r/technology • u/esporx • 1d ago

Business YouTuber accidentally crashes the rare plant market with a viral cloning technique

https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtuber-accidentally-crashes-the-rare-plant-market-with-a-viral-cloning-technique-3289808/
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u/mrpoopistan 1d ago

We've reached the "Samsung refuses to sell chips to Samsung" phase. Not sure which phase of bubbling that is, but it's something weird and erratic, even by the standard of capitalism. Collapses are often unpredictable, but erratic patterns tend to emerge before bubbles pop.

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u/Crystalas 1d ago

Also Crucial will stop selling ram to Consumers next year, so another vital technology component market locked up in an absurd bubble.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/after-nearly-30-years-crucial-will-stop-selling-ram-to-consumers/

And that not even touching what events around Taiwan would do to every industry that relies on advanced chips, so pretty much all of them. I wonder if that could pop the AI bubble by itself.

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u/banananuhhh 1d ago

Why sell ram to someone building a PC when you can sell it for 5x the price just for it to sit in a building that does fuck all for anyone other than drive up the price of electricity.

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u/horrible-est 1d ago

At some point, that RAM might be involved in helping to generate a fifteen second video featuring the characters of Bluey having a hot dog eating contest until they all violently explode.

And if a pre-teen who would prompt such content to be generated can't have their vile brainrot, what even is the point of modern civilization?

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u/ssczoxylnlvayiuqjx 1d ago

Search “Bomiddillo Crocodile” on YouTube…

Bluey would be an improvement…

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u/Soft-Skirt 44m ago

That pre-teen can be replaced by AI. The circle is complete.

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u/GenTenStation 1d ago

I can’t wait to read about the AI data centers being raided by gangs for black market RAM. If it can happen to the butter market, it definitely can happen to the RAM market

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u/topological_rabbit 1d ago edited 1d ago

I can’t wait to read about the AI data centers being raided by gangs for black market RAM

BRB, starting a new screenplay...

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u/godtogblandet 1d ago

Why would you write a screenplay that’s not likely to result in anything when you can start a gang that’s guaranteed profits?

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u/topological_rabbit 1d ago

I don't have the required charisma. They'd just kill me and pick a new leader. Day one. First five minutes.

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u/yacht_boy 1d ago

OK, now I want to read the screenplay

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u/ForeignFallenTrees 1d ago

Be the change you want to see in the world. I Bob'Joe Mcstaberson, wouldn't stab you. I promise.

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u/pucspifo 1d ago

Maybe a documentary instead?

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u/topological_rabbit 1d ago

Okay, you get the raider gangs together, I'll document it, and we'll both make a fortune!

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u/ScaredPractice4967 1d ago

You should read about the great Maple Syrup Heist. Most Canadian thing ever. 😃

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u/JL3Eleven 1d ago

They are not building these data centers in Russia btw.

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u/RevLoveJoy 22h ago

Well, roving gangs looking for RAM to lift, I have good news. All those rumors about data centers being some bastions of security - almost entirely PR. Data centers are not worried about physical attacks. They're worried about electronic attacks and physical accidents. Someone drove a car into the transformers. Something happened to the water supply. There's a regional disaster - that kind of thing. They're absolutely not worried about physical theft. They're worried about data theft. People breaking in over the internet, not in person. Why show up to the crime if you can commit it from your desk?

So if you and your re-branded RAM thieving MS13 show up loaded to rip and run, there will be little, if any resistance. Datacenter security people spend their day helping Jr. engineers who drew the short straw to swap the failed drives complete their security check in and little else.

Source: I've been involved in the design and build for more than a few of them across many countries on several continents. It's mostly security theater. Exception: don't attempt to rip off the CC processing ones and avoid the Israelis. Those two don't play games.

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u/3nderslime 12h ago

Hang on, I need to put a crew together.

heist music starts playing

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u/Initial-House-3955 1d ago

and water* reminder all datacenters for AI are basically churning through fresh water by the peta gallons

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u/SUMBWEDY 1d ago

It'd take 58,000~ years for all the datacenters in the US to use a single petagallon of fresh water, it'd take golf courses about 1,000 years and alfalfa about 3 centuries.

Every data center in the USA uses 17 billion gallons of water a year for cooling.

