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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

#331

Post by hackyhacky »

WalterBright wrote: post #170
lkey wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to demonstrate this kind of ignorance of human history on main. Aren't you embarrassed? Do you value knowledge even a little bit? When did capitalism begin? How was 'stuff' created and distributed prior to that? How do other, distinct and contemporaneous modes of production create 'stuff'?

Capitalism began when Thag, who was a good hunter, brought home two dinosaur steaks. His buddy Grog was a lousy hunter, but was good at making spears. Thag traded a dinosaur steak for a new spear.

That's commerce, not capitalism.

Capitalism began when Thag declared that he owns all the dinosaurs, and anyone who hunts a dinosaur must pay him 10 percent of the meat as a tribute, or else he will stab them with his spear.

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

#332

Post by gilrain »

Ray20 wrote: post #155
fakedang wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And farms are failing. Climate change will accelerate that, so there will be food shortages within a few years. This is the key one to watch out for. Prior food-based conflicts have sparked revolutions and civil wars. People can tolerate not having electricity, people can tolerate not having internet, people can tolerate not having gas. But a lack of food, due to a wheat shortage which in turn was sparked by Siberi…

> Climate change will accelerate that The climate is changing in a positive direction for farming. Farming is easier now than ever before. There's literally no chance of food shortages. Unless, of course, there's another attempt at building socialism.

And also the sky is red rather than blue.

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

#333

Post by joe_mamba »

WalterBright wrote: post #174
joe_mamba wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's up to individuals to take advantage of the opportunity, or not. The problem is that after decades monopolies consolidated and you have massive offshoring of labor to cheap countries and offshoring of profits to tax havens, there's not much opportunities the working class individuals can take, as all the opportunities are now geared towards the asset owning rent seeking class.

There are endless businesses you can start with little to no capital.

If you count being a Doordash or Uber eats self employed sole proprietorship as "endless business opportunities", then yeah you could be right.

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

#334

Post by libertine »

shimman wrote: post #101
mr_toad wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Labor has very little to do with it and more about a political class that has to increase the material needs of a nation if they still want to stay in power. What has the US government done for American's lately outside of forcing people to buy healthcare and providing monetary support for families for a small window during covid? All we have is a political class that wants to fuck Americans raw until they pump every…

Why are you stating China competitiveness isn't related to labor, and then pivot to US labor?

Before you go there, you should answer: what has the Chinese government done for the Chinese lately? Is everything well in their society, labor and economy wise?

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

#335

Post by ACCount37 »

stasomatic wrote: post #322
ACCount37 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of. There's a mysterious fab entity known as "the Recipe" - the product of long iterative dialing in of the fab's operating parameters. Of which there are a great many. A modern fab performs hundreds of manufacturing steps, with thousands of tweakable parameters, and they may interact in non-obvious ways to affect the outcomes. This is what's discovered and adjusted as the fab runs. The difference between having…

Can a recipe be acquired and reproduced to perform correctly from the start? Say one line is performing well, can its parameters be copied over to a new one and start producing? My head annoyingly refuses to accept the non-deterministic outcomes when applied to electronics. In other disciplines, let's say bow or musical instrument making, you need to harvest the wood, age it, dry it, pray to a deity, work with its na…

What we see as "just bits" is a product of thousands of men, smarter and more skilled than both of us could ever hope to be - all working together to keep those bits of ours delightfully simple.

The unfortunate truth is, "bits" sit on a vast foundation of chemistry and physics pushed to their limits. It's a (mostly) deterministic subspace, carved carefully into the non-deterministic world with sheer effort and skill. This is why those fabs are so expensive and complex. Nature defied, reproducibly and at scale. Keeping the Crawling Chaos away one wafer at a time.

If one line is performing well, you can copy its parameters to another, as a starting point. It'll get you some of the way there. How far? Have fun with that. Those two lines, you see, are not the same exact line copied twice. The equipment is the same, but our "the same" is a short for "merely very similar". There are subtle differences. There always are. And some of them matter.

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

#336

Post by ndiddy »

hackyhacky wrote: post #68
rationalist wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Thanks to capitalism, I don't have to toil in the fields. > No, that's thanks to commerce not to capitalism. Capitalism benefits those those who hold capital, which is not me. Are you toiling in the fields? It seems to me like your attitude is that "If I can't be rich, then no one should be rich." > The fact that there are more than enough resources for no one to live in poverty should suggest to you that somethi…

> It seems to me like your attitude is that "If I can't be rich, then no one should be rich." The problem with capitalism is not that some people get rich and some people don't. The problem is that of an unfair playing field. Everyone has a body and a mind, and commerce allows us to rent out those features in exchange for pay. People who are smarter or stronger or work harder or work more will be able to benefit more…

It's interesting how when you talk to people who are vocally in favor of capitalism, they always turn out to be in favor of an imaginary version of capitalism where everybody is a small business owner, rather than in favor of how the system works in practice and the outcomes that it necessarily creates.

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

#337

Post by rationalist »

pjc50 wrote: post #198
MagicMoonlight wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point to short will be when the Chinese army forms up. With Ukraine we saw it. It was incredibly obvious. Hilariously the Ukrainians themselves saw the huge army on their border and told everyone it wasn’t going to happen and refused to build any defences. Taiwan will be the same. But the satellites will give everyone enough warning.

> the Ukrainians themselves saw the huge army on their border and told everyone it wasn’t going to happen and refused to build any defences You're going to have to cite that, because Ukraine was already in the low-intensity Donbass conflict when the most recent invasion happened. But yes, you can't hide an invasion fleet. The Chinese navy only has three aircraft carriers. They've recently had high level purges in the…

The Chinese also have at least a few landing ships that they've been practicing with. I'm not sure how many aircraft carriers they need for Taiwan.

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

#338

Post by inglor_cz »

transcriptase wrote: post #279
inglor_cz wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have no practical experience living in a totalitarian country, don't wish that upon yourself and your family. That momentary feeling of triumphing over your enemies won't compensate for what you'd lose. This is a mistake that was made by numerous intellectuals in history.

Everyone thinks they’re getting the cushy office job working for the party, until they’re handed a shovel by someone with a gun.

In the worst case, knowing that they are about to dig their own graves.

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

#339

Post by tokai »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #137
rationalist wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's a possibility, do you believe it is likely enough in the very near future to the point where you are betting on it? Perhaps shorting TSMC? If I did so when I first thought about it, I would be broke by now.

The point to short will be when the Chinese army forms up. With Ukraine we saw it. It was incredibly obvious. Hilariously the Ukrainians themselves saw the huge army on their border and told everyone it wasn’t going to happen and refused to build any defences. Taiwan will be the same. But the satellites will give everyone enough warning.

>Hilariously the Ukrainians themselves saw the huge army on their border and told everyone it wasn’t going to happen and refused to build any defences.

Not the full truth. Leadership said publicly that there was nothing to worry about, but the AFU dispersed assets, distributed suppiles and ammunition, and took a defensive stance before the invasion happened.

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

#340

Post by ethbr1 »

sokoloff wrote: post #283
m4x wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A world where Apple has invested in their own fabs, so they can sell devices with drastically more RAM than their competition at entry-level prices.

Why would they sell a device with 256GB of RAM as the lowest-spec device rather than making 8 32GB or 16 16GB machines as their entry-level? Apple’s not exactly famous for their low pricing on spec upgrades nor competing based on being the price leader…

If 256GB of RAM enables them to run on-device AI models that (for reasons) are a key feature differentiator?

Personally, I think there's no way memory heavy inference moves on-device (vs cloud) due to the economics, but it's not impossible technology + platforms go that way for currently unforeseeable reasons.

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