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RAM prices are about to rise nearly 50 percent. And it gets worse. (mashable.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 66 points 3 months ago (20 children)

it will be ironic when consumers cant afford the end user devices needed to interact with the AI servers. House of cards??

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  • [–] 131 points 3 months ago (17 children)

    Let me put on my tinfoil hat really quick.

    They want to kill personal computing. You don't need a full blown computer, you need a fire stick style device that plugs into your monitor and allows you to remotely access the virtual machine you rent from Microsoft on a monthly basis.

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  • [–] 60 points 3 months ago (10 children)

    this has been “the plan” since 2005. when i was in high school trying to figure out what the heck “cloud computing” was, this is what they were talking about: anything requiring more compute than secure authentication and pixel drawing would be rendered in the cloud and delivered to dumb terminals. this is what netbooks, Chromebooks, and smartphones have been a step towards if not an implementation of.

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  • [–] 25 points 3 months ago (9 children)

    Looking back at computing history, cloud computing is basically reverting back to the original mainframes and dedicated terminals.

    There was a hype of using thin clients, the concept is that you get just enough hardware and software to be able to connect to a session running on a shared server, the admin can allocate more resources like CPU cores, RAM and storage as individual needs change over time.

    As an IT guy, I do like the concept in a corporate environment, especially when looking at the SunRay system from Sun, which used smartcards for easier access, you put your card into the client and if configured properly, you got your old session loaded and ready in a few sec, regardless of which client you put your card into.

    The YT channel Clabretro has several interesting SunRay videos.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

    Yup, there's a cycle between centralization and edge. Started with centralization, mainframes, went edge with the first PCs (and game consoles) and ever since corpos have been trying to pull it back to the center in waves. Thin client, cloud compute, arguably phones (as apps processing in the cloud), Geforce Now, AI. So far it's always gone back to the edge for most of the population, except for niche cases (or not in the case of phones). As internet gets faster and more reliable the chance of it sticking longer in the central zone increases (IMO).

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    As internet gets faster and more reliable the chance of it sticking longer in the central zone increases

    It also allow the opposite, the fediverse is a living example of it, the more internet is faster the more we can organize better to decentralize, it's harder that someone get in contact with the decentralized internet but it's more probable that it happen now than 7 years ago

    Some companies also would still continue to sell consumer hardware (like Framework, probably)

    I see it as a fight, companies are currently winning sadly but we have the power to win too

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    Heartily agree. I was trying for objectivity, personally you'll take my general purpose computers from my cold dead hands, and I will encourage everyone I can to support it.

    I take some solace from the general pendulum nature of the process (and societal evolution in general), this too shall pass. Doesn't mean we don't need to fight. Evil triumphs when good people do nothing.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    As an end user with this model at work, I hate this slow-ass shit that keeps freezing on me and randomly disconnects. Not fun or productive when it starts talking seconds to register a click because the connection becomes unstable for no apparent reason.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    It sucks that the world we live in is the way it is because in theory this would be an ideal model for so many people. Older adults I know really just need a Facebook terminal but are required to buy a whole computer. If anything at all goes wrong with it they freak out and buy a brand new one. So much tech waste and so much hardware not being used for the majority of the time. If they had lightweight terminals there'd be less issues on their end but even if they replaced it at the first issue, it wouldn't be an entire computer getting trashed. Since all they use is the occasional facebook the mandatory internet thing wouldn't even be an issue. Plenty of younger people might also be good candidates for this since they basically exclusively use online features too.

    Obviously I would never trust this kind of service for a variety of reasons, but in theory the world could really benefit from that model.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago

    Product idea: personal mainframe.

    Imagine a desktop small enough to fit in a backpack. It has a battery, a cell connection with data, decent GPU ram etc. Your phone is now just a display and a battery. Your laptop is the same but a bit bigger and with a keyboard.

    Each electronic device you own is now just a terminal used to access your mainframe. You can take your mainframe with you or leave it at home. It’s yours. You don’t rent compute from someone else.

    Would be amazing to have truly thin and very portable devices.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Even those contain RAM.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Yes, but they can get away with a tiny amount of it. Perhaps we are back at the start of personal computing and arcade machines era, where every byte counted.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Yes, but they can get away with a tiny amount of it

    Not really. Developers have forgotten how to write small, efficient code. Everything is a web page these days, and so the bare minimum app is a web browser, and a web browser is huge.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    This is 100% the plan. Also, I would not be suprised if in 5-10 years there are legal limitations on what kind of computing capacity a private person can purchase due to “national security” reasons.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Man, this makes me want to take stock of what I have in the attic. Those old computers dont sound so bad any more.

    I also wonder if I should be hoarding raspberry pi and building some kind of cluster

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