The RAM Crisis is Coming for All Your Tech w/ Chris Person

Public ire toward AI keeps growing as the data center boom continues to hit people’s pockets. Chris Person joins Paris Marx to discuss the soaring cost of consumer electronics, including why prices are unlikely to fall anytime soon, and how people can experiment with homespun cyberpunk tech.

Chris Person is a co-founder of Aftermath and makes Highlight Reel.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Support the show on Patreon.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• You can now pre-order Paris’s new book Hyperscale.
• Chris mentioned the BC250, an e-waste machine he’s written about recently.
• Chris also wrote a review of the Steam Machine.
• Xbox and Apple both announced price hikes this month.
• Stock prices for memory companies like SK Hynix are hitting record highs.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There's no there's nothing coming to save us with this one. You know what I mean? And and I urge you if you have a if you're a PC builder and you haven't done this already, go on a little website called PC Part Picker and figure out exactly what the components of your computer are and type it in there, and you will you will hug your computer tonight.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Us made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Chris Persson. Chris is a co-founder of Aftermath and makes Highlight Real, a video series on YouTube. I'm sure for the past few months you have been hearing about the increasing prices of RAM or memory and how that has been fueled by the AI industry and basically the need to have these things for data centers. You know, these massive tech companies that are trying to develop generative AI are buying up all of these chips. And that's making it a lot more expensive for everyday people and the kind of personal consumer electronics that we use, whether that's video game consoles or personal computers, right? And other things that would use these chips. And so we haven't really dug into that in great depth on the show before. But last time Chris was on the show, back in January, we started to kind of talk about that and mention it. And I figured this would be a good opportunity to have him back on the show because back then he mentioned this thing called the Steam Machine, this new product from Valve that was supposedly coming out, but we didn't know when, because, you know, in part, uh, you know, the components had become so much more expensive. And I think the company was trying to figure out what it was actually going to do with that product and how much it was actually going to have to price it at um in order to not lose a lot of money, right? And right before we uh you know went to record this episode, Apple announced that its prices were increasing. And as we were recording, so we don't talk about this in in you know the actual interview, but Xbox announced that its prices were increasing another 100 to $150 as of August 1st. And so all of these companies are raising prices on consumer electronics. And I figured it's a great opportunity to have Chris back on the show so we can dig into why this is happening, what the implications of it are, if there's any prospect of this, you know, maybe slowing down or like not happening in the future, or for these prices to be rolled back. But, you know, it's really tough to see it. Um, and really, it's just another way that this pursuit of AI at all costs is costing all of us in so many different ways in so many different parts of the world. Um, and you know, there are interesting stories that come out of that, but also a lot of frustrations, and rightfully so. Um, and so I think that this is a great episode with Chris where we dig into a really important issue that unfortunately so many of us are feeling and you know being affected by. Um, if you do enjoy it, make sure to leave a five-star view on your podcast platform of choice. You can share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making Tech Won't Save Us every single week, so I can keep having these critical in-depth conversations with, you know, experts who understand so many different parts of the tech industry and are willing to share that information with you. Uh, you can join supporters like Kate from Newcastle in the UK or Jana in Melbourne by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Chris, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us. Hi. How are you? I'm good, thanks. It's uh great to have you back on the show. I I was thinking, you know, we talked earlier this year, right? And we were talking about your interest in hardware and you know, the the kind of interesting reporting that you're doing at Aftermath. And one of the things you said was that the Steam Machine was, you know, a piece of hardware that you were really interested in. Um and but you know, there were questions about whether it was even going to come out, what it was gonna cost if it did, you know, all these kind of questions because of you know, this kind of escalating issue with the prices of memory and the prices of chips more broadly that was taking hold at the time and has really taken off since then. And so, you know, when I reached out, I was like, okay, I want to start by talking about the Steam Machine. But then right as we were about to hop on this call, we saw that Apple has announced that it is increasing the prices quite significantly on a lot of its hardware. And it feels like that is like a really significant moment in this story. So I actually wanted to start us there. Um, you know, as we see increases of $100 on the new MacBook Neo, $200 on the base MacBook Air, and you know, significant increases basically across the product line. What do you make of what we're seeing here with these increases from Apple?

SPEAKER_00 4:30

I mean, I I said this actually in my review of the Steam machine, but basically like this is what computers cost now. This straight up. And and we actually kind of knew this was gonna happen because you know Tim Cook was like, yeah, it's gonna happen. He said it more, I think I thought it was like more, it's gonna happen in the fall and not now or something or or whenever, I guess. What is is is it like sudden? Is it like right now?

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Yeah, I I believe so. Um and he uh he was also warning back in back in April, you know, of the kind of increasing memory prices that they were seeing, how it was eventually going to affect the product line. But yeah, I believe these increases are like immediate, you know, it's not like coming sometime in the future, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:15

So he uh if I remember correctly, like the the canary in the coal mine there for at least Apple is like they had basically pulled the entry-level Mac Mini. And I have a Mac Mini, um, because it's really good at uh not consuming any power and doing like little tiny tasks. But um not you know, a lot of people were doing using it for like open claw, which I I fucking hate. I think that's boring. I think you're a boring person if you do that shit. I'm really sorry. And the you know, like I use it for like video encoding, laser disk encoding. And they had this entry level one, you could upgrade the memory, and it was really good, and it required like I wrote a piece about that where you would go and get like because the memory is weird and keyed in a really weird way because of how the chip works, you had to go to like a Chinese company who would sell you like an aftermac uh aftermarket like uh SSD or something like that that worked with it. And at the time I was like, this is a bad deal. The mac uh max memory is a bad deal, you don't have to do that. And now it's like, man, I don't know anymore. Like Tim Cook's Mr. Supply Chain. I mean, like that's what he added. His value add was I understand logistics, I'm able to get everything locked down. And like we're hitting a point where like even Apple's like, yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know what he wants to tell us. Fucking Apple. Like Apple is doing that. And like the thing I'm worried about, even more broadly than that, is not like we cannot get memory for a cheap price. I'm worried about we can't get it, period, and what that'll do. I don't know if we'll hit that, but it's bad. It's really bad.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

