DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market • Hacker News Board

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#551

Post by fc417fc802 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 10:37 PM UTC

einpoklum wrote: post #472

neonstatic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Collusion of large corporations promoting LLMs > We all know that DRAM prices have spiked since production is going to those infernal chatbot training data centers I know it's very fashionable here to talk about capitalism as some hand-washes-hand big corp organized scam, but if you put that ideology aside for a moment, you contradicted yourself here, I think. I personally don't like conspiracy-theory-thinking. If…

I didn't say "Criminal conspiracy" nor "Capitalism is bad" (although I'm not a fan, and not because of the DRAM price spike). What mean by collusion is that OpenAI apparently agreed with Samsung and Hynix to secure 40% of global DRAM output, for their own exclusive use. See coverage here: https://bizety.com/2025/12/28/the-dirty-dram-deal-how-openai... https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/openais-star...

I don't think an above board negotiation to purchase in bulk is correct to refer to as collusion. In lieu of other details it's just a purchase agreement.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#552

Post by ekaryotic » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 10:49 PM UTC

leptons wrote: post #348

therealdrag0 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep I’ve seen multiple instances of this so far.

Yeah, I got the AI to convert some code that ran at 30fps in Javascript to C, and it resulted in a program that generated 1 frame every 20 seconds. Then I told it to optimize it, and now it's running at 1 fps. After going back and forth with the AI for hours, it never got faster than 1 fps. I guess I'm "doing it wrong" as the hypesters like to tell me.

speedrunning super mario world with neural nets is weirdly effective though. i guess you need a genetic algorithm to refine different approaches rather than a neural net.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#553

Post by leptons » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 11:02 PM UTC

Hendrikto wrote: post #421

leptons wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering helium is a finite resource on earth, it should be made illegal to put it in a party balloon.

It’s not illegal to put gas in your car. That is a finite resource too.

There are alternatives to oil for energy, a lot of them. Helium is unique in its place in the universe, for the properties it possesses as an element. And once it's gone, it's gone. Hydrogen is similar but extremely volatile, where Helium is not volatile.

Helium could be made with nuclear fusion, but a 1 Gigawatt nuclear fusion plant would only produce 200kg of helium per year, so it's still not a viable path to make the quantities of helium we currently use. Current usage is almost 30 Million kg per year.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#554

Post by karlgkk » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 11:25 PM UTC

megous wrote: post #464

parl_match wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can just as well not run docker. this is naive "just as well"? lmao sure i guess i could just manually set up the environment and have differences from what im hoping to use in productio > 1GiB machine can run a lot of server software, this is naive it really depends if you're crapping out some basic web app versus doing something that's actually complicated and has a need for higher performance than synchronou…

Yes, it's exactly how docker works if you use it for where it matters for a hobbyist - which is where you are installing random third-party apps/containers that you want to run on your SBC locally. I don't know why people instantly forget the context of the discussion, when their favorite way of doing things gets threatened. :) Context is hobbyists and SBC market (mostly various ARM boards). Maybe I'm weird, but I re…

> where it matters for a hobbyist

you dont get to define "where it matters" for a hobbyist

> which is where you are installing random third-party apps/containers that you want to run on your SBC locally

this is such a consoomer take. for those of us who actually build software, we have actual valid reasons for using it during development

> they're completely different architectures, so I can't avoid the differences anyway

ironically this is a side benefit modern containers are useful

i think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how containers work and why theyre useful for software development. based on your other posts in this thread only makes me more sure of that. im not saying containers/etc are a perfect solution or always the right solution, but your misconceptions are separate from that

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#555

Post by CTDOCodebases » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 11:43 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #56

CTDOCodebases wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuel price rises = logistics price rises.

You're right that fuel prices have risen. But usually the impact of fuel prices is mostly felt on bulkier, lower cost items first. After all, a truck can carry a 10kg sack of rice, or a 10kg nvidia gpu. If shipping costs for 10kg rise by $15 the sack of rice has doubled in price, but the GPU is only 0.5% more expensive.

Not all increases in prices are reactive. Some are anticipated. Inertial inflation is real.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#556

Post by CTDOCodebases » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 11:54 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #89

CTDOCodebases wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuel price rises = logistics price rises.

This is driven by AI datacenter demand, not fuel prices. RAM prices have actually dropped significantly in the last couple days as the Iran war hit and the possibility that interest rates might go up and pop the AI bubble sunk in. (Though let’s see where they go after the last couple days of whipsawing.)

It's driven by a whole bunch of factors but I agree it's largely driven by AI data center demand

But still 30% of the worlds helium production is apparently shut down and ships can't get to where they need to be as efficiently as they have been so there is going to be knock on effects from this.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#557

Post by nektro » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 12:02 AM UTC

they (collective) started losing the market the moment these went over ~$30. today's increases are disastrous

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#558

Post by nandomrumber » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 12:20 AM UTC

Aerroon wrote: post #474

nandomrumber wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same applies at the low end, the grand parent comment even agrees. You buy a new phone every two years, it comes with a camera, a cpu, a gpu, a host of sensors. Same as phones did two years ago, and ten years before that. I don’t use my current smart phone in any ways that are different to the iMate PDA2K I had twenty years so. https://www.gsmarena.com/i_mate_pda2k-962.php

How often does your browser freeze up when you open a webpage? How often does your phone browser dump its memory when you switch to another tab and then switch back? Eg if you were writing a post and opened another tab to go check some fact then the post in the original tab gets deleted. Because that's what happens if you use an old cheap phone in the modern day. I even had a phone that would occasionally just crash…

Old cheap phone is not the same as modern low end.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#559

Post by Nasrudith » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 2:03 AM UTC

nutjob2 wrote: post #518

gwerbin wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't count on it. There's a lot of money in killing other businesses, or even just keeping prices high. Even if the high prices are an accident, there is always someone looking to take advantage of any situation for profit.

I have to agree. You only have to look at car and junk food inflation from after covid. The prices make no sense, but that doesn't matter, they got away with it and are fighting to hold onto high prices, even as consumers balk. Their solution? Ditch poorer consumers. New cars and (branded) junk foods are luxury items now, apparently.

When weren't new cars luxury items exactly?

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#560

Post by Nasrudith » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 2:09 AM UTC

brandnewideas wrote: post #399

Waterluvian wrote: post #253

If I spent a bajillion dollars on massive data centres I would be delighted if personal computing were also crippled for a while. It would allow me to further own your ability to do compute tasks and to help kill the concept of doing it yourself for a while.

Crippling personal computing isn't a side-effect of massive investments in data centers, but rather one of the primary drivers for it.

Been hacking Sam Altman's inbox lately? Seriously how the hell could you actually know that instead of just assuming they are evil as possible?