I think the main point is that this post is not a good faith attempt to convince people otherwise. It's a shoddly researched opinion piece that has little to no merit as it ignores the complexities of producing either item.
Cartels aren't known for massively increasing production to satisfy all demand. Far from it I'd say, they're more likely to expand supply to such a level that they can still reap massive profits. Very few countries/companies have the knowhow and willingness to be able to build more.
OPEC is a perfect example of this behaviour. They set hearly production goals to keep prices high. Or the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers organization that limits the amount of syrup a farmer can produce and sell in a year to keep prices high.
OPEC's aim isn't to keep prices as high as possible. If they go too high, people will start buying electric cars, investing in renewable energy, etc. Basically they want to make oil as expensive as possible while preventing it from getting so expensive that it's disruptive.
OPEC's goal is as much profit as possible. They're not thinking in the short term but long term. If as much possible means over the span of multiple centuries then that's what they're going for.
I think we're in agreement here. I don't think memory manufacturers are interested in a market disruption even though profits are incredibly high for a few years. Make it too profitable for too long and others will arise but keep the supply at a steady pace with decent margins and they will remain the only ones on the block because of massive upfront cost.
China is, to my knowledge, the only country that has so far had the willingness to seriously invest. Not necessarily for profits but for independence reasons. I don't see many (or any really) other countries following suit.
Maple trees are living things and have a right to reproduce, you can't fault a bird for shitting maple seeds all over my farm planting maple trees everywhere.
It looks like you're forced to participate by law once you sell over a certain volume.
> Backed by the Canadian civil courts, the federation has the monopoly for selling Quebecois maple syrup on the wholesale market, and for exporting it outside the province. Producers are only allowed to sell independently cans of less than five litres or 5kg to visitors to their farm.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-35028380
I saw a documentary(forgot the name, sorry) about that that said, no you can't choose not to join. I forgot if it was about this organization but it was about maple production in Canada where a farmer wanted to do their own thing and they were intimidated and all sorts of nasty things happen to them because they didn't think the org was just and wanted to sell freely. Very interesting documentary and an eye opener that even farmer unions can act like organized crime when there's money involved.
> you can't fault a bird for shitting maple seeds all over my farm planting maple trees everywhere.
If only building a ram FAB was that easy :).
The best hope is that cxmt gets going quicker than expected and is able to satisfy a decent chunk of the Chinese demand for RAM which would - in theory - reduce the demand for ram from the few other producers.
You're correct in theory. I'm just not sure we have a cartel situation. Micron is a US company, and it controls 25% of the global market. I see no evidence that they nor SK hynix nor Samsung are intentionally limiting production.
I do see people arguing, "they had years to increase production - why didn't they?" They've been remarkably candid about this: because RAM production has been losing them money in the past. Because they don't have a cartel, prices were on the floor. Investing in more production would have been corporate suicide.
Even now, there is considerable risk that the bubble will burst, and all this investment in new production will be flushed down the toilet. RAM production is a brutal business.
But are the memory chip producers acting like a cartel? In the past they have not. When there was a shortage, they increased production as rapidly as they could build the new fabs, crashing the price of memory.
As others have noted they've been found colluding previously, more than once. Even admitted guilt and some people went to jail over it.
And the reason the market is so small is because of players who did as you propose, the DRAM market crashed on them (not due to them but due to broader market dynamics), and they went out of business.
So there is, quite perversely, strong incentive to collude if possible and if not to abide by an unstated agreement to be extremely slow to expand DRAM capacity.
That said...
SK Hynix has two fabs under construction, one set to open later this year. One for 80k wpm, another 360k wpm. A third was recently approved to start construction.
Micro has an overhaul of Fab 6 in Virgina near done and slated to produce first wafers this year. It also has a large expansion in Boise nearly completion for 300k wpm. They're also building a "megafab" site in New York (my guess is >1m wpm) and expanding at their Japanese plants (40k wpm).
Samsung has two under construction, P4 for 100k wpm.
