The aim of those buying up all the RAM is to prevent people owning devices capable of serious computing, so we have to rent what we used to have back from them, with added censorship and surveillance. Sam Altman has been explicit about how he wants no one to own RAM except companies running data centres. The Raspberry Pi becoming unfeasibly expensive is just an example of that forced transition from owning to renting playing out. When it was introduced the Pi cost $15. We’re in a different world now.
Yes but a pi zero 2w is $15 and is roughly equivalent to an OG B+. The problem as I see it is that computing segments like pis are jumping into the next segment up in power and in cost and nobody’s doing a very good job of marketing that or marketing the new product in the lower tier that are meant to actually replace them.
An ESP32-P4 is about the same ram, better IO options, but half the CPU of the original Pi for about $20 right now. So the tech has been progressing a little bit.
You’re roughly getting 150x the power for 10x the cost with the current price hike.
Maybe in a vacuum, but in a world with millions or even billions of ‘legacy’ devices sitting around collecting dust that have equal or better compute power for less cost, these devices don’t really make sense.
No I completely agree, they make no sense these days. I was just saying that innovation has actually carried them forward and how much more power you actually get compared to the original raspis.
Exactly this ^^^. Pretty soon people will only own clients/terminals, we will rent CPU/RAM/GPU/Storage remotely: cloud computing for everyone. The most terrifying part of this is no one seems to care.
I expect us the tech literate / enthusiasts / professionals, advocating about this feel similarly to climate scientists. Screaming into the void as it all goes to shit.
To be fair I have heard this same pitch 4 different times since the 1980s and it hasn’t come to pass. We users just get around things by being clever and resourceful. Trust me when the big AI bubble either pops or deflates - they will be right back selling ram and drives for cheap. Someone will for sure make an adapter for all the extra data center ram or something.
They’re going to run into speed bumps soon enough. Capital problems are starting to appear in the AI market over the past month, that’s going to get a LOT worse. And no matter what, production in 5 years won’t look like it does today. Between competition, newer production tech, and political upheaval, it’s going to be a hell of a ride.
Not everything is a conspiracy launched by shady billionaires in smoky back rooms. This is straightforward.
The AI companies are in competition so they’re building AI DCs at a breakneck pace in hopes of being the one who crawls out the blast crater when the bubble pops. This building mania predictably sent shock waves through RAM and other tech supply chains.
As to home compute, most people happily ditched their PCs a decade ago and do everything on their phone. I’m not sure tablets are popular anymore. Keep in mind, most consumers can’t pronounce Raspberry Pi and sure don’t want or need one. Ask the “man on the street” what he thinks of the RAM shortage and you’ll get a blank stare.
What “conspiracy”? They openly have more ram than they can install even given the best possible build out. They have also openly stated that they are buying more than they need, to intentionally price-out the competition, and that they want everyone to rent compute from them instead of owning their own.
Why would you paint this as a “conspiracy”? Are you just that ill informed, but chose to speak anyway? Or are you intentionally supporting it?
The aim of those buying up all the RAM is to prevent people owning devices capable of serious computing, so we have to rent what we used to have back from them, with added censorship and surveillance. Sam Altman has been explicit about how he wants no one to own RAM except companies running data centres. The Raspberry Pi becoming unfeasibly expensive is just an example of that forced transition from owning to renting playing out. When it was introduced the Pi cost $15. We’re in a different world now.
Yes but a pi zero 2w is $15 and is roughly equivalent to an OG B+. The problem as I see it is that computing segments like pis are jumping into the next segment up in power and in cost and nobody’s doing a very good job of marketing that or marketing the new product in the lower tier that are meant to actually replace them.
ESP32 started in the segment far below and moving up to match
It was a 700MHz single core board with 512mb of ram…and it was $35, not $15
Just to be pedantic: mb would be millibits, or thousandths of a bit. MB is its big brother megabytes.
Fun fact: a kb is a thousand thousand times bigger than a mb!
Been there, and even have the shirt to prove it 😃
So do I!
And if tech had been proceeding since then as it did for the previous 30 years, you’d expect a whole lot more power for your $15 now.
Moore’s law ran for 40 years but hit a wall around 2010 due to physics.
“Free” upgrades ended long before AI bros started buying up all the RAM and GPUs.
An ESP32-P4 is about the same ram, better IO options, but half the CPU of the original Pi for about $20 right now. So the tech has been progressing a little bit.
Theres a ton of ebook readers that are using the esp32 as a baseline. and meshtastic. Its a fantastic set of chips and setup.
The original Pi had 512MB not KB. It ran Linux and had an SD card “disk”. The ESP32 series aren’t in the same class.
It was also $35 at release, not $15
You’re roughly getting 150x the power for 10x the cost with the current price hike.
Maybe in a vacuum, but in a world with millions or even billions of ‘legacy’ devices sitting around collecting dust that have equal or better compute power for less cost, these devices don’t really make sense.
No I completely agree, they make no sense these days. I was just saying that innovation has actually carried them forward and how much more power you actually get compared to the original raspis.
Exactly this ^^^. Pretty soon people will only own clients/terminals, we will rent CPU/RAM/GPU/Storage remotely: cloud computing for everyone. The most terrifying part of this is no one seems to care.
I expect us the tech literate / enthusiasts / professionals, advocating about this feel similarly to climate scientists. Screaming into the void as it all goes to shit.
To be fair I have heard this same pitch 4 different times since the 1980s and it hasn’t come to pass. We users just get around things by being clever and resourceful. Trust me when the big AI bubble either pops or deflates - they will be right back selling ram and drives for cheap. Someone will for sure make an adapter for all the extra data center ram or something.
They’re going to run into speed bumps soon enough. Capital problems are starting to appear in the AI market over the past month, that’s going to get a LOT worse. And no matter what, production in 5 years won’t look like it does today. Between competition, newer production tech, and political upheaval, it’s going to be a hell of a ride.
Not everything is a conspiracy launched by shady billionaires in smoky back rooms. This is straightforward.
The AI companies are in competition so they’re building AI DCs at a breakneck pace in hopes of being the one who crawls out the blast crater when the bubble pops. This building mania predictably sent shock waves through RAM and other tech supply chains.
As to home compute, most people happily ditched their PCs a decade ago and do everything on their phone. I’m not sure tablets are popular anymore. Keep in mind, most consumers can’t pronounce Raspberry Pi and sure don’t want or need one. Ask the “man on the street” what he thinks of the RAM shortage and you’ll get a blank stare.
What “conspiracy”? They openly have more ram than they can install even given the best possible build out. They have also openly stated that they are buying more than they need, to intentionally price-out the competition, and that they want everyone to rent compute from them instead of owning their own.
Why would you paint this as a “conspiracy”? Are you just that ill informed, but chose to speak anyway? Or are you intentionally supporting it?
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/sam-altman-hates-local-ai-models-computers
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/nvidia-is-claimed-to-have-created-the-gpu-crisis-through-channel-stuffing/ar-AA2fWaLc
The RAM price jumps hurts smartphone prices too. Several models have basically no upgrades from the last year’s generation (see: Pixel) because of it.
And then there’s nVidia, making DLSS5 that requires serious computing power while causing ram shortage.