this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2026
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  • Nvidia and Micron are making emotional appeals to consumers while PC users express frustration with big AI companies’ practices and self-serving motives.
  • Memory vendors predict DRAM and SSD shortages lasting until mid-2027, while new tariffs on advanced computing chips and potential Steam Machine pricing over $1,000 add to consumer concerns.
  • The article highlights how corporations use emotional messaging to mask financial interests, advising consumers to remain skeptical of such appeals.
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[–] Kongar@lemmy.dbzer0.com 304 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (5 children)

Forget ram. Wait until there’s widespread power outages yet you’re somehow paying 10x for your electricity bill because of the new data center down the street.

[–] thisbenzingring@lemmy.today 214 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (6 children)

this is actually happening

my elecric company just raised its rates 13% and forcast rasing 25% next year after

we have a power making dam in town

historically we have had some of the cheapest power in the USA

[–] dmtalon 49 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Combined over 20% last November, great times!!

Combined means we have:

first 1k kwh rate Above 1k kwh rate

And the above 1k kwh changes seasonally.

[–] thisbenzingring@lemmy.today 65 points 5 days ago (3 children)

they send us these cute charts and stuff about our usage

they show you a "you are using xyz% more then previous year" type stuff

but my wife keeps it and their little bullshit is because they keep changing the rate and then using the new rate against your old usage as comparison. Looks like OMG we used a lot more power then last year! We should consider cutting something out.

But the actual meter reading numbers are almost always the same year after year

[–] MeatPilot@sh.itjust.works 41 points 5 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

I like the suggestions to save money and lower usage.

"Have you tried living in complete darkness this month? You could save $2 off your bill!"

"Perhaps try not using electricity this month. Or, consider getting a second source of income to turn on your fridge for a few hours a day!"

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 15 points 5 days ago

Inb4 we get astroturfed "Luddites" telling us to just abandon electricity and live like the Amish.

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[–] normalentrance@lemmy.zip 48 points 4 days ago (2 children)

It almost seems like they want to make home computing unaffordable, so you have to rent PC time from a cloud provider. This way they nickel and dime you, and use your data to train their LLMs.

Micron and nvidia get their cut by being able to set whatever prices they can imagine.

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[–] henfredemars 125 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Computer electronics are like my main hobby. It was expensive on a good day. This makes it unaffordable.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 45 points 5 days ago (7 children)

Switch to retrocomputing; it’s currently significantly more affordable.

[–] henfredemars 17 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Not a bad idea. How do you actually partake that hobby? Is it more the same building things or the challenge of getting old hardware/software working?

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 32 points 5 days ago (6 children)

A mix of both; finding old gear and combining parts to restore functional units, repairing where needed and learning more about how the systems work in the meantime.

And older SIMMs and DIMMs are relatively cheap right now — you can create a maxed out system for its era and still do everything on the computer that was possible to do when it was new.

There’s even great web proxies for older systems now, so if you want to, you can browse the modern web on a computer from 1996.

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[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 28 points 5 days ago (13 children)

IMHO there's much hobbiness and fun to be had with creating a second or third life for "outdated" hardware. The current RAM crisis leaves me cool, on a 2014 ThinkPad. My kitchen server was a 2008 HP laptop.

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[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 89 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 16 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yeah I noticed that lmao, definitely AI slop.

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 12 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

AI slop with the audacity to block anyone with Privacy Badger enabled, like, "we worked hard to produce this AI slop so we deserve to make money scraping your personal data"

(edit: oh wait, I just noticed you meant OP's summary. Yeah, blatant slop, get to fuck OP)

[–] roserose56@lemmy.zip 23 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I said before and I will say it again. AI is product being built by its users, an unfinished program that it is used wrong just for companies to make money. AI hasn't made any progress and we won't see any progress, because it is used by companies to profit.
They don't care about the economy and the downsides, they care to make us use AI.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 4 points 4 days ago

i overheard today on the bus, that someone(assume in grad school) as a TA was planning to use AI to grade all the classes homework without care if it was inconsistently correct or not, it isnt going to end well.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 26 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Way, way back, capitalism was a version of “the customer is always right.” Various companies would compete to sell a product at the right price point and quality the customer could accept. It wasn’t perfect, but it was pointed mostly the right direction.

Now capitalism is just the few major companies competing to see who can make the biggest cash grab and fuck the regular customer with prices, fees, and enshittification. Now we have dystopian monopolies divorced from the consumers.

[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 4 days ago (3 children)

The customer is always right was never a thing.

For a start, it's an intentional shortening of the actual phrase, for exploitative reasons, of "the customer is always right in matters of taste"

Which just means "if they want to buy ugly shit, let them"

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 6 points 4 days ago

I have been staring at the original comment trying to figure out how to basically say this, so thank you. lol. "The customer is always right" just means don't tell the customer that green and purple polka dot curtains are fuck-ugly because it will hurt the company's bottom line.

