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JimmaDaRustla 4 hours ago

My crude metaphor to explain to my family is gasoline has just been invented and we're all being lent Bentley's to get us addicted to driving everywhere. Eventually we won't be given free Bentley's, and someone is going to be holding the bag when the infinite money machine finally has a hiccup. The tech giants are hoping their gasoline is the one that we all crave when we're left depending on driving everywhere and the costs go soaring.

eru 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why? Computers and anything computer related have historically been dropping in prices like crazy year after year (with only very occasional hiccups). What makes you think this will stop now?

shykes 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Commodity hardware and software will continue to drop in price.

Enterprise products with sufficient market share and "stickiness", will not.

For historical precedent, see the commercial practices of Oracle, Microsoft, Vmware, Salesforce, at the height of their power.

hugmynutus 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Commodity hardware and software will continue to drop in price.

The software is free (citation: Cuda, nvcc, llvm, olama/llama cpp, linux, etc)

The hardware is *not* getting cheaper (unless we're talking a 5+ year time) as most manufacturers are signaling the current shortages will continue ~24 months.

denimnerd42 an hour ago | parent [-]

GB300 NVL72 is 50% more expensive than GB200 I've heard.

Wobbles42 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It has stopped. Demand is now rising faster than supply in memory, storage and GPUs.

We see vendors reducing memory in new smart phones in 2026 vs 2025 for example.

At least for the moment falling consumer tech hardware prices are over.

Ekaros an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

On consumer side looking at a few past generations I question that. I would guess that we are nearing some sort of plateau there or already on it. There was inflation, but still not even considering RAM prices from last jump gains relative to cost were not that massive.

walterbell 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Recent price trends for DRAM, SSDs, hard drives?

aftbit 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Short term squeeze, because building capacity takes time and real funding. The component manufacturers have been here before. Booms rarely last long enough to justify a build-out. If AI demand turns out to be sustained, the market will eventually adapt by building supply, and prices will drop. If AI demand turns out to be transient, demand will drop, and prices will drop.

adrianN 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Cars have also been dropping in price.

Wobbles42 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

And knives apparently.

I recently encountered this randomly -- knives are apparently one of the few products that nearly every household has needed since antiquity, and they have changed fairly little since the bronze age, so they are used by economists as a benchmark that can span centuries.

Source: it was an aside in a random economics conversation with charGPT (grain of salt?).

There is no practical upshot here, but I thought it was cool.

sciencejerk 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Evidence for this claim?

adrianN 2 hours ago | parent [-]

A few generations ago almost nobody could afford a car, now many low income families afford two.

CamperBob2 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In the GP's analogy, the Bentley can be rented for $3/day, but if you want to purchase it outright, it will cost you $3,000,000.

Despite the high price, the Bentley factory is running 24/7 and still behind schedule due to orders placed by the rental-car company, who has nearly-infinite money.

echelon 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I like this analogy.

I also think we're, as ICs, being given Bentleys meanwhile they're trying to invent Waymos to put us all out of work.

Humans are the cost center in their world model.

rizky05 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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