6 ms·

If they do it'll likely be part of an industry wide push to kill off the home-built PC market. It's no secret that MS and others want the kind of ecosystem Appl

If they do it'll likely be part of an industry wide push to kill off the home-built PC market. It's no secret that MS and others want the kind of ecosystem Apple has and governments want more backdoor access to tech. And which mfg wouldn't want to eliminate partial upgrades/repairs. Imagine that the only PC you could buy one day has everything tightly integrated with no user serviceable or replaceable parts without a high-end soldering lab. Now, since it's impractical to build your own they can raise the price to purchase one above reach of most people and the PC market succeeds in their rental PC aspirations.

Imustaskforhelp 10mo ago
There is definitely a part of me which feels like with the increasing ram prices and similar. Its hard for people to have a home lab. To me what also feels is that there becomes more friction in an already really competitive and high-friction business of creating cloud. With increasing ram prices which I (from my knowledge) would only decrease in 2027-2028 or when this bubble pops, It would be extremely expensive for a new entry of cloud provider in this space. When I mention cloud provider, what I mean aren't the trifecta of AWS,Azure or GCP but rather all the other providers who bought their own hardware and are co-locating it to a datacenter and selling their services targeted at low/mid-range vps/vds servers I had previously thought about creating cloud but in this economy and the current situations, I'd much rather wait. The best bet right now for most people creating cloud /providing such services is probably whitewashing any other brand and providing services on top that make you special. The servers are still rather cheap but the mood that I can see in providers right now is that they are willing to hold the costs for some time to not create a frenzy (so they still have low prices) but they are cautiously waiting and looking for the whole situation and if recent developments continue happening in such a way, I wouldn't be surprised if server providers might raise some prices because the effective underlying hardware's ram/prices increased too.
- thewebguyd 10mo ago
  Feel the same way here. Can't help but get the vibe that big tech wants to lock consumers out, eliminate the ability to have personal computing/self-hosted computing. Maybe in tandem with governments, not sure, but it's certainly appetizing to them from a profit perspective. The end goal is the elimination of personal ownership over any tech. They want us to have to rent everything.
  - Imustaskforhelp 10mo ago
    Honestly its not the fact that they want us to rent everything but rather that effectively an AI tax is happening on us general public (or even hobbyists) where the price of hardware/ram is increasing because of AI demands. I don't exactly think that they did it on purpose to chokehold the supply but it sure damn happened and that doesn't change the fact that prices of hardware might / (already?) increase
cyber_kinetist 10mo ago
I think China will then try to sell their own PC parts instead, their semiconductor industry is catching up so who knows in a decade. But perhaps then the US will probably reply with tariffs on the PC parts (or even ban them!) Which is slowly becoming the norm for US economic policy, and which won't reverse even after Trump.
- john01dav 10mo ago
  US already banned Chinese EVs, even though, from what I've heard, they're excellent
ogogmad 10mo ago
That might be a bit on the paranoid side. It could just be that it's far more profitable right now for companies to sell only to data centres. That way, they don't need to spend money on advertising, or share their revenues with third-party sellers.
wnevets 10mo ago
You're not thinking big enough. Their ultimate goal is gaming (or any computing really) available only in the cloud.
- ogogmad 10mo ago
  Maybe then the year of Linux (or OpenBSD?) on the desktop would finally arrive. Maybe anti-trust could get used. Maybe parts could get scrapped from data centres. Interesting times they would be!
  - guerrilla 10mo ago
    It's already here right now, unironically. There's no need for Windows for gaming now. I just build a new rig with a 7900 XTX and with Steam on Arch Linux everything just works with absolutely no hassle or thinking. This was the only value Windows still had and now that's over.
    - ogogmad 10mo ago
      There are still some pain points with Linux distros: With some, an upgrade can leave you unable to boot into a graphical login screen. This can also happen if you leave a Linux installation, like Manjaro, alone for a year and then do an update.
      - weaksauce 10mo ago
        manjaro is arch under the hood and arch is supposed to be updated fairly frequently.
        deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
      - ElectricalUnion 10mo ago
        That is a problem if you happen to have a nvidia GPU, and, as the article says, by nvidia forcing it, you will not be able to have that brand of customer gamer GPU anymore.
shaky-carrousel 10mo ago
If they do it all gamers will boycott LLMs. Which would be a godsend. Decades trying to save power, moving to LED, trying to improve efficiency everywhere, and now... We are wasting terawatts in digital parrots.
- sorushn 10mo ago
  You are vastly overestimating the standards of the median gamer.
  - Zetaphor 10mo ago
    Also the influence they have on the tech industry, consoles already dominate the market share
Kirth 10mo ago
> Imagine that the only PC you could buy one day has everything tightly integrated with no user serviceable or replaceable parts without a high-end soldering lab. So.. a smart phone?

