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PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

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Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#331

Post by Cthulhu_ »

golem14 wrote: post #220
moribvndvs wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's next? Electricity? Yes. My electricity prices jumped 50% in 3 years.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mikesimoncasey_our-team-at-re... ? How much is due to long overdue infrastructure upgrades and greed by providers, vs the cost of energy? Also, consumer prices _have_ risen (mine included), but it's not clear that this is only because AI. While EV charging is not at the scale of all data centers combined, it seems to grow even faster than the datacenter's consumption, and is expected to…

In my personal case, it was cost of energy due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine triggering a stop on buying cheap gas from them. Infrastructure upgrades are also being done, costing tens of millions per year because the grid can't handle the sudden increase in renewable energy generation and electrification (to ironically move away from dependency on gas).

I mean part of me thinks it's a necessary evil because we relied too much on Russian gas in the first place. But that's because we extracted most of our own gas already (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_gas_field), which that article lists as one of the factors in the Dutch welfare state being a thing - it and smaller fields out at sea contributed over 400 billion to the Dutch economy since the 1950's.

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#332

Post by Aurornis »

somenameforme wrote: post #214
Aurornis wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I zoom all the way out, all of consumer computation has existed as sort of an addendum or ancillary organ to the big customers: government, large corporations, etc. Perfectly stated. I think comments like the one above come from a mentality that the individual consumer should be the center of the computing universe and big purchasers should be forced to live with the leftovers. What's really happening is the b…

Advances in video cards and graphics tech were overwhelmingly driven by video games. John Carmack, for instance, was directly involved in these processes and 'back in the day' it wasn't uncommon for games, particularly from him, to be developed to run on tech that did not yet exist, in collaboration with the hardware guys. Your desktop was outdated after a year and obsolete after 2, so it was a very different time th…

> a good computer from 10 years ago can still do 99.9% of what people need, even things like high end gaming are perfectly viable with well dated cards.

HN is strange. I have an old gaming build from 7-8 years ago and while it can do high end games on low settings and resolution, it doesn’t hold a candle to even a mid-range modern build.

“viable” is doing a lot of work in that claim. You can tolerate it at low res and settings and if you’re okay with a lot of frame rate dips, but nobody is going to mistake it for a modern build.

You’re also exaggerating how fast video cards became obsolete in the past. Many of us gamed just fine on systems that weren’t upgraded for 5-6 years at a time.

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#333

Post by Cthulhu_ »

nickpp wrote: post #287
muldvarp wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You thought that abundance would trickle down into the pockets of people that have to work for a living? AI will lead to abundance. For those that own stuff and no longer have to pay for other people to work for them.

> abundance. For those that own stuff and no longer have to pay for other people to work for them. Why are you saying that? Anybody working for a living (but saving money) can invest in AI stocks or ETFs and partake in that potential abundance. Robinhood accounts are free for all.

> Anybody working for a living

> (but saving money)

These two are already difficult or impossible for many people. Especially a big chunk of USAmericans have been living paycheck to paycheck for a long time now, often taking multiple jobs just to make ends meet.

And then to gamble it on a speculative market, whose value does not correlate with its performance (see e.g. Tesla, compare its sales / market share with its market value compared to other car manufacturers). That's bad advice. And for an individual, you'd only benefit a fraction from what the big shareholders etc earn. Investing is a secondary market.

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#334

Post by dysoco »

Narishma wrote: post #188
tonymet wrote: post #154

The silver lining is that hopefully it’ll become too expensive to ship new Electron apps

You have too much faith in the software industry.

This. Users and developers will just get accustomed to 2s delays everywhere. The era of native software is long gone.

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#335

Post by Cthulhu_ »

neogodless wrote: post #303
phil21 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only meaningful if you have enough disposable income to invest that it eventually (and I don't mean in 50 years) makes a dent against your living expenses. If you make $4k/mo and rent is $3k, it's pretty silly to state that it's a meaningful thing for someone to scrimp and invest $100/mo into a brokerage account. They definitely should do this, but it's not going to have any meaningful impact on their life for d…

If you contribute $1k per month for 10 years earning 6% you would have $162k. 5% of that would be $8100. Is $48k / year a typical income?

Who in this economy has $1K left over at the end of the month to spend / risk freely?

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#336

Post by Cthulhu_ »

huseyinkeles wrote: post #82
librasteve wrote: post #55

I used to sell 64kbit (yes, bit) DRAM at $7 in 1982. 1 year later was The memory business is a pure commodity and brutally cyclic. Big profit => build a fab => wait 2 years => oh shit, everyone else did it => dump units at below cost. Repeat.

