Can we get a TL:DW for people that don’t want to watch a video?
this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2025
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I think a lot of people left out the fact that these companies have been accepting public funds for R&D and expansion, and now they're no longer using those funds to sell consumer products, but rather dumping them into the insatiable maw that is AI.
Here's the actual TL:DW (it's not that long, and I did watch it)
Steve describes what's happened (Micron shuts down Crucial their consumer-facing "store brand"), mocks their stupid press release, and discusses the nuances involved, will they still be selling to all the rebadged memory resellers who use Micron as a supplier? Unclear, their reps and defenders say yes, their PR and the context implies not really, unless those resellers want to get into a bidding war with AI datacenters that they're not going to win. Steve not-so-subtly implies that this seems awfully sort of kind of like more price fixing from a small group of oligopolist companies who have in fact been convicted in the past of price fixing, while explictly stating that he is, of course, for legal reasons, definitely NOT implying that in any way shape or form. Some much deserved ranting about how shitty and frustrating this situation is is mixed in throughout and he goes over details about exactly how much prices have risen already, pointing out all the different devices that require some form of high speed memory that are going to be affected by this. Some further discussion suggests the possibility this might just be a shot across the bow to let the other memory companies who are totally not colluding with Micron and never would consider doing that to let them know it's absolutely time to not collude about anything like that because of course they're all paying very close attention right now. So we'll have to see what else develops, but basically he's letting everyone know he's on it, and he's paying very close attention too.
I might've read between the lines a bit in a few places, I have some of my own strong feelings about what's going on here, so I apologise if I inadvertently mixed in any of my own interpretation by accident.
This really is a new front in the war on general-purpose computing for regular people. The EU or some entity big enough that's outside of the US needs to fund new memory fabs ASAP and get this industry out of the hands of the present cartel.
new fabs is iffy… samsung chose not to scale up production because they’re betting that the AI bubble is just a bubble, and in that case any change in the short term will be bad in the long term… building a factory for DRAM takes years: let’s hope the bubble of AI enshittification doesn’t last that long
it's infuriating and honestly kind of scary. They're making gaming a luxury hobby, one auxiliary industry at a time. Every component that goes up in price is another reason for consoles to go up in price. More and more cool hobbies are slowly growing out of reach for the average person. Soon the only thing left to fill your free time will be alcohol and the sound of silence.
There are still some factors providing weight on the other end of that lever. Valve is doing good things with Steam Deck and the popularity of it is keeping developers supporting lower spec hardware. Remote play codecs (both Steam's own and Moonlight/Sunshine) reduce the need to have more than one capable gaming computer as you can just stream from the one you do have to any others. Raspberry Pi is a great way to access non-gaming computing cheaply. Arduino, even though the company itself is kind of doing some shit, still has an ecosystem big enough to survive even if the company itself completely sabotages it. And of course the used/surplus PC market is thriving, even more than ever before with Windows 11 forcing millions of PCs into early retirement for no good reason. They're still perfectly capable machines that will run Linux without an issue and you get them cheap as a song or even free if you play your cards right.
I'm not saying any of this to dispute anything you're saying, I'm just pointing out these resources we still have so that we can take advantage of them while we still can and protect our continued access to them. It's clear the claws are coming out to start locking down consumer computing, but people need to know there is a resistance to it and there are ways to resist. And we should.
More and more products that were previously targeted at what was the middle class are now targeting solely the top 10% of income earners. It's pretty tragic, and corrosive to the long term health of society.
Phones as well. Each increase in the nand/chips makes phones and ANY consumer electronics that use it much more expensive.
It doesnt help when most devices that we buy are not designed to be repaired.
This seems to be the way things are going. On the plus side all of this has pushed me outside more. I've been picking up cheap or free outdoor activities that I now love. Birding and amateur photography have been my latest passions and they can be pretty cheap.
You'll still be able to get consoles and cloud stream. The real problem is that the power to create is being taken away from regular people.
There's a reason I'm still rocking CS6. Fuck you for wanting me to pay monthly.
Could just use GIMP at that point.
cloud stream
That literally plays into the concept of big business having a monopoly
It seems the wealthy elite got sick of the "poors" creating memes and having discussions about their stupidity and horrendous actions and want to go back to us plebs just reading a finely reviewed newspaper with all the correct opinions they want us to have in it and none of this "free thought" nonsense.
Like everything else in this world, we need to wait for HBM to crash or for a competitor to get massive funding for DRAM when it becomes more profitable.
Companies only exist to seek profit, and HBM is way more profitable than anything they made for consumers.
It's possible this will precipitate a reduction in HBM costs until they come down to consumer levels, then we might end up with HBM instead of (G)DDR.
Oh, I drink lots of beer while not wanting to call attention to my rave on wheels.
I'm of the idea of not buying new tech ever again, with some exceptions on use case and rarity.
Instead, i'm a proponent of only buying 2nd hand or business surplus.
These companies don't deserve our money, and the average use case doesn't require the latest and greatest.
I'm of the same mind. I did make an exception for a Pixel 9a because, well, that seven years of updates starts from the day it went on sale, so shaving a few years off that for minimal savings didn't seem ideal.
Shame they are going to send you a "battery protection update" that makes your phone last 45 minutes between charges on year three.
I'd bet against any plan that requires Google to not fuck you over for a whole 7 years.
I mean, I'm going to drop or sit on the thing in half that time. But allow a man to dream ...
Cruical was the EVGA for ram & SSDs. Sad to see them go this way :(
Pouring one out for Soyo ... damn, were those some solid motherboards.
I love Steve and GN
Their deep investigations are so good. I liked their documentary about GPU smuggling in China.