past this hurdle, it's still highly unclear how it wouldn't tank the economy if every white collar worker gets fired.