[stuxnet79]

Don't forget that this is all intentional and by design. If the tech oligarchs have their way we will all have no choice but to rent compute by the token within the next 3-5 years. The era of the personal computer is over. Current supply chains & production capacity can't accomodate both the AI hyperscalers and regular consumers.

[malfist]

Thats one hell of a leap you got there. Things have gotten more expensive before. It won't be the last

[jauntywundrkind]

8x more expensive? I doubt things have ever gotten anywhere remotely near this crazy this bought out this not for sale this fast.

[malfist]

Memory used to be worth more than gold by weight, and still every stick was sold.

GPUs, flight controllers, etc went sky high during the pandemic and we still buy them today.

Hard drives got way more expensive during flooding, and we still have local storage.

[xienze]

> Memory used to be worth more than gold by weight, and still every stick was sold.

And right before that, was it dirt cheap? No? Slightly different scenario then.

> GPUs, flight controllers, etc went sky high during the pandemic and we still buy them today.

They're even more now...

> Hard drives got way more expensive during flooding, and we still have local storage.

Nowhere near as expensive as they are now, nowhere near as high a jump in price in a short period of time as now. Plus, there was a defined end point of "flood over, back to normal." There is no "AI data center build out over, back to normal" in sight.

[jauntywundrkind]

I'm so unsure why someone was working so hard to wedge such doubt amid such clearness. Yes, well said, very core clear differences you raise, my thanks.

[t-writescode]

Tulips?

[jauntywundrkind]

Tulips just look pretty. That's a mania. I think we recognize the mental agility that having compute fan give people, that we acknowledge this bicycle of the mind as potentially freeing liberating and virtually travelling.

[WithinReason]

Bitcoin?

[xerox13ster]

Have things gotten this much more expensive at the same time that massive datacenters are harmonically distorting power delivery [0] to the point that it degrades the lifetime of your existing devices?

The AI datacenters are making things more expensive and at the same time destroying existing electronics. All this is happening at the same time that the major OS vendors are locking down their operating systems and creating device attestation frameworks.

Whether it is a coordinated effort behind the scenes is irrelevant, the real outcome of all of this is that the average home tech prosumer will not be able to afford to maintain personal hardware that remains compatible with mainstream services.

In light of the consumer market RAM shortages, all the consumer devices will transition to thin client architectures that offload all their real compute to the centralized cloud. You will not be allowed to modify these devices, and there will be nothing you can modify them to do. They will have no ports, using wireless charging and wireless connectivity, and likely even any UART will be left off the board, if you can get them open at all. Like the Apple Watch or Airpods, they will not be built to be openable, and opening them will be an irreversibly destructive act.

You will not be able to buy these devices, they will only be available on a subscription basis. You will own nothing and be told you should be happy.

Online major digital services will only be compatible with these devices, offering no endpoints for third party devices to connect.

[0]: https://archive.ph/f707o

[tjohns]

It's always been a good idea to have a UPS in front of any digital electronics anyway.

Brown-outs are arguably more dangerous to your electronics, and those are more common now with more frequent heat waves during the summer, stressing the electric grid and triggering public safety shutoffs on the US west coast.

I also think the concerns in the article are overblown. I grew up in the mountains where the electric grid was notoriously poor quality, especially when buildings would fail over to (often poor-quality) generators. It would make computer monitors misbehave, but rarely did it actually damage anything.

[xerox13ster]

Again, good luck affording a UPS when price hikes really kick off. If there is no workstation market, even for small businesses, what happens to the UPS market?

[dankben]

You're acting like companies like Apple would simply let "the tech oligarchs" make 20% of their revenue disappear

[sheepdestroyer]

I don't want an apple blob I want to pick specific components and run linux

[xerox13ster]

You're acting like Apple wouldn't simply make hay in a world of thin client device subscriptions, where they can charge a subscription for the thin client device and the services that make it usable.

[tavavex]

Trillion dollar companies like Apple will still be able to get their hands on whatever they need, albeit at worse prices. Individual consumers trying to buy those components directly probably won't.

[pjmlp]

They wouldn't blink twice pushing everyone into iPhone, iPad and watches.

The death of Mac was already a discussion topic a few years ago, they only need do XCode on iPadOS or iCloud, Android Studio style.