111–120 of 209 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If there is no agreement, then the magic term is "tacit collusion." Why not ask the same ridiculous amount of money your competitors do? People seem to be paying for it. Their fault. If suppliers have sufficiently different products, they can make some more expensive, others cheaper; on average, everybody pays more. A high barrier to entry might help such practices. That doesn't mean I'm saying this is what is happen…
We have to decide what part is damaging to society: the actual physical agreement, or the effects of the agreement? If it's the actual physical agreement that's the problem - the system is working as intended. But if we are looking to prevent the negative outcomes associated with price fixing and collusion, our system is failing us. They are never going to find proof of conspiracy. The people involved covered their t…
I would look at questions regarding what harm is created: Is it discriminatory? Are parts of society shutting down, and is that unreasonable? Are groups of people now unable to afford a living? Does it move the poverty line? Is that permanent? And how do you prove this is exclusively due to the price increase of tech components, and RAM specifically?
It needs to be unfuzzy in some way in order to make sense, but that's just my opinion.
I do agree prices are insane and wish for them to come down today. I liked the ubiquitous amounts of RAM any system could have. In those days, forums were also filled with how insanely expensive 32 gigabytes of RAM was, about $100 :)
HBM is also DRAM. I also think it's kind of a weak argument to say that them discontinuing ddr3 (which while in use still today in industrial/embedded was on the way out for consumers 10 years ago) and ddr4 which last had consumer CPUs for it 3 years ago is meaningful. What we need now is ddr5. Turning off the old fabs and moving those resources including people to ddr5 is a good thing. That's not price fixing. It's…
Consumers use these every single day in embedded devices without knowing it.
I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if the embedded DDR3/DDR4 market greatly exceeds the number of consumer desktop computing devices in terms of "devices with memory" (not in sheer IC count or nominal size though.)
The level of design effort and PCB expense to go from DDR3 to DDR5 is enormous.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ahh you are right, not sure where I got that from…
That's incorrect. Apple purchases RAM from all of these providers to produce their unified memory. They also rely on TSMC fabs for all of the chips their memory relies on. If they haven't doubled the prices of their machines, that just goes to show how fat of a profit margin they take on everyone that buys from them...
I think the only solution to this issue is China. If CXMT can supply, it will put all these monopolies in check.
That’s a nice short-term solution. How do you envision adding an infinitely-deep-pocketed state-sponsored supplier to the mix over the longer term?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's incorrect. Apple purchases RAM from all of these providers to produce their unified memory. They also rely on TSMC fabs for all of the chips their memory relies on. If they haven't doubled the prices of their machines, that just goes to show how fat of a profit margin they take on everyone that buys from them...
I stand corrected, thank you!
I guess they would love to produce it themselves, but for the average scenario the production reserves they have with Samsung already work well enough and prevent them from having to get into such a complicated industry.
What happens if Samsung and SK Hynix simply stop selling to US at all? Micron is in US but are the rest still in the US jurisdiction? They are selling the hottest commodity of the day. It’s made outside of the US using non-American tooling.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Identical prices are often a sign of intense competition. Every gas station on a corner has the same price because it's a highly competitive market not because of collusion. The prices of the much more lucrative chocolate bars inside the gas stations are less likely to be identical.
Yes, the gas station example is directly cited in the article I linked to. It’s legal for a gas station owner, with knowledge and consideration of a competitor’s price, to reduce their price to the same or just below. What is illegal is for nominally-competing gas station owners in an area to conspire to keep their prices within a range of each other’s, even without explicit agreement.
When I worked at a gas station as a teenager there was definitely an unspoken implicit agreement that the price of gas would be 6 cents/liter above wholesale IIRC. Which was highly competitive and didn't completely cover costs.
Maybe software people can get around this issue by not making every app a electron bloat? This is now more than doable now you got AI right? And it will save your job
And replace all your apps with some horrible Tcl/Tk and .NET interface? Nobody ever made good native widgets.