No, absolutely. Like I completely agree with you with what you're saying. And I feel like one of the things that you know I was reading in recent months was kind of like if you looked at, say, the Steam Machine, you know, Valve is not a company that has these like long-term contracts for uh RAM and memory in the way that Apple would, right? And so it was kind of like understandable that their hardware prices were going to have to increase quite quickly to reflect the increasing prices of components that they were seeing. Whereas someone like Apple felt like, you know, okay, they can hold on for a while, like, you know, they are a major buyer, they have these contracts with manufacturers, you know, it's something that they're going to be able to basically manage, right? Um, and it and it really felt like when the MacBook Neo came out there, you know, what was that two or three months ago or something, that that seemed really significant that they were releasing, you know, this kind of lower priced computer at a time when prices were going up so much. But now, you know, just a few years down or a few months down the line, we're seeing this massive increase across the product line, which, you know, uh really shows us where we are, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Yeah, also it's really funny because like, you know, I think there's a uh Valve's a weird company, like a really, really weird company. Um, even and I and I kind of feel that way about like Gabe Newell too. Like we did a piece I actually quite like where it's like, man, he yeah, he has he's a yacht guy, but he's a really weird even by yacht guy standards, you know what I mean? And and I I don't make it good. But like that's the the weird thing about this company is like they're they make so much money, but the actual number of people who work there is relatively small. And like their hardware division isn't that big. You know, the way these like supply chain things work is like there's a pecking order, and you know, who will pay the most amount of money, and also like you sort of cement these relationships in, and like, you know, they're the biggest they're one of the biggest names in PC handheld space, and that's not very big. You know, that's not a huge player grant relative to like Nintendo or Sony or any of those. And like Sony's had to raise their prices. I don't think it's gonna they're gonna stop raising their prices. I don't think anybody's gonna stop raising their prices. I think the Steam Machine was like, I think an inflection point for a lot of people because they're like, oh, and I think also because they were fairly open about like, yeah, these are what the components cost and it's not great.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Absolutely. And before we jump into the Steam Machine piece of this, like, do you think seeing Apple make this significant move because they are such a major player in hardware, does that kind of like, you know, open the floodgates to other companies, you know, just moving forward with big price increases of their own, you know, companies that maybe we haven't seen actually be willing to do so much of it before now? Or have we already seen a lot of these these other companies, you know, already hike their prices?

SPEAKER_00 9:33

We we've already seen it happen, I think. You know, like Nintendo had uh I believe the Switch 2 got a price bump, but like the PlayStation 5 and the PlayStation 5 Pro are now but like the PS5 Pro I'm I'm very worried about because it's $900, but it has a two terabyte SSD in it, if I remember correctly. And it's like, oh bro, you could just soap that that's like a lot. And you know, I wonder how much like supply they have. Um and that's the thing, it's not just RAM, it's like SSDs are also going up. Again, for the same reason, which is just like AI and AI servers and who who gets who gets first dibs and who's making the most amount of money and or who's worth the most amount of money, you know, like who's spending the most amount of money because they're losing the most amount of money to have their stock prices be high. For data centers that may not exist, or you know, and for GPUs and you know, HBMs and shit, but like uh it's it's bad. It's bad. And like there's a pecking order, and like it's actually in impacted like people who make sticks of memory because those guys don't make the memory. Like those guys, like G Skill and like Corsair, I mean like certain like uh component makers don't make the memory, so they just have to pay whatever they can get. And uh so their m their margins don't really change, but they themselves have are like it they have to do less volume because fewer people are like, yeah, I'm gonna pay like 800. Like the thing that's really annoying about this is that you know, flash memory one is one thing, but it was always a little pricier just because memory is pricey, but it used to be like sort of getting better, and then they all kind of cut their their supply back, and then it kind of creeped up a little bit, and then these things happened. Um but not a lot of people make these things. You know what I mean? Like it's basically three companies Samsung, Micron, NSK, Hynix that make like most of the RAM, for example. You do have like two Chinese companies making like flash memory and um and RAM now, but they don't have like the same scale that those do that those companies do, and they can't make like the really good stuff. I think uh um I think one of them is making like DDR4 memory at this point, and uh, but I'd have to look into that. And it's it's it's just not there's no there's nothing coming to save us with this one, you know what I mean? And and I urge you if you have a if you're a PC builder and you haven't done this already, go on a little website called PC Park Picker and figure out exactly what the components of your computer are and type it in there, and you will you will hug your computer tonight and maybe take a fucking insurance policy out of it. Because I did that, and the computer that I am currently podcasting from cost fifty, five hundred dollars. It did not cost that when I bought it and made it. Like that's not in- it was like 54 something, not including like a really nice case. And I I don't know how aggro I went with like the fans and everything, but yeah, no, it's not good. And like it's going to it's impacting PC builders, obviously, and and everybody who cares about these things, but like, yeah, nobody's nobody's safe here.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Yeah, it it's I don't know, it's it's just been really shocking to see how quickly this has like escalated. And you know, it's like you know, there were little talks of it before. There were issues in gaming where people were feeling it in particular, but now very quickly it has gone from like being this niche concern to something that everybody is now feeling, all the electronics are going up because the chips are getting so expensive. Uh and as you say, you know, because of the demand that's coming from these AI companies. And so I want to come back to the Steam Machine, but I was wondering if we can get into why we are actually seeing these massive price increases in the first place. Like what is actually driving the price of memory, the price of uh you know solid state drives and stuff like that up so much in such a short period of time?

