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grueztoday at 4:10 AM3 repliesview on HN

>The biggest problem is all the tech companies making consumer hardware completely unaffordable, and I don't think this is accidental. Look at Micron's profits and share price lately...

You realize "tech companies" isn't a monolith? Micron charging inflated prices doesn't magically benefit OpenAI. The "high prices keep out competitors" theory doesn't make much sense either. It's like saying Dennys benefits from higher egg prices because it makes cooking eggs at home more expensive.


Replies

omgwtfbyobbqtoday at 5:24 PM

Dennys can benefit from higher egg prices if they can lock in long term contracts with suppliers for lower egg prices when smaller companies selling directly to consumers can't.

I think that realistically, companies compete against each other as individuals and compete against smaller companies and individuals acting more like cartels/monopolies, and that's what OP is referring to in terms of hardware purchasing/contacts/pricing. This also extends outside of tech to investing, so it's likely not just tech responsible for this.

sdf4jtoday at 4:56 AM

You got it wrong. Use appliances instead of eggs. If getting an oven gets more expensive I rather keep going to Dennys.

It’s classic capex vs opex. I’d keep paying my openai subscription instead of dropping $3k to run a subpar model. If the thing costs $1k I would consider it.

mkjtoday at 4:58 AM

openai etc are going to have a higher utilisation of the hardware so can afford it more than small companies/people. Efficient resource use matters more when they're expensive.