This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I am infinitely grateful to my past self that I purchased an on-sale 64GB RAM upgrade for my Framework 13 in 2024 before prices skyrocketed. It was $119, and checking back right now... Holy crap the same thing is $1,079 now.
Yeah, I put 96GB of DDR4 in a PC just before prices went wild and my only regret is that I didn't also do my server. Garage sales have been interesting this summer. Always hoping to find old PCs or TiVo devices so I can grab the hard drives and/or ram.
And people who have an issue with this are called luddites
Absolute clown show
We've been told historical lies. People who have an issue with this are like Luddites, but that's because the Luddites were justified too!
They weren't against technology; they were against it being used to abuse and exploit them as workers.
I've only heard that term being used to insult, that's actually a real thing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites
The Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers who protested the usage of certain types of automated machinery owing to their concerns relating to worker pay, labour savings, child labour, working conditions, and output quality. They often destroyed said machines in organised raids. Members of the group referred to themselves as Luddites, self-described followers of "Ned Ludd", a legendary weaver whose name was used as a pseudonym in threatening letters to mill owners and government officials.
History is written by the victors, and the luddites lost. That's why they're maligned as backwards idiots who didn't want tech to succeed.
They weren't stupid. They knew precisely what was going to happen, and did their best to stop it. Generally they took care to target only machines as their goal wasn't to harm people but to remain employed, and have money to survive with. Naturally there were exceptions, and sometimes people did get hurt.
But then, the bourgeoisie enacted law to prevent this where destroying mechanical looms became punishable by... oh let's see...
The act, as passed, made the destruction of mechanised looms [...] a capital felony (and hence a crime punishable by death).
Right! Death! Destruction of company property became punishable by death.
And people did die. Children died. Mind you, back then workers were anyone capable of working, and they had no rights. They didn't vote for the people who passed this act; workers weren't supposed to have a voice, and so the only recourse was rebellion.
This didn't stop things immediately, there's quite a lot of really cool worker history here, but eventually the government sent in the military and couple that with nothing really changing despite widespread rebellion, the luddite movement fizzled out.
This is why I am opposed to the death penalty and I want the police disarmed. It is also why I still believe in workers arming themselves.
They confuse us with legitimate technophobes.
My stepmother was a technophobe. She read articles about school shootings in the US, and thought if I got addicted to video games like Quake, I'll be buying a machine gun from the black market, then end up as a murderer. Yes, she also had a moral panic about drug use, all while she was a borderline alcoholic. The farce in it was that while I wasn't allowed to play any Quake games, there was no harm in Unreal games, which arguably are better. The tragedy in it was that she tried her best to steer me away from computers, giving me some disadvantage in college, also she lied to the doctors about my first seizure to make it seem like it was due to the computer, which lead to the doctors not doing tests besides EEG and strobe lights. Once social media rolled out, she somewhat changed her mind on the subject, though she was still ignorant enough to think "software developer" and "CNC programmer" are the same, and almost got me a job at a local factory (she feared that if I lived on Budapest for a bit longer, I'd get some lung disease, because big city equals bad air).
Give it 10 years and civilians won't be able to own PCs... We will be forced to the cloud computers. And by that time AI surveillance and profiling will already have its infrastructure built.
We need to figure out how to do our daily things with very few computing resources. Gaming and heavy workloads excepted, most things we do ought to be possible on 15 year old CPU’s and 2GB. All we need is efficiency and low expectations. Fuck em.
It was already possible to do that. Then Electron came in and developers thought it was better to just release stupid apps that take 4 GB of RAM each.
This is the type of dystopia that I cannot bear to live in.
Its already here. Most "regular" users already depend for most part of there digital life on subscription based cloud computing. Al lot of people don't even own a PC anymore, only mobile devices.
I got some 16gb of DDR4 i found in a closet. You guys can start bidding.
I could have bought a 16 GB DDR4 stick at 30, now they go for 150, I'm going to be stuck at 24 GB forever now.
It seems the more this shit happens the less I need tech in my life (pulls notebook out of back pocket and writes this down for posterity).
And suddenly me "unjustifiably" buying 128gb of DDR5 was a good investment of money.
Yeah, I splurged on some hardware upgrades with great shame almost 2 years ago because I was preparing for the idiotic tariffs, expecting modest price increases.
I did not expect a 5x. So glad that I did it. It would no longer be an option.
I fucking had to keep pushing back buying some more RAM. Yeah, that was a great move. Now I can only hope the bubble bursts and prices crash.
I mean, I get by fine with the RAM I have. I don't need much. It's the principle of the thing, you know? Sometimes being financially responsible and careful sucks.
The thing with the bubble bursting is it will still take time for it to come down, as they'll need to start manufacturering consumer RAM again. The stuff they're churning out now can't be thrown into a PC or laptop.
And they'll NEVER allow prices to drop back to reasonable levels. They've already learned people will pay a premium during a shortage, so they can still artificially control the supply to keep prices high.
If competitors ever emerge making RAM at reasonable prices, we need to boycott the current fuckwads even when they undercut the new players.
I dont... I am absolutely stressing the DDR3 I have. But no way I am going to pay 500% for some memory!
Do I want more memory or do I wait for two years...
I wait for two years. As long as the existing memory modules doesn't break, Linux will continue to be happy with existing amount.
If you are on windows, good luck.
AI bubble will burst.
I mean, today I saw a chocolate company ad saying no AI was needed. For chocolate. Anti-AI in a chocolate ad.
If Sees Candy is getting in on AI hate to sell shit, obviously people are tired of this crap. The bubble will burst.
and if it doesn't, let em have it. I'll cancel my internet, and start overloading all other infrastructure with confusion from not knowing how to deal with humans and paper..
idgaf. I can't and won't be forced to comply to a subscription.
I wonder if the fed gov cares that entire sectors of the tech economy are being threatened by one (AI).
yea its getting pretty bad. i bought 32gb 3200mhz ddr4 ram like 3 years ago for like 50 dollars brand new on amazon, and i recently had to purchase that same amount for a server pc im building and it costed like $130 USED
Ah you crazy kids, we used to have to lock our computers in steel cases in the early 2000s.
Bought my first prebuilt 2 years ago and it's now worth over twice what I spent on it. First time in my life I remember anything like that happening.
On the plus side, all the game companies are going to finally start optimizing games and quit pushing out more and more demanding shit. A big win for smaller devs and creative\fun game developers too. My steam deck and old PC gonna keep on winning.
