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AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

theregister.com

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Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#221

Post by Waterluvian »

CivBase wrote: post #162
Waterluvian wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People rent things they can’t afford to own.

Is this true? I'm trying to think of a solid example and I'm drawing blanks. Apartments aren't really comparable to houses. They're relatively small units which are part of a larger building. The better comparison would be to condominiums, but good luck even finding a reasonably priced condo in most parts of the US. I'd guess supply is low because there's a housing shortage and it's more profitable to rent out a unit…

Check out the furniture rental industry. Car rental (lease) industry. Electronics rental industry.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#222

Post by FireBeyond »

dpkirchner wrote: post #173
gnfargbl wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer lies in one of your questions: > Grocery stores closed to visitors, all shopping done online and delivered to your door In the UK at least, and I'm sure in a lot of other places, a solid proportion of groceries are now delivered to the door. But, that doesn't mean that supermarkets have closed; if anything, they seem to be busier than ever. Instead, we have a hybrid market where convenience for the consume…

In parts of the US, even low-crime areas, a significant amount of the items at grocery stores are locked up in glass cases. If you want them you have to track down an employee and beg for access (and in some stores they won't let you carry the items to the register). That part of the store might as well be closed to visitors, replaced by vending machines.

Hah. In my Safeway, the ice cream and half the frozen aisles have a lock on every door. I can’t imagine how much inconvenience that causes everybody. The employees openly say it’s ridiculous and you regularly find a queue in each aisle waiting to be individually served by an employee with a key unlocking and re locking each door they want something from.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#223

Post by pmdr »

drob518 wrote: post #154

The “hopes you weren't paying attention” part of the headline seems needlessly inflammatory. All I see is demand rising into a supply-limited market (GPUs and RAM). That doesn’t seem nefarious, just high-school economics.

High-school economics also point out that this handful of companies has so far only produced slop and debt.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#224

Post by jstummbillig »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #182
jstummbillig wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People confuse themselves with the bubble-metaphor. If an AI bubble exists and pops (we need not discuss either) the already existing and on-the-way-demand will not just disappear. Millions of todays users will not just decide that they don't want to use claude code or chatgpt anymore. Instead, an increasing number of people are going to want AI stuff from here on out, forever, because it's proven to be good enough i…

> Millions of todays users will not just decide that they don't want to use claude code or chatgpt anymore Won’t they? For a great number of people, LLM’s are in the “nice to have” basket. Execs and hucksters foam at the mouth over them, other people find utility but the vast majority are not upending their life in service of them. I suspect if ChatGPT evaporated tomorrow, the chronically dependent would struggle, mo…

I am not sure I understand. I agree: If AI were to disappear tomorrow, people would adjust (as they did when AI, or the iPhone or the internet appeared). That's what people do.

But now there is user demand. Who or what would take away AI? What is the scenario?

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#225

Post by philistine »

1980phipsi wrote: post #123
xvxvx wrote: post #12

- GPU prices rising - RAM prices rising - hard drive prices rising Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? ‘You don't need storage space, use our cloud subscription’ ‘You don’t need processing power, stream your games through our subscription service.’ Game publishers have already publicly floated the idea of not selling their games…

> Game publishers have already publicly floated the idea of not selling their games but charging per hour. Imagine how that impact Call of Duty or GTA. MMORPGs have had monthly subscription fees for a long time. For a lot of games if they charged by the hour would probably see less revenue...people buy tons of games and then barely ever play them.

You assume there's only one type of player. Some players fall into a category I lovingly call Madden Guy. These people will play some other games, but they will play one game *a lot*. Call of Duty, Arc Raiders, Destiny, Battlefield, Fortnite, these are the type of games who attract these kind of players. If a game has 600 purchasable items, a seasonal battlepass-type thing, multiple female rappers skins, and a publisher-financed pro scene, it's probably one of those games.