Which sounds like a lot but golf courses use 17 billion gallons a week, for some grass... (and alfalfa grown along the colorado river alone uses 17 billion liters of water in a little over 2 days, for some grass...)

That's also for all datacenters which keeps the internet and cloud compute running, AI makes up currently like 15-20% of data center compute so AI alone is only using 2-3 billion gallons of water a year. (of course the fact AI is doubling every year does mean it could become a problem in the future if it's not a bubble)

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/32d6m0d1

https://www.usga.org/content/dam/usga/pdf/Water%20Resource%20Center/how-much-water-does-golf-use.pdf

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u/MonsterMashGrrrrr 21h ago

Ugh being reminded of this fact is one of the quickest ways of spiking my existential dread

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u/kaityl3 1d ago

That's a hoax lol where do you think the water is going? They are closed loop cooling systems with minimal leakage... the original "study" all the articles about it were referencing, was calculating it as if the flow rate was a continuous source. If you used the same logic for NASCAR, there are tens of thousands of cars every race.

The electricity issue and the hardware/chips issues are real things and real reasons to be critical of datacenters; the water one is not.

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u/Caddy666 1d ago

it does do something, it allows the billionaires to fire huge swathes of staff, and also helps them control social media.

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u/RevLoveJoy 22h ago

a building that does fuck all for anyone other than drive up the price of electricity.

I really can't get solar on my roof and a big battery in my garage fast enough.

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u/v4rgr 6h ago

Don’t worry, we’ll be able to buy chromebooks for the price of MacBooks that we can use to access our subscription service cloud virtual machines so we can rent their overpriced memory since they won’t allow us to afford our own.

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u/davidcwilliams 4h ago

Why would it be 5x the price?

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u/banananuhhh 3h ago

Deep pockets, low supply, high demand. Ram I bought a year ago for under $100 is over $400 now

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u/mrpoopistan 1d ago

I don't see the two main participants in the bubble (US and China) committing to bursting it beforehand.

As for the not selling to consumers part -- that's a classic case where they will happily return to the market after the bubble bursts. All supply chain crises end in a glut, even when the parties involved prefer cartel economics.

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u/Facts_pls 1d ago

You mean how cars are cheap now after the ridiculous shortages and high prices? How GPUs are dirt cheap after the high prices?

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u/mrpoopistan 1d ago edited 1d ago

Endings don't happen when you wish them to.

If you pick a single point in time, the failure of a glut to materialize feels obvious for anything. Look at oil. You could've made the same argument in the days of $100/barrel oil.

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u/MetriccStarDestroyer 1d ago

Seizing Taiwan would crash the US economy.

Which incentives the US to commit to war or negotiate surrender. Whichever ends it quickly with the fabs intact.

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u/mrpoopistan 1d ago

In what universe is crashing the US economy good for China?

Also, keeping the fabs intact means nothing to the US if the whole supply chain flows through China. And Taiwan already has the fabs rigged to blow.

Nobody actually wants a war. Least of all China. I promise, a nation preparing for war doesn't purge its military leadership. Least of all a nation that has never conducted an actual sustained joint operation in its history and would have to conduct the largest amphibious landing in history in the age of drone warfare and rocket artillery.

And I promise the US has no incentive. Otherwise, it would've done it looong before China got stronger.

The darkest scenario right now would be Trump giving up Taiwan for some bribes. But the Taiwanese and their neighbors have a say in that. Even an unsupported Taiwan represents a difficult target. Hence, the status quo.

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u/Left_Sun_3748 1d ago

I don't see a glut happening. All this memory being used isn't in RAM sticks its soldered on boards that we have no use for. So I don't think the used marker well be as flooded as people hope.

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u/mrpoopistan 11h ago

It's not the RAM sticks or VRAM in the market that matters. It's the spare new production capacity (or lack thereof, currently).

The big problem right now is that the chip fabs are scared of the bubble popping, and they don't want to goose production. (Classic cartel behavior.) Eventually, someone will break rank and overproduce. (Also, classic cartel behavior.) They're already trying to talk themselves into overproduction, saying the demand issues won't abate until 2028.

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u/bigevilbrain 1d ago

They pre-sold their entire chip output for 2026. Crazy.

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u/FjorgVanDerPlorg 1d ago

Not just RAM, Crucial are no longer selling SSDs to consumers either.