A great example for the pork cycle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle

I've often heard it refer to as the bullwhip effect, I think it was this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#337

Post by buran77 »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #308
buran77 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither do chips, even if they all start as silicon from the ground. What the earlier comment was saying is that the actual composition of crude oil varies by location so you aren't necessarily getting the same ratio of finished products at the process. With silicon you have a bit more control over what goes into the fab. But you're still at the mercy of demand from the market.

The crude composition defines a range of possible products, not exactly ratios. Longer chain hydrocarbons are also cracked to yield more light products.

> defines a range of possible products, not exactly ratios

I'm not sure I follow, varying range necessarily implies varying ratios (e.g. a product missing from the range means its ratio is zero).

Even when in theory you can obtain some higher quality products, the composition of the crude can make it too complex and expensive to practically obtain them.

You don't want to refine gasoline from heavy crude, especially in winter when demand is lower. For gasoline or kerosene you want to start from lighter crude. Same with many undesired components (either from the crude or resulting from the refining methods), the more you have, the more complex the refining, and the resulting ratio of products you obtain varies.

So in practice what you get out of the refining process absolutely depends on the characteristics of the crude, and many other things like market demand or the capability of your refinery.

Same as with silicon. The process to make the wafer results in different quality if you want to make low tech or cutting edge semiconductor products.

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#338

Post by Refreeze5224 »

nickpp wrote: post #279
Refreeze5224 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ding ding ding. What a surprise that a system designed not for human flourishing but pure profit would actually deliver massive profit with no regard for human flourishing. Humanity will have to adopt new human-focused modes of living and organizing society, or else. And climate change is coming along to make sure the owning class can't ignore this fact any longer.

> a system designed not for human flourishing but pure profit But please, don't be coy: tell us about that other system that is designed for "human flourishing" - we're dying to learn about it. Because I grew up under communism and I lived its miserable failures: the non-profit system didn't even manage to feed, cloth or warm/cool us. > new human-focused modes of living and organizing society Oh, these sounds sooo pr…

I appreciate the lack of sarcasm in your reply. And echo the other reply's point about not being able to criticism the system that is literally destroying the planet and in by design totally unsustainable...

> But please, don't be coy: tell us about that other system that is designed for "human flourishing" - we're dying to learn about it.

Libertarian socialism, anarchocommunism, any system where human freedom is the basis, and not coercion or hierarchy. This stuff is not new or radical, it's just not favored by people with lots of money to lose.

> Oh, these sounds sooo promising. Please do tell us: would you by any chance be willing to use force to "convince" the laggards of the benefits of switching? What if some refuse to believe your gospel? Will you turn to draconic laws and regulations?

Lucky for you, no. The complete opposite. Freedom of association is the entire foundation of it. We all get to associate with whomever we want, when and for as long as we want. Someone being a condescending prick in your local comment section? You get to ignore them! No commissars or cops or Party. Someone wants to go play hierarchical capitalism with his friends? As long as he's not messing with other people or contravening their rights, they get to do whatever they want.

Will any of these systems result in 99 cent stores, fast food restaurants, or people on the moon? Almost definitely not. But those are all irrelevant to creating a sustainable environment designed for human beings, and not profit.

The lack of innovation (or even reading of basic history...) in what is possible in terms of organizing human societies is frankly sad, especially among tech workers. Most people are too influenced by capitalism (intentionally so) to believe that how things are now is the only way they can be. There is so little scope for innovation and change, and that starts with the owning class who have no interest in it changing.

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#339

Post by Refreeze5224 »

brooke2k wrote: post #329
nickpp wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a system designed not for human flourishing but pure profit But please, don't be coy: tell us about that other system that is designed for "human flourishing" - we're dying to learn about it. Because I grew up under communism and I lived its miserable failures: the non-profit system didn't even manage to feed, cloth or warm/cool us. > new human-focused modes of living and organizing society Oh, these sounds sooo pr…

It's depressing how in the modern day you can't criticize capitalism without immediately being told that you must be a supporter of soviet-style authoritarian socialism There are shades of grey here. Capitalism is a system with many inherent problems. Exploring alternatives is not the same thing as being a Stalinist

This exactly. Capitalist propaganda likes to paint anything other than capitalism as Stalinist authoritarian communism, which should be abhorred as well as capitalism, and just for the same reason: both are coercive, hierarchical, and unfree.
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