I know it's at least a little irrational, but I am indescribably angry with the pricing trajectory of personal computing. I'm not all that young and for pretty much all my life the computers you as a random person could buy have consistently become massively more performant and massively cheaper over time. Even when the exponential performance increases started to taper off, every few years you could buy or build a new computer that was either cheaper or faster than the one you already had.
That trend of the last several decades has been completely destroyed in the last year or so. Sure you can buy a new computer that might be slightly better than one a few years old, but it will be significantly more expensive to the point where an upgrade is almost certainly not worth it unless money is no object. Even replacing a computer from the pre-AI era would be virtually impossible at anywhere near what it cost you to buy it new unless it was verging on truly ancient by computer standards. Computers have always been a counterpoint to inflation everywhere else, but now that seems to be not only no longer true, but computer costs are inflating significantly worse than other goods.
I find myself increasingly in favor of the movement against data centers. Not because I think data centers are bad on their own, but because of the hording of computing resources they represent and the impact that has on people trying to buy any sort of computing device for their personal use. The PC I built 2 years ago is basically irreplaceable at anywhere near the price I paid for it. That's a truly unacceptable state of affairs in personal computing.
That trend of the last several decades has been completely destroyed in the last year or so. Sure you can buy a new computer that might be slightly better than one a few years old, but it will be significantly more expensive to the point where an upgrade is almost certainly not worth it unless money is no object. Even replacing a computer from the pre-AI era would be virtually impossible at anywhere near what it cost you to buy it new unless it was verging on truly ancient by computer standards. Computers have always been a counterpoint to inflation everywhere else, but now that seems to be not only no longer true, but computer costs are inflating significantly worse than other goods.
I find myself increasingly in favor of the movement against data centers. Not because I think data centers are bad on their own, but because of the hording of computing resources they represent and the impact that has on people trying to buy any sort of computing device for their personal use. The PC I built 2 years ago is basically irreplaceable at anywhere near the price I paid for it. That's a truly unacceptable state of affairs in personal computing.