This is just companies giving up the idea of needing to be competitive in favor of behaving as a cartel that can raise prices however they want lazily disguised as AI nonsense.
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
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AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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Yep! The news of higher prices is already out there. There's zero incentive for the RAM Mafia to be competitive.
I'm pretty convinced they want to create a situation where people have to use "thin client" like computers always plugged in their infra. An OS as a service, under subscription, always monitored and scrapped for AI training and mass surveillance.
The Windows 12 announcements point towards that
I just bought an Electric Moped. To make it affordable upfront for some people, they have BaaS (Battery as a Service) model which allows you to pay for your battery as you use it. If you buy the fully “owned” variant, it costs 150k INR while BaaS variant costs 90k INR.
They are just trying to erode ownership from every sector as possible. Capitalism is destroying everything.
Edit: A decent ICE moped costs 90-100k INR
It's 100% the end goal. The shortage driving ram prices is to build data centers; it's not just to hold LLM compute power but to centralize (meaningful) compute power.
Humans are powerful with open information, the ability to communicate, organize...better rip all that down and give consumers what they want; easily clickable funnels into your compute power, your data harvesting, your political and information control...it's the techno fascist fantasy.
I'm shocked by the number of adults 20-40 who don't own their own computer at home. Even when computers are dirty cheap in the US compared to their information, record keeping and economic vitality to modern living at ~$400-$1,000, tons of adults simply walked away from computing or never started it as smartphones were already here and were easy to slide into instead of having to learn.
Lemmy worries about windows users but I worry about people who don't have ANY understanding of how special this moment in history has been when plebs had access to the same technology that oligarchs did (broadly). It's historically an anomaly that the wealthy and powerful would like to correct. Literally the means of production.
I won't be buying anything of the sort until the situation gets back to normal.
It's in the PC manufacturers' interests to force parts manufacturers and AI companies to solve this.
Yes it is in the PC manufacturers interests to have the component prices go down, but you can be sure the PC prices won't go down as much.
Holy shit, they have managed to make computing a capital-intensive industry, like biotech or manufacturing.
This is exactly why I just bought a laptop for one of my kids. He's been asking for one for a while, his birthday is coming up, and sharing my computer is causing some tension. Trying to get ahead of the crazy price hikes that are inevitably coming down the tracks.
And with the indirect repercussions of this whole Iran/oil situation, transportation and freight costs will probably add to this whole pricing mess/exploitation a little.
Looks like I won't be upgrading for a while then. Luckily I upgraded to an RX 7800 XT and a 5700X3D at the end of 2024. AM4 4 Life it seems.