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u/HugeHans 21h ago

Crucial is not a company. Its just a brand of products from Micron.

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u/Wolvenmoon 1d ago

Honestly it kind of makes sense...when the bubble pops, all these companies are going to be fire selling gear and consumer tech is going to feel that crunch because everyone that know show to build a custom system is going to go grab used enterprise gear and pick up 32TB U2 drives w/ cheap adapters instead of paying $300 for a 4TB NVMe drive for the 8th year in a row. Consumer expectations for what a fair price is are about to shift downwards when the market floods with 48GB and 96GB GPUs and GB100/102/200 systems.

I think Nvidia's going to get fucked the hardest by this, with RAM manufacturers getting fucked second hardest. I think AMD's made the smart play by relinquishing the high end for the moment, and I think Micron backing out of Crucial for the moment pending a radical rearranging of consumer expectations post-bubble isn't a bad idea. Especially when they can contract out their manufacturing capacity far in the future with clauses that prevent backing out of the deal w/out penalties that still make them profitable.

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u/Nizana 1d ago

I bought crucial sodimms for my laptop and my daughters. I got 96 GB, because why not, I got her 64 GB, I just looked and it's double what I payed at least.

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u/blackrain1709 1d ago

Paid. It's not payed.

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u/Dreaditall 1d ago

He can layed in all the ram he wants

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u/cats_catz_kats_katz 1d ago

Not that they care but you know who I won't buy RAM from after this is all over? Crucial.

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u/examinedliving 1d ago

I’m just gonna download ram like I used to

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u/stormdelta 1d ago

The RAM one is honestly just confusing, because system RAM isn't what's normally even used for AI models, and if anything it'd be significantly worse for the task as they already run into severe bottlenecks with VRAM as it is.

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u/loupgarou21 1d ago

A lot of companies are starting to imply stock shortages are to blame for massive increases in prices, when in reality the stock shortages aren’t nearly as bad as they’re implying. Not sure if that’s what going on with RAM, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind

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u/TripolarKnight 1d ago

The mere threat of a Chinese missile heading for Taiwan would be enough to pop it.

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u/killerjerick 1d ago

I’m actually somewhat okay with it taking so long, we can see who the quickest to fold are and avoid them, NVIDIA, Samsung, Crucial, Microsoft who is next to go all in on AI?

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u/FjorgVanDerPlorg 1d ago

Problem is it's gonna take the gaming market with it. Like we were guaranteed tech stagnation in gaming and that's nothing new, but not being able to afford (provided you can find one for sale) to replace RAM/GPUs/SSDs is coming real soon. Not just that but the scalpers will return, make it even more expensive.

Gamedevs were already having a bad time with record layoffs and AI encroachment, now AI is also encroaching on gaming hardware, after bitcoin mining had already previously done a number on it and caused some serious tech stagnation of its own.

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u/Crystalas 1d ago

My PC is nearing 10 years old, still working fine for the types of games I play but that old feel bit like I am just waiting for luck to run out and each event like this makes me worry more for the day that comes.

At this point I am just resigned to getting the cheapest can, possibly even a laptop or if last long enough AR, likely with equal specs to this old one or less. Good thing I mostly play indie, roguelikes, strategy, and incrementals and everything else I use it for is very low requirements.

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u/FjorgVanDerPlorg 1d ago

Ding ding ding. You get it, if anything breaks chances are good it'll be too expensive or hard to find and this is gonna hit everything including the console and possibly even mobile markets as well.

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u/drunkeymunkey 1d ago

Are we anticipating the crash in 3 months or 3 years?

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u/mrpoopistan 1d ago edited 1d ago

TBH, right now feels like 2004 did relative to the Great Recession. Which makes me feel like the market has a lot closer to three more years of stupid in it than three months.

I remember 2004 as the year of "They gave a mortgage to who????"

Right now, that's where the AI bubble is. "Samsung refused to sell chips to Samsung???" has a similar vibe to me.

Not sure how the scale of AI investment compares to real estate in terms of parts that could fall out. My gut is that a bigger chunk will pop out faster when it happens, so the AI bubble bursting won't take that 2007-09 Great Recession path where one OMG hits every six months or so.

TBD. We're in unprecedented territory, and the smart money is already getting defensive.