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That's actually a myth. The life expectancy was low due to very high infant and childhood mortality, but if you made it to age 14, you could be expected to make it to 70.
Basically all popular memory sticks I checked show the highest stock that the websites are designed to show on every swedish retailer I looked at.
From @Fourplex
https://www.fourplex.net/2026/02/23/the-hard-drive-shortage-hurts-small-cloud-hosts-too/
The Hard Drive Shortage Hurts Small Cloud Hosts Too
Western Digital announced they sold out their entire manufacturing capacity for 2026, due to the AI boom. AI-caused shortages aren’t new; it also happened to memory.
Hard Drive manufacturers’ focus on datacenters isn’t new: the rise of flash memory in consumer systems coincided with the rise of Big Data. With this movement, it’s no secret Seagate and Western Digital focus on servers rather than consumer systems.
But in the past, hard drives were sold to a variety of companies: large server manufacturers like Dell and HPE, smaller whitebox system builders, cloud providers, etc. Now, they’re all gobbled up by Big Tech due to AI being very hardware-intensive at the moment.
While AI can be optimized as DeepSeek has shown, it’s in Big Tech’s current interest to instead buy more hardware, causing shortages. This is an indicator to investors that they’re serious about AI, and in turn, causes the stock price to go up.
But how does this impact small cloud providers?
Preempting Competition (Again)
It’s no secret VPS hosts are being squeezed by the memory shortage and competitive cloud storage providers are no different.
One of our products is the Storage VPS offering 1TB or 2TB of storage at a monthly cost of $5 or $10 respectively. While our server was assembled months prior to the shortage, we are not immune to the shortage.
While it could be a conspiracy, despite the threat of antitrust, Big Tech doesn’t want smaller rivals to run competitive services. Here, if direct anti-competitive actions can’t be used, the supply chain is used to achieve the same goal. This strategy isn’t new, and has been used with the tech job market in the 2010s.
During the 2010s tech boom, there was a shortage of qualified engineers. Big Tech offered sky-high salaries to software engineers to prevent them from leaving for startups, while offering comparatively little work. In fact, some engineers got paid to do nothing.
Startups were strangled of essential talent and couldn’t build a competitive product, cementing Big Tech’s dominance. And when priorities changed, as has happened with the AI boom, many of these engineers were laid off.
Now, Big Tech is preempting cloud competition with the memory and hard drive supply chain.
Conclusion
Shortages are usually seen as a supply-and-demand issue. But with tech, it’s also a weapon used to subvert competition.
From a business perspective, it’s pretty smart. It’s 2027; you might want a Nextcloud cloud storage server, but instead sign up for Google Drive since a hard drive is more expensive than a subscription. And by the time the shortage subsides (assuming it does), you’d be locked in to Google, both technologically and habitually. It’s a win-win for Google and a loss for you and Nextcloud.
But this also means competitors are harmed. For nearly a century, AT&T was a monopoly over American landline telephones where competition was illegal. Sure, they were regulated and had many Bell Labs innovations. But AT&T also refused to build cellular phones or the internet even when asked by the US government, technologies we can’t imagine living without.
If Google and Amazon get too comfortable with their monopolies using the hardware supply chain, it will set technology back decades. The savings from AI coding agents will be offset by oligopoly hosting costs as smaller hosting companies went out of business. And it’s not just hosting companies, consumer electronics are affected too.
Unrelated, but heavy
https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/2028gic
Realtek announced in 2024, demoed in 2025 and products are just starting to roll out.
On the nic front, the 2.5Gbps nics all got replaced with 5Gbps dropins with no extra cost.
Meanwhile... goodbye Xbox? It seems Xbox will be sunsetted for more focus on AI.
It's still rare. It's going to took another 3-5 years before it become the standard offering, unlike the 802.11* standard which will gain wide adoption within 1-2 years.
No. All be fine. I own XSX and my subscription still valid for 13 months.
Not, 5Gbps, but 10Gbps already seems to be taking off in China.
I bought this (admittedly consumer) switch about 15 months ago. £40 back then and you can get it for £48 now: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005011533992977.html (or even £43 here: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005010563410865.html )
It's made by Xiaomi which is the "everything for the home" shop in China, comes with 4x 2.5Gbps (which is what I wanted it for) plus 2x 10Gbps SPF+ sockets. I don't have any other 10Gbps gear, so I still haven't even got round to using them yet!
It looks good and has been rock solid since I got it. If you don't mind the cheap brands, for about the same price you can get 4x2.5 + 2x10 with managed routing, and unmanaged for about half the price. The brands are a bit less good in terms of QA, but if you don't mind rough edges, there are plenty of good cheap deals already.
Back in 2015, 470 million HDDs were sold; in 2023, only 120 million. Companies could scale production if they wanted to — they just want super-profits here and now
When I mean cheap, it's something at this pricing ($10/£8) e.g.
https://www.aliexpress com/item/1005006861001071.html.
The price for 8-16 ports of 10G is still high
An AR-15 rifle is now cheaper than two DDR5 RAM sticks of 32GB from Corsair, some people will get one to obtain more RAM.
I woke up to an email that Amazon had a Lenovo desktop with a 5070ti, 32gb DDR5, and Ultra 7 256F for $1500, so I bought first and asked questions later. I guess the hard drives for the Gold 6212U storage server I bought are going to have to wait a while.
The envy in me for those in the US.........
That is like ~3K in the EU depending on make and addons.... so that makes is 256 GB DDR5
Wise move. Enjoy it
I asked for a quote for 3x 512 DDR4 ECC R 2933 MHz ( 64 GB Sticks ), I got back a quote for a new Car. - I said a hard Fuck Off, now, let me see that car offer.......
https://www.fourplex.net/2026/02/23/the-hard-drive-shortage-hurts-small-cloud-hosts-too/
Well, what can I say, my 2 orders last week ( placed and payed for 22 TB and 24 TB drives ) just canceled yesterday.... why? ..... price update.
So now I am still thinking about that car.......
The 3 parts alone costs at least $1500. The rest is practically free
I don't get how your comment relates to what I said. Companies can scale down production in a downtrend market, but cannot 10x their production in a uptrend market, simply because it's hardware manufacturing not writing codes. Purchasing/installation/qualifying a single ASML scanner takes about 1.5 - 2 years, let alone other equipment in the fabs.
One should be aware that the fact that the tech companies are for-profit is what actually drives technology forward. So, instead of complaining hardware price increase, the better stance is to just get involved in this unstoppable process.
In fact it's difficult to find someone not having stocks of at least one of Nvidia/Sandisk/WD/Micron/Seagate/AMD among my friends. I believe they don't worry about hardware increase at all.
Wait of the 36 months cycle write-off. It will be a great time to acquire a bunch of hardware... at least that is what most hardware resellers are doing of course, besides making a load of money with their current stock they've had.
Wait, so after 36 months warranty for hardware is off and it floods second hand market?
It's fiscal write-off game after 3 years for the big players. Plus new hardware coming in.
Try reading my comment
If there's something you don't understand, I'll explain it
I never said "standard offering". I can buy 8 port 2.5Gbps switches for $80 CAD and 8-port 10/5/2.5Gbps switches for $280 on Amazon. I am expecting an 8-port 5/2.5Gbps switch for some price in between, hoping closer to $120 or so.
what is the best hard drive brand