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Hold on to Your Hardware

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Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#41

Post by imtringued »

I just realized that this blog site is pretending to be malware. I opened the tab and was constantly switching between the blog and writing this HN comment (I deleted the rest of the comment after realizing it) and was wondering where the tab went and kept opening it over and over again, then I realized that it completely rewrote the tab title with NSFW content (one of the title contained the world "nudes" with a faked amazon favicon) and when you reopen the tab, it shows you a black overlay with a message intended to induce shock if you ever bother to read it (I didn't read past the first sentence so I don't know what it was actually about).

Can dang/a moderator please ban the domain from HN? Even if its not exactly malware, it's pretending to be malware to grab your attention and it's obviously intending to fill your browser history with inappropriate content, which didn't work on my browser because I opened the blog in a private browser session. The operator clearly doesn't run his blog in good faith.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#42

Post by Arn_Thor »

dust42 wrote: post #23

Just to mention one thing, helium -which is a necessity for chip production- is a byproduct of LNG production. And 20% of that is just gone (Qatar) and the question is how long it will take to get that back. So not only a chip shortage because of AI buying chips in huge volumes but also because production will be hampered. Tongue in cheek: we urgently need fusion power plants. For the AI and the helium.

Considering my helium-filled hard drives a strategic reserve now

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#43

Post by torben-friis »

barrkel wrote: post #15

I don't buy the central thesis of the article. We won't be in a supply crunch forever. However, I do believe that we're at an inflection point where DC hardware is diverging rapidly from consumer compute. Most consumers are using laptops and laptops are not keeping pace with where the frontier is in a singular compute node. Laptops are increasingly just clients for someone else's compute that you rent, or buy a time…

The thing is, other than AI stuff, where does a non powerful computer limit you?

My phone has 16gigs of ram and a terabyte of storage, laptops today are ridiculous compared to anything I studied with.

I'm not arguing mind you, just trying to understand the usecases people are thinking of here.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#44

Post by gzread »

guessmyname wrote: post #28
barrkel wrote: post #15

I don't buy the central thesis of the article. We won't be in a supply crunch forever. However, I do believe that we're at an inflection point where DC hardware is diverging rapidly from consumer compute. Most consumers are using laptops and laptops are not keeping pace with where the frontier is in a singular compute node. Laptops are increasingly just clients for someone else's compute that you rent, or buy a time…

> I personally dropped $20k on a high end desktop - 768G of RAM, 96 cores, 96 GB Blackwell GPU - last October, before RAM prices spiked […] 768GB of RAM is insane… Meanwhile, I’ve been going back and forth for over a year about spending $10k on a MacBook Pro with 128GB. I can’t shake the feeling I’d never actually use that much, and that, long term, cloud compute is going to matter more than sinking money into a sing…

> 768GB of RAM is insane.

Before this price spike, it used to be you could get a second-hand rack server with 1TB of DDR4 for about $1000-2000. People were massively underestimating the performance of reasonably priced server hardware.

You can still get that, of course, but it costs a lot more. The recycling company I know is now taking the RAM out of every server and selling it separately.

Apple hardware is incredibly overpriced.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#45

Post by jaen »

imtringued wrote: post #41

I just realized that this blog site is pretending to be malware. I opened the tab and was constantly switching between the blog and writing this HN comment (I deleted the rest of the comment after realizing it) and was wondering where the tab went and kept opening it over and over again, then I realized that it completely rewrote the tab title with NSFW content (one of the title contained the world "nudes" with a fak…

It doesn't write anything extra to the browser history. How about actually checking before exaggerating. If you are bothered by a single wrong title with the right URL, well... I think something else is wrong.

You are also completely speculating on the intent. Less drama please.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#46

Post by lugu »

Shank wrote: post #21
CraigJPerry wrote: post #9

Articles entire thesis looks like it can be completely de-railed if one activity happened: ai infrastructure firms cease to be able to secure more capital. Is that likely? History says it's inevitable, but timeframe is an open question.

> ai infrastructure firms cease to be able to secure more capital If this does occur, unfortunately it isn’t like any of the production capacity is going to immediately shift or be repurposed. A lot of the hardware isn’t usable outside of datacenter deployments. I would guess a more realistic recalibration is 2-3 years of immense pain followed by gradual availability of components again.

> If this does occur

The capital from the gulf is already disrupted. It isn't anymore a matter of if or when.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#47

Post by adrianN »

dust42 wrote: post #23

Just to mention one thing, helium -which is a necessity for chip production- is a byproduct of LNG production. And 20% of that is just gone (Qatar) and the question is how long it will take to get that back. So not only a chip shortage because of AI buying chips in huge volumes but also because production will be hampered. Tongue in cheek: we urgently need fusion power plants. For the AI and the helium.

Fusion fuel is so energy dense that fusion plants will never produce industrially meaningful amounts of helium.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#48

Post by gzread »

Shank wrote: post #21
CraigJPerry wrote: post #9

Articles entire thesis looks like it can be completely de-railed if one activity happened: ai infrastructure firms cease to be able to secure more capital. Is that likely? History says it's inevitable, but timeframe is an open question.

> ai infrastructure firms cease to be able to secure more capital If this does occur, unfortunately it isn’t like any of the production capacity is going to immediately shift or be repurposed. A lot of the hardware isn’t usable outside of datacenter deployments. I would guess a more realistic recalibration is 2-3 years of immense pain followed by gradual availability of components again.

My computer, and I think all threadripper systems, has registered ECC DDR5 RAM which I think is the same type used in AI datacenters. Well one half of it, the other half being HBM memory used on video cards, which is soldered to them and non-upgradeable. But the main system memory from a used AI server can become your main system memory.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#49

Post by zozbot234 »

torben-friis wrote: post #43
barrkel wrote: post #15

I don't buy the central thesis of the article. We won't be in a supply crunch forever. However, I do believe that we're at an inflection point where DC hardware is diverging rapidly from consumer compute. Most consumers are using laptops and laptops are not keeping pace with where the frontier is in a singular compute node. Laptops are increasingly just clients for someone else's compute that you rent, or buy a time…

The thing is, other than AI stuff, where does a non powerful computer limit you? My phone has 16gigs of ram and a terabyte of storage, laptops today are ridiculous compared to anything I studied with. I'm not arguing mind you, just trying to understand the usecases people are thinking of here.

> other than AI stuff, where does a non powerful computer limit you?

Running Electron apps and browsing React-based websites, of course.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#50

Post by sigio »

compounding_it wrote: post #38
jleyank wrote: post #26

Hold onto your hardware. Hold on to your existing software and the current version. Don’t upgrade without a specific need. None of the “progress” is actually helpful to hackers and I’m not sure it’s even helpful to typical users. There’s enough information being given to and slurped by others, don’t make it more effective.

In order to go from 360p video 15 years ago to 4K HDR today, I have upgraded from a 2mbps 802.11g WiFi on a 1366x768 display to a 200mbps connection on 802.11ax and a 55 inch 4k television. The experience is quite immersive and well worth the upgrade that happened very progressively (WiFi 5 1080p then WiFi 6/7 4K).

At the same time, we had cheap consumer gigabit ethernet, and still have cheap consumer gigabit ethernet. 2.5 is getting there price-wise, but switches are still somewhat rare/expensive.
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