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Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

mashable.com

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Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#191

Post by pixl97 »

Gud wrote: post #179
pixl97 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The growth curve of technology has always pointed at the world becoming tiny and non-private.

Disagree. Mass surveillance by corporations can be outlawed. Just because something is possible, doesn’t mean it must be necessarily so. I travel a lot for work to different nations. The cultural differences are stark. In the UK for example, they love their CCTVs. In Switzerland, they’re only allowed where they are deemed necessary.

I mean back in the cold war we started losing privacy to foreign governments. A parade of overhead satellites is capturing everything you do all the time.

As much as we expound about the rule of law, might makes right if the population isn't vigilant. Simply put technology gives capability. In 1900 we didn't have the capability to monitor everything that everybody did all the time and keep those records their entire life. Now we have technology that can do just that.

This has nothing to do with the law. Zip, zilch, nada. Switzerland is one dark day away from having all their behaviors recorded by businesses/governments.

At the end of the day legality is a theoretical construct, and technological capability is reality.

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#192

Post by notpublic »

jccc wrote: post #147

Great. I’ve just returned a WD drive to Amazon after it arrived crushed in a torn-open paper bag. The replacement arrived also in a paper bag and went straight back, this time for a refund. I guess I should have kept that one and hoped for the best. Good alternatives? I’ve only recently been enlightened on how profoundly sh__ty SSD is for long-term storage and I have a whole lot of images my parents took traveling th…

Bestbuy with local pickup. They price match Amazon. B&H Photo is another option.

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#193

Post by manbash »

markus_zhang wrote: post #69

Better stock up with used laptops. I'm going to buy another one this year. Those used ones usually don't last very long. What if in the near future it is simply too expensive to own "personal" computers? What if you can no longer buy used computers from official channels but have to find local shops or sharpen up on soldering skills and find parts from dumps? The big techs will conveniently "rent out" cloud computer…

Why laptops specifically (and not also desktops)?

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#194

Post by m4rtink »

danaris wrote: post #107
ido wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware just depreciates much much faster than fiber The manfucaturing capacity expanded to meet the demand for new hardware doesn't (as much)

But if the demand drops for six months, the manufacturers are going to scale back production. If it drops for a year, they're likely to start shedding capacity, one way or another. This is not an equivalent situation. The vast, vast majority of what's being produced for this bubble is going to be waste once it pops.

I guess you could at least mine the boards from defunct AI companies for memory chips ? Latest videos from Gamers Nexus showed it is apparently not that hard to transfer memory chips from board to board.

Then you can leach precious metals from the PCB itself.

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#195

Post by bachmeier »

markus_zhang wrote: post #69

Better stock up with used laptops. I'm going to buy another one this year. Those used ones usually don't last very long. What if in the near future it is simply too expensive to own "personal" computers? What if you can no longer buy used computers from official channels but have to find local shops or sharpen up on soldering skills and find parts from dumps? The big techs will conveniently "rent out" cloud computer…

Time for folks to familiarize themselves with Linux distros designed to run on older hardware. My 2009 laptop runs great, with the exception of the browser. Oh and the fact that 32-bit software is harder and harder to find.

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#196

Post by baq »

aurareturn wrote: post #146
rwmj wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Silicon Valley" doesn't get to make the decision unless they are willing to send some of those hundreds of billions to TSMC up front. (TSMC isn't going to want future promises of business either since those are worth very little.)

I don't disagree. I wrote the top comment here basically saying the same thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46764223 If big tech prepays for the entire fab, I think TSMC would do it.

if what Elon recently said is true (if - but he might not be... inaccurate... on this particular thing) they already have and bought the forward production capacity of those new fabs and it still isn't enough.

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#197

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bluGill wrote: post #143
londons_explore wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smart manufacturers will sell 'hard drive futures'. Ie. "Give us $100/drive now for 100k drives for delivery in march 2028". These contracts are then transferrable. The manufacturer can start work on a factory knowing they'll get paid to produce the drives. If the AI boom comes to an end, the manufacturer is still going to get paid for their factory, and if the AI company wants to recoup costs they could try to sell…

That only works out if there are enough investors willing to pay for those futures. If the new factory can make a billion drives but they only have 2 of those futures contracts sold (that is 200k drives) they don't build the factory. Remember too if they sell those contacts they are on the hook to deliver - if it is just investors they will accept the street value of 100k drives in 2028 but some of the people might b…

> If the new factory can make a billion drives but they only have 2 of those futures contracts sold (that is 200k drives) they don't build the factory.

But the AI companies are flush with cash and trying to buy everything, right? Why wouldn't they buy up as many futures contracts as the fab company needs to justify more fabs?

> Every year a few farmers realize they are contracted to deliver more grain than they have in their bins and so have to buy some grain from someone else (often at a loss) just to deliver it.

This is most commonly because they sold a futures contract for X bushels expecting to grow 2X but 75% of the crop failed and they only have 0.5X.

Semiconductor fab yields aren't as susceptible to how much it will rain next year and the companies generally have a pretty good idea of what their yields are for a given process node.

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#198

Post by yndoendo »

The only way to combat this is the same way to combat toilet paper shortages.

Market says the more you buy the better pricing you get. Once you start capturing large market share of the product, the price should go up and not down; exponentially.

Example, a person that owns 10 houses means that they are restricting the ability of others to own a single home. By increasing the cost of excessive product ownership ... it will reduce the amount of product that people will hoard and allow others to gain access to it.

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#199

Post by Fnoord »

pixl97 wrote: post #175
zozbot234 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For "cold" archival storage you would want to use tape, which is far cheaper per TB at scale.

If demand for hard drives is this high then it sounds like there wouldn't be near enough tape around either.

This is why I am buying a couple of LTO 6 tapes. Thus far I've been able to buy 4 for approx 120 EUR, 2,5 TB each. They have been around 30 EUR each the past years, and still are approx such price (leaning towards 35 EUR though). I bought a second hand drive for about 500 EUR, and a HBA for it.

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#200

Post by estimator7292 »

yndoendo wrote: post #198

The only way to combat this is the same way to combat toilet paper shortages. Market says the more you buy the better pricing you get. Once you start capturing large market share of the product, the price should go up and not down; exponentially. Example, a person that owns 10 houses means that they are restricting the ability of others to own a single home. By increasing the cost of excessive product ownership ... i…

This only works if you exclude datacenters Georg who lives in a server rack and buys 10,000 hard drives a day.

Unfortunately, there are several such outlier entities which collectively control enough resources to price literally everyone else out.

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