I too bought memory in April to avoid tariffs. I had to run a stupid python program to generate a dataset that required 96GB of RAM for a delayed project so I figured I might as well bite the bullet. DDR4 was still a good value at that point (it's a problem that can run overnight, performance wasn't too important).

But how are the tariffs limiting the manufacturing supply capacity of RAM factories in East Asia?

Do you have a mechanism to propose?

Do you think they're making enough to meet demand but then blaming tariffs to justify jacking up prices? All of them? It would be an interesting conspiracy but is there any evidence to support that theory?

> How much is this problem is down to AI and how much to beautiful tariffs?

What mechanism are you thinking of where tariffs could limit supply of VRAM from East Asia?

Simple price increases, sure, definitely, but this is described by manufacturers as a supply & demand problem.

Do you have a different angle we should consider?

I recall very early in the conversation, the transcription included a "why did you turn those off?"

Are you saying nobody said that?

I agree with you in principle: the open Internet, distributed expertise, and solid investigative journalism CAN reveal the true story when official sources are covering it up due to an agenda.
OTOH, the internet is *also* a being ground for paranoid conspiracy theories, tinfoil hatters, and cranks cherry picking data to drive their pet theories.

How does an amateur tell the difference?

So you're suggesting that circumstances could intersect resulting in large scale drought and climate change without an industrial civilization?

Without cars?

Without capitalism?

Without America, specifically Republicans?

Jesus, next thing you are going to be saying is that the current climate panic might not be entirely man made? That's crazy talk.

Trump Delusion Syndrome has been the greatest thing for the Chinese ever.

If Trump says 2 + 2 = 4, Western Europe and half of the US would demand that we abandon basic math.

Thankfully, the only people believing the climate grift are the zealots anymore.
The world is healing.

> It did happened before, but not on this scale and speed.

Check out Meltwater Pulses 1a and 1b.

The inability of people to clear student loans with bankruptcy generally, was a fantastic gift by legislators to universities and lenders who otherwise needed to actually evaluate loan risk.

US Federal Debt in 1995 was about 65% of the GDP. Plus, the US was looking at a booming (fake) dot.com economy and expecting to reap the benefits of significantly reduced defense spending due to the end of the cold war.
Yes, when you're flush with cash (and helps being a Democrat) it's easy to promise $ for anything and everything.

In 2020 it's 132%.
1/4-1/5 of the US budget ANNUALLY is borrowed.
We *can't fucking afford to buy everyone lunch any more*.
https://www.investopedia.com/u...

It's ironic that Biden's comment "lines up to Ukraine" as oyu say, when largely the problem today is his Boss's/Clinton's meddling in Ukraine (ie about as critical a Russian sphere of influence as it gets), toppling Putin's puppet, and then doing FUCK ALL in 2014 when Putin boldly invaded Crimea (because Mr Obama was desperate to have RU support for his pointless, unenforceable treaty with Iran as a way to ensure Mr Obama's historical "legacy").

Just to maybe jog your memory a bit: Mr OBAMA was the first that told the lazy ass free riding Euros that they need to start paying their way. Not Mr Trump.

https://www.france24.com/en/20...

Mr Trump was merely "classless" enough to HOLD EU economies to their promises of years before. HOW GAUCHE!

Thought you might have forgotten that bit.

Right now the drive to diversify is entirely political.
Ok great you hate Trump, congrats.
The FACT is that there is no serious alternative to the USD as a reserve currency.
The currencies mentioned (euro, yuan) are indeed probably the closest in a basically empty field.
The yuan is controlled by a deeply dishonest tyrannical government that hasn't authentically reported financial information for decades. The EU is an anti democratic talking shop that can't manage to stand up a coast guard, much less manage a monetary policy.

Don't get me wrong, there are major, major issues with how the US handles economics. Inter party vacillations every 4 years. Dishonesty about inflation or economic data when it's politically inconvenient. But to the point of real-world contexts critical to underpin faith in a currency, the US remains economically dominant, more militarily secure than all others, and well supplied with food, water, oil, and raw materials.

> It used to be my go-to site for all things computer related.

Me too.

They were slightly cheaper than Amazon for the same product, then I did a big project which got slightly downsized and I wound up with $400 in "restocking fees" for a couple of pieces of factory-hologram-tape sealed network gear, after I paid $100 in return shipping.

Learned my lesson real fast.

Them: Why don't you act your age?
Me: Well, I've never been this age before.

Like buying booze, renting a car, purchasing a handgun, buying a lottery ticket, getting a tatoo?

(some of these vary by state)

I don't see how you're too immature to order a Chianti with your steak dinner but you're mature enough to go $200K in debt based on a sales pitch of returns after investment.

These aren't even reasonable equivalents from a neuroscience perspective.

A read is supposed to be fine. At read time the firmware *should* rewrite the cell if the read is weak.

The firmware also *should* go out and patrol the cells when idle and it has power.

you can dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/null bs=2M once a year if your firmware behaves.

If your drive is offline you could
dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdX bs=2M iflag=fullblock conv=sync,noerror status=progress

to be sure, though write endurance is finite.

If you're running zfs you can 'zpool scrub poolname' to force validation of all the written data. This is most helpful when you can't trust the firmware to not be buggy crap. Which only applies to 90% of drive firmware out there.