RAM prices are forcing companies to choose between higher prices and worse specs. Some have decided on doing both.
    • realitista@lemmus.orgEnglish
      32·
      6 months ago

      The voting is done with money, and the money is in a few hands which right now say “yes, yes it is”. I don’t think this will last forever, though. Their free cash flow won’t allow it, and they are notoriously fickle.

    • verdi@tarte.nuage-libre.frFrançais
      41·
      6 months ago

      The majority of the western world’s labour force is now comprised of middle management like roles that are trained to extract every gram of wealth out of products consumers while they enact their intermediation role that was invented to avoid massive unemployment now that everyone (regardless of competence) has a uni degree. When MsCs started having to work food retail the powers that be should have woken up and regulated numerus clausu. They didn’t, so here we are. Karen from dumbfuqistan has a PhD in ML because Unis aren’t allowed to flunk dumb dumbs anymore so a degree is virtually worthless when selecting candidates for a job, despite the fact Karen’s competence wasn’t really evaluated at all during her PhD. Don’t get me wrong, unis are extremely important, but the onus of figuring out if people learned well enough during uni has transitioned from the educators to employers. So when a conman comes to sell AGI to Karen’s employer, Karen, CTO, with a PhD in machine learning, has no fucking clue the conman is full of shit and advises her peers and superiors to buy into it.

      And that is yet another symptom we’re living in late stage capitalism.

      /rant

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      until AI bubble busts, i dont see anything going down anytime soon. most tech companies have been peddling, and went all in with AI

  • moustachio@lemmy.worldEnglish
    47·
    6 months ago

    “Shrinkflation” is a cute branding for theft and class warfare.

    They’re going all in on lowering your quality of life to contribute to AI data centers, and pretending it’s some natural market force.

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zipEnglish
    21·
    6 months ago

    The problem is that tech companies have fewer choices than ever. They can either hurt performance or raise prices.

    Time for less bloaty software, boys!

    (also please stop shoving a webbrowser in every app. Or imitating them in your GUI framework)

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
    17·
    6 months ago

    cheapflation as well, they try to disguise as the original product but you notice the plastic, is cheaper, or a quality part of the device is been replaced cheap degradable things.

    • jacksilver@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      Besides using the term “shrinkflation” which is arguably a “clickbaity” term in this context, I don’t think the article is terrible. It’s a bit of a nothing article, as it’s something that’s been called out for a while, but a lot of new devices on the horizon are providing less (RAM/storage) for the same/higher price.

      Its not the most interesting article, but at least uses real examples demonstrating the effect, which is sadly better than most articles I’ve read on this topic.