Sony halts memory card shipments due to NAND shortage(www.techzine.eu)
67 pointsby methuselah_in9 hours ago6 comments
  • HerbManic8 hours ago
    A moments silence for Memory stick... Yeah that should do it.
  • tomalaci8 hours ago
    I feel like all these hardware shortages will supercharge 2nd hand electronics and their refurbishing from repair specialists.
    • HerbManic8 hours ago
      For many years I had been advocating for Linux distros to optimize for lower spec machines as their life times got extended. Best case, you head off potential hardware end of life, worst case you allow newer hardware to run more effciebtly. The latest shortage I didnt see coming, but it would have helped out regardless. Keeping old hardware going is vital nowadays, need to end the mind set of disposable goods.
    • iszomer4 hours ago
      Might even bring back some value to those _westerners_ who are still hooked into the nostalgic scene -- have you made a trip to Akihabara district lately?
    • Havoc3 hours ago
      2nd hand is up massively already. Built a ssd nas with eBay parts in mid 2025 and everything is up 100ish percent
  • noobermin7 hours ago
    Didn't OpenAI cancel a bunch of memory orders? Seems premature to announce this as there soon will be a glut of memory in the market.
    • zvqcMMV6Zcr5 hours ago
      I think that is misinformation caused by circular logic. DDR prices stopped risking, simply because supply reached equilibrium vs demand and willingness of customers to overpay. The Micron stock price also had minor correction. Suddenly internet is full of articles how it is all caused by TurboQuant release or OpenAI giving up on its huge wafer orders.

      Looks very similar like attempts to explain random crypto price changes with any (un)related news.

      • torginus5 hours ago
        Am I wrong that essentially what OpenAI tried to do is to short squeeze the memory market?

        What happens if they decide to dump all the stock they don't actually need anymore?

        Will half the memory industry run into the ground because of the oversupply means their current production is unsellable?

        • pjc504 hours ago
          The term I would use is "corner", as in "silver" and "onions". But there's a couple of distinctions:

          - supposedly buying for their own use, rather than reselling

          - bought as forward, rather than spot: much of what they've ""bought"" is a commitment to buy memory that has not yet been manufactured

          > Will half the memory industry run into the ground because of the oversupply means their current production is unsellable?

          They've seen that coming, this is why there isn't a massive expansion to meet the demand rise and instead they're letting "demand destruction" happen. A decision vindicated by the war, as well.

          • torginus4 hours ago
            > supposedly buying for their own use, rather than reselling?

            Do we know what they're using it for? I mean not reselling would imply the chips go on some OpenAI specific proprietary hardware directly, rather than it being sold back to OEMs to buy more GPUs or other off the shelf accelerators.

            > They've seen that coming, this is why there isn't a massive expansion to meet the demand rise and instead they're letting "demand destruction" happen. A decision vindicated by the war, as well.

            If you're a memory company, this sounds like making the best of a bad situation. not making more stuff despite demand far outstripping supply, just to prepare for the potential oversupply your customer can cause because they can walk back on their massive order.

        • HWR_14an hour ago
          I thought they were buying it more to keep it out of the hands of their competitors than any other reason.
    • dist-epoch3 hours ago
      OpenAI is not the only buyer. If they canceled, Google/Microsoft/Apple will pick it up.

      And there is another incoming tidal-wave of compute demand from all the vibe-coded apps that everybody is making now.

      This will create a CPU shortage too.

    • pulse76 hours ago
      Source?
  • bit19935 hours ago
    Is this how globalization ends?
  • shevy-java7 hours ago
    The AI corporations owe us money. I fail to see why we all have to pay more due to these greedy companies - they should pay us compensation money for driving up the prices here. In particular the US government is helping drive these prices up as well - not just due to AI situation, but also due to destroying part of the energy supply lines via its bombing of Iran as well as stock market manipulation. A mafia is pillaging all of us here.
  • globular-toast9 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • noobermin8 hours ago
      Are heavily ironic posts still considered non-kosher for HN? It does seem times are changing.
      • skrebbel7 hours ago
        Only if they're not funny
        • fpoling6 hours ago
          It is more funny if one watched the original Total Recall.
      • globular-toast2 hours ago
        This is why "sort by controversial" is such a good feature of Reddit. If you're not offending half the people, is it really worth saying anything at all?
      • t0rt01se7 hours ago
        The word you seek is 'sarcastic'. The ever so slightly neuro-divergent don't do sarcarsm. Nor do linkedinlunatics.
        • clarionbell5 hours ago
          Please don't buy into that stereotype. People with aspergers are capable of getting sarcasm. Especially if it's over the top like this.
      • paganel6 hours ago
        They're a good way of verifying that they're not AI-slop, or not pro-AI slop, which I view as the same think, so I think that they should be embraced.
    • prerok8 hours ago
      We can remember it for you, wholesale.
    • ares6238 hours ago
      Who needs terabyte hard drives when all your photos can stored as plaintext prompts instead. Finally, the perfect storage format!
      • pjc505 hours ago
        There is actually some work on doing this; after all, an imagegen model is simply a very large number of images that have been compressed together. Given a stable model and a means of inferring a prompt for an image, you can then generate a base image and store compressed deltas on top of it.

        (of course the limit case of this is Samsung moon replacement)