this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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Chapotraphouse

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Looking at what's happening with RAM pricing and Crucial being shuttered, the doomer in me thinks they could just pull the same thing with every other PC component. It's not like some plucky band of upstarts can start 3D printing organic free-range FOSS processors, hard drives and motherboards in their garage- all of this shit comes out of a couple of giant plants in Asia. If porky strangles the supply, that's it. In the end all the average joe schmoe will be left with are cloud-based terminals that rely entirely on subscription services and that require strong identification to even use (and that will monitor and log every single fucking thing you do while drowning you in ads)

Wanna install Linux? Go ahead! What are you going to install it on though, your grandpa's old Pentium? porky-happy

Wanna ditch subscription services and sail the seas? Oops, it looks like hard drives cost 5,000 dollars and are only sold to enterprise customers. I guess you're not storing that media anywhere porky-happy

Our automated content scanning systems found a spicy pro-palestine meme in one of your chats. Your accounts have been terminated and the appropriate authorities have been contacted porky-happy

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[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 20 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

Idk. I think what's more likely to happen is that when the bubble bursts, a lot of these over-leveraged, capital-intensive, hardware tech companies, are to be acquired for pennies on the dollar by private equity or some other locus of fictitious capital, with money they get from a gvmnt bailout that prioritizes finance over any other industry.

After that, the buyers will get to work doing what they've done with other industries: rip the companies to shreds, sell them for scrap, and leave the barest possible operation. At that point, the company has to make a choice: do I spend a lot of money and resources servicing the consumer industry, with all its uncertainty and high overhead, and higher (importantly, only for the long term) margins, or do I go enterprise-only, where revenue is higher, more stable, less overhead, although with lower margins?

Given the quarter-to-quarter cycles these people operate in, enterprise is going to look like the play for most of these companies, at least while they recover from having been ripped apart by vultures which will take years. Some people will step up to serve the consumer market, but they're not gonna have the economies of scale to offer the prices larger companies used to do, so stuff is going to remain expensive, or get more expensive.

Whatever choice they make though, private equity getting their cut is going to mean mass lay-offs, delayed or no maintenance of equipment, and inevitable loss of know-how and efficient production practices, as the people working there move on to other industries and can't wait 3-5 years for the 1 in 50 chance of going back into consumer semiconductors again, so it's going to be a while before affordable computer parts reappear, if they ever do.

[–] RedSturgeon@hexbear.net 20 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I think our hubris lies in the fact that we can't imagine being technologically behind others and severely underestimate how quickly other nations, such as China, can advance. It's entirely possible US tech sector cannibalizes itself, but that doesn't mean that will be the case everywhere. I can't say it would be pretty tho' we should try to minimize the collateral damage.

Unless of course the likes of Orwell get their wishes, the defeat of communism is finalized, remaining anarchist splinters continue to be hunted down for eternity and Liberal forces end up dominating the world.

[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

I think our hubris lies in the fact that we can't imagine being technologically behind others and severely underestimate how quickly other nations, such as China, can advance. It's entirely possible US tech sector cannibalizes itself, but that doesn't mean that will be the case everywhere. I can't say it would be pretty tho' we should try to minimize the collateral damage.

I wasn't ignoring China, it just wasn't relevant to the point I was trying to make, which is about western companies who sell to western consumers. When there's a hardware market gap due to the AI bubble popping (and assuming Chinese tech isn't too embroiled or affected by it, look at AI investment stats in China, and they're not as crazy as in the west, but there's still a big chunk of cash in AI), China and other countries will have an opportunity to fill it themselves, that's true, and they will certainly try to go in.

However, infrastructure takes time to build, workers take time to train, and sales channels are hard to construct from scratch. Doesn't matter if you have the immortal science of Xi Jinping thought on your side, it will take time and investment, which might not be easy to find in the aftermath of a stock bloodbath as the one we're anticipating.

All in all, the western consumer market, largely impoverished by the aftershocks of the AI bubble bursting and accelerated de-dollarization, will be the last priority for hardware makers everywhere. And I don't see this changing short of world revolution happening overnight.

[–] RedSturgeon@hexbear.net 2 points 4 hours ago

Yes, I'm just saying we should try to reduce the damage that will come from when the empire goes fully into military-surveillance enterprise, that's probably what will happen with all the jobless people and where they will go or be controlled by.

Washington could even win in the end, there are forces in every nation that are their allies. Including China. I'm probably never affording a computer again either way, so I'll try to contribute to building a world where someone like me in the future can be making fun computer games to play with their friends. I can see that happening too.

America doesn't have an education system and they don't like making stuff themselves, you need time to learn how to do that also, they outsource that to the rest of the world, in order to make their own citizens feel wealthy and happy. I don't want to take that away. I just wish everyone could have that.