6 ms·

The honeymoon is over. Among regular citizens, gamers and some groups of tech, many are now incensed by the cost of memory, I was once mildly enthusiastic about

by Danox 4mo ago

The honeymoon is over. Among regular citizens, gamers and some groups of tech, many are now incensed by the cost of memory, I was once mildly enthusiastic about AI but now not so much.

Zigurd 4mo ago
The public seems to be aware that it's a hype driven grift, much more so than when it was a flood of DTC dot-coms, or plowing fiber to nowhere. There's so much money sloshing around that people correctly believe the potential for corruption of their supposedly representatives is rife. People know Kevin O'Leary isn't a real businessman, and the crypto bros pivoting to AI data centers are scammers. The incentives, especially property tax concessions, all look like corporate welfare. Who in the right mind would support Larry Ellison getting a tax break?
- g42gregory 4mo ago
  > Who in the right mind would support Larry Ellison getting a tax break? As Kevin O'Leary said to the interviewer recently, when asked why he is getting subsidized by the tax payers: "You don't understand how free markets work..." You can't make this up.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
mikestew 4mo ago
I'm sure it's more than the cost of memory. The person that does all of their computing on their phone doesn't care. They do care that aspect of life is infected with this shit. From the useless "AI" chatbot that is really just a reskin of their old POS chatbot (or an "Actual Indian"), to the U. S. government talking about giving money to these companies ('cuz ol' Larry and Elon need the money), all the way to the tech bros that will...not...shut up about it. And to drive it all, we'll need to put a jet engine next to your house, sorry. Cryptocurrency was mildly annoying, then AI said "hold my beer...".
- sofixa 4mo ago
  Don't forget the US government openly bragging about using AI for targeting in the Iran war, while also trying to pretend it didn't strike a school and kill a few hundred schoolchildren. (No we don't know if it was AI that made the mistake, and it's not like we're likely to get a proper investigation into it)
  - throwaway85825 4mo ago
    The school used to be a military base office. Acting on stale data is common for both humans and ML models.
    - sofixa 4mo ago
      And a wall between the two was built a decade ago. Considering it was hit on day one, obviously it was considered an important target, which makes it inexcusable that nobody checked it in a decade. https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/4314de01-04f9-43f8-9411-c46805a325d5 https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/4314de...
      - throwaway85825 4mo ago
        A navy base on the contested straight of hormuz is always going to be a priority target. Militaries have pre existing contingency plans. Typically military bases don't move very fast.
        sofixa 4mo ago
        A decade to realise that a military base has been resized and there is an obvious school on what used to be a part of the same property isn't fast.
        mpyne 4mo ago
        "isn't fast" is basically how you'd sum up the U.S. military in a nutshell. So much of what it is in the past 3 decades is coasting off its Cold War legacy. Target lists for an Iran scenario should absolutely have been updated before use for combat, but if it turned out they had not been substantively reviewed ab initio in a decade, I'd absolutely believe it.
naturalmovement 4mo ago
[flagged]
- mikestew 4mo ago
  Complains about pollution, but still breathes the air, eh? What is your suggestion, a strongly-worded letter to the editor of your local newspaper? Arming the dumbest among us... Conveniently leaving yourself out of that group, I'm sure.
  - AlexeyBelov 4mo ago
    It's a 70 day old account (as per usual). Just flag and move on.
- infamouscow 4mo ago
  Pointing out hypocrisy is a losing strategy in politics. I implore you to continue with this strategy.
- Spooky23 4mo ago
  And yet here you are, chilling with the dumbs.
- shimman 4mo ago
  There are differences in types of data centers and hyper scale data centers are extremely different than what you're imagining.
  - naturalmovement 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - shimman 4mo ago
      Ok so you not only don't know the difference, you also think you should be able to act like a tyrant against the local populations for not bending toward your will. You're a great imperialist but like a bad human...
RajT88 4mo ago
The mass data center build out is only partly driven by AI. There is a big cloud capacity crunch across the big providers, has been for a while and it is getting worse.
- shimman 4mo ago
  There is no cloud capacity crunch, what a bunch of hog wash. What we've mostly got are some of the most inefficient systems on the planet where consumers are also building some of the most inefficient projects on top of it. There is no real effort being put towards maximizing the amount of resources you can get out of hardware, the game for the entire duration of our industry has been throwing more money to buy more hardware. Now that there are actual limits happening, there still isn't any major motivation to truly rewrite things to be better or more efficient. What they're trying to do instead is force the US government to bail them out via corporate welfare or to threaten allies into buying their wares.
  - RajT88 4mo ago
    That's certainly another way of looking at it. But the ground truth is: Cloud customers want to deploy more resources, and they can't build data centers and fill them with hardware fast enough to meet that demand. Cloud customers are fighting for who gets to the front of the line to deploy more stuff. That part is undeniable.
  - senordevnyc 4mo ago
    So why don’t these orgs who are voracious for profits just rewrite things to be more efficient? Probably because rewriting things also uses a scarce resource: organizational attention. I’m in this boat myself on a micro scale: I run a fleet of GPU servers for my SaaS and I know that I could improve the efficiency of what I’m running on them by 20% or more, but it’s far cheaper and more effective in the short run to just throw more hardware at the problem than for me to spend weeks or months overhauling things. At some point the scales may tip, but right now hardware is still cheaper than my time is.
    - 4mo ago
Spooky23 4mo ago
That’s just a minor speed bump in the circus of criminality that has been created by the US regime. When Elon did his thing, it was way more than just firing federal workers. They dismantled key parts of the regulatory system. The SEC was purged, the lawyers were chased out of DoJ, and contracts that were key to external/industry groups like FINRA were terminated — they purged most of their staff. AI and crypto is just the means of the grift. The corruption vig being applied to the markets is distorting everything. We see it with memory and food.
nfw2 4mo ago
Demand crunches spur supply chain capacity improvements when the market is left alone from populist interventions.
- throwawayqqq11 4mo ago
  Do you regard delusional billionaire circular funding as populist intervention too?
- CraigJPerry 4mo ago
  Sounds like a certainty stated like that. So not like toilet paper during covid? what if the market was hard to enter? What if the inputs aren't available? What if the costs of the inputs rises? What if the capital for expansion isn't available? What if the manufacturers don't expect demand to persist? What if there's a shortage of skilled labour? What if it takes years to expand supply? What if there wasn't effective competition? I'm not sure it's as certain as you seem to claim.
- atmavatar 4mo ago
  With consumer brands (e.g., Crucial) being shuttered in the wake of AI companies buying up all available RAM production capacity, it's difficult to imagine consumer RAM production even returning to normal anytime soon. It seems all but assured that it will require the AI bubble to burst plus several years to return to normalcy, particularly as RAM manufacturers have also been repeatedly caught price fixing.
- danaris 4mo ago
  That only happens if the producers don't a) believe the crunch is caused by a bubble that's going to pop in a few months, or b) see the crunch as primarily an opportunity to rake in enormous short-term profits.
- surgical_fire 4mo ago
  Ahh the "free market" fable. Like any fable it is a cute story. It is also bullshit.
- andrekandre 4mo ago
AviationAtom 4mo ago
Once the demand from AI companies lets up there will be some bangin' deals
- zeristor 4mo ago
  If you want to by a RAM chip factory in a cyclical fire sale.
JKCalhoun 4mo ago
You might be missing the larger issue: regular citizens are not paying attention to RAM costs, they are more generally just sick of tech and sick of tech bros specifically. Datacenters are a effigy/proxy.

