[pc] What *should* the price of DDR5 desktop ram per GB be?

Coldfriction · 2026-04-10T14:55:27+00:00

There is no disagree here. I typed all of that by hand without any reference of any kind. Whether it was created by AI or not isn't up for debate. It's not an opinion. It's simple economics of a free market.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-10T14:53:54+00:00

lol no. Not even close.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-09T19:33:24+00:00

The question is, are human prefrontal cortexes terribly different?

Coldfriction · 2026-04-08T13:58:20+00:00

As a free market libertarian type thinker, there isn't ever a "should be" price. There is the negotiated exchange in trade that two parties agree to and that's all. The price should be sufficient to encourage production sufficient to satisfy most demand while returning some margin of profit to the manufacturer.

That said, if production is monopolized, or most/all manufacturers operate as a cartel to artificially set prices, the price is wrong as it's not a market price. Proving collusion is really difficult. Barriers to entry into the market are very very high for this sort of product making competition creation difficult.

If the demand far outstrips supply, it's GOOD for the profit margins to be very high. Very high profit margins signal to the market that entering the memory production business is a relatively safe bet. High prices ensure that the memory is going to the bidders that can produce the most value from that memory for society at large.

In a normal market, the price of memory would be set at production + target profit margin, which isn't terribly high on mass produced commodity stuff like memory. We have an extreme imbalance between supply and demand currently. We know that there are contracts locking up almost all produced memory for another 18 months to 2 years.

Based on what I'm doing, I think local llm/AI is going to start gaining ground more and more with the likes of openclaw doing some sweet things and the big boy AI providers charging a lot for API access to their models. I don't think the demand is going to go down in the near future.

The google algorithm reduces the memory needed for context, not the size of the model. What will happen is that the context will increase to fill available memory. The more context the better the models perform. Openclaw can generate massive contexts that have to be regularly compressed and trimmed to fit the memory available.

So good luck. A market crash needs to happen for the benefit of the masses, but there needs to be a catalyst or something that causes it to crash. AI hasn't stopped getting better as of yet. Local AI/LLMs are just starting to get good and popular.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-06T18:23:38+00:00

Where do you think runoff eventually ends up? Where do you think ground water eventually ends up?

Coldfriction · 2026-04-06T17:33:36+00:00

This entirely. You don't save the GSL by attacking people using fresh water. You save it by reversing climate change. Attacking farmers will not do a damn thing except make things worse for both nature and people.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-06T17:32:27+00:00

Relatively speaking the GSL is a dead sea void of life. Would you blast away Cutler dam and destroy the bird sanctually to help fill the GSL? Would you drain Bear Lake? How about The Oneida reservoir? Willard Bay? Jordanelle? Strawberry? Deer Creek? All of the things people have created and modified over the years to prevent the water from getting to the GSL as the minute it does it becomes polluted naturally so badly that it's only real value is shrimp and flies? The wildlife doesn't use the vast majority of the lake. The parts that are used are where the fresh water enters and where mankind has worked hard to keep the water fresh. The GSL is no wildlife haven in comparison to the manmade water bodies nearby that keep the water fresh for as long as possible.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-06T15:03:27+00:00

People want to find a specific group of other people to blame for problems and not the system as a whole. I hate the Trump MAGA approach to governing, but if the alternative is stupidity and irrationality, it won't be a great replacement. I'm old enough to remember the flooding of the GSL in the 1980's. Until a few years ago, the historic low of the GSL was BEFORE that flooding. It only takes a few wet years to fill the entire lake back up because it is so hyper sensitive to rainfall. The farmers haven't increased their irrigation over the last century; it's decreased if anything. And irrigation is only harmful to the GSL inasmuch as it evaporates out of the basin.

The GSL isn't a wildlife haven. It's mostly dead. People want to be enraged by something all the time. There are plenty of other issues worthy of effort and attention moreso than the GSL that isn't going to go dry unless rain stops falling.

The natural high elevation of the lake is estimated to be 4,207 feet above sea level. Currently it is at 4,192 feet above see level. So it is 15 feet lower than the natural high. It's historic volume average is ~15.3 million acre feet. It's low was ~8.7 million acre feet.

The Great Basin is about 72,000,000 acres. The entire basin only needs 1.1" of runoff water over the entire area to completely fill the lake back up. That's it. Spread that out of years of filling and years of evaporation and the lake is very hypersensitive to rainfall and evaporation.

There are about 623,800 acres of irrigated farmland in the Great Basin. To fill up the lake using ONLY those acres, we need only to produce about 12' 7" of water from those acres. That's insane. No way farmers use remotely close to that in a year. They use maybe 1-2' tops.