Those games 100% already have game modes you pay by the hour. They will have special modes you access with currency and you need to keep paying to keep playing. Those modes are usually special, with increased and unique drops.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#226

Post by shoemakersteve »

zwnow wrote: post #179
pc86 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have that option, it's called buying a house and getting a mortgage. You just rent from the bank for 30 years first. But you're not thinking x=30 with any responsibility other than writing a check, I bet. If I had to guess, I'd say you want x There's a reason why a mortgage with very little down payment is a lot more than comparable rent.

> It's fine to want that but let's not pretend "rent should be illegal" is a serious or reasonable policy proposal. So its fine for you that there are people owning 20+ properties speculating on profit for basic human needs? Its literally Nestlé "this is MY water" behavior.

Say they don't. If they can't afford to buy their own house, now those people no longer have a place to live. How is that better?

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#227

Post by 9rx »

kakacik wrote: post #95
XorNot wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If capitalism prices me out of owning property, then I've not much use for it.

Trust me, losing freedom you most probably consider as basic as air we breathe since your birth will stop such petty worries. And no system would give you property just because it would be nice, neither did communism (I know since I grew up in it and saw its destruction of everything good first hand - it had to be bought for non-trivial money with good old mortgages, and only regime-aligned people could).

> neither did communism (I know since I grew up in it

Impossible. Communism is a work of science fiction, much like Star Trek which is a more modern adaptation of the same idea. Like Star Trek, the concept is dependent on post-scarcity, which we've never seen, and isn't likely to ever happen. Perhaps you mean you grew up under rule of the Communist Party?

> it had to be bought for non-trivial money with good old mortgages, and only regime-aligned people could

The defining features of communism are no class, no state, and no money. It imagines these will no longer be relevant in a post-scarcity world.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#228

Post by pmdr »

general1465 wrote: post #207
xvxvx wrote: post #12

- GPU prices rising - RAM prices rising - hard drive prices rising Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? ‘You don't need storage space, use our cloud subscription’ ‘You don’t need processing power, stream your games through our subscription service.’ Game publishers have already publicly floated the idea of not selling their games…

> Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? No we don't. In Eastern Block during communism everything was either expensive or unavailable to the point that picking up broken TV on the side of the road and dismantling it for parts was making complete sense and you could actually learn something. Today it is much easier. You can visit e…

Windows 10 is mostly EOL because M$ doesn't want you using older machines, no matter how powerful.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#229

Post by nostrademons »

xvxvx wrote: post #12

- GPU prices rising - RAM prices rising - hard drive prices rising Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? ‘You don't need storage space, use our cloud subscription’ ‘You don’t need processing power, stream your games through our subscription service.’ Game publishers have already publicly floated the idea of not selling their games…

Yes and no.

I think what'll happen here is that these computing price increases will be what finally makes certain ML startups un-economical. That's what will precipitate the AI bubble burst. The whole thing runs on investor capital, so it keeps going until some investors lose their capital. Once the bubble bursts, you're going to get some really cheap GPUs, RAM, and hard drives (as well as cloud computing prices), as many of the more marginal data centers go out of business and liquidate their hardware.

It's going to be a rough couple years for hobbyist computer aficionados though. In the near future I'd try to wait this one out and get a job at an AI startup instead.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#230

Post by zozbot234 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #218
conductr wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this say about tenants though? You expect someone to buy a home that you can’t afford, rent it to you until you can. Meanwhile, maintain it while you rent it, pay the property taxes and insurance as well, basically have a tiny cash flow off my investment-all to just be forced to sell it to you in the end when my only hope of getting ahead on this was some long term appreciation or the build up of equity. Sp…

> Sure even if you pay a few thousand in rent, it may be the landlord only has a couple hundred of cash flow. Then, one repair on the home can easily wipe out a year or more of that. One bad tenants can wipe out a decade of it. I love how this conveniently ignores the equity you acquired in this year and almost certainly the appreciation. I went from renting for a decade plus to buying four years ago and while I have…

I'm not sure why this is a surprise to you. People take much better care of their own stuff, because any damage is a direct hit to their own pocketbook. Whereas bad tenants can be careless with no real consequences to speak of; the damage they cause is ultimately defrayed via higher renting costs across the board.
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