this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2025
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The goal is to get you to rent your computer forever.
AI, vast datacenters, hardware “shortages”, cloud services, DRM, TPM… it’s all part of the same pipeline: remove compute power from the user and concentrate it under control of the manufacturers in order to lease it back to the public in tightly controlled environments.
You will own nothing and be happy.
Where "happy" is a euphemism for something not to be said amongst mixed company.
Hanlon’s razor applies here. The margins for selling to datacenters are higher for the producers of RAM and GPU’s. The chance that it is some kind of conspiracy is very small.
Did we not just have a clear cut example of DRAM manufacturers working out back room deals with OpenAI for 40% of global supply, causing the price of RAM to skyrocket? Seems pretty conspiratorial to me.
I feel like we need a 2020s razor or something. If the degree of nihilism is greater than the degree of absurdity then its probably true.
Cory Doctorow spoke of it in 2011 (transcript here).
Yes, but this only works if said concentrated manufacturer group also holds all IP and power means to prevent competition on the market they don't want filled.
It's like a monopoly protected by navy, something right out of 1600s, if such a state of things is established in some countries, all the others will have an advantageous route of peaceful development, except with higher risk of war and sabotage from the former group. Almost like colonial unpleasantness between Iberian monarchies on one side and England and Netherlands on the other. From the point of the former, they had the Papal blessing and divine ownership of the New World divided between them, and the latter were heretics and thieves. From the point of the latter, the former didn't have any exclusive rights to unpopulated by Europeans lands overseas. While the popular narrative (right out of Sabatini's books and such) portrays the former as bad and the latter as good, I'll notice that the former did less of racism and slavery and genocide, and their former colonies are culturally mixed unique nations. Unlike British colonies, which are all, even USA, sort of England overseas with diverged dialects.
The point is - there are legal arguments which might eventually become bigger conflicts.
So - you won't do anything to already consolidated power. This might become a new global split, in political dimension driven by economic interest. Already in testing, in fact, with Gaza and other recent conflicts. And it would be a shame if most western countries turned up on the wrong side, because that wouldn't make the other side better than it really is, but it really would have an advantage in development. You can forbid people to produce and own universal personal computers for all kinds of use only if they live under your control.