I know this is mostly paranoid thinking on my behalf, but it almost feels like this is a conscious effort to attempt to destroy "personal" computing.

I've been a huge advocate for local, open, generative AI as the best resistance to massive take-over by large corporations controlling all of this content creation. But even as it is (or "was" I should say), running decent models at home is prohibitively expensive for most people.

Micron has already decided to just eliminate the Crucial brand (as mentioned in the post). It feels like if this continues, once our nice home PCs start to break, we won't be able to repair them.

The extreme version of this is that even dumb terminals (which still require some ram) will be as expensive as laptops today. In this world, our entire computing experience is connecting a dumb terminal to a ChatGPT interface where the only way we can interact with anything is through "agents" and prompts.

In this world, OpenAI is not overvalued, and there is no bubble because the large LLM companies become computing.

But again, I think this is mostly a dystopian sci-fi fiction... but it does sit a bit too close to the realm of possible for my tastes.

Wouldn't the easy answer to this be increased efficiency of RAM usage?

RAM being plentiful and cheap led to a lot of software development being very RAM-unaware, allowing the inefficiencies of programs to be mostly obfuscated from the user. If RAM prices continue rising, the semi-apocalytic consumer fiction you've spun here would require that developers not change their behaviors when it comes to software they write. There will be an equillibrium in the market that still allows the entry of consumer PC's it will just mean devices people buy will have less available RAM than is typical. The demand will eventually match up to the change in supply as is typical of supply/demand issues and not continuously rise into an infinite horizon.

I believe that while centralized computing excels at specific tasks like consumer storage, it cannot compete with the unmatched diversity and unique intrinsic benefits of personal computing. Kindle cannot replace all e-readers. Even Apple’s closed ecosystem cannot permit it to replace macOS with iPadOS. These are not preferences but constraints of reality.

The goal shouldn’t be to eliminate one side or the other, but to bridge the gap separating them. Let vscode.dev handle the most common cases, but preserve vscode.exe for the uncommon yet critical ones.

The first "proper" "modern" computer I had, initially came with 8 megabytes of RAM.

It's not a lot, but it's enough for a dumb terminal.

It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just typical dumb short term business decisions amplified and enabled by a cartel supply market.

If Crucial screws up by closing their consumer business they won’t feel any pain from it because the idea of new competitors entering the space is basically impossible.

I don’t think you need a conspiracy theory to explain this. This is simply capitalism, a system that seems less and less like the way forward. I’m not against markets, but I believe most countries need more regulations targeted at the biggest companies and richest people. We need stronger welfare states, smaller income gaps and more democracy. But most countries seems to vote in the absolute opposite direction.