I Love The Ram Crisis

2026-06-21

Cheap computing power ruined everything. Smartphones only exist because of cheap compute, and smartphones are literally bad. There is only one good thing which has ever come from the existence of smartphones, and that is 異世界はスマートフォンとともに. It almost makes the invention worth it. But in fact, it would be mostly the same were it 異世界はノートパソコンとともに. Cheap hardware made computing "accessible" to normans. Now, in the future, everyone can have a supercomputer right in their pocket! And how has that turned out for us. Not very well is the answer. Because these * can't use the internet properly, can't use computers properly, now the rest of us have to suffer. We've got governments making all kinds of draconian laws. My government in particular. Just real evil shit. Evil evil evil. Confirm your age to read the rest of this blog post by thinking really hard about being over 18. Our psychoelectric radio scanners will determine your mind's truthfulness. Well look what's happened. You made computers so cheap that they started throwing trillions at them to build a robot just so that they don't have to interact with the arseholes at stack overflow. Who can blame them. When you're thinking about purchasing some e-waste in waiting like "steam hardware" or whatever nonsense they're going to come up with next, imagine my disgusting smug face looking down at you and saying, "let me guess, you 'need more'". I am writing this post on a thinkpad with 3.5g ram. I have a desktop with 32g ram. 98% of the time, I do not notice the difference. If ram is actually expensive, if GPUs are actually, prohibitively expensive. If compute in general is actually out of reach for most people. Then they will have no choice but to optimise their fucking programs for the first time since the 90s. This could fix everything. It won't, it will just end up with three classes of people, the wealthy who can afford expensive computers to run garbage software, the autistic, who know how to avoid garbage software, and the rest, who will be paying subscriptions for "cloud services" as a pseudo-mandatory cost of living. But imagine a world where anything is even half way bearable. Imagine...

Did you know there was a time before computers. There was even a time before oil. People rode horses and bicycles and walked places. Well, I don't even own a bicycle! But I could, if I wanted to. It's entirely possible to purchase a bicycle. Waow! There's an oil crisis, don't you know. This guy is a genius. The most genius leftist in history. The USSR bolstered capitalism by providing it with the one thing it really needed: a second order implementation of it's own operative logic. That is to say, competition. American capitalism was forced to develop rapidly to keep up with the USSR. At certain points, the CIA thought they were going to lose that race! They lost the space race after all. And so it caught up. It powered up, infused with all sorts of steroids and substances, and overtook. Out competed on the global market. The obvious reason why the "in one country" model was always doomed to fail. "In any case, and in whatever conceivable circumstances, we are doomed if the German revolution does not break out." - Lenin, 7th March 1918. And he was correct, of course. Without Russian competition American techno-capital would not have had need to develop with the speed and power which it did. Thus paradoxically, it was the communists who ensured who communism could never win out, who entrenched and empowered capitalism to such an extreme. China is continuing this pattern. Learning from this history, Comrade Trump has seen the logic of the code, that one doesn't oppose a system by opposing it, but rather by pushing into hyper-logic. His humiliatingly weak gift of death, and humiliatingly poorly enforced gift of deferred death, has successfully funnelled power into it's competition. With no oil, we have no choice but to build out "energy sovereignty" in renewables. Ah he has banned Anthropic from allowing their new model overseas for "national security" reasons. Europe panics! The chips are too expensive, oh no, we can't compete! Are we to become a vassal! 500 years too late, they build "the euro stack". Better make sure Euro-Office Docs is Microsoft Word compatible though. You know. Just in case.

If you think the resources are scarce right now, just wait until it comes for the food. Oh what's that, grocery store prices are way too high already? Don't worry, this is just "inflation". It's normal for economies. Get ready to learn rice and beans buddy. They've been promising us bugs for a decade, why can't I buy them. You think I wouldn't eat crickets if they were cheap? Put them in the damn shops you cowards. I will eat the bugs, I will live in the pod, and the government can't stop me! Ok fine, ya dumb bastards, I'll spell out my point in plain language. A simple transition to renewables is a bit of a myth, because renewables don't provide continuous power like fossil fuels do. You have to build up storage capacity too. This much you know, but consider the implications. What this means is, it is not enough to just build out the renewable infrastructure to meet base demand, because when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, you have to also be charging those batteries, spinning those flywheels, pumping that water. Renewable capacity has to actually be much higher than base demand, because you need to produce surplus for storage. This means highly intensive mining and industrial processes must be pushed to the extreme. Not so green after all. Most of the greening has taken place in the public facing side of the economy, raw extraction and industrial processing are not exactly eco-friendly, and very little is being done to make them so. Your car might be electric, but the mining equipment which extracted the materials it is built from definitely is not. What needs to happen is a transition to renewables coinciding with a reduction in energy demand overall. Of course, this will never happen. No one is letting go of their treats. And so, a simultaneous crisis of both energy supply (oil) and the materials which drive demand (chips), is basically the perfect storm. You might be thinking to yourself, "but n0thanky0u, the straight is already open again, everything is fixed now. These are just temporary growing pains while hardware manufacturers build out." Listen man, you ever ever seen prices go down? When does anything ever get cheaper? It's Jevon's Paradox or something. But that topic is it's own future post. No, I don't think this will last forever, this specific mix of crises. But it is a sign of things to come. So I gotta get myself some solar panels or some shit because things are not looking good. Actually I gotta get out of this damn country. I'm thinking or * maybe. Yeah you don't need to know that actually. Anyway, there is no reason to be worried about this stuff, why on earth do you need a brand new SSD. Just delete some stuff. What's cheaper, buying an SSD during a shortage, or learning to accept the fundamental impermanence of all things.

