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Let’s be real they fumbled the bag a long time ago. They could easily have had their own supply chain for ram etc.
We went from cheap hobby computer to luxury item with emotional damage real quick 💀
Good news is that micro controllers and used office PCs are still fairly affordable by comparison… for now.
$270 of the price is for the RAM.
No thanks, I will buy an used AI mini PC that can do the same.
Aren’t we trying to avoid AI ?
Well, he is the worlds dumbest man.
No more cheap portable control stations for DIY projects for now. 😢
That’s what you get for trying to have fun instead of gaining value for shareholders.
Well if size isn’t important you can still get just a regular motherboard for less, especially if it’s used.
Arduino?
It is a microcontroller, which has less computational power and used for other tasks usually.
I mean the modern RPI are much different then the older models. Much more advanced much better hardware.
This one has 16gb of ram for Christ sake. That’s more then most phones.
AI has for sure made it more expensive but RPI haven’t been the “cheap hobbiest IoT” device for many years now.
It’s now in the realm of “professional hobbiest”
Yeah but I bought an 8gb pi 5 on release (09/23) for £79. The same sku is now £168…
They are at war against ownership (not raspberry pi org, but the general oligarchy). It’s the next step coming after “every software is a cloud service subscription”. We are heading towards the “you can’t own a computer, just rent one from the cloud”. In this day and age, computers are necessary, for everything, for education, public services, employment, entertainment. Once we have to pay taxes to the Lords in order to have access to our mean of substance, we are essentially in a new era of feudalism.
One could call it “technofeudalism”.
That’s exactly where this is headed. Modern day slavery. They take away the usability of offline devices so we only use their devices to use their apps and work for their companies, and anyone trying to circumvent this (VPNs, refusing Age Verification, Piracy, FOSS) gets visited by the technofeudalists’ friends at ICEstapo.
yeah it’s the “war on computation” that’s the other term Cory Doctorow coined apart from “enshitification”
I’m not too worried about this. It sucks for the time being, and who knows how long they economy will suffer when the US fully collapses. The silver lining is that the actual cost of producing the hardware doesn’t match the inflated evaluation of it. The drivers of this won’t be able to sustain the hoarding. Don’t get me wrong, it’s bad. Anyone with a time machine would probably chose to give Peter and Sam a visit.
I don’t know, people said the same about videocard prices during the crypto boom, the 2020 shortage and every time prices just went up. I doubt prices will go down
IT people have been saying that everything would be run in the cloud for the last 25 years. The truth is that processing is not profitable. They will not offload all processing into the cloud nor do they want to. The struggle is against right to repair/modify and ownership/control of software.
They can make “processing” profitable when their service is the only available option and they can charge whatever price they want for lackluster quality of service.
You said we’re heading to “you can’t own a computer, just rent one from the cloud”.
What I’m saying is that since at least the 1990s / early 2000s we have had dumb terminals that connect to the server that does all the processing and provides the video signal. People were saying this was what everyone would be using in the future. The fact that you are still saying this makes me really skeptical. When will this be?
I remember it too, the dreaded thin clients are coming to kill your desktop. Honestly I’d love it if there was a viable option. You just can’t do it though - look at Stadia. Until graphics can be processed without a local card you’re only catering to net nanny’s and the slightly Amish. Ahhhh Web TV.
The Data-Terminals and mainframe architecture of the time was a technical solution emerging from limitations of the time, bulky and pricey electronics. Also, computers at the time were used for special tasks.
Today, we can fit an ultra powerful computer in your pocket, no problem. You practically can’t survive without a smartphone (or computer), or yes you can survive, but you can’t be part of society without one.
Today’s trend to takeaway the computing power off the hands of normal citizens, when it’s so cheap and practical to have it, is not driving by technical limitations (or improvement of technology). It’s driven my the goal to extract every bit of money, ownership and finally freedom that we have have citizens.
Why would they give you the option to buy a top of the line 2000€ laptop and let you use it with Linux for everything you need until the heat-death of the universe when they can can extort you of 200€/month instead? Much more profitable. They can change the price whenever they want and you will have no choice but pay, because you can’t even find a single DDR3 RAM stick to buy anywhere! Why would they just let you use the heated sits in your car when they can extort you of a 60€/month subscription for it, on top of the 70k€ buying price ?
It’s not a technical trend, it’s an ideological one.
You really think “they” are going to make computers and Linux illegal so they can force you to pay $200 a month for their own platform? Hilarious that people agree with you
They don’t have to make alternative OS illegal, they can simply make it unusable.
It’s not necessarily done my pure evil intent, it just happens as a side effect of other decisions.
One example right now is how Google is locking down the Android platform by making side loading mode difficult in the name of security. But more generally with the example of Android, how Google set the standard by providing frameworks and development tools in their terms, that become the defacto standard without any kind of industry wide consultation, is a big problem. My banking app use to have its own implementation of the NFC payment, it worked perfectly fine with GrapheneOS, now they updated the app and decided to just integrate the Google Wallet instead of maintaining their own implementation of the feature. Now it can’t be used with GrapheneOS. In this example, Google is in full control, and I, can’t do anything about it even if I am savvy enough to use custom ROM on my phone. Google didn’t act evil, they provide some tools and service, the bank didn’t act evil, they are just make technical choices that make financial sense, but in the end it contributes to take away our rights. I can either decide NFC payment with my phone is not worth signing a contract with Google and give up the feature, or I can decide my privacy is not worth the hassle and move back to the Google “certified” version of Android.
In the end, if a corporation can make more money, they will cease the opportunity. And they will absolutely make it illegal for you to own things or make choices if they have enough political leverage. Just look at all the DMCA and other anti “piracy” laws out there! In the USA it’s a federal crime to break a digital lock even on a product you bought and paid for ! It is defacto illegal to do what you please with something you “own”.
