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The story
Following a report from the German news site heise.de titled “Concerns grow over the Christmas shopping season due to expensive electronics,” members of Lemmy’s German-language community c/dach shared a flood of their own price-hike stories. Reports poured in of external Blu-ray drives rising more than €100 in a year, and GPUs climbing nearly €300 in just a few months, with AI companies hoarding memory and storage cited as one cause. Reactions were mixed, ranging from sarcastic acceptance of inflation to lament that photography — as a hobby — is now cheaper than PC hardware.
Soaring electronics prices are fueling concerns about the Christmas shopping season
Source: heise.de / Read the original article here
What people said
I bought two used lenses recently, and they cost exactly the same as a single 32GB stick of DDR5 memory at today's terrible prices.
When photography can be called the cheaper hobby, you know it's not a good time to be buying PC parts.
But make sure you're still saving properly for retirement too!
But why would that even happen?
Memory I get — AI companies are buying it all up. But a Blu-ray player?
Honestly, no idea. It actually got a bit cheaper again today.
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https://feddit.org/pictrs/image/512e7945-512b-4ea0-8c28-f95f8f17e553.jpeg
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The backdrop here is a global surge in semiconductor prices — DRAM, NAND flash, and similar components — driven by explosive data-center demand tied to AI development, which has in turn pushed up the cost of sourcing PC memory and storage. In the thread, some commenters pointed to AI companies hoarding storage as one cause of the memory shortage, while others questioned why devices with no direct link to semiconductor demand, like Blu-ray drives, were also getting pricier — and few could fully explain just how far the price increases had spread. The discussion around inflation itself was similarly split, with some sarcastically noting it’s offset by rising wages, and others countering that saving for retirement should still come first — making this more than just a simple gripe about rising prices.
*This article is a condensed, editorially translated summary of the overseas forum thread “Sorgen um Weihnachtsgeschäft wegen teurer Elektronik” on Lemmy’s c/dach community. Responsibility for the translation lies with this site.
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