SPEAKER_00 13:31

Um I mean it's AI. It's really simple. It's just it's AI, it's data centers, it's you know, you know, GPUs, it's um they have wafers that they can sort of allocate like stock to, and those are not like oh yeah. If you th by the way, if you think that the the the bad part is if you think the data centers are like gonna be like, okay, well, they all went up. Let's take the sticks of ram out of there. Nope, that's not how that works, unfortunately. You're gonna that's that's not how that works. Unless you do some like okay, um, side tangent. There's a guy called DOS Dude 2, I like, and he was the guy who would like take like individual like nans and stuff like that and like desolder them on max. And I I love that guy who interviewed him. He's really he's doing like high-level soldering, and like so people who do electronics are like, Oh, that's quite good. Unless you do some like wack-a-doo shit like that, or figure out a way to get this extremely specific memory, like salvaging it or something like that, it's not gonna help. You know what I mean? It's we we either have to like wait for the industry to tank or wait for these commitments to tank or whatever, and then hopefully they'll come back like hey, we're sorry, you know, like Samsung and SK Heinex will be like, Hey, so about that, you know, like like they always fucking do. But I mean, like the really evil thing, by the way, is stock prices. I mean, like, would you like to look up the stock price for like Samsung? It's gone up a ton, right? Yeah, a lot. Fucking a lot. Um, it's just like static until the beginning of 2006 and then just shoots up to like 10 times its worth. Seagate, anything involved in the storage sector is like going straight up. And like these companies are often very corrupt, like the memory industry at least is very corrupt and like has been, you know, has been investigated and and and whatnot. And uh I don't see them doing anything soon in this regulatory market, unless I don't know, like the EU gets involved. Because it's just they're making too much money. Like even if even if they weren't making the money that way, they're making their their stock prices are that's the really the annoying thing is that spinning disc prices are up too. Like the fucking platter ones, like the ones in servers. It feels like less organic even than just Sam Altman buying a bunch up for like whatever that pretend like mega data center thing he's he's making, which what was it called? Yeah, Stargate. Yeah, the Star what was it? There was that one headline where they bought up like 40% of the of the of the RAM supply for this one thing that like by all accounts doesn't really exist in a real way or is like not gonna happen, or I I I don't know. Um but yeah, it's it's it feels like there's this other layer, and I don't think this has been either reported on, but like I would love to hear people more investigating like the stock element of this because they're they are it's like a straight line. It's really, really not good.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Yeah, I feel like the one like upside of that is was the story of seeing like the Samsung uh chip workers like get these massive bonuses because they threatened to to strike, but it it's still it's still wild to see, right? And I I feel like my understanding of it from from looking into it a bit was kind of like, as you were saying, you can't just take this RAM that's dedicated to data centers and to AI and shift it back to consumer uses because what they're really doing is like changing production lines that have been making consumer RAM and memory and you know, uh SSDs and stuff, and switching that over to a completely different type of production that is meant to go into these data centers and these enterprise applications that they can sell for a lot more money, right? Which is kind of what has drawn driven this shift and why there is not the, you know, as you're saying, why why there's not the like capacity to meet the demand in the consumer market anymore because they feel like they can make more in the enterprise market.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Yeah. For the record, uh SK Heinex, uh who is the second biggest uh, I think, uh, memory supplier, their stock price in the last year went up 895%. That's wild. This is wild. That's definitely, I mean, I think you should send a guy kind of territory. I feel like everybody's like kind of just getting in while the getting's good because they know it it could collapse tomorrow. It kind of has a a sort of like there's like a I don't know in a way you describe like frenzy that that is that is like smash and grappler. They're like this is a scam. We all know this is a scam. Just fucking go for it, just go for it, and then we'll we'll worry about it later. And I and it and it feels it feels it feels bad. I'm sorry. I feel like I'm reiterating that. I apologize. It's makes me really upset.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

I think it's a point that deserves reiteration, though. It it makes me think of uh, you know, like what a year or two ago when Jensen Wong was like selling NVIDIA shares, and people were like, Oh, he thinks uh he thinks it's gonna crash. And it's like, nah, man, that guy's just like making sure he has some cash in his in his bank account for when something happens, you know, because the stock has gone up so much. Like Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

He needs he needs to have like 50 different horrible leather jackets.

unknown 18:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

I I saw a video of him. I mean, I've seen very a bunch of videos. I think uh Ed Zitron posted the one of him doing some a wallet inspector thing where he just like like signed, what was it? He signed a dollar and then like took some money from the person's wallet and then gave it back to them or something like that. And the other thing I remember I I didn't want to repost it because I wasn't sure if it was AI or not, but it was too specific where I think he was in Korea, which I I think he seemed it seems like people fucking love him in East Asia because they just don't have the same relationship uh to AI that I think people in the West do. Or it's not articulated the same way because I think it's making a lot of money. It was him in like South Korea, and he was toweling himself off in like ass level soul heed. And he he just was just taking a single like napkin from an aide whose hand was out and just dabbing himself, not taking the leather jacket off, because he can't take the leather jacket off. But it was just an aide lazily holding out like a piece of a piece of paper or something like that. I want to believe that's real, because it's just really embarrassing because he's an embarrassing man.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

I can see that being something something accurate, you know. But like, you know, w when we think of the RAM prices, like why is it that they really started taking off like end of last year or early this year? Is it just because the demand from data centers became so high that like the chipmakers just eventually had to switch everything over? Like, why didn't this happen earlier in the AI race? Do we have an idea of that?

