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Comment by carlosjobim | Hacker News Reader

Everybody needs electricity and water, but nobody needs more RAM except for companies. And they can pay for it.

You can travel to the ends of the earth, to a village down miles and miles of dirt roads and still see someone bent over their phone. People buy RAM.

> but nobody needs more RAM except for companies.

I'm amazed you could write this in apparent seriousness.

Be so kind then and tell me what a normal citizen would need more than 8GB of RAM for, if it isn't for professional work or a specialized hobby?

A Mac with 8GB of RAM is blazingly fast for any task your average person would need for it to do. Which doesn't include gaming, mining crypto, or heavy AI models.

Maybe I've missed something? So please tell me exactly what task requires more than 8GB of RAM which is so necessary for the average citizen that the government should subsidize it?

A Windows 11 machine with 8GB of memory is borderline unusable.

We can go in circles about how developers need to optimize their applications, etc but truth of the matter is that 8GB is considered pretty low for a lot of "average" use cases. MacOS is an exception to the rule and even 8GB on MacOS is limited with multiple Electron apps.

And why should the government and the tax payers be held responsible and be forced to pay for the bad decisions of Microsoft and their customers?

MacOS is not limited in any way for the needs an average citizen has from computers. The average citizen is even fine with an iPad. 8GB is considered "low" by people here, just like a 170 horse power hatchback is considered "low" by muscle car enthusiasts and mining companies looking for dump trucks. But those uses have no bearing on reality for most people.

> And why should the government and the tax payers be held responsible and be forced to pay for the bad decisions of Microsoft and their customers?

Ah, a motte and bailey argument! I always love those.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

I don't find anything hard to defend about my argument. It origins in response to people arguing on the lines that the government should subsidize RAM because it is expensive. But it is not expensive for a customer unless they're getting a lot of it. My argument has been the same all through this thread, while hackers are arguing all over the place.

The most absurd argument is that any consumer would need more than 8GB, when it is proven beyond all doubt in physical reality that 8GB gives you extreme amounts of power in for example an Apple device - at consumer friendly prices.

> I don't find anything hard to defend about my argument.

Of course. Because "I need more than 8 GB of RAM" and "the government should subsidize Microsoft" are logically equivalent statements. If you're insane.

You have provoked yourself into a rage, because you didn't understand the arguments being made here. Whether you have the capacity to understand, I don't know. But I'll assume so, and explain:

1. Nobody has argued either for or against for the government to subsidize Microsoft.

2. However people are arguing that the government should subsidize RAM makers. And their extended argument for it is that people choose to purchase Microsoft Windows. A well known low quality product.

That's a very weak argument. If you choose to make bad decisions and use sub-par solutions when good solutions are readily available, that isn't something that the government should take to account when deciding on subsidies.

Could you explain how you chose the 8GB number? Would you still have used 8GB as the baseline 10 years ago? 20? 30? No? Then at what point would say 16GB will become acceptable?

What reasoning are you using to figure out what exact amount of RAM is acceptable at a given time period?

Hello!? Us consumers need it too.

Really depends how you're defining "need".

Will you die without it?

Will your life as you know it end if your next phone has 8GB instead of 12GB?

Those questions can’t get to the root of how the GGP is using the word for two reasons: 1. Companies, not being alive, can’t possibly need in this sense without analogy. 2. The poster included electricity as something everybody needs but there are people surviving without it.

You need 8GB at the very most, which isn't out of reach for any consumer. If you need more, then you are a professional and can afford more. Or you are a hobbyist, and your hobby doesn't deserve any subsidies from the hard working tax payer.

> You need 8GB at the very most

I call total bullshit on that. I need more.

Why would you need more compute power than other people? An 8GB machine is already way beyond capable for anything a consumer - and most professional - can throw at it.

And why in the world should the government force tax payers to subsidize your extraordinary computing needs?

Have you ever used a computer?

No, have you?

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