I know it's rude to double post but...
This just hit my news feed. What a fun time to be a tech enthusiast. /s
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/27/trump-semicon … ch-tariffs.html
I just heard he is also considering Ocean Of Left America and Ocean of Right America 😀
ocean of east america
ocean of west america
south china sea gonna be part of ocean of east america so taiwan gona be island of america
@robertmo3: Please don't spam the thread with repeated replies. You can always go back and edit your previous posts if you want to add something additional.
In the mean time I have removed the recent posts to prevent the thread from being derailed from the main topic which is about rising computer hardware costs.
i figured out it is all about trying to keep taiwan away from china so as a result it is about topic as moving taiwan back to china could affect the prices somehow too
One claim I saw was that SBCs like Raspberry Pi's are so expensive now because they're being bought up in mass to make drones and/or to make it harder for Russia to make drones
"This all reminds me when i took the windows vista sticker thingy off my old laptop, and on my washing machine as a joke. A few days later said washing machine stopped working. I still think this cannot be a coincidence."
RPi lacks a cellular modem, but does have lots of useful GPIOs.
You could make a wifi based drone, with a camera, with some clever 3D printing / light fab work, and some COTS parts. People have been doing that for many years now.
But really? Military use? That hardware is most certainly not hardened enough to evade ECM, and the software stack has almost certainly not been tested stringently enough to be considered fit for use, against nationstate hacking tools.
I'd say the issue is that fab capacity has been fully booked going out 2 years into the future, as has been reported.
You can only produce product on existing stocks for 'so long' you know.
Yeah it doesn't seem likely, but it came to mind when robertmo suggested this is related to the PRC/ROC thing.
Any war in the straits would be primarily conducted by drones, and the side with the most drones will win.
A LOT of drones are getting built around the world right now, not just for Ukraine.
"This all reminds me when i took the windows vista sticker thingy off my old laptop, and on my washing machine as a joke. A few days later said washing machine stopped working. I still think this cannot be a coincidence."
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is still $35 on Mouser, same price as the original Model B was in 2012, and significantly more capable. It's actually incredible that they have maintained that price point in the face of inflation.
In fact, if you run that through the BLS CPI inflation calculator, the Pi 3 Model B now costs $24 in 2012 dollars. So Raspberry Pis are actually cheaper now than they were before for boards that are better than the original.
You think they are more expensive because they started making much more powerful Pis with much more RAM that could never possibly hit the $35 price point, even if RAM prices were normal.
World's foremost 486 enjoyer.
Errius wrote on Yesterday, 20:44:Yeah it doesn't seem likely, but it came to mind when robertmo suggested this is related to the PRC/ROC thing.
Any war in the straits would be primarily conducted by drones, and the side with the most drones will win.
A LOT of drones are getting built around the world right now, not just for Ukraine.
Drones need Ram right ....and other hard to source components ..this cant be helpful for the shortages either since well the drones are pretty much one shots getting destroyed. Got Data centers on one side eating memory and parts and War on the other side also eating the very same parts to produce drones that cant really be reused once they have been deployed.
Double whammy.
wierd_w wrote on Yesterday, 12:27:Saw this on slashdot today. […]
Saw this on slashdot today.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/27/ais-memory- … r-android-apps/
I can feel the collective screams echoing over time and space already.
But on the plus side, maybe my existing devices will be given new life through the tighter requirements?
Maybe in some ways this data center boom and the memory crunch is a good thing.
Memory usage was starting to get out of hand.
I remember not to long ago 16Gb of RAM was a massive amount that you didnt really need. But now I have this kind of mental block idea that 16Gb is the minimum amount of RAM any system needs, which just isnt true, or it shouldnt be.
I recently bought and set up a new gaming PC to play World of Tanks and that system has only 8Gb and it plays perfectly fine, but Im planning on doubling up the RAM to 16Gb and I have no idea why really because it sits at about 7Gb usage and thats it. And thats playing WoT which fits perfectly inside the GPUs 4Gb.
The super low prices we had over the past couple of years are never coming back now so its a good thing we adjust now for a reason otherwise we'll be stuck with high system requirements for basic tasks and high prices for it.
ElectroSoldier wrote on 50 minutes ago:Maybe in some ways this data center boom and the memory crunch is a good thing. Memory usage was starting to get out of hand. […]
wierd_w wrote on Yesterday, 12:27:Saw this on slashdot today. […]
Saw this on slashdot today.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/27/ais-memory- … r-android-apps/
I can feel the collective screams echoing over time and space already.
But on the plus side, maybe my existing devices will be given new life through the tighter requirements?
Maybe in some ways this data center boom and the memory crunch is a good thing.
Memory usage was starting to get out of hand.I remember not to long ago 16Gb of RAM was a massive amount that you didnt really need. But now I have this kind of mental block idea that 16Gb is the minimum amount of RAM any system needs, which just isnt true, or it shouldnt be.
I recently bought and set up a new gaming PC to play World of Tanks and that system has only 8Gb and it plays perfectly fine, but Im planning on doubling up the RAM to 16Gb and I have no idea why really because it sits at about 7Gb usage and thats it. And thats playing WoT which fits perfectly inside the GPUs 4Gb.
The super low prices we had over the past couple of years are never coming back now so its a good thing we adjust now for a reason otherwise we'll be stuck with high system requirements for basic tasks and high prices for it.
The major memory hogs are not the games but Windows itself along with the other shovelware Microslop keeps adding to it. The other culprits are browsers especially certain ones that use Chromium poorly. Right now just looking at my system I'm using 18Gb of 64Gb with a certain sloppy Chromium based Browser eating 8Gb of that on its own, the Alphabet soup version isn't quite as greedy, no browser should ever be a memory hog . (Switching to Brave with 40 tabs open and its barely using 3Gb, its Chromium too).
Its simply poor optimisation from devs that should know better causes Windows to require more than 16Gb of ram, especially certain browsers.
Like you I believe this crunch will be beneficial if it goes on long enough by forcing Devs/Publishers to once again push for optimisation of their sloppy coding. (They gonna need to learn how to work within 8Gb of memory again BAHAHA)
wierd_w wrote on Yesterday, 12:27:Saw this on slashdot today. […]
Saw this on slashdot today.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/27/ais-memory- … r-android-apps/
I can feel the collective screams echoing over time and space already.
But on the plus side, maybe my existing devices will be given new life through the tighter requirements?
Considering there are dozens of new 2/3gb cellular designs hitting developing markets I would say yes.
Even googles flagship is down to 12gb (from 16) at a higher price point.
But who knows, they might still find a way to screw it up so you need a new device with less ram to run the app over an older one with more.
Some of the old tracfone smartphones I had thrown out might become usuable again