SPEAKER_00 20:18

I I mean I don't know. I think they just bought up a bunch of them and then they were like, hey, that's a good idea. I mean, like, it's just switching production lines. I think also like COVID, they overbuilt a little bit. I mean, this is kind of the thing. Like RAM traditionally was the cheapest part of your build. It was expensive for a little bit in COVID, if I remember correctly, and then it just kind of dropped back down. And then I think they sort of curtailed like some production back if I remember correctly, but it's i i I'd have to double check. I think part of it is just like nobody ever thought the RAM would ever cost this much because it's it was always assumed to be kind of like you know, should I get 32 gigabytes or should I spend like slightly more and really go in on like 64? It would cost like a hundred dollars more. And now it's like that kid costs like obscene amounts of money. Like I think it's just like people finding new frontiers of where they can like uh get the money in. Like like spinning disk drives are are the really weird one. And I've seen if you ever follow the like R slash data hoarders uh subreddit, uh because like I keep seeing Seagate trying to like raise their retail prices on like on their research, but then you'd go to like server part deals, which is where I would normally go, and like the recertified drives there are still they're like bad, but it's like 2x and not like 10x or something like that. But then you'll go to like a retail place and it's like, yeah, here's like oh like a Western digital like portable and it's it's it's like an obscene amount of money. So that one feels like they're trying, but it isn't working as well, or it's like weird. But I I think it's just they're finding new frontiers of to of stuff to buy from and then to sell, you know what I mean? And like to sell they're like, hey, I didn't think we could fuck people over like that. W when you were talking about also the Apple price increase, the one that really struck me was the like not the PCs, but like the the Mac like uh the air the AirPod Mini or the HomePod Mini and like the Apple TV. Because those do include RAM, but it's like it's not like you you don't think of it as that. Yeah, I mean I mean it I can't imagine it's that much, but it but it's a little computer, so it's it's it's subject to this. And it's like $30 increase on that just because of the RAM. And that's bad.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Yeah. And I think I think like the Apple TV was something like $129 to $199, like in the US, which is like that's a huge jump for a small device like that that has been out for quite a long time as well, right? Like it's not like this is new cutting edge hardware or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

But it's got four gigs of RAM. That's that's four gigs of RAM, and you know, and that matters. And and um so one thing about the Steam machine, I won't get into this too much, is that they were trying to ship it with two sticks of eight gig RAM initially because it's dual channel, that works a little bit better, it's a little easier to sort of get higher speeds that way. They're shipping it now, even outside of this, and we can get into this in a second, they're shipping it with like 16 gigs on a single stick instead, because they can't get eight gigabyte sticks. And the reason they can is because like higher production stuff is being shifted upwards. And so it's sort of I mean, it's not a huge difference in the in the performance, but it's like not a not insignificant one. And I guess you could say like the upshot of that is if you want to upgrade it, because it's an upgradable machine, you can get that one stick of 16 gigabyte RAM for $220 and like put it in there, and now you have a you know a little, a slightly more capable machine. They had to make a choice that they didn't want to make on calculus they never would have thought about a year ago.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Yeah. And and I I guess if we're getting into the Steam Machine, maybe we can take a quick step back. And can you explain like what the Steam Machine is and like why this is a significant thing for Valve to be doing?

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Um so for people who don't know Valve software, they are the de facto store that you buy PC games on. Um there are other pl stores. Some of them are like proprietary and usually involve like one big game, but it for the most part, in the or like then you have like Epic and like third parties that aren't as successful, but are like a little more curated. But Valve is like, this is the marketplace. We had they had Half-Life and Team Fortress, and then they built an empire on that. And the thing that's interesting about it is you know, they take a pretty high cut, they take 30%. It's a little onerous, but whatever. And they have they moved into like hardware hardware with the Steam deck. I mean, they'd previously tried to make a Linux machine for people to play on, um, and a c a controller to match with it like 10, 12 years ago, and it failed. I mean, the controller was weird looking. It was like two big, like, like I don't know, touch pads that and like uh it's it's it's uh it's uh people who love that controller love that controller. But their attitude was we're gonna put Linux on things and the developers are gonna come and we're not gonna we're we're not gonna lead with the hardware, we're gonna have like third-party developers doing it, and it just like it was a mess. Um, and people didn't talk about it. But then eventually they came back, they invested a lot of money in what's called Proton and a lot of development in basically making it so that instead of having to do Linux native games or games that are uh you know run well in Linux and you know are developed in Linux, they said, let's just build on wine, make wine really good, and like create this like compatibility layer that makes it so you can just run a Windows game in Linux. And it works. It works really, really well. And part of that was they made a handheld that was just based on that concept. It's like, here you go, here's a handheld that will play all your PC games. Might not play all your PC games. You might have to check the compatibility. But like for the most part, it works and it's been a really huge success. And I think people have also, if not installed SeamOS on uh their handhelds, have like you are able to install Linux on it quite well. It's been a really big success. I've moved most of my computing over to Linux now because like, you know, that's that I I just want to. I fucking hate Microsoft. I think we've both talked about this a lot. Yeah. I don't ever want to uh work in Windows unless I have to. And you know, the the interesting thing is the Steam Machine was them being like, okay, let's try this again. Because the first one was called the Steam Machine. This is also called the Steam Machine. They're like, we noticed a lot of people would take their Steam Deck and just keep it docked all the time. So we were like, why don't we just make something that was like a slightly nicer version of that? Not even like trying to compete with the consoles, literally just like, hey, why don't we just have one that's docked all the time because people were doing this? And they I think they targeted something that was like more affordable, more meager, and shit changed. It's a really nice I mean, I have it over there. It's quite nice. Um it's very quiet. It's you know, realistically, it's it's hard to sort of talk about performance on something that isn't done yet, really. But um they they targeted m things that were much more like lower spec. And so you're talking about like PS5, slightly more than a PS5, slightly less than a PS5. I think that like when you involve FSR 4.1, which is rolling out to it now, it'll be a lot more charitable. But you know, it's it's it's quiet. It's really, really quiet. Um they had it's a really weirdly designed piece of hardware because they're using like a Finstack that's like shaped like a server fin stack, which is like kind of closed off on the side, and then they use these like high pressure, low flow fans that they made with like really strange blades and a plastic shroud to basically push everything through one big heatsink, and it's small, but most of that's just the cooling, and it's like 28 dB. It's like really, really maybe 25, quite as the grave. I love it, I think it's great. $1,050 is not a good price for it, you know, for the entry. Um without a controller, you know, not great. Um controllers are cheap now, I will say. But yeah, no, it's the thing that I was excited about is is that it's the probably gonna be like the biggest PC shipping Linux out there, like outside of the Steam Deck. Like that's huge. That's so important. We super need to like get people acclimated to not being on Windows. And I think the thing that's really interesting about it is, you know, like applying a PC in a living room setting uh sucks. I say this to somebody who has a PC in his living room for like well over a decade at this point. It's not fun, it's not intuitive, it rocks if you can get it to work, but then you're the guy who has to be like, all right, I'm just gonna boot into a desktop environment. And they've you know kind of solved a lot of those issues with this. You know, HDMI, CEC works, although I think I think I've gotten it to work in other distros as well. Like it's weird. Linux development is very strange because you'll get like SteamOS doesn't support like NVIDIA graphics GPU drivers right now. It's basically just AMD. And I think they're trying to like be more cautious and make sure things are like tested. But like Bazite will run GPUs that are NVIDIA and they're getting into a good place now.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

