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einpoklumyesterday at 10:15 PM2 repliesview on HN

The title should say: "Collusion of large corporations promoting LLMs with RAM manufacturers is killing the hobbyist SBC market (and bankrupting anybody trying to get a PC or laptop)".

Because we all know that DRAM prices have spiked since production is going to those infernal chatbot training data centers. Same as a lot of the electricity in some parts of the world, BTW.


Replies

Permityesterday at 10:18 PM

Can you elaborate on the collusion aspect? Is the implication that OpenAI and Anthropic are coordinating their purchases in such a way that they target the hobbyist market? What’s the collusion angle here?

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neonstaticyesterday at 10:34 PM

> Collusion of large corporations promoting LLMs

> We all know that DRAM prices have spiked since production is going to those infernal chatbot training data centers

I know it's very fashionable here to talk about capitalism as some hand-washes-hand big corp organized scam, but if you put that ideology aside for a moment, you contradicted yourself here, I think.

I personally don't like conspiracy-theory-thinking. If I was a DRAM manufacturer and had to choose between servicing a single customer, who orders hundreds of millions worth of my product, or service a very large number of customers who order tiny amounts of the product a piece, then of course I would focus on the large client, because they are easier to service for the expected profit margin. I wouldn't even need to think about advertisement, sales, all that jazz. Looking at it from that perspective, it seems pretty logical to me that a spike in demand from datacenter operators would rise prices dramatically. I struggle to see room for collusion / conspiracy here.

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