A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
Yeah, well, Sam Altman basically spelled that out.
But they also see us as a wasted potential for profit harvesting. More resources in our hands means less resources we need to rent off of them.
A very long time ago, with light bulbs, companies discovered the value of repeat customers. But planned obsolescence isn't good enough. Better to secure a continued abd perpetual revenue stream.
At some point, people like me will think "what am I even alive for then?" and do the unthinkable.
They absolutely dont see normal people as competition. 95% of ram was going to enterprise already.
isnt it because they stopped producing as much and mostly focused on AI chips, this makes any new RAM just sought after more.
Deeper theorising: The drive for AI is both for surveillance and control using AI, AND for raising prices on computing gear so that the average person cannot afford to own anything but a terminal where their privacy and choices are completely out of their hands.
This is both backlash to a CEO being killed AND privacy actions digging into advertising revenues.
Tin foil hat: it's become far too easy for the average person to collect a dangerous amount of data. They have to start controlling PC supplies and eventually move everyone to subscription services so they can keep data control.
Is this on tin foil hat levels? I'd be surprised if it doesn't go there and I don't want to live in that world
And if scam altman wants my ram, he's going to need to pay me $4k/gb
Goes up $1k every time I mention it
He can rent half my RAM at $10 per mb per hour.
Wanna utilize 32gb of my ram?
32 GB of my ram will cost you a cool $32,768 per hour.
Edit: sorry the grace period has ended and enshittification has begun. It's now $15 per mb of ddr4 and $30 per mb of ddr5 (but it's faster!)
Why use a linear increase when you could use an exponential increase?
I like logarithmic increases.
You know what, fair enough, I didn't think big enough
1000^(# of times mentioned)
Which makes the current price $1000000000000/gb
AI companies don't see normal people at all. They're too busy worrying about keeping the scheme rolling or trying to birth the digital god they think will give their life meaning.
Revelation 13:15-17
And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain. Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.
This is always a fun game when the next scary trend rolls in. Ok, so: "... image of the beast might even speak... " could just be the LLM console interface, but LLMs don't really have an "image" so... tenuous.
"... causes all... to be marked..." Could refer to having "AI" in your resume/CV.
"... on the right hand... " gonna go with mouse RSI from typing less in IDEs and mousing around more.
"...and on the forehead..." since you're thinking less your brow will spend less time furrowed, so like a botox injection between your eyebrows.
"... no one can buy or sell without the mark..." Would be market paralysis waiting to see if the bubble will pop, but AI stans don't fret.
That's pretty funny
"Image" I take to be the AI itself if true. The reason is:
Man is made in God's image
GenAI is trained on man's outputs, etc. It is literally made in the image of man (this is a strong theological argument against allowing AI to generate sacred content or giving it human rights in general)
The first beast has a wound, this has been ascribed to Donald trump
The second beast could be Elon Musk with his image being Grok
I'm not saying that Trump is THE antichrist, but he is certainly AN antichrist, and these patterns could appear (prophecies can be fulfilled multiple times before they are finally fully fulfilled)
They definitely see personal computing as competition. They see people as potential market slaves.
No. RAM prices skyrocketed because the major manufacturers that supplied the consumer market shifted their production capacity toward AI data centers, creating a supply shortage in the consumer market. This effectively turned RAM into a high-demand commodity rather than the relatively accessible consumer product it once was.
RAM continues to be expensive because competing manufacturers have not stepped in to meaningfully increase supply for the consumer market. Instead, manufacturers are prioritizing the substantially more lucrative AI data center market, leaving consumers with fewer options and less competition for available supply.
Judging by the title of your post, I'm convinced you don't understand what competition actually means in the context of economics. Competition isn't simply the existence of multiple companies. It's the willingness and ability of those companies to enter a market, increase supply, and compete for consumers by offering better prices.
It's very likely also due to cartel behavior between the big three memory manufacturers, something for which they have been convicted in the past.
I think they used the AI demand shock as an excuse to raise and maintain their prices to the insanity they are today.
Absolutely. Large public companies like nothing more than to corner the market and be the only supplier circumventing the necessity to compete with other companies. Ideally legislation would prevent this from happening. Alas, this is the world that we live in.
Even though I agree with you, I think OP is saying the same thing but in a nutshell and with more emotion than logic. They’re not wrong but not correct because it’s not the full answer.
CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman, a billionaire, said he thinks it's terrible for people have RAM. He said it in the context of being against local inference. It's really not hard to see what they really think. They want to hoard all the RAM and make you rent it from them.
Ah that’s a didn’t perspective. I see what you’re saying now. Well done.
We live in a weird late stage capitalist situation where the producer sees the consumer as competition which is why we're seeing the artificial scarcity and GPUs just sitting idle in warehouses.
Once again, you are misusing the word competition. Consumers aren't producing RAM, adding supply to the market, or competing with another company for sales.
If these companies want to rent computing power to consumers while reserving the RAM supply for themselves, they are consolidating control over the market. That's a supply-side market concentration issue, not competition between consumers and manufacturers.
Sam Altman, OpenAI, and other tech executives don't view the consumer base as competition. They view consumers as potential customers for their computing services. They want to own the infrastructure and rent access to it. A consumer renting computing power from a company isn't competing with that company.
You're confusing two entirely different economic concepts. You're wrong, and I'm not saying that to be mean. I'm simply pointing out an objective distinction in how competition works in economics.
