[JimmaDaRustla]

My crude metaphor to explain to my family is gasoline has just been invented and we're all being lent Bentley's to get us addicted to driving everywhere. Eventually we won't be given free Bentley's, and someone is going to be holding the bag when the infinite money machine finally has a hiccup. The tech giants are hoping their gasoline is the one that we all crave when we're left depending on driving everywhere and the costs go soaring.

[eru]

Why? Computers and anything computer related have historically been dropping in prices like crazy year after year (with only very occasional hiccups). What makes you think this will stop now?

[shykes]

Commodity hardware and software will continue to drop in price.

Enterprise products with sufficient market share and "stickiness", will not.

For historical precedent, see the commercial practices of Oracle, Microsoft, Vmware, Salesforce, at the height of their power.

[hugmynutus]

> Commodity hardware and software will continue to drop in price.

The software is free (citation: Cuda, nvcc, llvm, olama/llama cpp, linux, etc)

The hardware is *not* getting cheaper (unless we're talking a 5+ year time) as most manufacturers are signaling the current shortages will continue ~24 months.

[shykes]

> The software is free (citation: Cuda, nvcc, llvm, olama/llama cpp, linux, etc)

If you factor in the cost of integration and ongoing maintenance - by humans or llms - it is not free. But it certainly has never been cheaper.

[eru]

> The hardware is not getting cheaper (unless we're talking a 5+ year time)

Yes, that's the time I'm talking about.

You also had a blip with increasing hard disk prices when Thailand flooded a few years ago.

[denimnerd42]

GB300 NVL72 is 50% more expensive than GB200 I've heard.

[Wobbles42]

It has stopped. Demand is now rising faster than supply in memory, storage and GPUs.

We see vendors reducing memory in new smart phones in 2026 vs 2025 for example.

At least for the moment falling consumer tech hardware prices are over.

[HDThoreaun]

Memory and storage has always been very cyclical. This is nothing new

[CamperBob2]

In the GP's analogy, the Bentley can be rented for $3/day, but if you want to purchase it outright, it will cost you $3,000,000.

Despite the high price, the Bentley factory is running 24/7 and still behind schedule due to orders placed by the rental-car company, who has nearly-infinite money.

[Ekaros]

On consumer side looking at a few past generations I question that. I would guess that we are nearing some sort of plateau there or already on it. There was inflation, but still not even considering RAM prices from last jump gains relative to cost were not that massive.

[JimmaDaRustla]

Please show me where any AI company is currently turning a profit with their current offering and price structure, then let's have that conversation.

[walterbell]

Recent price trends for DRAM, SSDs, hard drives?

[aftbit]

Short term squeeze, because building capacity takes time and real funding. The component manufacturers have been here before. Booms rarely last long enough to justify a build-out. If AI demand turns out to be sustained, the market will eventually adapt by building supply, and prices will drop. If AI demand turns out to be transient, demand will drop, and prices will drop.

[adrianN]

Cars have also been dropping in price.

[Wobbles42]

And knives apparently.

I recently encountered this randomly -- knives are apparently one of the few products that nearly every household has needed since antiquity, and they have changed fairly little since the bronze age, so they are used by economists as a benchmark that can span centuries.

Source: it was an aside in a random economics conversation with charGPT (grain of salt?).

There is no practical upshot here, but I thought it was cool.

[sarchertech]

Yeah I’d definitely take that knife thing with a grain of salt. I have most of a history degree, took a lot of Econ classes (before later going back for CS), and it’s a topic I’m very interested in and I’ve never heard that (and some digging didn’t find anything).

It’s also false that the technology has changed very little.

The jumps from bronze to iron to steel to modern steel and sometimes to stainless steel all result in vastly different products. Not to mention the advances in composite materials for handles.

Then you need to look at substitute goods and the what people actually used knives for.

A huge amount of the demand for knives evaporated thanks to societal changes and substitute goods like forks. A few hundred years ago the average person had a knife that was their primary eating utensil, a survival tool, and a self defense weapon. Knives like that exist today but they’re not something every household has or needs.

This is a good example of why learning from ChatGPT is dangerous. This is a story that sounds very plausible at first glance, but doesn’t make sense once you dig in.

[Wobbles42]

Interesting. I am glad you commented. It's nice getting grounding from someone with a real background in the area.

With that said, if it is a hallucination (and it sounds like it was), it's one of the more interesting ones I have encountered. It almost has the shape of a good idea.

Blade and handle material has certainly changed over the years, but I think good arguments about how relevant that is could be made both ways. They remain handled cutting tools, used in the same general way, for the same general purposes (though as you posted out, some use cases have gone away). Basically anyone from any of these periods would recognize a knife from any other, and be able to pick it up and make immediate use of it for all their normal knife related purposes.

To be clear though, I am now siding with the clankers and arguing for a hallucination. It's an interesting thing to think about, but it sounds like it's not an established concept in any way shape or form.

[sciencejerk]

Evidence for this claim?

[fatherwavelet]

I had a 1990 Ford Taurus as my first car. I had got it used and I remember it being completely impossible to afford a new car at the time.

It was sticker price of $33,000 adjusted for inflation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Taurus_%28second_generati...

I don't think it would even feel safe to drive at all compared to what we have got use to with modern cars. It broke down 3 times while I had it and stranded me on the road. No cell phone of course to call anyone.

These were the mythic "good ol days".

[adrianN]

A few generations ago almost nobody could afford a car, now many low income families afford two.

[sciencejerk]

Maybe cars are not cheaper, just easier to finance due to the modern credit systems?

[echelon]

I like this analogy.

I also think we're, as ICs, being given Bentleys meanwhile they're trying to invent Waymos to put us all out of work.

Humans are the cost center in their world model.