And and just to be clear, when you're talking about distros, that's other versions of Linux, Bazite being being one of those. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Bazite uh and Cashey are the big gamer ones, I would say.

SPEAKER_01 29:48

I I remember when the Steam Machine was like first announced, like you know, a lot of the discussion was on what this might mean for the consoles, right? And what this might mean for PC gaming, and is this going to make things more accessible, right? To kind of get into PC gaming without needing to worry too much about putting together your own PC or all this kind of stuff. Like it's just a plug-and-play kind of easy to get into sort of a thing. But it's interesting to hear you say that actually one of the things that makes it more compelling or appealing to you is actually the fact that there's Linux on this, and this is going to mean that a lot more people are going to come in contact with like using Linux more regularly, where maybe that kind of opens them up to considering it more as their like regular personal computer too, do you think? Or what do you think about that?

SPEAKER_00 30:33

I think so. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people just don't like interacting with Windows at all. It it sucks. It's it's not fun. And like switching to Linux is really nice. Um I have I have Bazaite on a bunch of things. Um without getting too much into the weeds in that one, it doesn't matter which distro you choose, really, at this point. Like it they're all kind of the same in certain ways. And uh it just depends on like how you approach these things. Like most of them are running plasma or GNOME, like in terms of like desktop environments. And Plasma is the one that is basically the most like Windows. And if you know Windows, you probably know how to deal with this. I like Bazite personally because I don't like breaking my computer. And I have had enough Linux machines where like you break something accidentally, and this is sort of what's called immutable. They would go with the term atomic, I think that's more accurate. That's kinda kind of how SteamOS works, is it's like, hey, why don't we make it so that the user can't just completely fuck up their computer? Which which a lot of Linux people like because they like breaking their computer instead of using it. Arch people love doing that. I love I like Arch people, but they love breaking their computer. And so yeah, like they're made, they've made that the that was the really nice thing about SteamOS, is like it's pretty easy to understand, it's pretty straightforward, that's it's sort of like the Fedora version of that. And yeah, like I think this was be one of the biggest contact points. I don't think it's gonna solve a lot of um I don't think they're gonna ship a lot of volume, is the thing. You know what I mean? I think that the problem is that they in addition to just the RAM costing a lot of money, they straight up couldn't get a lot of it. They couldn't get a lot of storage. And so I think volume is gonna be bad for the next few years. But like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Which I guess changes like the conversation on it a little bit, right? Especially from like those early discussions of like, you know, the the kind of major impacts that it might have. But then the RAM the RAM increases or or you know, the lack of availability paired with the higher price point, you know, limits kind of like the consumer maybe willingness to pick it up, right? In the sense that you were talking about the handheld, the Steam Deck, which they have as well. And that suffered significant price increases just like last month or the month before as well, right? Uh you know, just like we're seeing in so many other in so many things, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:56

It used to be such a good deal. It used to be like 350 bucks for the LCD, and I think like what six, six fifty or something like that for the OLED. And I have the OLED and it's I use it like every day. It's so good. I use like that thing so often. Because all my games are on there. Because I have all this big this I have this big library of like weird indie titles. And like that's the other thing that's really nice about and it makes the calculus of like how how useful is something that is like relatively underpowered. It's like, okay, it's relatively underpowered. There's like hundreds and thousands of games that you're just never gonna touch on any other platform that you can on there. And uh something I find is that like, and also they'll just like let you install shit on there. I really do favor that like quite a bit. Like you could just do whatever you want, it's your computer. And like that's the annoying thing about like PS5 and and all of these things. It's just like if you install an emulator on a Switch 2, they'll they'll fucking they'll fucking send the cops or something. Not literally, but you know, they they they you know, they're they're they're you don't own that thing, you know what I mean? Like you own the ability to play their games on it, which like you know, they they spend a lot of money on it, they don't want to lose money on it. They're a Japanese company, I get it. But like that is a nice thing. I think there's also pushback. It's the reaction's been interesting because there's like different groups of people. There's people who are like hardware people who have been like paying attention, and those people look at this thing and they're like, yeah, it's kind of underpowered. Wow, they did a really good job with it, but it is a little underpowered. Yeah, that is what that costs. And that's where I'm at. And then you have people who are like, console people who are like, why aren't you subsidizing the cost of this? And it's like, I don't think they can do that. You know, I'm gonna be honest, I don't think anybody can do that right now. I I don't think that's as common as people think it is. And also like, I don't know, that one is very funny because it just sounds like they're saying, well, Gabe has a yacht, please give me money. And I think it would respect it more if people just said that. You know what I mean? As opposed to like as opposed to like, hey, instead of like kind of breaking even, why don't you lose money? It's like, because that's their business still. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

