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Hold on to Your Hardware

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Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#101

Post by myself248 »

Arn_Thor wrote: post #42
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

That's another lifetime-limited thing -- the helium leaks out, and you cannot (for practical purposes) stop it or even meaningfully slow it down. When it's gone, the drives are dead. And the helium leaks by calendar-days, it doesn't matter whether the drive is powered on or off.

Non-helium hard drives are basically limited by their bearing spin hours. If one only spins a few hours a week, it'll probably run for decades. Not so with helium.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#102

Post by TeMPOraL »

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #94
bluejay2387 wrote: post #61

The general take here seems to be "everything eventually passes". That isn't always true. I wonder how many people have a primary computing device that they don't even have full control over now (Apple phones, tablets...). Years ago the concept of spending over $1k on a computer that I didn't even have the right to install my own software on was considered ridiculous by many people (myself included). Now many people…

To be fair the people that have ipad as their only computer device now didn’t have a computer back then

Not necessarily. Many people grew up with PCs and laptops but now mostly use their phones, because outside of specific jobs or hobbies, everyday computing needs are heavily optimized for mobile-first.

(A large factor here is, obviously, the cloud. With photos, documents, e-mail, IMs, etc. all hosted for cheap or free on "other people's computers", the total hardware demands on the end-user computing device is much less. Think storage, not just RAM.)

It's true even in tech; half a year ago I switched my phone to a Galaxy Z Fold7, and I haven't used my personal laptop since then, not once. I have a separate company laptop for work, and I occasionally turned on my PC, but it turns out that a foldable phone is good enough to do everything on personal side I'd normally use a laptop for. So here I am, with my primary compute device I don't have full control over - and yes, I'm surprised by this development myself, and haven't fully processed it yet.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#103

Post by cheschire »

guardian5x wrote: post #83
meindnoch wrote: post #73

I know this may sound ridiculous, but m-maybe... maybe it's time for us to make software... less bloated? Maybe... just maybe, a TODO list app shouldn't run 4 processes, and consume hundreds of megabytes of RAM?

Let me be the devils advocate here. Ok, let's say you optimize that TODO list app to only use 16 mb of RAM. What did you gain by that? Would you buy a smartphone that has less RAM now?

It’s the upgrade treadmill you would stop using, and stick to the initial entry device.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#104

Post by teeray »

zozbot234 wrote: post #49
torben-friis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Companies love externalizing the costs of making efficient software onto consumers, who need to purchase more powerful computing hardware.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#105

Post by myself248 »

gzread wrote: post #48
Shank wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So that becomes the next question -- will we see an ecosystem of modifications and adapters, to desolder surplus and decommissioned datacenter HBM and put it on some sort of daughterboard with a translator so it can be used in a consumer machine?

Stuff like that already exists for flash memory; I can harvest eMMC chips from ewaste and solder them to cheaply-available boards to make USB flash drives. But there the protocols are the same, there's no firmware work needed...

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#106

Post by mjmas »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #97
zozbot234 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> other than AI stuff, where does a non powerful computer limit you? Running Electron apps and browsing React-based websites, of course.

It seems like as hardware gets cheaper, software gets more bloated to compensate. Or maybe it’s vice versa. I wonder if there’s a computer science law about this. This could be my chance!

Is your name Wirth?

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#107

Post by halapro »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #96
Arn_Thor wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering my helium-filled hard drives a strategic reserve now

Gonna sit on my half-empty tank for party balloons from my daughter's birthday, maybe we'll be able to sell it to pay off mortgage quicker than the helium itself escapes the tank.

Same energy as "buy bitcoin" in 2011

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#108

Post by pmdr »

I've seen comments on here before that went somewhere along the line of "adults don't care about RAM prices." HN is no stranger to siding with the oppressors.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#109

Post by TeMPOraL »

halapro wrote: post #107
TeMPOraL wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gonna sit on my half-empty tank for party balloons from my daughter's birthday, maybe we'll be able to sell it to pay off mortgage quicker than the helium itself escapes the tank.

Same energy as "buy bitcoin" in 2011

Unfortunately bitcoins don't leak from storage tanks on their own.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#110

Post by lpcvoid »

skydhash wrote: post #90
tormeh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For real. Once I've opened Spotify, Slack, Teams, and a browser about 10GB of RAM is in use. I barely have any RAM left over for actual work.

That’s why I only run those on work computers (where they are mandated by the company). My personal computers are free of these software.

I rarely doge a chance to shit on Microslop and its horrible products, but you don't use a browser? In fact, running all that junk in a single chromium instance is quite a memory saver compared to individual electron applications.
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