Pay no attention to the OS-level age verification laws they’re forcing down our throats, nothing to see here!
Have you heard about AWS and Azure?
Yeah I worked in IT for 20 years managing servers and networks and have deployed servers in AWS.
To be fair, who needs 16GB of RAM on a Pi? The hell are you running on it that needs that? Are you trying to use it as a desktop?
Considering the 3 only had 2GB of ram, and the 4 only had 4GB of ram for the longest time, it’s probably better to compare the 8GB model. Which is still $135.
Even the 1GB model is $50. Fucking ridiculous.
Are you trying to use it as a desktop?
Why not. It has enough power. But you can easily consume all that RAM if you run Minecraft server, or crypto software
Ehhhhh it kinda has enough power.
I have an 8GB Pi5 we use as a desktop in our living room. PiOS is sluggish to navigate, even though it’s an 8GB pi5 running off an NVMe SSD instead of a memory card. It’s just there to stream YT and Twitch and whatnot though, and it streams at 60FPS no problem once you’ve got the stream pulled up.
I wouldn’t recommend it as a desktop PC though, as navigating the OS and loading programs is not a great experience.
But why would you do that on a raspberry?
I mean if you have one already go ahead do your thing! But here we’re talking buying a new one.
At that price it’s really pointless.
But at normal prices, you can slap passive radiator on it, and have perfectly decent server for these things taped to the wall behind your desk. Zero noise, minimal power consumption, works reliably 24h
Yeah sure, those small pieces are marvels for stuff like that!
It actually saves you decent money compared to regular optiplex. In 24h work power savings translate into meaningfully lower electricity cost over the year.
even at $135, what does a pi offer than i can’t solve with an refurb/off-lease corporate 1L minipc?
Low power consumption, GPIO pins, small form factor.
With 16GB you might just get away with a Jellyfin 10.11 instance.
No. I easily run that with 2gb RAM and over 60tb of shows.
I have the 8 GB one.
I agree the 16 GB one is useless (especially how weak it is,I would rather buy a Optiplex or Thinkpad for that price with 16gb ram)Power efficiency is still a consideration. I am 100% for rehoming business waste. I have several optiplex and think station’s. Modern AMD and Intel are getting better. But still not there in efficiency. And older systems certainly aren’t. But sadly, at this point unless that or space are at a premium. For home lab use they are much less viable now.
Oh true.
Thats why i bought a rpi5 (when it was still 80 usd),I love how you can run it from a powerbank and a usbc screen concurrently.
Which am currently doing with mine.
I also like how you can make it portable.
The irony? 16GB is enough for running a mid-size LLM, to not connect up to the cloud.
There are use cases for it. If you have robotic applications that heavily rely on machine vision and image processing it might be needed. You can also upgrade the Raspberry pi 4 and 5 with this so called AI shield, to increase performance.
Fuck me, I thought it was an exaggeration
But think about all the porn you could make with AI!
I didn’t believe it, i mean they were pricey as hell but this is taking the biscuit now 😞
I got mine 4 months ago for 120€ (including Power Plug, mini HDMI cable, Case and a Cooler/Fan)
edit for clarity
It was the Pi 5 with 8GB. The same kit now goes for 230€ which is still insane
They don’t even want you building your own dinky little cyber deck
I’ll use it to crash their CPU after dancing on all their ICE.
bu-but youtube tech newsies told me ram prices were going to drop any day now…th-that OpenAI was going to shut down while ignoring they fact they just raised $122billion…
Raising 122 billion in IOUs is not what you think it is. AI (LLMs) are here to stay, but it’s a bubble just like the cloud shit was.
There is a reason both of these companies keep pushing back their IPO… gotta cook the books more to make it seem like they’re what they claim to be worth.
Also on ram prices:
Idk who on YouTube told you that but you need to refine your news sources. Most people want that to happen, but they know the reality is that it wont
What were they when they first started being produced?
Raspberry PI 4 MSRP when introduced (2019): $35 (1 GB) $45 (2 GB) $55 (4 GB) $75 (8 GB)
Raspberry PI 5 MSRP when introduced (2023): $45 (1GB - added later) $50 (2 GB) $60 (4 GB) $80 (8 GB) $120 (16 GB)
The 5 while claiming 2x performance was considered to be the start of offering no value for many users since it started above $100 for the 16 GB model, which many small form factor used PCs from EBay could surpass in performance for projects that required no GPIO (like self hosting apps).
Before 2020 each new generation would offer a performance and memory boost at similar prices to the previous.
Like 30$
I mean this is the 16 gb raspberry 5. You can’t compare that with a zero
Fuck me.
Feel like when I think back to someone mentioning bitcoin for the first time on an old forum. Coulda shoulda woulda - didna
1GB model is $45. And if you need a Linux microcontroller, Raspberry Pi Zero with 0.5 GB RAM is $15.
Honestly, 16 GB RAM in a Raspberry Pi is stupid. What are you using it for? If you want AI, you buy NVidia Jetson, Raspberry Pi won’t cut it with 4-core CPU. If you want a regular PC for office, you buy a regular PC with low-end Intel or AMD CPU for the same price. If you want a video server to plug into your TV, 1 GB RAM will be enough, and there are cheaper moddable media boxes out there. If you want a controller for your industrial equipment, you’ll be barely using half-gigabyte of RAM for your industrial spaghetti code, so you probably bought the most expensive model for your corporate writeoff money just because you could. No, it will not be more reliable and won’t work any faster. But you can run Quake 3 on your CNC lathe, which makes it totally worth the price (Quake 3 runs fine on 512 MB RAM, you could have bought Pi Zero ).