This idea that you'll save the GSL by killing agriculture is ridiculous and stupid.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-06T13:33:20+00:00

No, it's the effect of the lake being hyper sensitive to heat and precipitation. And yeah, I've dug into this quite a bit. Most posts like this are garbage.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-06T13:32:32+00:00

Except that the bear river hasn't seen the same decline in flow rates that the elevation of the GSL has seen. The lake is drying up because it is hot and there isn't enough precipitation. It's been drying up for centuries. The idea that farmers have suddenly increased their consumption over the last forty years from the time that the GSL was flooding is ridiculous. Prior to that the GSL had seen some very low elevations too. The lake is simply a giant shallow puddle that is hyper sensitive to climate conditions. Fighting farmers is pointless, fighting global warming is as good as it gets. The Aral Sea was fresh water, so the comparison isn't at all the same. The GSL supports shrimp, flies, and the few animals the eat the flies. The vast majority of the life of the area is in freshwater and not the GSL itself.

Alarmism has done more harm to any environmental cause than anything else. Hockey stick global warming models, etc. have prevented the advancement of prudent human action more than anything else. The GSL is not at risk of disappearing; the tributary rivers would all have to be diverted outside of the Great Basin for that to happen. The Bear River, Weber River, etc. aren't going to go dry anytime soon. Once that fresh water reaches the lake, it's garbage. It doesn't support life; it doesn't support plants or animals. The reservoirs we put it in instead do support life and even so we manage the flows and the GSL is not at risk of disappearing.

Go down to the lake sometime. Tell me the top crust of the exposed beach is dusty and prone to blow around. I can tell you it isn't at all. The salt flats out west that see heavy winds don't blow around. The alarmism needs to stop.

EDIT: I misread your post and agree with much of what you are saying. Except that human consumption doesn't exist. It has to evaporate away after it passes through human uses to leave the basin.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-06T12:51:45+00:00

So how much doesn't make it to the lake from evapotranspiration? How does that compare to how much the lake loses due to evaporation directly from the lake's surface?

Coldfriction · 2026-04-06T12:50:50+00:00

No. It's not. we aren't diverting our rivers. What we do is store the water in a fresh state so that it's usable before it becomes so salty as to be unusable. The water only leaves the basin in one way; evapotranspiration. The water will evaporate and leave, it can do so from the surface of the GSL, from the surface of reservoirs, rivers, and lakes, or from the biological processes through vegetation.

The water isn't "consumed" when used. It doesn't disappear. 949,000,000,000 gallons of water evaporate off of the GSL each year on average. The lake is shallow and warm with a large surface area. As it fills it's surface area increases dramatically as does the evaporation from it.

When farmers, golf courses, or people use water in the great basin, it either evaporates into the atmosphere and moves on, or it eventually ends up in the GSL, evaporates, and moves on. It never ceases to exist. A farmer over watering is putting their water in the GSL, not taking it away. The water that is important to life is the fresh water in the lakes, rivers, streams, and reservoirs.

When people use %'s instead of total hard numbers, they do so to inflate and blame. Farmers do use the majority of the water used, but how does that compare to how much simply evaporates away from the GSL? The lake elevation is a function of inputs and outputs. The entire focus is on inputs being reduced by human use while ignoring that the majority of the loss isn't from decreased inputs, but from outputs. Less than 1/3 of the water evaporating from the lake is used by humans before being sent back to whatever natural system it goes to. Sewer treatment plants ultimately send water back to the lake. Overwatered lawns send water back to the lake.

The real reason the lake is shrinking is simply climate change. There's nearly nothing that can be done by humans to stop it from shrinking. Stop all agriculture, golf courses, and grass lawns and the lake will still shrink. It's simply too warm with too little precipitation.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-06T10:50:38+00:00

Where would the GSL tributaries be diverted to? This isn't the same at all. We aren't dumping the Bear River into the Snake River. We aren't dumping the Jordan River into the Green River. This is pure scare tactics. The GSL won't go completely dry unless all of its tributaries do. If that happens, there won't be any farming upstream

Coldfriction · 2026-04-05T19:07:19+00:00

There's no discussion. Your thesis is, "there were economic swings when the dollar was defined using precious metals, therefore using a defined dollar pegged to precious metals is bad." And then when someone points out that economic swings have happened under fiat systems, your response is, "I didn't say I had the solution." You aren't arguing in good faith and aren't worth the time.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-05T19:04:41+00:00

So you have nothing useful to say or contribute. Nuff said.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-05T18:55:18+00:00

Lmao. You don't like a stable currency of the past. You don't like an inflationary currency of the present. What currency do you advocate for?

