From : https://techhub.social/@sawaba@infosec.exchange/115924627853343043 (mastodon)
The enshittification of computer repair is happening.
AI has amazingly managed to make repairable computers practically worthless.
The increase in memory and storage pricing is destroying the second-hand market for computing hardware and this makes me sad. I watched a video from someone that runs a repair shop, and this is what’s happening:
The memory/storage alone is worth more than the rest of the computer, so people are stripping them out to sell separately.
The second hand market is now flooded with computers that have no memory or storage. Buying new memory or storage to put in these used computers is now more expensive than buying a new computer.
So we now suddenly have a giant e-waste problem PLUS a giant problem for repair shops that want to stay in business.
In the video, he was basically saying that they have to pivot to the only computers that folks aren’t stripping RAM and storage out of - computers that have those things soldered on. The irony here is that repair shops now have to ignore the most repairable computers and focus on the least repairable computers instead.
I have a hard time calling this enshittification, it dilutes term if it is just used to mean anything getting worse. Rather it should be used to describe the purposeful corporate destruction of a service’s value to boost profit after attracting users.
Ai is the machine powering turbo-enshittification of other products.
I don’t know if it is purposeful. It just seems to be a side effect of the market going all in on AI.