People have the option of just not buying stuff. I sold my Tesla in 2021 for a stupid price, drove a beater for two years, and bought another new car a couple years later. Now, certainly not everyone has that luxury, but this is computers, not real estate. Prices will crash.
I think it's more likely the industry would rather rent us our compute and storage than let us own it ourselves.
We can have our Raspberry Pis and our ESP32s, but meaningful amounts of compute and especially storage will be rental-only.
Requiring proof-of-humanity using device-bound cryptographic attestations (which the "age verification" camp will rally behind) will insure the toy computers we are allowed to own won't be able to conduct meaningful online discourse. Only phones and other locked-down platforms will be trusted to make the attestations necessary to interact with banks, merchants, and governments.
Edit (now that I'm not on mobile):
I think storage ownership, more than RAM or compute, is the cornerstone of digital sovereignty. Big tech will be happy to let us store our data on their servers for a fraction of the cost of self-hosting, so long as we let them train their models on our data. Any storage, be it self-hosted or rented, where the data is inaccessible for model training, mass surveillance, or censorship will command top dollar.
It'll be just like "dumb TVs" going extinct. "Dumb storage" will be impossible to get for any reasonable cost for consumers.
They're coming for business computing too, BTW, but consumers are the low-hanging fruit.
eagerpace · · focus · HN ↗
EvanAnderson · · focus · HN ↗
I think we're seeing the end of the PC as we know it, personally.
Henchman21 · · focus · HN ↗
/s if you need it
EvanAnderson · · focus · HN ↗
We can have our Raspberry Pis and our ESP32s, but meaningful amounts of compute and especially storage will be rental-only.
Requiring proof-of-humanity using device-bound cryptographic attestations (which the "age verification" camp will rally behind) will insure the toy computers we are allowed to own won't be able to conduct meaningful online discourse. Only phones and other locked-down platforms will be trusted to make the attestations necessary to interact with banks, merchants, and governments.
Edit (now that I'm not on mobile):
I think storage ownership, more than RAM or compute, is the cornerstone of digital sovereignty. Big tech will be happy to let us store our data on their servers for a fraction of the cost of self-hosting, so long as we let them train their models on our data. Any storage, be it self-hosted or rented, where the data is inaccessible for model training, mass surveillance, or censorship will command top dollar.
It'll be just like "dumb TVs" going extinct. "Dumb storage" will be impossible to get for any reasonable cost for consumers.
They're coming for business computing too, BTW, but consumers are the low-hanging fruit.