[systemvoltage]

Between 2007-2009, 80+ Stratasys patents expired. Think about this - a single company holding back the world in advancing forward in 3D printing. Orthogonally, ever wondered why memory on your PC is so expensive? Thanks to Micron, Hynix and Samsung triopoly.

[rudedogg]

> Orthogonally, ever wondered why memory on your PC is so expensive? Thanks to Micron, Hynix and Samsung triopoly.

Should have mentioned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing. It's not just speculative.

[spoonjim]

But isn’t it those same companies that are the reason that memory isn’t $1000/megabyte?

[mynameisvlad]

I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say here. Are you implying that they could price gouge even more than they already are and are keeping prices relatively low out of the goodness of their hearts?

[est31]

I think their point is that these companies gave us cheap memory in the first place. Which is an important thing to remember. The distruptors of days past are the monopolists of today. And they themselves will be disrupted one day.

[SV_BubbleTime]

> The distruptors of days past are the monopolists of today. And they themselves will be disrupted one day.

I can think of a few that can’t be disrupted soon enough.

[ericd]

They're saying it used to be that much, and now it's orders of magnitude less, thanks in part to those companies.

[systemvoltage]

I am not sure if I understand your point.

[dragosmocrii]

Can you elaborate on the memory pricing?

[dsr_]

Here's an article from 2011 doing Moore's Law extrapolation of RAM and disk prices: https://antranik.org/using-moores-law-to-predict-future-memo...

RAM, 2011: "A single 8GB stick of RAM is about $80 right now. In 2021, you’d be able to buy a single stick of RAM that contains 64GB for the same price."

Disks, 2011: "The price of a 1-terabyte hard drive is $80 now...

In 2013, a 2TB drive will be $80.

In 2015, a 4TB drive will be $80.

After that the doubling rate may lengthen to 3 years instead of 2 years so..

In 2018, an 8TB drive will be $80. And finally in 2021, for $80, you’d be able to buy a 16 terabyte hard drive"

[Someone]

I don’t think it’s fair to expect hard drive capacity/$ to grow exponentially forever.

Certainly for consumer hard drives, there’s a cost of getting the drive to the customer (transport, shop rent, employee salaries, etc) which is, at best, fixed.

If manufacturing costs drop to zero, price will approach that fixed cost (plus any markup sellers manage to extract, for example by marketing their drives as better/more hip/etc.)

[mendelmaleh]

For the record, it's 2021 and the cheapest 16tb hard drive on pcpartpicker is $335. For $80 you can get a cheap 4tb hard drive.

[treeman79]

When I was a kid, me and a friend would be amazed at a 25,000 dollar 1 TB multi hd array.

We couldn’t imagine how anyone would ever need so much space.

[ivegotnoaccount]

Is applying Moore's law relevant, since the manufacturing process of DRAM is hugely different from the one for usual chips (limited by capacitor size, not transistor one) ? Same goes for hard drives. Not saying that price gouging has nothing to do with this, but simply saying "Moore's law was not followed" does in no way imply something interfered with it.

[loeg]

Moore's law was (1) an observation of historical data and (2) never a guarantee by vendors to make higher capacity products at lower prices. The extrapolation is just nonsense wishful thinking.

[hyperpallium2]

lcd screens didn't fall in price because of an international criminal price-fixing conspiracy. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/TFT-LCD_(Flat_Panel)_Antitrust_Li...