My tasks are to reduce my remaining dependency on any website which requires a modern web browser. In terms of raw numbers, if you were to just count each website I visit on a somewhat regular basis, the websites which are simple and mostly text, which work fine in w3m or dillo or whatever, would far outnumber the bloated garbage. However, if you were to account for time spent on each website, unfortunately, the story would be different. That's because of Youtube. I have to admit it, they say accepting you have a problem is the first step to solving an addiction right. I have a Youtube addiction, and I have had it for many, many years. Sure, I've found my ways to cope. I use a locally hosted alternative frontend which is more lightweight and private, whatever. The real problem is that unlike every other "social" media website, youtube actually contains genuinely worthwhile content. I even make some of it myself. This is what really makes it hard to ween off. And so I have decided to take up reading fiction more intensively. One of my many attempts, which will of course fail. Free will isn't real, I need Google to collapse as a company and then I'll be forced to go cold turkey.

All I'm saying is it's funny watching people get all riled up about this stuff from behind my core 2 duo. Do you remember covid? They were like "oh wait, this whole just-in-time global supply chain malarkey might be a tiny bit fragile. Then they started doing wars to check the theory. Turns out, who could have seen this coming, they were right. My god I hate these tescreal idiots who jerk off onto global supply chains. And the thing about this whole AI thing is everyone is completely missing the point. Well not everyone, of course my homies are on le right side of history. I do not believe I will be following that particular local llm path myself. I already have a little man in my head, he's called me. The unixy way of having an LLM sex slave is called tulpamancy. Not that I'm doing that either. Although I am engaging in plenty of 妄想 myself. Well it seems fun but I am lazy. And I will not be stopped in my laziness! I have already been isekai'd, I was previously in No World At All and I was taken and 転生した in this strange world. Now all I need is a harem. They have learned nothing from covid, they will learn nothing from this, because there is nothing to be learned. This is what people aren't seeing. Ok so we're in this supposedly "multipolar world" or whatever. A multipolar world is when every country says we need to trade more with China while China is already their main trading partner. Canada did this btw. Carney was like "we need to trade more with China" and China is already Canada's number 2 biggest trading partner. Many leftoids don't see this either, right. They also think "if only these countries allied more with China" I promise you take any country on the globe and they could not physically be more economically tied to China. So anyway we're in this "multipolar world" which as far as I can tell means the US is shooting itself in the foot and making that our problem. So we need "sovereignty". We need to be more independent. OK, here's what you're missing. The governments have figured this out btw. If they could by more independent, they would already be doing it, right? Like every country wants their own booming automotive industry, but not every country can have one, so they don't. That's not for lack of trying, that's how the economy works. You can't just flick a switch and become self reliant as a country, because you can't just do everything yourself. This whole global economy thing didn't start for no reason. Nutmeg doesn't grow in European climates well, ok, the spice trade started all this. They weren't doing international trade as like, a favour to these other countries. They're doing it out of economic necessity. And now, Europe (or whoever) can't just build out their own AI infrastructure if they set their mind to it, there are limitations in place. And so this whole house of cards which is the highly fragile state of international supply chains is too ingrained, moving past that would mean a radical restructuring of the global economy. And I mean radical radical, like "end of capitalism" radical. And that's not gonna happen, at least not on purpose. You know what life was like before this stuff? Everyone was a farmer. It sucked! I don't wanna be a farmer, I want to be NEET!.

Even second hand hardware is going to, in fact already has, spiked in price. You know, ThinkPads are a known entity these days. Even many normans know about this. Now of course, many of them cannot stomach daily driving a computer which is older than last thursday, just look how many people purchase the new iphone every year. You're telling me my le webapps are going to be le slower?? But even these old gals are starting to get inflated in price. Well, being as old as they are these days, I'm sure part of this price increase is genuine scarcity. I will gatekeep the other options. Man do I love my thinkpads. They are my precious babies. I love them deeply, and I consumate this love every night in an orgy of clicky keyboards and whirring fans. Of course, there will be old, cheap hardware for the foreseeable future. People are going to "upgrade" to something worse and sell their treasures on ebay. The autist class is well fed on salvaged compute. You know, one of my favourite websites is https://compost.party, a linux server running on an old broken smartphone hooked up to solar. This is what it's all about, ladies and gentlemen. If I even slightly bought into my own bullshit I would have learned forth by now. But I am in "Nito's lazy strange world adventure".

