My guess is that many of the current people saying "technology is over and no one will afford their own computer" might have been born after the previous shortages, so it's in reality their first shortage and they have no memories (nor interest reading about) the previous ones, that all eventually washed over, even if at those points there were also people claiming that "No one will have their own SSD in the future, because prices will always be super expensive for consumers from now on".

That's my hypothesis I spent a whole of 30 seconds thinking about anyways.

Market is fixing it. Memory makers prioritized HBM and enterprise NAND, some, like Crucial, went out of consumer business entirely.

At the same time, the rational market is behaving rationally - they're not increasing production because they're fearing AI bubble could burst, leaving them with oversupply and expensive factories.

The market, apart from AI market, is behaving exactly as it's designed and as it should. But it doesn't mean outcome is good for everyone.

Here's an easy experiment to conduct: look around the room at your home and count all the devices that have a CPU, RAM, SSD or HDD.

Then take a look at your bank statement to see what are the services you pay for monthly that also require the same hardware.

Now, imagine that these devices or services can no longer procure RAM, SSD or HDD. There's no more available supply for these components, because this is what's happening.

Would you still be able to have these devices if they all broke tomorrow? What about your hypothetical Backblaze subscription? Would you still be able to have an off-site backup?

I'm seeing the same thing. I was consulting a group of people in my city that wanted to digitize massive load of old VHS tapes. No AI, no crazy tech, just standard, boring storage+network infrastructure.

I'm looking at the procurement sheet that I made for them a year ago. Half of the items are no longer available, while the other half became so expensive that we'd probably build 10 of such labs with these costs a year ago.

I'm also looking at my home NAS right now - I pray not even a plastic clip breaks inside, because I'd have to shut it down.

While these are still likely the first things that you'd think of being affected, I'm sure the effects are rippling through essentially every industry that utilizes these components in their supply chain. Which is probably - every industry nowadays?

I think that’s a massive stretch. What we are seeing is a new frontier in tech that nobody knows where it will land yet. Hyperscalers see a future where if they don’t build now that they might be left behind.

Absolutely VC money is flowing around but I think it’s unclear where the cards fall yet.

Not sure what you would regulate here. I hate the tripe that America and China are at war but I do think it’s not a great decision to stop the current work the west is doing as China is pushing full steam ahead.

I wish this comment can be on the absolute top of this page. This really is one of my frustrations with the AI bubble.

Fwiw, the days of creating an good ol' reliable hosting provider/Vps provider are over. I looked extensively into it one time out of curiosity but this would be one of the worst times in history to do that.

We would be sort of stuck with the options that we have right now and more and more shops in Lowend are even shutting down or raising prices with the sheer ram crisis and even HDD and storage crisis now.

A provider in LET had a post which said, "what should we providers do to deal with the ram shortage/ram prices"

These providers gave competition/had different unique features too to have chosen them but they were also incredibly price sensitive and the AI bubble blew the sensitivity by raising the prices almost 5 times or more. This would impact real businesses.

Thank you for creating this comment. I hope more people can read this. I genuinely just want this bubble to burst asap so that we can see a sense of rationality back within the market/the market functioning as expected without the immense irrationality/unpredictability of future.

another point is this, from my hosting provider idea, I shut it down. Why? because it literally makes 0 sense to start now, its postponed indefinitely untill the bubble bursts/ram prices are decreased.

How many other projects might be going through something similar. Gck1's comment next to mine also gives an example of a project whose value of cost increased 10 times.

How many of such projects would simply be unable to be built because of the ram inflation can't be underestimated imo.

and forget people who wish to game and many other things too. Basic comodities in the previous year or two feel like luxury now. All because of AI. It's insane.