Why would I buy what they're selling when I can run their product on my gaming computer?
I have no idea... Why would you buy what they're selling if you can run it on your gaming computer?
You doing something on your own in the same way a company would do it for profit still isn't competition as defined by economics.
You still don't know what competition means.
No, you just don't really understand what you're reading and you're arguing shit the guy isn't even saying.
ITT: Talk of ECONOMIC COMPETITION in the sense of a multiple companies chasing the same consumers, and there is also LITERAL FUCKING COMPETITION FOR WHO GETS TO USE THE LIMITED AMOUNT OF CHIPS PRODUCED.
He keeps talking about the second point and you keep pointing at the first one, which isn't really what he was fucking talking about.
Ah indeed, thank you.
It's not my first encounter with someone who is somehow more autistic than me.
Don't thank him he has no idea what he's talking about. You're just agreeing because he's on your side. You still don't know what competition means or why your statement is not only wrong but makes no sense.
You're going to argue with that guy about what he meant by what he wrote?
And you think somehow you know better than he does, about what he wrote?
And somehow we're all assholes for noticing that you actually CAN'T read fucking minds, and apparently can't read English off a website?
ok you can go back to disappointing your parents now. I've had more than enough of being incorrectly mansplained at by an illiterate narcissist.
At this point in the conversation, I generally consider this sort of response to be a concession, particularly when you can't actually factually address anything I've said and instead resort to "nu-uhh" and "you're stupid."
I have to say, being called illiterate by someone who writes this kind of contrived drivel is the sweetest irony. Not only do you fundamentally misunderstand the concept of competition in the economic sense, but you also apparently don't understand what the words literate, narcissist, and mansplain mean.
We're definitely done here.
I wish we were done, but I feel like you're just going to go to post after post and pretend you can read those people's minds, too.
So grats, you're LemmyHerpes now.
I have no idea where you got this idea that I'm trying to read someone's mind. Your statement about people being competition as the reason RAM prices went up is factually and objectively incorrect. In fact, we know exactly why prices went up. I corrected you and explained why you were wrong. You simply don't understand what competition means in the economic sense.
Apparently, this is offensive to you, and I've somehow become a mind reader in the process. I don't know, man... It all seems pretty straightforward to me. At this point, all that's left is for you to concede and move on.
Look at the downvotes, dude.
The only person who agrees with you is you.
Lol. You think I care about downvotes? One of the most unreliable metrics to judge the factual basis of a statement.
If you actually looked my original comment it's upvoted. So there are others that think I'm right. Which also doesn't matter to me. Because I'm right.
No...you're just an asshole.
And there we have it. Yes, I can come across that way. It's actually a rather interesting phenomenon on the internet.
Take someone like Professor Dave on YouTube. He can be absolutely vicious toward people he debunks, and audiences applaud him for it, often because the people he's criticizing are demonstrably spreading misinformation or making objectively terrible arguments.
Yet when I adopt a somewhat abrasive tone while doing essentially the same thing, suddenly I'm the worst person imaginable.
Here's the distinction people seem to struggle with: I have absolutely no obligation to be nice, agreeable, or easygoing when correcting someone who is confidently presenting misinformation. I saw a statement that was factually incorrect, corrected it, and pointed out that the OP didn't understand the subject matter they were attempting to discuss.
People may not appreciate being confronted that way, but their discomfort doesn't make my argument arrogant, incorrect, or mean-spirited. Being nice is a social preference, not an intellectual obligation. And being abrasive doesn't automatically make someone wrong any more than being polite makes someone right.
You seem to be treating niceness as the standard by which an argument should be judged. It isn't. The standard should be whether the argument is factually sound.
Say what you mean and mean what you say. Everything else is window dressing.
This is the entirety of OP's post. It is factually and objectively incorrect. It doesn't have a second point, and it barely has a first.
Consumers competing to buy RAM because of some supposed scarcity simply isn't happening. If you have the money, you can buy all the RAM you want. It's in stock practically everywhere; it's just incredibly expensive. That's an entirely different kind of market dynamic. It's called demand. The idea that consumers are somehow fighting over a limited supply of RAM is nonsense.
Companies aren't chasing customers or anyone else for that matter. They're supplying RAM to whoever is willing to pay the most for it, i.e., data centers and AI technology companies. They're actively prioritizing those customers and refusing to supply the consumer market. That's the exact opposite of competing for consumers.
If a new company enters the market and begins supplying RAM to meet consumer demand, there will be very little competition for those customers. In fact, consumers will buy from them hand over fist because there's an underserved market waiting to be supplied.
I 100% understand what I'm reading, which is precisely why I'm commenting on it and explaining not only why this isn't competition but also why OP fundamentally misunderstands what competition actually is.
Apparently, you're also struggling with some rather basic, ninth-grade economics. 🤷
And the sheer confidence with which you proclaim such simple-minded nonsense is... incredible.
Ram prices skyrocketed because a few turbotards with more money than god saw a text generation algorithm generate text and this collectively made them cream their pants.
If anyone can generate slop with AI, why would you pay money for someone else's generated slop? They wanna control the slop so people might actually pay for that garbage.
Sam Altman said as much
Did you just figure out capitalism?
? We're bad at making ram and they found a way to use the sticks/factories, messing with demand. No conspiracy required?
Banks/investors see bubble and aren't adequately regulated.
normal don't use that much RAM each but there's billions of em