I can't get over the feeling that I won't survive all of this.

What do you need ram for? What do you need all that SSD space for? If your answer to this was to play modern video games, yngmi. There is no justification for playing any video game created after 2010. Oh, you're honestly telling me you have played final fantasies I - XIII, dragon quests I - IX, ok I was going to just name a billion video games but I will not. Have you even played 電車でgo Have you even played princess maker. People have thousands of hours in NES tetris. That's a real video game right there. I am horrifically bad at tetris. I'm also horrifically bad at 電車でgo wwww. Did I pick my arbitrary cut off date so as to make it acceptable that I play Team Fortress 2 religiously? Of course I did. Why wouldn't I. I'm also not counting eroge. There have been plenty of good VNs released since 2010. Maybe if I were a real gamer I would be saying the same thing about non ero ge. But I read books now, didn't you hear. Anyway, I found a strange creature possibly of extraterrestrial origin living under my floorboards, tied it to a chair, pointed a gun at it, and asked it these questions:

Q1: Do you consider yourself a gamer?

 A1: Yes. I've been a gamer since my parents handed me a controller when I was 2 years old.

Q2: If you could only play video games released before 2010, or only after 2010, which would you choose?

 A2: As much as it hurts to say this, I would have to go with before 2010. Beyond the fact that it gives you access to a much larger number of titles, many of the most experimental games that went on to define the medium, or go on forgotten despite being revolutionary in and of themselves, were made in this period. Which makes sense, given that developers were still becoming acclimated to 2D and then 3D graphics. Even control schemes could be more interesting before the age of standardized controls. Video game before 2010 encompass early forays into 2D gaming as well as their refinement and perfection. It covers that period before 3D games got boring.

I suppose some people want a powerful PC for other reasons. Such as a nice CPU to compile software faster. I don't believe there is a CPU shortage, but your software should be compiling quickly anyway. If you need to compile the linux kernel or firefox it's going to take a long time no matter what. Long enough to take a nap. Your computer is telling you to take a nap, and you should do so.

I don't see a RAM shortage, I see a SHEEP surplus! Too many SHEEPLE who want to play valorant and purchase "nintendo switch 2"! You know what there's no shortage of? Bass guitars. Pick one up, slap it a little. 4 strings, infinite possibilities. Now that's suckless. You can't hear it, but I'm going to raise my hands off the keyboard, pick up my bass guitar, and noodle for 5 minutes right now.

There you go, I did it. And you know who couldn't stop me? The government. Yeah that's right. My bass is currently tuned to FCFC, very wacky. Got that from Thurston Moore, shouts out. Very fun. For some reason, despite having far overstayed its welcome, I feel like this blog post cannot be allowed to end here. Despite something you may intuit from some of my posting, I actually love industrial society. Consequences and all. Ok maybe not all. I really like running water, I like non-seasonal produce, I like modern medicine (when it works), I like Monster Energy, I like plumbing, I like electric fans, I like fast food bacon cheese burger, I like being able to talk to someone who lives many miles away from me instantaneously, I like grocery stores, I like nicotine, I like artificial lighting, I like recorded music, I like movies, I like vaccinations, I like Amazon delivery. There are many nice things. I don't know why I spend so much time criticising technology. I don't even know anything about it! What even is this strange contraption. "Computer". What are you computing? What mysteries do your circuit boards hold? I will never know. Isn't that strange? But I don't want to give it up. I am here for the computer. I love the computer. My books are in here, you know. Well, some of them. Books printed on paper are expensive. I need GabeN brain chip install google translate in my brain. All those people who spent thousands of hours learning Japanese are gonna feel really stupid when my neuralink does the same thing. Ok now I'm mad. We were promised recreational prosthetics and brain implants by the time it was cyberpunk time, and what do we get? Fuck all! Give me my god damned robot hand. Where's my semi-legal grayware cybernetics. It's always flying cars that are the go-to "the future has been cancelled" tech, but flying cars suck. A brain chip though, that has real potential. Using a smartphone is inherently humiliating. Oh I'm tapping away on this piece of shit. It's embarrassing. Pump Youtube Shorts directly into my visual cortex. With my class B dreamspace jack I can be reading erodoujins and you would never know. All we got is shitty r/cyberdecks (guys, I plugged a screen from alibaba into a raspi, am I schway?) Currently, vim motions are the closest thing to a neural interface yet invented. It's not quite direct brain computer communications, but it's pretty close.

The general wisdom is that ChatGPT makes you dumb. It makes you dumb because you let it do your thinking for you. Oh, if only! If only someone else could do my thinking for me. Then I would finally be free to do things other than think! Ok that's about enough of this.