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 ...which only works for as long as nobody else can start producing alternative hardware.
And, come on: decades-old DDR3 is barely 5 times slower than modern DDR5. For most practical uses, cheap and somewhat slower than top-end memory would be perfectly fine.
@mbpaz @cstross There is so much untapped wealth in all the old tech collecting dust all over the world. Commercial software steals this wealth from us by dropping support but free software unlocks it all back.
I'm writing this on a laptop from 2010 that I've been using as my only personal computer for about two years. It's running linux and can stream video in 720p when the website isn't too bloated, 480p otherwise, and I can use it to work on my godot game.
Yup, I'm posting this with a 2010 Core 2 Duo running Linux. I use it for internet, video editing, making music with Reaper, etc. I'll never stop using C2D computers for most duties.
Charlie Stross
mbpaz
an actual bus
✶Rayotron✶