Aral Balkan

If your stated goal is to make computing into a “utility” (aka subscription) you can only obtain from Big Tech and if your entire industry is comprised of rentiers, it makes perfect sense to also make actually owning a general computing device as expensive as possible.

As far as Big Tech is concerned, this is a feature, not a bug.

It’s capitalists acquiring capital and pricing it out of the reach of those they want to make dependent on them.

Also: fuck these people. https://social.heise.de/@heiseonlineenglish/116301661509651336 https://social.heise.de/@heiseonlineenglish/116301661509651336

7:31pmWeb
Show threadAral Balkan7h ago
(It’s because of this shit that when we launch the Small Web this year, I’m not going to be able to price the servers as low as I would have wanted to (and could have done, say, last year). It’s not because of inflation but because of this shit raising the price of virtual private servers. Because fuck the small guy trying to make something that’s owned and controlled by people instead of owning and controlling people.)
Show threadRichBartlett 6h ago
@aral is there any chance that when the AI bubble bursts there'll be data centres worth of hardware being sold cheap by liquidators? Doesn't help now but I heard someone say a good business plan for 2027 was "find a use for loads of cheap GPU servers"
Show threadAlbert Cardona7h ago

@aral

Seems like a business opportunity for alternative chip makers? While the cost to entry seems huge for single-nanometre chipsets, surely less modern chips (i.e., thicker) can be manufactured again for profit?

Show threadAlbert Cardona6h ago

@aral

I am thinking in particular of projects like from Andrew Huang [1] like #Novena
https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena

[1] https://bunniestudios.com/

Novena

A new open-hardware computing platform, flexible and powerful, designed for use as a desktop, laptop, or standalone board.

Crowd Supply
Show threadCadmus 🌲6h ago
@aral No doubt this will also be worsened by the helium shortage from the illegal #IranWar.
Show threadUtopiah (Fabien Benetou)6h ago

@aral well the good news is that if you are privileged enough to already have a "proper" computer (my laptop is 8 years old, intel Core i7) then honestly for most "normal" tasks... you probably don't even need a new one anyway.

I'm not saying it's OK, only trying to highlight the fact that IMHO we reached peak CPU/GPU for the normal users already.

If you're not editing 8k videos or batch processing millions of images but rather "just" browsing the Web to read, pay your bills or editing a presentation then honestly "old" hardware is probably "good enough".

Show threadCounterVariable6h ago

@aral good. Having read the amd64 manual. I can decisively say that it's a good thing that they're leaving the consumer industry. x86 has decades of legacy bloat that makes it chug energy. This will give newer more efficient CPU architectures a chance in the spotlight.

Any computer brand that thinks that consumers are not worth selling to have sealed their own coffin.

Show thread(^^)3h ago
@aral We don't need these fucks.
Show threadKen Milmore3h ago
@aral I wondered when CPUs would become scarce too. Can we just call it a semiconductor crisis now?
Show threadQuasit1h ago
@aral
They'd make owning a computer illegal if they could.