And and I feel like that was the model for like console gaming for a long time, you know, like the especially in the in the like beginning years of a console, like it would be it would be priced below the cost of production and they would make it up on like you know, selling the games and all that kind of stuff. But even now it feels like with the regular consoles, they you know, they're also making sure that they're breaking even on selling like the PS5 and the Xbox Series X and stuff like that, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:29

Yeah, I think their costs are actually like a little well, I mean, I don't want to talk about Xbox making or losing money. Uh but like but PlayStation's like, you know, they didn't get this way writing checks. I think that they are not in the red with these as much, but it's it's I think they're having more I think even they're gonna have more difficulty. They had to raise their prices. And that's the other thing, is it's like this is like the third or fourth indignity. Because like even at this is after like De Minimus and like the Trump admin just like making it so that everybody had to like reconfigure their supply chains so that it was like technically in Southeast Asia, so it didn't have the China, you know, just like and then the tariffs lifted, but maybe they didn't, but like it to the point where like I think people just were like, we're just gonna assume this is expensive and that you we don't know. You know, like I I kind of stopped paying attention to whether or not what we were doing with tariffs at this point just because it's like so annoying and we went back and forth, and I think uh but like this comes at the heel of our all that other shit happening. And this isn't healthy for this industry. Like it makes it really, really hard to like have an environment where people buy games, you know what I mean? Like where people can afford anything. And it's it's it's a bummer.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

Yeah, no, it definitely is. And I wanted to ask you that too, because like, you know, thinking about the Steam Machine and this as you know, this alternative way, I guess, to play games for people that is more PC-like, but is structured a bit more like a console, so you can easily put it like in your living room and and things like that without the difficulties of having a PC as you were talking about. But you know, on the regular console side, like we've seen a PS5 go from I think $500 at launch to $650 now, you know, the the Xbox has gone up, I believe, a similar amount. The Switch 2 is going up in September by I think $50 or something like that. And so what does that mean for gaming then? If you know, all of because because I feel like gamers were hit early by like the increased cost of GPUs, you know, they saw that during the pandemic, but also more recently with with AI. And it feels like that is like a sector that feels it earlier than other parts of I don't know, consumer electronics, I guess. What does it mean for gaming if the cost of getting in becomes so high?

SPEAKER_00 37:41

It's fewer people, you know, fewer people. Although the really weird thing I will say is you keep occasionally just seeing like because these prices are so high, occasionally you'll just see like a really weird flash sale. Because like people are like, what do we do? Nobody wants to buy this thing. Uh shit, I don't know, he was on sale for a day. And then so you'll you'll occasionally be able to get a like a deal as as though that's like good, but like it happens intermittently, and you just kind of have to like jump on it like a grenade with a helmet, you know, like you're just like a band of brothers shit or something. Um no, it's it's gonna be bad for everybody. And um actually something I'm writing now, I think you might find this interesting, is in addition to doing this, I also already had a living room PC, so I switched that over to Linux or to Bazite. And then I also got something that like other people have been tinkering with, which is the BC 250 that does not stand for British Columbia 250, which is a crypto mining card that was a cut-down PlayStation 5. It's uh it's basically the chip from a PS5, but it didn't pass QC or something like that, or they had extra. And so they just cut off a bunch of the cores or the compute units, and like cut off some of the CPU cores and said, Okay, we're gonna put these in a server rack and go to town. And then crypto died, or at least crypto mining died, and then crypto is not doing well either. And so these have made it onto the secondary market, but they were never meant to be used in a personal computing way, but uh they have 16 gigabytes of DDR6, GDDR6, I think, RAM on there that you can't desolder. And, you know, it's not an it's not the most powerful thing, but people have figured it out. So people are just 3D printing cases around this, putting weird fucking things to it, and it's like the it's the e-waste steam machine. And I have one in my house. The the wildest thing about this, by the way, so they remember those fused off compute units and whatnot. Like a month ago, they were like, hey, we found them. We found the compute units that they fused off, and not only that, we can turn them on again. And so there's like so not only do you have to do this wack-a-doo shit where you like 3D print a case, figure out cooling. And also, like the cooler is meant to be done in server layout, actually, kind of like the C machine, ironically. So you have to do this thing where you're either like just zip tying a case onto it and hoping for the best thermally, or 3D printing like a blower at the end of it, or removing it, doing what I did, which was very silly, which is removing the entire cooler, 3D printing out of ASA, because you that's like thermally what can withstand those heats. 3D printing a bracket, taking a stock cooler onto it. So it's just like it looks like you put a uh a tower cooler onto a graphics card, and then just building a computer around that using like all like secondary parts. And then you unlock the core and then you also the sorry, in order to reset the BIOS, you have to like take the coin battery out for like a minute. It's just it's it is so much fun and so annoying at the same time. And once I actually got it going, it did like 1080p, no FSR, that's no upscaling, cyberpunk at high settings, 54 frames a second? Not bad. That's like not with that's without any of the like doing fake stuff, you know what I mean? The Steam machine does like 76. It's not bad. Um, it has more compute units if you unlock it than the stock PS5. It's not as optimized. The PS PlayStation's very, very good at that, but like you can do pretty good things for something that costs $170 plus whatever you're adding to it.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

