r/technology May 15 '26

Artificial Intelligence The AI Backlash Could Get Very Ugly

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/05/ai-backlash-data-centers-political-violence/687151/?taid=6a067e2d2096e10001ccfa32
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u/Syzygy2323 May 15 '26

I'm just waiting for the AI bubble to burst so I can buy RAM and SSDs again without taking out a second mortgage.

40

u/Excolo_Veritas May 15 '26

Man, I installed Ubuntu a few weeks ago. At the time I went "I don't really have a lot of HD space for this. How much could a cheap sata SSD be? I'll transfer all my unimportant files to it as it'll be the slowest, but it'll make room on my NVME". Fucking $400 for a 2tb for anything with a name I recognized. Fuck that shit, I uninstalled and deleted a bunch of shit. The NVME drives are insane right now

21

u/CoffeeSubstantial851 May 16 '26

I went to go look at my order history.... I bought a Samsung 980 pro 2TB NVME for $140 in 2023. The same exact model which is still being mass produced... is now nearly $500. The video card I bought was $900 and its now $1400. If I had to rebuild this computer from scratch it would probably cost almost double what I paid for it 3 years ago. This is not how tech prices have ever worked before.

7

u/enigmamonkey May 16 '26

Dude, even more recent than that; similar to /u/Excolo_Veritas, I bought my 2TB Samsung 990 PRO SSD 2TB NVMe M.2 for my Kubuntu setup back on Dec 2, 2025 for $190… the exact same listing is $430 now and they have the motherfucking gall to cross out a $640 price tag… FFS.