This has got to be what tulip mania felt like right? Like we all know this is going to end badly.
Except those tulips were a plaything for the rich and the fallout was contained to the rich, and with AI the fallout is going to be put on everybody else.
When you say it like that AI sounds like one big scam.
😮
I think Louis Rossmann said it right: https://youtu.be/WpPIW4aeeag?t=699
tl;dw: "Fuck you!" ..."You have them for Sam Altman, just not for me."
DDR3 still works just fine
Been running that shit since 2009
Slots open still, 4 to go
32 gigs and I can buy mo'
Since DDR4 is relatively reasonable in price, production of AM4 CPU's and motherboards are starting back up to make use of it.
TBH, I'm for it. I'm still on that generation of hardware and it still works great
The problem is organic demand is going up for older gen hardware and that will drive THOSE prices up.
That's why we only talk about this on posts that don't get scraped by LLM
You need to be really optimistic to assume that this post isn't going to be scraped
If I can play Kingdom Come Deliverance II using DDR3 (and a gforce 1660 ti) running on Ultra, I don't understand why I need to replace my entire motherboard for clout or whatever.
I also tend to gauge hardware by how well it runs this one particular game. 😂 I’ll upgrade if necessary KCD 3 comes out, I guess.
I built an AM5 system because I wanted to ensure that if I want to upgrade it, I won't have to buy an entirely new motherboard. Coming from Intel who change their socket every two weeks, I thought it was a great idea at the time.
The cost wasn't prohibitive, the kinks ironed out quite fast. But I don't like DDR5 RAM. Like, it's RAM, I don't notice anything spectacular about it. What I do notice, is that it takes FUCKING AGES to post!
Startup finished in 20.971s (firmware) + 4.818s (loader) + 785ms (kernel) + 4.440s (initrd) + 7.741s (userspace) = 38.757s
graphical.target reached after 7.697s in userspace.
It's taking 21 fucking seconds to do some kind of "memory training!" It used to be over 40 seconds! For what? No noticeable difference in user experience other than it taking forever to boot.
Bit ironic that the image is generative AI slop
… or is it?
I am quite positive that it is AI gen.
The smooth focus effect on the heatsink made me think it was stock photography but tineye can't find it beyond February so it could easily be generated.
Aren't the ram slots also straight up placed wrong in the motherboard? I have never seen ram on a diagonal from the CPU before, or running parallel to the pcie slots, even on weird prebuilts.
Oh, definitely. I was questioning whether or not the irony was actually deliberate, illustrating the end result of the fake money ouroboros
All kinds of weird going on with how the right hand is “holding” that module (while pinching another one behind it?)
Memory module is symmetrical.
No motherboard I’ve ever seen would have DIMM slots parallel to PCI slots, let alone that far from the CPU socket
Have a look at what would normally be the 24-Pin ATX connector - fewer pins, which is not unheard of in some proprietary cases, but the connector itself looks weird and garbled.
… or is it?
Ironic? Or GenAI?
Ironic - it’s clearly GenAI
The question is whether or not it’d deliberately ironic, the hallucination machine can’t even properly hallucinate PC Hardware despite heaps of training data.
… or is it?
vsauce music intensifies
HBomberguy rips through the background
"I tricked you! This post is actually about professional wrestling!"
The real reason is that the people running those AIs that they put so much money into to get where they currently are are well aware that people can just run their own models locally and cut them out of the picture entirely so they are attempting to monopolize the hardware needed to run it under the guise of getting ready to expand into the future.
Though the storage I think is more about wanting to keep a log of each interaction with their model for training and other ways to profiting from it (openly or covertly).
Like the whole "ai output isn't copyrightable" benefits them because they can just straight up use whatever output their models generate and it will be perfectly legal.
Not just AI. Many of these companies are also very entrenched in Cloud Services and have pushed cloud/subscription only models as a perpetual source of income.
By manipulating the supply chain to push up the prices of hardware, it's similar to how buying up the housing market allows incumbents to squeeze out competitors and ensure that they control how much "rent" people have to pay
Yup. I sometimes suspect the “higher electric bill” (near datacenters) is to force people to use cloud services, rather than a private cloud method.
Reminds me of the Ankh Morpork Pork Futures Warehouse.
... by doing things that are impossible.
It's irrational because this is being driven by billionaire techbros who think AI will bring them immortality.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the rich and powerful seeking immortality is nothing new.
How is it these days? I really need to build a nas and haven't checked prices in a few months.
Still horrible
NAS
Decided to check the Synology RAM just for fun. I think they were quite overpriced even before.
Anyway, 16GB DDR4 Synology stick is EUR 1,409. What makes it EUR 88/GB?
Same as always, best time was last year, next best is now. Consider LTO5 tape backups.
well they are mathematically possible just not necessarily economically feasible
When you zoom out and look at the bigger picture, this is just the latest instance of ever expanding credit being converted into assets, just like housing, and reflected in everything down to groceries.
The structural problem lies in the very fact that we have, since 1971 and the end of the Bretton Woods system, fiat currencies backed by nothing tangible or physical, allowing for limitless expansion and by extension inevitable devaluation.
That money has to go somewhere to avoid being eaten by the very inflation it created, holding onto a resource that can be infinitely replicated, like currency in our present system, is a guaranteed loss.
The goal of fiat fueled VC bubbles is never to generate immediate, honest profits from selling a product to consumers, the goal is asset inflation and capital preservation.
The system is not broken, it is in fact working exactly as intended.
I wouldn't blame fiat at all. It's an issue of governance, classes and growing poverty. Capital has been shrinking labour's share, year on year. Your inability to afford a nominal price has nothing to do with fiat. The capitalist class have just grown more brazen and they've realised no one will say "no".
https://fortune.com/2026/01/13/us-workers-smallest-labor-share-gdp-on-record/
If you want to quip about AI being mentioned in the above article do note that labour's share of GDP had been on the decline before 'AI' was a twinkle in your father's eye. It's been a set trend, with politician's endlessly arguing with the working class: you'll get your share soon(tm), but not now. It never came and it never will. The political promises are the same, but they increasingly sound ever hollower.
It's just more capitalists doing what capitalists do.
Damn this just describes capitalism 101
TBF, step 1 was to take a shit ton of equity and purchase the small house sized machinery to make the memory stacks that will never be used....
Like the subprime housing bubble.
"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.