Do you think that like all of these price increases for memory for SSDs, you know, as we've been talking about, will kind of lead people to experiment more with computers and stuff, like in the way that you're talking about and trying to kind of put things together that maybe they wouldn't have otherwise considered because it was just relatively affordable to buy a computer because prices were like coming down so regularly. Like as I hear you describe that, one of the things that comes to mind is you know the people experimenting with these like low-powered computers that called cyberdecks, where like they're 3D printing cases and stuff, and just just building like I don't know, computers with like interesting and weird designs. What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_00 42:17

I'm a little bitchy about cyberdecks because I don't think they're fun to use. I'm a little, I'm a little they're they're not. No, but it is very like the the BC-250 is very cyberpunk in the like true sense of it, like in the Gibsonian sense. It is very like you took e-waste and you have to go on a Russian YouTuber's like English language channel devoted to this. It's a guy named Old Lamer, and he uses GPT like imagery on everything. But other than that, he's a n he seems like a nice enough guy. And he's just like, here is how you unlock course in BC250. And it's just like, I'm so with you, homie. So I'm so here. I mean, I think this is still a very niche thing. I think it matters for people, like not in the US in particular, because like as much as it hurts people in the US, this is kind of occasionally how computing has been for a lot of people. I think it's still a very niche thing, but I think that like the thing I take away from it is that like this kind of development is only possible when you have an open platform. And so the things that like happen with Bazite and like Steam like enable this kind of stuff. Do you know what I mean? And so cash EOS and all these like these like things, like these are things that are like happening out in the open, and people are like, all right, I don't have any money, but I got a lot of time on my hands. What can I do? And and you you have people like helping each other, and there's like a Discord. I the case I I I used, I talked to this guy named Gadget, I think he's a guy, I don't know. Uh this person named Gadget, who's French, I believe. And it was just a month long conversation of me being like, uh, that doesn't work, because Gadget's French, and so gadget's part selection was. Different. The cooler that they used can't be bought in the United States legally because Deep Cool got sanctioned by the United States government for selling to Russia. So I had to buy a secondary one on eBay. But they do have OSA. There is another company with suspiciously similar hardware right now called Sudoku, who has been selling recently and it's just is very much like when when Mo throws Homer out and you just see him from like or was it Barney out and you see Barney come up behind him two seconds later? Uh yeah, I don't know. It's I I think it's fun more than anything. I think that like the ingenuity of people developing in the open is the thing I really enjoy about this. I don't think it'll be super common, but um I do think something you're also seeing is people playing PC games on their phones. Because you have uh in addition to the Steam machine, you have what's known as FEX. And Valve has been uh doing this for the Steam frame, which is their VR headset that's coming forward, because they want it to be a headset that is uh something you can do remotely, but also play on the headset. And it uses an ARM chip. And FX is the translation layer layer that lets you do x8664 stuff on ARM. And that's really hard, but it's gotten very, very far right now. And so you're seeing people on like really nice Android phones and handhelds like the Ion Thor, which is really good. It's like a 3DS, but it's like really powerful and uses a Snapdragon. They're just playing like Fallout New Vegas on that now. It's is nutty. You can kind of get Final Fantasy VII Rebirth running on a handheld that like you get from China now. And that's what I think is actually like really important is like getting that shit to run on a Mac, getting it to run like natively on cell phone hardware, because that's something that you you can like choose to game or not on your PC. You don't have a choice to have a cell phone. And that's where cell phone hardware is. And so if they can really blow that up, I I think that will benefit them tremendously, provided we're able to afford cell phones.

unknown 46:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

Yeah. Uh I I can't remember if the iPhone prices jumped uh in in Apple's price increase, but uh maybe I'll have to check that. Uh you know, I'm wondering hearing you talk about all that then, you know, obviously public opinion in Western countries is very much against AI and data centers already, right? Do you think that people are making the connection between seeing their game consoles and their MacBooks increase in price and what is going on with AI? And if so, like how does that contribute then to public opinion of the tech industry, of you know, the AI industry in particular?

SPEAKER_00 46:47

I I think a lot more people are cognizant, like even six months ago, that this is happening. I think it's becoming common knowledge. Actually, if the Steam machine does anything, it might just radicalize people against data centers even more because they're like, fuck, this is making my cell phone cost more money. In the same way that like, you know, like you would see tech people try to like rationalize water usage and be like, oh, it's getting better, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, you know, you can have that long, annoying debate on someone's substack or whatever. But it's harder to get the electricity thing rationalized. And even they're understanding that. And now the sort of like, well, you've made my iPhone cost a lot of money, that's that's bad, dude. You're gonna I think that that will backfire on them. I mean, like, not that like public opinion matters so much anymore with like the construction of data centers, or but like I can't imagine it will be good for them. And I think it's like becoming much more common knowledge. Like, you know, the a lot of people were like, oh, I'm never buying that, blah, blah, blah. I can make a pre-built, you know, for the steam machine. Uh by the way, you can do that if you want to make a pre-built, you can make a pre-built that costs roughly the same amount of money and performs slightly better, and that's way louder and way more annoying for like roughly like 1,050. If you use like really fucked up parts, like if you use a power supply that costs like $30. But I think that like people uh it's the first time I've seen a lot of people being like, man, fuck Sam Altman at a console price like being raised. Like it used to be like fuck Nintendo, fuck PlayStation. This is the first time, and maybe it's you know Valve's relationship and the fact that they're much more open about this, uh, that they that that that I think people are really connecting what's happening. Um because before it was Trump tariffs and whatnot, and now it's like, no, we have we have an enemy. It is it is Jensen Huang. It is these fucking people who just like do not give a shit what your personal life is like. And and and if you have money to like for a computer you need for work. That's the other thing. It's like it's not just if it was just gaming shit, that would be one thing. But like people need these to live. People need a fucking computer to live. The MacBook Neo was that for like two seconds. For two seconds, it was the like $600, $500 computer like that outcompeted everything. Now it's what, like $799, $6.99, something along. I think it's $699, right? Bro, not good. And then like even before this, the Mac Mini, like they they knocked the price out on that too. And it's just like there is like the one thing Apple had was like, well, at least we have affordable hardware. No, that lasted like two months.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Yeah, yeah. You just can't keep it up anymore, right? And I I am interested, you know, what you were saying about the the Sam Altman piece and people really connecting it to him because I feel like Valve in announcing the price of the Steam Machine and the availability was also like very upfront about this is why it costs so much as it does. You know, this is the issues we're having with uh you know procuring memory. And so it was very much not just like, here's the price, you know, deal with it, but here's the price, kind of like, sorry about this, but this is the reality of what's happening right now, so you understand it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 49:57