by Danox 4mo ago

The honeymoon is over. Among regular citizens, gamers and some groups of tech, many are now incensed by the cost of memory, I was once mildly enthusiastic about AI but now not so much.

Zigurd 4mo ago

The public seems to be aware that it's a hype driven grift, much more so than when it was a flood of DTC dot-coms, or plowing fiber to nowhere. There's so much money sloshing around that people correctly believe the potential for corruption of their supposedly representatives is rife. People know Kevin O'Leary isn't a real businessman, and the crypto bros pivoting to AI data centers are scammers. The incentives, especially property tax concessions, all look like corporate welfare. Who in the right mind would support Larry Ellison getting a tax break?

g42gregory 4mo ago
> Who in the right mind would support Larry Ellison getting a tax break? As Kevin O'Leary said to the interviewer recently, when asked why he is getting subsidized by the tax payers: "You don't understand how free markets work..." You can't make this up.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]

mikestew 4mo ago

I'm sure it's more than the cost of memory. The person that does all of their computing on their phone doesn't care. They do care that aspect of life is infected with this shit. From the useless "AI" chatbot that is really just a reskin of their old POS chatbot (or an "Actual Indian"), to the U. S. government talking about giving money to these companies ('cuz ol' Larry and Elon need the money), all the way to the tech bros that will...not...shut up about it. And to drive it all, we'll need to put a jet engine next to your house, sorry. Cryptocurrency was mildly annoying, then AI said "hold my beer...".

sofixa 4mo ago
Don't forget the US government openly bragging about using AI for targeting in the Iran war, while also trying to pretend it didn't strike a school and kill a few hundred schoolchildren. (No we don't know if it was AI that made the mistake, and it's not like we're likely to get a proper investigation into it)
- throwaway85825 4mo ago
  The school used to be a military base office. Acting on stale data is common for both humans and ML models.
  - sofixa 4mo ago
    And a wall between the two was built a decade ago. Considering it was hit on day one, obviously it was considered an important target, which makes it inexcusable that nobody checked it in a decade. https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/4314de01-04f9-43f8-9411-c46805a325d5 https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/4314de...
    - throwaway85825 4mo ago
      A navy base on the contested straight of hormuz is always going to be a priority target. Militaries have pre existing contingency plans. Typically military bases don't move very fast.
      - sofixa 4mo ago
        A decade to realise that a military base has been resized and there is an obvious school on what used to be a part of the same property isn't fast.
        mpyne 4mo ago
        "isn't fast" is basically how you'd sum up the U.S. military in a nutshell. So much of what it is in the past 3 decades is coasting off its Cold War legacy. Target lists for an Iran scenario should absolutely have been updated before use for combat, but if it turned out they had not been substantively reviewed ab initio in a decade, I'd absolutely believe it.

