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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

#411

Post by wing-_-nuts »

nickpp wrote: post #363
yuriks wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health care, education and housing have been getting worse and more expensive in the US over the decade also. Must be all that nationalization.

> Must be all that nationalization. No, it’s the regulations. In less regulated, freer markets like vision correction eye surgery the costs went down and quality up. Even in health care.

You'll forgive me if perhaps I want something as important as eye surgery to be well regulated. Have a look at health outcomes for literally any industry where regulation is lax, like Brazilian plastic surgery. It's not great.

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

#412

Post by trollbridge »

ethbr1 wrote: post #340
sokoloff wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Think past on-device inference... imagine what on-device training could do. And that would need a lot of RAM.

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

#413

Post by everforward »

hackyhacky wrote: post #77
KnuthIsGod wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China going capitalist ( while remaining authoritarian ) has helped lift 800 million out of desperate poverty. I hope that India too can emulate this in my lifetime. I was born in Kerala and would love to see Indians live in a country that is as wealthy per capita ( PPP adjusted ) as Singapore or failing that even as wealthy as the USA. Capitalism has it's problems. But you struggling with rent is entirely your self-…

> But you struggling with rent is entirely your problem... Who said anything about struggling with rent? Sounds like you a grasping for a straw man. > I hope that India too can emulate this in my lifetime I, too, hope the best things for the people of China and of India. But India, by any metric, is already a capitalist economy, where its wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very few. To the extent that China has…

China also does massive amounts of investment in new technologies and local companies. One of the reasons capitalism concentrates wealth these days is that it’s cheaper to generate enormous capex to prevent paying for labor than to deal with the opex of labor. Ie the road to wealth requires either wealth or investment from the wealthy.

In capitalism, the wealthy provide the capex and reap the profit. In China, the government provides a lot of the capex and claims a lot of the profit (either directly or indirectly). They can then re-invest that, use it to set salaries free from market forces, etc.

The US could do more of that without getting into the contentious issue of raising personal taxes. Ie the government could control the flow of GPUs into the country, asserting that it had the right of first purchase, distribute them to a tightly controlled private company (think power or water company, with margins set by law), and probably make a profit on the cheaper hardware because they’d be a massive purchasing block. We won’t, though, because Google, Amazon, Oracle, etc are currently posed to make a _ton_ of money off doing basically the exact same thing.

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

#414

Post by wing-_-nuts »

nickpp wrote: post #379
yuriks wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, yeah, that was the point of my original reply: health care, education and housing have been getting less accessible in general, not just that poster's country. (Or wherever they're from. I checked the comment history and it seems to be 90% talking back to people criticizing capitalism/markets. Wouldn't be my preferred hobby of choice, personally.)

Not a hobby, but a duty. I lived under both systems and I do not wish the horrors I’ve seen in my youth onto my children. Although at this point, it’s probably unavoidable. It seems that some lessons can only be learned by experiencing them, no warning is ever enough: Russia, communism.

Yes, now ask someone from a nordic country about how best to balance capitalism with regulation and social safety nets. I think you'd get a very different answer.

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

#415

Post by wing-_-nuts »

inglor_cz wrote: post #272
coldtea wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can afford less (lesser treatment, drugs, procedures, quality of doctors and hospitals you can pay for), then your chances of survival also got WAY worse. Doesn't matter if the 1% has now access to better versions.

Sure, if actual availability of healthcare to an average American has grown worse, that would be a bad result. But that is something you should demonstrate with data instead of just asserting it.

I mean one can go look at the health outcomes of the average american vs other developed nations, and see that we do not get much for the amount of money we spend. I won't bother to argue this with you. If you're genuinely operating in good faith, you're just as capable of finding the studies as I am, and if not, there's really no point

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

#416

Post by ecshafer »

Schlagbohrer wrote: post #300
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #46

It's impressive that somehow, as if by coincidence, we're seeing the biggest inflationary drivers for decades, perhaps for centuries, all happening simultaneously. The Iran war is spiking the price of oil and will likely cause shortages of pretty much everything if it isn't ended. The Ukraine war is helping with that by destroying Russian refining capacity. The memory shortage is set to do the same to consumer electr…

William Gibson coined the term "The Jackpot" to describe an apocalypse made up of many different disasters all happening near in time, overwhelming civilization. Pandemic, war, mismanagement, corruption, resource scarcity, climate breakdown, ...

The book "1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed" essentially argues that as being the root cause of the Bronze Age Collapse. The eastern Mediterranean and middle east were sophisticated, highly integrated cultures with a large amount of trade. There was a series of droughts, earth quakes, fires, etc. that re-occurred over a period of time, causing agricultural output to drop, leading to rebellions, leading to wars, leading the trade routes to collapse, and everything collapsing roughly at the same time.

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

#417

Post by Ylpertnodi »

fittingopposite wrote: post #316

Like Taleb says: "I've never seen a shortage not followed by a glut." Just wondering when this time is and got how long end consumers should wait for prices to fall again strongly.

I'll wait forever, if necessary.

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

#418

Post by nickpp »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #411
nickpp wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Must be all that nationalization. No, it’s the regulations. In less regulated, freer markets like vision correction eye surgery the costs went down and quality up. Even in health care.

You'll forgive me if perhaps I want something as important as eye surgery to be well regulated. Have a look at health outcomes for literally any industry where regulation is lax, like Brazilian plastic surgery. It's not great.

Sure, I totally get you. Then higher costs, lower availability and crappier services (all due to less competition and more bureaucratic hoops) is a price you should be happily willing to pay.

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

#419

Post by handle584 »

coldtea wrote: post #182
mr_toad wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, nothing to do with that. Even Steve Jobs said so back 20+ years ago, about why Apple can't just get out of China manufacturing. He said the labour cost is neghigible and not qualitatively different to the US. It's the availability of every part and tech you need in nearby supply centers and factories, the huge supply of appropriate resources, including the ability to have tens of thousands of expert workers on co…

Of course you do not talk about cheap labor when you are exploiting it, from which all the speed, all the availability-at-any-time come from. The closest quote I can find is

The story is told of when Apple did a last minute design change on the Iphone. As soon as the parts came in, 8000 Chinese workers were immediately called in at midnight to start a 12 hour shift. An Apple executive is quoted as saying that the “speed and flexibility are breathtaking.”

Currently the reality on Chinese assembly lines is those expert workers are working 12 hour shifts for 1 day off every 14 days, and earns about $800-$1,000 a month.

It's a huge problem in China actually, those 996-esque working schedule is everywhere now, normal 955 or even 965 schedule is almost non-existent among domestic private employers. The sad thing is that sometimes some Act (like EU supply chain law) forces factories to 955 schedule but those line workers are not happy, because that means they don't get overtime and are making minimum wages like $300 a month, not even enough to live a life. Chinese got five day work week because of WTO, yet now many have lost it.

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

#420

Post by _kidlike »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #141
p0w3n3d wrote: post #139

I heard that one company buying all the product or a majority of the product is called a monopoly practice. If a dominant buyer locks up most of the supply chain through exclusive contracts, it prevents rival companies from getting the materials they need to survive, which violates laws like Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

It's called a monopsony[1], regardless, antitrust regulation is famously dead under the current US administration. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony

very cool word, but I think the etymology stated in Wikipedia is wrong.

the second part of the word just means purchase (in a weird ancient Greek tense). there's no relation to fish whatsoever.

(I'm Greek)

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