I mean, I think they had to. Like they think that's the correct move. I think it's the honest move. Um, they they didn't have another choice. And I asked them actually, like, how much would this have cost? And they were like, well, we can't tell you that one, because I don't think they actually know, because that would have been theoretical and it's it's counterfactual. But the thing they basically said was take the recent price bump with the Steam deck and then just subtract, and you would have had roughly that range. Which would have been like, you know, like seven, eight hundred dollars, maybe maybe eight fifty. Uh and I mean that's still more than a PS5, and it's still like less way less power than like a PS5 Pro for roughly the same price. But that's like for something that's your computer, that's a much more attractive deal. And yeah, I think they made the correct call to be like, yeah, our hands are tied because like they they literally don't have any other option.

SPEAKER_01 50:51

Yeah. Uh it's it's really frustrating to see how this is all increasing and how you know how we have to pay the cost for the kind of you know, the the push for generative AI in so many different places, right? We pay it for gaming consoles, we pay it for consumer electronics, we pay it in energy prices. And you know, I'm not- I would not be surprised if people's kind of like water bills have gone up as well in certain parts of the United States and the world because of this. And it's like, you know, again and again, there is a price that regular people have to pay for this pursuit of trying to push generative AI on us and build out all these data centers. Um, and it just feels like every few months there's a new one that kind of gets added to the toll at a time when people are already struggling to pay for everyday needs, right? For food and housing and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 51:38

K-shaped economy. It's it's it is it is haves and have-nots, and the haves are doing very well, at least in a stock sense, and have nots are are not. I mean, like that's that's just how how like you you get this whenever people try to do the like well peep well, the economy's doing actually really well thing. And it's just like the people who aren't doing well aren't doing well, and things are expensive. Like you can't massage that all you want. That's the reality of the situation. And and yeah, no, it's they don't give a shit. I mean, like the people who the people who do this don't give a shit. They they they they are, if not sheer cultists, deeply greedy, and and there's no regulatory way of stopping them, at least in these states, because they're all their evil friends. So I don't know. Sam take Sam take Steam Machine.

unknown 52:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:26

It's a it's a grim moment. And and I assume, you know, my my final question, there's not really any like signs in the near term that this is gonna lift, right? Like there's not a ton of like memory capacity coming online that's gonna cause the prices to go down or or anything like that, I imagine.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

Oh no, no, no. You're you're I mean, again, like I think the there are a couple of Chinese factories that are like scaling up. I think China recognizes that this is a not a growth sector, but like a liability. And so they're they made like investments in their own production facilities, and so so there are a couple of manufacturers that are are spinning up on it now, but like but no, it's you know, unless unless something really bad happens to like data center construction and and then even then it's gonna be a long tail and we're just gonna have to suffer this. And so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:17

It's grim. It's not it's not the kind of thing that you want to hear, but that's the reality, unfortunately. And again, like you're saying, it's the AI industry that we have to blame for this.

SPEAKER_00 53:26

I mean, I think you can still get a PS5 for, you know, Grand Theft Auto. Um if you get one on sale, snag it. I I am interested in how this impacts like G I hate I hate being this person because the whole fucking game industry has just become like a like a cargo cult around like Rockstar. But like I do really wonder like what the net impact of this is to the largest game, like a load-bearing economic game release. Because if it if it really impacts GTA 6, that's bad. That's really bad. You know, like I don't I don't know to what degree it will. Um I think people will just buy that shit regardless, you know, and I mean a lot of people. And PS uh 5 has pretty decent install based at this point, but like it's rough.

SPEAKER_01 54:08

Yeah, you could see the the units affected, you know. Not that not that. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 54:15

They'll do fine. It's fine. Whatever. It costs a shitload of money to develop, uh, but I think if it's less than people I I'm more worried about like it scaring, it causing external factors than I I don't care about that. I mean, the g I do care about the game because it's like disgusting and weird, but like I don't really worry about the health of that company. I worry about like what that means for the industry.

SPEAKER_01 54:39

Of course. The the broader signals that it sends and how other companies then react as a result of seeing what might happen. Yeah, no, I totally get that. Uh Chris, it's always great to have you on the show and and to get your insights on this stuff. Obviously, you know, the RAM prices is something that we've been hearing more and more about recently. And you know, seeing the Steam Machine come out and then the Apple increases, I felt like it was the time to really dig in and understand what is going on here and the implications of it all. And they're not great. So yeah, I appreciate you coming on to talk about it all.

SPEAKER_00 55:07

I wish I had better news aside from hey, you can make like a computer out of e-waste. Like that's pretty cool, I guess, but like, you know, it's it's not you know, it's not good. But but thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_01 55:20

Absolutely. Great to talk to you. Thanks. Chris Persson is a co-founder of Aftermath. Tech won't save us is made in partnership with the Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kylie Houston. Tech won't save us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening, and make sure to come back next week.