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The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

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Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#181

Post by csomar »

shimman wrote: post #30
swatcoder wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what happens if the market settles back down or the leading memory tech pivots away from what you invested all this capital and time chasing? You'd need a very strong, very particular forecast to make such a costly bet. And conversely, it may say something about their internal forecasts that they're not making the bet.

Why should society care about people making profits? Society would greatly benefit from cheap abundant ram than FAANG shares going up. I'm kinda sick about only caring that some billionaire makes more money and would rather you know... actually improve conditions to better society. This is why China is eating the West. Quite easy to start an electronics company when you have such an abundance of suppliers, compare th…

It's a cycle. The zeitgeist moves from communism to capitalism and vice-versa every 30 years or so.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#182

Post by coldtea »

mr_toad wrote: post #75
shimman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should society care about people making profits? Society would greatly benefit from cheap abundant ram than FAANG shares going up. I'm kinda sick about only caring that some billionaire makes more money and would rather you know... actually improve conditions to better society. This is why China is eating the West. Quite easy to start an electronics company when you have such an abundance of suppliers, compare th…

> This is why China is eating the West. Nothing to do with cheap labour.

No, nothing to do with that. Even Steve Jobs said so back 20+ years ago, about why Apple can't just get out of China manufacturing.

He said the labour cost is neghigible and not qualitatively different to the US. It's the availability of every part and tech you need in nearby supply centers and factories, the huge supply of appropriate resources, including the ability to have tens of thousands of expert workers on command for a fast new production run.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#183

Post by csomar »

WalterBright wrote: post #149
shimman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should society care about people making profits? Society would greatly benefit from cheap abundant ram than FAANG shares going up. I'm kinda sick about only caring that some billionaire makes more money and would rather you know... actually improve conditions to better society. This is why China is eating the West. Quite easy to start an electronics company when you have such an abundance of suppliers, compare th…

> Why should society care about people making profits? The people making profits are the ones providing food, shelter, and phones to you.

No, the real people providing the food, shelter and electronics are the generally the lowest paid in society.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#184

Post by aurareturn »

swiftcoder wrote: post #135
aurareturn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So with compute stagnating and memory constrained, my money is on vendors taking this as an opportunity to gradually shift away from a yearly release cadence and slow down to a biennial cycle that alternates between budget and flagship launches every other year. My bet is that vendors will simply discontinue their low margin phones, which are usually the budget phones. For example, Apple might make fewer iPhone 18 an…

> For example, Apple might make fewer iPhone 18 and let it sell out frequently. They’ll use their RAM supplies mostly for the Pro phones. Apple has a second option that may not be open to most other vendors - as they've just demonstrated with the MacBook Neo, they could cut the RAM in half on the budget models. One good cycle of optimising the hell out of their (almost entirely native) software stack, and iOS would o…

I doubt they'd consider that because it's a downgrade. If things get truly desperate, then maybe.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#186

Post by coldtea »

hcurtiss wrote: post #105
shimman wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are but the difference is that China doesn't want to encourage monopolies and have zero qualms in jailing or executing bad business leaders.

There absolutely are monopolies. There are, in fact, many state run enterprises. Where do you get these ideas?

State run is better than a private for profit monopoly or few-o-poly which is what we get.

People all over the world have often revolted to get some enterprises state run (nationalizing) and were often punished or even bombed for it.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#187

Post by coldtea »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #125
wmf wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the Chinese government prefers to have multiple successful companies in each field and they don't like it when one company becomes too powerful.

They pivoted away from that quite a while ago now they just disappear people for a week or two and randomly completely crush a business here and there to make sure they understand their place.

[flagged]

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#188

Post by azan_ »

einpoklum wrote: post #176

So, if you were wondering how come LLM services are cheap or gratis - now you know another group of people bearing the costs: The poorer half of humanity, who will now not be able to afford a smartphone, i.e. not having access to a computer. Sure, that doesn't kill you, but it is quite significant personally and socially.

That's the worst critique of AI I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot of it.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#189

Post by ajb »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #127
shimman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should society care about people making profits? Society would greatly benefit from cheap abundant ram than FAANG shares going up. I'm kinda sick about only caring that some billionaire makes more money and would rather you know... actually improve conditions to better society. This is why China is eating the West. Quite easy to start an electronics company when you have such an abundance of suppliers, compare th…

I own FAANG stock because I own the S&P 500 in my retirement accounts, and so do managed pension funds. There's a lot more than billionaires who benefit from FAANG shares going up in value.

It's true that the current pension provision depends on this. But if pensions are mainly funded by companies which extract monopoly rent, then it would actually be more efficient and be less distortionary to the competitive market to fund them directly out of taxation - one big, simple rent instead of 100,000 different ones clogging everything up.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#190

Post by nickpp »

eecc wrote: post #150
prewett wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society should care about people making profits because otherwise those people do something else instead of providing goods and services. What happened in Communism is instructive on this point. Now if you want to argue that the pursuit of maximum profit as an end is a problem, there's a case to be made. The US had something like a marginal tax rate of 90% around the 1940s/1950s, if I recall correctly, and it obvious…

Perhaps it’s not capitalism that’s the problem but the unboundedness of the greed of a few, with respect to the other needs of humanity. Also Adam Smith implied that unbounded avarice is irrational and disruptive to society. The assumption is that morality survives grotesque wealth accumulation, we see many examples proving otherwise

Capitalism is the only known system that aligns natural, normal individual greed with the benefit and advancement of the society.
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