naturalmovement 4mo ago

[flagged]

mikestew 4mo ago
Complains about pollution, but still breathes the air, eh? What is your suggestion, a strongly-worded letter to the editor of your local newspaper? Arming the dumbest among us... Conveniently leaving yourself out of that group, I'm sure.
- AlexeyBelov 4mo ago
  It's a 70 day old account (as per usual). Just flag and move on.
infamouscow 4mo ago
Pointing out hypocrisy is a losing strategy in politics. I implore you to continue with this strategy.
Spooky23 4mo ago
And yet here you are, chilling with the dumbs.
shimman 4mo ago
There are differences in types of data centers and hyper scale data centers are extremely different than what you're imagining.
- naturalmovement 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - shimman 4mo ago
    Ok so you not only don't know the difference, you also think you should be able to act like a tyrant against the local populations for not bending toward your will. You're a great imperialist but like a bad human...

RajT88 4mo ago

The mass data center build out is only partly driven by AI. There is a big cloud capacity crunch across the big providers, has been for a while and it is getting worse.

shimman 4mo ago
There is no cloud capacity crunch, what a bunch of hog wash. What we've mostly got are some of the most inefficient systems on the planet where consumers are also building some of the most inefficient projects on top of it. There is no real effort being put towards maximizing the amount of resources you can get out of hardware, the game for the entire duration of our industry has been throwing more money to buy more hardware. Now that there are actual limits happening, there still isn't any major motivation to truly rewrite things to be better or more efficient. What they're trying to do instead is force the US government to bail them out via corporate welfare or to threaten allies into buying their wares.
- RajT88 4mo ago
  That's certainly another way of looking at it. But the ground truth is: Cloud customers want to deploy more resources, and they can't build data centers and fill them with hardware fast enough to meet that demand. Cloud customers are fighting for who gets to the front of the line to deploy more stuff. That part is undeniable.
- senordevnyc 4mo ago
  So why don’t these orgs who are voracious for profits just rewrite things to be more efficient? Probably because rewriting things also uses a scarce resource: organizational attention. I’m in this boat myself on a micro scale: I run a fleet of GPU servers for my SaaS and I know that I could improve the efficiency of what I’m running on them by 20% or more, but it’s far cheaper and more effective in the short run to just throw more hardware at the problem than for me to spend weeks or months overhauling things. At some point the scales may tip, but right now hardware is still cheaper than my time is.
  - 4mo ago

Spooky23 4mo ago

That’s just a minor speed bump in the circus of criminality that has been created by the US regime. When Elon did his thing, it was way more than just firing federal workers. They dismantled key parts of the regulatory system. The SEC was purged, the lawyers were chased out of DoJ, and contracts that were key to external/industry groups like FINRA were terminated — they purged most of their staff. AI and crypto is just the means of the grift. The corruption vig being applied to the markets is distorting everything. We see it with memory and food.

nfw2 4mo ago

Demand crunches spur supply chain capacity improvements when the market is left alone from populist interventions.

throwawayqqq11 4mo ago
Do you regard delusional billionaire circular funding as populist intervention too?
CraigJPerry 4mo ago
Sounds like a certainty stated like that. So not like toilet paper during covid? what if the market was hard to enter? What if the inputs aren't available? What if the costs of the inputs rises? What if the capital for expansion isn't available? What if the manufacturers don't expect demand to persist? What if there's a shortage of skilled labour? What if it takes years to expand supply? What if there wasn't effective competition? I'm not sure it's as certain as you seem to claim.
atmavatar 4mo ago
With consumer brands (e.g., Crucial) being shuttered in the wake of AI companies buying up all available RAM production capacity, it's difficult to imagine consumer RAM production even returning to normal anytime soon. It seems all but assured that it will require the AI bubble to burst plus several years to return to normalcy, particularly as RAM manufacturers have also been repeatedly caught price fixing.
danaris 4mo ago
That only happens if the producers don't a) believe the crunch is caused by a bubble that's going to pop in a few months, or b) see the crunch as primarily an opportunity to rake in enormous short-term profits.
surgical_fire 4mo ago
Ahh the "free market" fable. Like any fable it is a cute story. It is also bullshit.
andrekandre 4mo ago

AviationAtom 4mo ago

Once the demand from AI companies lets up there will be some bangin' deals

zeristor 4mo ago
If you want to by a RAM chip factory in a cyclical fire sale.

JKCalhoun 4mo ago

You might be missing the larger issue: regular citizens are not paying attention to RAM costs, they are more generally just sick of tech and sick of tech bros specifically. Datacenters are a effigy/proxy.