Imustaskforhelp 10mo ago

There is definitely a part of me which feels like with the increasing ram prices and similar. Its hard for people to have a home lab. To me what also feels is that there becomes more friction in an already really competitive and high-friction business of creating cloud. With increasing ram prices which I (from my knowledge) would only decrease in 2027-2028 or when this bubble pops, It would be extremely expensive for a new entry of cloud provider in this space. When I mention cloud provider, what I mean aren't the trifecta of AWS,Azure or GCP but rather all the other providers who bought their own hardware and are co-locating it to a datacenter and selling their services targeted at low/mid-range vps/vds servers I had previously thought about creating cloud but in this economy and the current situations, I'd much rather wait. The best bet right now for most people creating cloud /providing such services is probably whitewashing any other brand and providing services on top that make you special. The servers are still rather cheap but the mood that I can see in providers right now is that they are willing to hold the costs for some time to not create a frenzy (so they still have low prices) but they are cautiously waiting and looking for the whole situation and if recent developments continue happening in such a way, I wouldn't be surprised if server providers might raise some prices because the effective underlying hardware's ram/prices increased too.

thewebguyd 10mo ago
Feel the same way here. Can't help but get the vibe that big tech wants to lock consumers out, eliminate the ability to have personal computing/self-hosted computing. Maybe in tandem with governments, not sure, but it's certainly appetizing to them from a profit perspective. The end goal is the elimination of personal ownership over any tech. They want us to have to rent everything.
- Imustaskforhelp 10mo ago
  Honestly its not the fact that they want us to rent everything but rather that effectively an AI tax is happening on us general public (or even hobbyists) where the price of hardware/ram is increasing because of AI demands. I don't exactly think that they did it on purpose to chokehold the supply but it sure damn happened and that doesn't change the fact that prices of hardware might / (already?) increase

cyber_kinetist 10mo ago

I think China will then try to sell their own PC parts instead, their semiconductor industry is catching up so who knows in a decade. But perhaps then the US will probably reply with tariffs on the PC parts (or even ban them!) Which is slowly becoming the norm for US economic policy, and which won't reverse even after Trump.

john01dav 10mo ago
US already banned Chinese EVs, even though, from what I've heard, they're excellent

ogogmad 10mo ago

That might be a bit on the paranoid side. It could just be that it's far more profitable right now for companies to sell only to data centres. That way, they don't need to spend money on advertising, or share their revenues with third-party sellers.

wnevets 10mo ago

You're not thinking big enough. Their ultimate goal is gaming (or any computing really) available only in the cloud.

ogogmad 10mo ago
Maybe then the year of Linux (or OpenBSD?) on the desktop would finally arrive. Maybe anti-trust could get used. Maybe parts could get scrapped from data centres. Interesting times they would be!
- guerrilla 10mo ago
  It's already here right now, unironically. There's no need for Windows for gaming now. I just build a new rig with a 7900 XTX and with Steam on Arch Linux everything just works with absolutely no hassle or thinking. This was the only value Windows still had and now that's over.
  - ogogmad 10mo ago
    There are still some pain points with Linux distros: With some, an upgrade can leave you unable to boot into a graphical login screen. This can also happen if you leave a Linux installation, like Manjaro, alone for a year and then do an update.
    - weaksauce 10mo ago
      manjaro is arch under the hood and arch is supposed to be updated fairly frequently.
      - deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
    - ElectricalUnion 10mo ago
      That is a problem if you happen to have a nvidia GPU, and, as the article says, by nvidia forcing it, you will not be able to have that brand of customer gamer GPU anymore.

shaky-carrousel 10mo ago

If they do it all gamers will boycott LLMs. Which would be a godsend. Decades trying to save power, moving to LED, trying to improve efficiency everywhere, and now... We are wasting terawatts in digital parrots.

sorushn 10mo ago
You are vastly overestimating the standards of the median gamer.
- Zetaphor 10mo ago
  Also the influence they have on the tech industry, consoles already dominate the market share

Kirth 10mo ago

> Imagine that the only PC you could buy one day has everything tightly integrated with no user serviceable or replaceable parts without a high-end soldering lab. So.. a smart phone?