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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

#301

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bluGill wrote: post #289
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That is the question - will those ai companies buy the contracts edit: actually it is worse - who else isn't buying contracts - if they build new capactity on contracts and ai collapses the existing users will take up the contracts but the old capacticy is unused.

If they build the new fabs and AI collapses then they still got all the AI companies' money because they prepaid. The current market price of chips is then going to crash, but that's what happens when AI collapses regardless. Might as well sell them five years worth of chips rather than two years worth of chips before the cash cow dries up.

Meanwhile, the fab companies want to think about what happens if AI collapses, but the AI companies don't. What do they care if they get screwed on a contract the day after they go bankrupt regardless? So offer them a contract where they get screwed if they go bankrupt, e.g. prohibit them from using any of the hardware for anything but AI for five years. Then the hardware is locked into AI stuff regardless of whether AI dries up and you can still go sell the rest of the chips that aren't to PC OEMs etc.

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

#302

Post by voidUpdate »

zarzavat wrote: post #244
voidUpdate wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you can't claim ownership of ideas, but if you verbatim repeat other people's content as if it is your own, and are unable to attribute it to its original creator, is that not a bit shitty? That's what LLMs are doing

If a human learns to code by reading other people's code, and then writes their own new code, should they have to attribute all the code they ever read? Plagiarism is a concept from academia because in academia you rise through the ranks by publishing papers and getting citations. Using someone else's work but not citing them breaks that system. The real world doesn't work like that: your value to the world is how mu…

If a human copies someone else's code verbatim, they should attribute the source, yes. If they learn from it and write original code, no, they don't have to cite every single piece of code they've ever read

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

#303

Post by high_na_euv »

1shooner wrote: post #219
high_na_euv wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Why gamers must be the most important group?

I think they're just a proxy/alias for 'state-of-the-art personal computing'.

State of art? 1-2k usd hardware? Haha, data center stuff is orders of magnitude crazier

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

#304

Post by antonyh »

jacquesm wrote: post #285
antonyh wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big ones with a separate power brick, I've not looked inside the smaller USB-powered ones. My interest was in the >8Gb desktop drives. I'd imagine they're the same deal, but hard to say from the outside. I did have a part of one at one point, a USB-to-SATA circuit board that was useful for adhoc connecting 2.5" drives, but I can't recall if that came from an prebuilt or an old BYOD enclosure. I have a old WD smal…

Ok. So I have a bunch them here, different sizes, both SSD and spinning rust. The big ones are all consumer grade drives with a little adapter board like you describe. The small ones are a mix of a single custom board with a USB connector and adapter board based ones. The tell tale is the outer dimension in the length, if the case is a little bit longer than a standard drive you have a very good chance of having one…

I popped open a WD 'My Passport' drive, 4TB. It's exactly that - no SATA connection at all, only a USB on a custom board. I should have guessed this, it really is too short to have much in the way of other electronics. Thanks for confirming about the larger models, it's always good to know where we can source spares in an emergency. Top tip about NVMe - I would never have guessed this was an option.

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

#305

Post by ponector »

fwip wrote: post #207
randusername wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think about this too. There are several headwinds. Rent-seeking and collapse of economies of scale in the consumer sector for sure, but also I feel like we've basically peaked in hardware's ability to meet routine needs. Once the phone makers realize that they can sell phones and docking stations to businesses because 90% of knowledge work seems to happen in a web browser through one SaaS or other I think personal…

I don't think phones are really any cheaper than the mini PCs that businesses can already buy. Which makes sense, because a phone has to include a battery, touch screen, and is under tighter space constraints.

Android phone is $100 a piece. Minipc is much more expensive.

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

#306

Post by voidUpdate »

cryptonector wrote: post #297
voidUpdate wrote: post #3

This is the consequence of "I don't want to write this function myself, I'll get the plagiarism machine to do it for me"

In my experience LLMs mimic human thought, so they don't "copy" but they do write from "experience" -- and they know more than any single developer can. So I'm getting tired of the argument that LLMs are "plagiarism machines" -- yes, they can be coaxed into repeating training material verbatim, but no, they don't do that unless you try. Opus 4.6's C compiler? I've not looked at it, but I would bet it does not resembl…

LLMs just predict the next token. They mimic humans because they were trained on terabytes of human-created data (with no credit given to the authors of the training data). They don't mimic human thinking. If they did, you would be able to train them by themselves, but if you do that you get Model Collapse

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

#307

Post by jacquesm »

antonyh wrote: post #304
jacquesm wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. So I have a bunch them here, different sizes, both SSD and spinning rust. The big ones are all consumer grade drives with a little adapter board like you describe. The small ones are a mix of a single custom board with a USB connector and adapter board based ones. The tell tale is the outer dimension in the length, if the case is a little bit longer than a standard drive you have a very good chance of having one…

I popped open a WD 'My Passport' drive, 4TB. It's exactly that - no SATA connection at all, only a USB on a custom board. I should have guessed this, it really is too short to have much in the way of other electronics. Thanks for confirming about the larger models, it's always good to know where we can source spares in an emergency. Top tip about NVMe - I would never have guessed this was an option.

YW, good luck with the hunt!

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

#308

Post by bluGill »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #301
bluGill wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the question - will those ai companies buy the contracts edit: actually it is worse - who else isn't buying contracts - if they build new capactity on contracts and ai collapses the existing users will take up the contracts but the old capacticy is unused.

If they build the new fabs and AI collapses then they still got all the AI companies' money because they prepaid. The current market price of chips is then going to crash, but that's what happens when AI collapses regardless. Might as well sell them five years worth of chips rather than two years worth of chips before the cash cow dries up. Meanwhile, the fab companies want to think about what happens if AI collapses…

The bankruptcy courst are likely to see that as an unreasonable contract terms and call it void. See a lawyer for what they really can do of course but contract terms have to be reasonable.

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

#309

Post by lobsterthief »

zozbot234 wrote: post #292
geye1234 wrote: post #290

I am interested in hearing how to get hard drives to last longer. Should you keep them locked away in the closet? Spin them up occasionally but not too much? Keep them always-on? I understand the less reading and writing, the better. How does external compare to internal, if at all? Is 3.5" going to last longer than something smaller?

Spinning HDDs will eventually be at risk of failing for purely mechanical reasons, so beyond handling them with care you can't really do all that much. Keeping them always-on may be a viable strategy for drives that are already mostly on, otherwise, just spin them up once in a while, but don't expect this to lower risk significantly. An old drive should simply have its contents transferred to new media, and then be t…

I’ll add: if you’re using your drive as a NAS, use a drive model that’s meant for this purpose, and avoid SSDs

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

#310

Post by infecto »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #301
bluGill wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the question - will those ai companies buy the contracts edit: actually it is worse - who else isn't buying contracts - if they build new capactity on contracts and ai collapses the existing users will take up the contracts but the old capacticy is unused.

If they build the new fabs and AI collapses then they still got all the AI companies' money because they prepaid. The current market price of chips is then going to crash, but that's what happens when AI collapses regardless. Might as well sell them five years worth of chips rather than two years worth of chips before the cash cow dries up. Meanwhile, the fab companies want to think about what happens if AI collapses…

I don’t think the math maths. The pay back for a new plant is minimum 7 years and that is not accounting for the time to build it. I suspect nobody is buying a 10 year forward purchase agreement.
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