RE: https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/116127740444038853
The unadmitted reason this is happening (and the AI bubble besides): Moore's Law *has ended*. The only way for hardware sales to go in future is *down* because your next PC or Mac will work just fine until it breaks or dies of old age. So by ramping prices artificially via this RAM/SSD futures bullshit, they're keeping profits high for as long as possible.
@cstross I am willing to entertain the "we're going to get rid of consumer computer hardware that isn't rented" scenario.
In the 1970s, there was a thriving market for making, selling, and applying custom/aftermarket car parts. The entire auto industry systematically murdered it by successively moving cars into a space where you couldn't do that. It's not like we don't know a large market can't be expunged.
The incumbents have a strong general incentive to keep people from having options.
@furicle @cstross It is not what it was and a whole lot of effort has gone into, e.g. doing things with on board computers to prevent off-brand parts. (Not, in autos, as much as in heavy machinery including farm machinery.) "Right to repair" didn't start with small electronic gadgets.
Or look at the cost of replacing a headlight; lots of effort has gone into making you buy the big assembly and not either a standard headlight or replacing a bulb.
@cstross @furicle Back to at least to the 1970s!
The core point I'm after is that collusion across entire industries to prevent unwanted behavior (that is, not giving them maximal money) has a deep history of being found completely legal and proper and more or less working.
A combination of pricing people out of the market and pressure to make every device a managed device has been going on about personal computing hardware for at least ten years. Turning that up to 11 isn't implausible.
@graydon @cstross @furicle There's a reason I'm not too upset about a supply chain collapse. (Although I'm watching food distribution closely.)
A raspberry pi is an outright miracle of computing... by 1990s standards. It can be a media center, server, gaming, the works. The sane open source people make the same hardware do more over time.
Alas Linux stopped being sane ~10 years ago, because https://www.zdnet.com/article/graying-linux-developers-look-for-new-blood/ eventually became the "here's a nickel kid" dilbert strip unix greybeards.
The parts are bought by the OEMs as assemblies, and installed as assemblies. They aren't interested in fixing them as it's cheaper to use whole units that robots assemble.
No attempt to kill the aftermarket - the aftermarket is happy to sell whole wiper motors instead of almost zero profit bushings springs and brushes, and one part instead of 1000 per car.
Lots of things have changed, and may be anti consumer, not arguing that, but it's driven by costs and requirements.
@ianturton @cstross @graydon @furicle
gorilla amps were usually 25 watts, if not 50 watts. they shipped with 15 watt speakers. blew 'em out. i replaced the blown speakers with ones rated for the amps. nice little second income for a year or so.
@graydon @cstross again, wasn't the intention.
Modern headlights throw a lot more light than any old headlamp, and aerodynamic styling and mileage drives custom swept shapes that aren't standard
We used to replace bulbs often, now it's only when defective or damaged.
There was no conspiracy to kill the aftermarket
@graydon @furicle @cstross Obama's "cash for clunkers" program was another direct attack on aftermarket parts, by eliminating working vehicles that predated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention provisions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-JOYGlsnKw
Late stage capitalism performing regulatory capture literally bought them and destroyed them en masse.
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