Then note how wide the gray bands are. That makes it very easy to cherry-pick a few examples to present as "supporting evidence" that prices are doing whatever you want to believe they are doing.
It's showing $999 now, which seems about median for similarly-spec'd memory on Amazon. The cheapest slot-and-capacity-compatible equivalent I can find is around $570, even. So 3-5x increase, at minimum.
It's true that that's a high error bar. It's absolutely not true that the trend is ambiguous.
Can you cherry pick me a $141 kit, please? I mean, it's not an abstract question! I'd buy it from you right now if you had it or could get it, in whatever quantity you can source. No joke.
So it's been public knowledge for almost year, and internal Google knowledge for longer. Did Google reduce its capital expenditure plans over the past year? Let's ask Google:
Google is expecting to see a capex of between $175-185 billion in 2026, approximately double that of 2025.
As much as 23.1GW of capacity is under construction globally, split across 831 sites. The Americas region hosts 17GW of this capacity, across 311 locations. Europe, Middle East and Africa or EMEA as well as the Asia Pacific (APAC) region trail significantly. APAC has marginally more ongoing construction, with 3.2GW across 283 sites versus EMEA’s 2.9GW across 258. The US alone hosts 15.9GW of ongoing construction.
Eventually people will begin to put their memories of their lives on their sites. At first they will be like a grand photo-album, but then things will get more complicated. People will begin to journal their memories (cleaned up and detuned or exaggerated). This will be called their Book Of Life and when you fall in love or become very close with someone you will share your “Book of Life”.
Jann Burner, "The book of life", December 26, 2008
"OpenAI is focusing employee and investor attention on its enterprise business as the artificial intelligence startup gears up to go public, potentially by the end of the year, CNBC has learned."
> Now compare that to the same numbers from 40 years ago.
That turns out to be easier than I thought thanks to [1]. In 1986 it looked like this (PPP, million USD):
China: 647,219
USA: 4,579,625
EU ex UK: 4,368,019
UK: 805,518
EU total: 5,173,537 [2]
The big standout is obviously China's rise since then.
> Then do the same with nominal GDP which is a better measure for this IMO as you cannot buy anything in global markets at PPP.
I disagree; we are comparing three global powers which would be quite capable of satisfying their needs internally if need be. Feel free to post your own calculations if you want, but be careful with dates and exchange rates; the USD index is down about 9% over the past year.
[2] In 1986, the EU had 12 members: Belgium (161,613), Denmark (100,996), France (866,333), West Germany (1,319,247), Greece (120,566), Ireland (40,169), Italy (953,257), Luxembourg (10,542), Netherlands (246,164), Portugal (92,824), Spain (456,308) and UK (805,518):
Your link to the list of past PPP GDPs does not say what unit is used - it says "international dollars" without specifying an year.
> but be careful with dates and exchange rates
The numbers you are quoting are already corrected for that.
> I disagree; we are comparing three global powers which would be quite capable of satisfying their needs internally if need be
Not my intention at all. My claim was about Europe's ability to act independently of the US and "go off on adventures" - i.e. the ability to project military and economic power. Europe is not a global power, it is a potential alliance of mid size powers.
> The big standout is obviously China's rise since then.
The big change is that everyone else has risen since then. while Europe has stagnated. If you look at this list of countries by PPP GDP you will see India, Indonesia and Brazil are ahead of the UK and France. The only European country in the top five is Russia! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
> Your link to the list of past PPP GDPs does not say what unit is used - it says "international dollars" without specifying an year.
Irrelevant since we are comparing relative sizes, like EU vs US, now and then.
>> but be careful with dates and exchange rates
> The numbers you are quoting are already corrected for that.
Indeed, that's why I use them instead of the nominal ones you requested. My warning was about the latter.
> My claim was about Europe's ability to act independently of the US and "go off on adventures"
Your claim, quoted verbatim, was this:
> The time when Europe had the capability to go off on adventures of its own or be a threat to the US is past. European economies are no longer big enough proportionately.
The GDP figures say otherwise: US and EU were and are roughly equal, EU + UK were and are larger.
I am willing to grant you half a point: neither US nor EU are large enough to separately dominate the world like they once did. Together, they are still #1.
> Europe is not a global power, it is a potential alliance of mid size powers.
The EU is a little more than "potential". Currently ineffective, yes, but that's the topic of the article. Says right in the subtitle: "Without America to rely on, the EU is gearing up to be a global power in its own right."
> The big change is that everyone else has risen since then. while Europe has stagnated.
If that is the case, then it's evident from the relative GDP figures now and 40 years ago that the US has stagnated just about as much, which contradicts your original claim.
> The only European country in the top five is Russia!
Breaking out individual European countries instead of considering the EU as a whole (the topic of the article you are ostensibly commenting) makes about as much sense as breaking out individual US states instead of considering the US as a whole.
https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
Note how flat the black lines are.
Then note how wide the gray bands are. That makes it very easy to cherry-pick a few examples to present as "supporting evidence" that prices are doing whatever you want to believe they are doing.
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