Nanya - historically a secondary player focused only on producing non-leading-edge DRAM is making a play for the leading-edge market with a new fab dedicated to DDR5 and HBM.
It appears they've all decided that the demand is sufficiently sustained that building new fabs is worth doing... but it takes time. If my guess is right Micron is making the largest play with their New York site at 1-1.5m wafers per month. That would give them a large chunk of the market.
Well guess what :) They've done it before, they will do it again.
"To date, five manufacturers have pleaded guilty to their involvement in an international price-fixing conspiracy between July 1, 1998, and June 15, 2002, including Hynix, Infineon, Micron Technology, Samsung, and Elpida.[1]"
That was 24 years ago. Half the people commenting on this board aren't even that old. How many of the shareholders on the boards or executives at the helms of those companies do you think are still there?
Wasn't that bad for business last time? I could see them erring on slower build up because of how it went before, if they're not sure how long this demand will last especially
Which is exactly what's happening. There used to be a lot more then 3 makers but up till very recently memory was a comedically low margin business you didn't go into.
Exactly this. I'm not entirely certain AI has anything to do with it but my last book purchases have been entirely used.
Our local independent book shop got together with a couple other dozen and started a used book platform. If I have a book I don't want, I'll let them know, if they have a buyer, I just bring it to them and get a small amount of money. They take a fee for the handling and everyone's happy.
A used book is usually max half the price of new and there is a decently wide selection.
A lot of online retailers have also started stocking used books as a cheaper alternative.
> hit hide on the domains that I never want to see anything from
Ive been on hn with one account or another for close to a decade now. I have never used that feature nor did I think it would permanently hide the domains entirely. Super good to know though.
That's not really true for quite some time now. Both client and the free server depend on a separate submodule that has no LICENSE file whatsoever. Because of that RustDesk is stuck in a limbo somewhere between open source, source-available and closed source. Also, the whole management of the project seems questionable. Also for some features a dll blob which is not open source is required with no source disclosed at all.
I like that their server is just a single Go binary, but then they go and ruin that with a Node.js web UI and.. PostgreSQL?! Seems like complete overkill. I wonder what gripping limitations they faced with SQLite that they decided it needed PostgreSQL.
Seems like that is just a server implementation that requires you to use stock RustDesk clients. So you can't really have a fully opensource RustDesk-like system without requiring a substantial chunk of unlicensed source code as well as a closed source dll blob(s).
I just glanced over the repo, deployment and comments around it and it seems like unconstrained AI slop or at least the project seems to be led by a person which can't use AI effectively for the purpose of software engineering.
The main complaint and law that HateAid, the organization that lodged the complaint, is using, is that recording devices have to be visible as such. Glasses are not a known and widely accepted video/photo device and therefore affected by that law.
Effectively, their complaint is that a specific model looks too much like normal sunglasses that other people are unable to distinguish them as such.
I imagine Meta and folks wearing these glasses would object to webcam like behavior where it tells you with a LED that it's consuming the video feed. Could be same for taking a picture.
These glasses have a LED. I haven't seen it for real, but I've heard it's not discernible at daylight.
Even so, it might still run afoul of German law. The German radio directive specifically forbids recording devices made to blend in and be surreptitious. The LED would have to be extremely obvious and hard to tamper with.
(It's not even a privacy directive; you're just not allowed to sell devices like that. Baby monitors have run afoul it.)
Blue is "online offers actioned/removed", orange is "legal proceedings initiated against vendors & sellers". That's more than 7 legal actions per day in 2024.
You’re also not allowed to record anyone without their explicit consent if there is an expectation of privacy, even in public spaces. That makes the device use very likely to be illegal (assuming you use it to record videos in public spaces and it’s sensitive enough to record your surroundings)
That's not an argument in this (legal) case since the regulation applies at the time the device is sold.
(It just means the applicable law is another one, i.e. the one against recording in secret, which applies regardless of what the recording device looks like.)
[Ed.: it could still be considered a design/manufacturing defect, I guess. It certainly would fail if it were intentionally made such that the LED is trivially disabled. The courts may have to decide if this is in the grey zone.]