I don't think Capitalism has ever been this romanticized version, at least not in my lifetime. It has always been about how much money "they" can squeeze out of consumers, and they have been inching more and more constantly for a long time to get where we are now. The companies have always wanted to manipulate to make more money, and the only slight road blocks or steps in the right direction have come from government regulation.

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[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 41 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Lol

“Our viewpoint is that we are trying to help consumers around the world. We’re just doing it through different channels. […] What’s going on right now is that the TAM [ed: Total Addressable Market] and data center is growing just absolutely tremendously. And we want to make sure that, as a company, we help fulfill that TAM as well.”

Let me translate that for you:

Yes we definitely want to support the consumers, but hey look, the thing is, these data centers want to buy a lot of memory, and guess what, they're willing to buy it in bulk even at a huge mark up! Like just think about that... We're gonna make so much money!

But uh, yeah uh, I feel you, that sucks bro and I appreciate you. But, dude, seriously, look at all this money! So yeah, stay strong guys, tweet about us! And don't forget, if you want to be informed about the best memory deals, definitely sign up for our newsletter! Just put your email right in this field...

[–] TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 12 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Yes we definitely want to support the consumers, but hey look, the thing is, these data centers want to buy a lot of memory, and guess what, they’re willing to buy it in bulk even at a huge mark up! Like just think about that… We’re gonna make so much money!

To be fair I would not be mad if that was the response, It's the pandering that get's me fuming

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[–] abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone 75 points 5 days ago (2 children)

These people keep saying "it's the future" but it just seems like they're chasing pink elephants and forcing us to partake in the delusion.

[–] hayvan@piefed.world 27 points 5 days ago (1 children)

That delusion keeps pumping up stocks.

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[–] melfie@lemy.lol 57 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (3 children)

What’s going on right now is that the TAM [ed: Total Addressable Market] and data center is growing just absolutely tremendously. And we want to make sure that, as a company, we help fulfill that TAM as well.

Your TAM is about to go bam, so cut the shit and make us some RAM.

[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 28 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I can't take anything that uses the word "tremendously" seriously any more.

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[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 52 points 5 days ago (1 children)

They(the companies) want AI to takeover so badly. They know they can control everyone if only we would embrace their slop. The idea we all have a terminal that has no storage and no computing ability that just allows us to access their slop remotely. For a forever fee of course.

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[–] duncan_bayne@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

Here's an idea: a catalogue of companies who pulled this shit during the bubble, so we know who not to buy from when it bursts.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 43 points 5 days ago

Summary created by Smart Answers AI

chuckles

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

In order to appeal to others' emotions, it really helps to have emotions of your own and feel empathy.

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[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 39 points 5 days ago

Micron reported a revenue of $37.38 billion for fiscal year 2025. Nvidia reported a revenue of $57 billion for just its latest quarter. AI is hot. Meanwhile, inflation and interest rates continue to depress consumer spending power here in the U.S., which is reflected abroad as well. AI has also torched jobs—it’s fueled thousands of layoffs already.

Torched jobs, the environment, and climate.

Sure, in the grand scheme of things, the fevered pace of tech often has led to good outcomes in the end.

Only when it's well-planned and well executed, with people and our habitat treated well.

But that doesn’t change the individual impact of incomes lost, plans destroyed, security evaporated. So when a company makes a play for my agreement through emotion, I always wonder: Who benefits from this vision?

[–] VirtuePacket@lemmy.zip 14 points 4 days ago (3 children)

They can fuck right off.

For the foreseeable future, DIYPC is dead.

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[–] deadymouse@lemmy.world 28 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (7 children)

And all these memory are spent on the generation of pornographic content in the highest quality.

highest quality.

Man's got jokes!

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[–] Damage@feddit.it 9 points 4 days ago

Yet if prices somehow go back to sanity, people will flock back to nVidia like they always did

[–] MeatPilot@sh.itjust.works 31 points 5 days ago
[–] jjlinux@lemmy.zip 12 points 4 days ago

I could care less about Asus and many more of those fuckers, but this is impacting every single part of the consumer electronics environment.

https://wccftech.com/asus-declares-all-in-ai-strategy-as-server-revenue-soars-beyond-expectation/

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 14 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I might buy a new tennis racquet instead. Humanity emerges blinking into the sunlight as hypnotic little black rectangles become unaffordable.

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[–] sturmblast@lemmy.world 13 points 5 days ago (6 children)

They are going to kill an industry and damage peoples ability to access technology.

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[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 19 points 5 days ago

weird emotional appeals

“I think we’ve done a lot of damage lately with very well-respected people who have painted a doomer narrative, end of the world narrative, science fiction narrative. […] It’s not helpful to people, it’s not helpful to the industry, it’s not helpful to society, it’s not helpful to the governments.”

“Our viewpoint is that we are trying to help consumers around the world. We’re just doing it through different channels. […] What’s going on right now is that the TAM [ed: Total Addressable Market] and data center is growing just absolutely tremendously. And we want to make sure that, as a company, we help fulfill that TAM as well.”

[–] SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

Nothing like a call for empathy from the morally bankrupt.

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