Originally posted by ling.speed:

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

Ew, is it really getting that bad?

I've been setting up dedicated game servers and networking ♥♥♥♥ for years, I only heard people talking ambiguously about "Running out of IP addresses" but I lived through Y2K, so I just immediately dismissed it as another way to sell old bottled water.

Idk really, only have own limited experiance, but where i live (poland) some BIG isps are doing NAT with no way out. Previously you could buy yourself out at one time fee at least, and even earlier NATs were only on wifi rural internets. I got lucky with fiber that offers external IP still but its not cheap.

Even if they aren't actually running out of IP addresses, whenever I see some kind of service that restricts users ability to modify their experience, I just assume it will eventually become standard, because Corporations (usually at the behest of government entities) absolutely do not want the end user to have any more freedom than is absolutely necessary to extract money from them.

We're seeing the move against AI now in the US, with CHATGPT founding company OpenAI (That name will be highly ironic in just a moment) Publishing a whitepaper and submitting it to congress openly advocating for the restriction of "High End AI enabled Hardware" (Specifically named Nvidia's A1000 iirc, but it will also extend to RTX Titan/4090 class) to only licensed users. To me, it looks like no more a naked attempt to corner the emerging market like what Pan Am tried to do against the Hugh's Aircraft company back in the late 40's.