ashughes

@ashughes@feddit.uk

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Best-Selling Video Games Since 2020⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This has to be one of the worst designed data visualizations I’ve seen in a long time. God knows social media isn’t wanting for shitty dataviz, but this one is particularly awful. It’s an assault on my senses trying to read it.

  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised from a company called “visual capitalist”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨IDC warns PC market could shrink up to 9% in 2026 due to skyrocketing RAM pricing — even moderate forecast hits 5% drop as AI-driven shortages slam into PC market⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think there will be a “return on ai” eventually, just not with this race to the bottom with chatbots. It’ll come from machine learning applied to solving problems in medicine and sciences and other areas of complexity.

  Admittedly machine learning and “ai” get lumped together these days but I think there is a difference.

  Also, thanks for reading my (long) rant. 😆

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨IDC warns PC market could shrink up to 9% in 2026 due to skyrocketing RAM pricing — even moderate forecast hits 5% drop as AI-driven shortages slam into PC market⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  shipments of PCs could shrink by up to 9% in 2026

  I’ll be shocked if it’s not at least double that. Thing is, this is going to be like the covid-19-crypto-bro-GPU-pocalypse that drove up GPU prices so much we now just collectively accept paying double.

  Except this time it’s not just GPUs. It’s now hitting RAM, SSDs, HDDs, CPUs, Laptops, probably next year’s smartphones, and who knows what’s next. Motherboards? Power supplies? Cases? Everything else?

  It’s not just that these companies are all cannibalizing their consumer capacity for AI customers and it’s not just the hardware they’re buying. As consumer demand plummets because they can no longer afford PCs, companies will reduce consumer production even further because waning demand. It’s a feedback loop whose only killswitch is economic collapse.

  Sure we might be able to seek refuge for a while in the secondhand market, but that won’t be our saviour either. As demand increases in the secondhand market, a market with a largely fixed (and likely dwindling) supply, expect sellers to increase their prices too. Whether they’re trying to recoup costs from the first-wave price increase they paid buying new hardware, or just because they know the market can bare inflated prices that are somewhat less inflate compared to new.

  And what do we have to look forward to? Prices will “settle” to 2-3x what they were last year compared to 5-6x as today. That’s if there’s a manufacturer left who hasn’t abandoned the consumer segment by that point.

  I’m just coming to terms with the fact that the computer I built 2 years ago is probably my last, and my ability to help my neighbours fix their computers is probably has a near expiry date. This has been a hobby of mine for decades that the rich have always fought against. With the AI bubble, they may have finally found a way to kill it completely.

  I hope I’m wrong but I’m genuinely worried about this. For now I’ll have to wait and see how things go, look to the secondhand market for my next build, and maybe, start learning to solder.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨🤏🤏🤏⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Hey, I’m a millennial! I not only remember Crossfire and SLI, I still hold a grudge against Nvidia for killing 3dfx.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anyone in tech confirm?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Can confirm.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Labour Party members just defected to Your Party en masse⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Bothsidesing whereby an organisation presents propaganda from the left and the right as equally factual to construct a straw man of a middle ground as truth is definitely bad, as is presenting one side’s propaganda as the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  I expect any legitimate news outlet to inform the public of the nuance on a given topic because it is within the nuance where the truth often lies. It is then helpful and informative to present how “both sides” are trying to frame that topic by excluding the nuance, thereby obscuring the truth. Journalism as a public service is there to inform me about what is happening in depth and in a debiased manner so I can think critically about it (if the UK has any news outlets that meet this standard, that’s news to me). Painting real, hard journalism as “bothsidesing” only serves to destroy the concept of nuance, which is just about the only thing both sides can agree on: destroy the middle ground and they’ll be able to keep us pawns fighting forever.

  You may think having a Nigel Farage or Fox News for the left brings balance but it doesn’t. It only serves to keep us fighting each other rather than fighting the status quo. If you’re reading the Canary solely for entertainment and are able to consistently view it as such then fair enough I guess, just don’t call it news.

  To be clear, I am not claiming that you personally are participating in any of the above, just calling out a general worrying trend I am witnessing in our discourse.