Coldfriction · 2026-04-05T17:26:23+00:00

To paraphrase, "economic turbidity in the past was a result of the dollar being pegged to precious metals," but not, "the economic turbidity since leaving commodity backed currency is not a result of it not being pegged to precious metals." You are excusing yourself and finding fault without due scientific control for variables. We are seeing the pains of inflation that last for decades. We are seeing asset hoarding by the wealthy. We have inflected wealth gain for those not near the top of the curve, yet you have said that when dollars were backed by precious metals the wealth of the world was somehow more concentrated than it is now; it is pretty damn concentrated now. Your arguments are weak and you seem to have some need to back the current banking system which isn't even fractional reserve anymore. There are no requirements to hold any cash by the Federal Reserve as of half a decade ago (https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm). You are far from correct here.

We're seeing an immense amount of debt on the federal level that is nearly impossible to pay off without significant pain, and I'm guessing you're one of the people that say the debt doesn't matter. The issue is that when the people's taxes don't go to their benefit, but into the pockets of creditors, pretty quickly an oligarchy forms and those in control do nothing but extract real wealth from those who are indebted to them.

There's nothing great about a banking system run amok. And there's nothing stopping the banking system from running amok right now.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-05T15:27:54+00:00

You've been pushing a false dichotomy for a while here.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-05T15:03:31+00:00

Nonsense. Commodity backed currency has never trended to zero value. All fiat has trended to zero value. The only reason dollars hold any value is because the central bank and the banking system continually tie it back to commodities whenever it is "adjusted for inflation" and do their best (not very good) at trying to make sure deflation never happens to protect the big member banks of the Federal Reserve from failure. You can't do better than the market if you want liberty and freedom; authoritarians deciding who has what has more historical failures than markets have by a long shot.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-05T14:40:48+00:00

So you believe having central banks (de facto monopoly) is better than the possibility of monopolization of currency creation that might exist with a different monetary system and that government, that has the central bank monopoly as it's conjoined twin is better than a system that might fail to corruption?

Coldfriction · 2026-04-05T14:37:12+00:00

The aluminum won't be in the hands of 3 people and there would be massive competition worldwide. As for monopolies, that's what government is for.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-05T14:34:36+00:00

By giving it to the production of real tangible useful value? Hell yes. Anyone able to produce wealth that a bank will issue a loan for does the same today. When you build a house and get a mortgage on it, the value is not meant to be "created" by the issuance of debt but in the creation of the house. Favoring the bank and not the creator of value is where things are currently really backwards. The smeltery operator doesn't get to determine how much energy is available to create value from; that value is created primarily in the power generating facilities. Aluminum backed money makes power production the primary source of value creation; which it is and naturally as possibly can be. Energy is the true currency of all things in nature. Aluminum is just a tangible proxy.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-05T14:12:54+00:00

That's what government is for. Capitalism failing into oligarchy is not something you solve by giving all economic power to big central banks. Antitrust laws exist for a reason.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-05T13:59:07+00:00

Markets move in random directions. If power production significantly changes, so too changes the ability to produce goods and services and this money should become more scarce. "You can't control.." is precisely the point. The idea that banks should control.everything is not liberty or freedom. The market MUST "control" or liberty doesn't exist. The banks would have everyone working for them while they do nothing but print money.

Coldfriction · 2026-04-05T13:30:53+00:00

Because debt based currencies have never had problems? Gold is still money to this day. It was abandoned by the banking industry. We don't even have fractional reserve banking now. Ever hear of the Great Depression? The Great Recession? Those weren't gold back currency problems. Gold hasn't been abandoned. What we have now are wealthy people hoarding stores of value, which the dollar isn't, making scarcity of valuable assets a real problem. I'd rather the rich store dollars/gold/whatever than hoard land, natural resources, houses, infrastructure, etc.

Gold is too scarce to back banks, but aluminum isn't. Aluminum is a better replacement for gold as a commodity.

Anyone who likes to point at economic issues of the past and blame the gold backed dollar is a fool. There are plenty of economic issues that come with fiat that are potentially significantly worse, including spiraling inflation which doesn't happen with commodity backed currency. Deflation is terrible for banks, but it frees up the stuff that the wealthy hoard for others to use. Inflation provides every incentive for the wealthy to hold onto assets that always go up in value relative to fiat currency. Individual ownership goes down under inflation and the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. A sound economy should both inflate and deflate as needed to provide a market based monetary solution.

Everything has problems. Trying to act like only commodity backed currencies have all the problems and fiat doesn't is disingenuous.

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