Somewhere between a $305 Raspberry Pi board and a used NVMe listing on eBay, the homelab hobby quietly stopped making financial sense.
Andy and co-host Eric Siron dig into why memory, NAND, and storage prices went vertical in 2026, who is actually eating the supply, and what practitioners should do about it. They cover the AI buildout swallowing the manufacturing capacity, why prices probably never return to pre-shortage levels, and the return of a skill the industry let atrophy: right-sizing hardware to the workload instead of throwing spec at it.
## Chapters:
00:00:00 - The Hardware Market Is Fire and Brimstone
00:01:18 - Welcome and Intros
00:04:33 - News React: The First Fully AI-Run Ransomware (JadePuffer)
00:08:16 - News React: AI Job-Blame and the Unix Lawsuit That Won't Die
00:13:32 - Nerd Hour: Thunderbird Finally Speaks Exchange Online
00:18:47 - Nerd Hour: Hugo, AI, and the 80% Problem
00:23:13 - Show Plugs
00:24:09 - Why Homelab Hardware Broke Me: The eBay Moment
00:41:44 - Why This Is Happening: AI Is Eating the Supply Chain
00:46:43 - Local Models and the Willingness-to-Pay Problem
00:52:41 - The New Normal: Prices Aren't Coming Back
00:59:05 - Right-Size the Hardware to the Problem
01:06:02 - Could China Break the Bottleneck?
01:09:29 - One More Casualty, and Wrap-Up
## Resources / Show Notes
- BleepingComputer, JadePuffer AI-run ransomware: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/jadepuffer-ransomware-used-ai-agent-to-automate-entire-attack/
- Thunderbird Blog, native Microsoft Exchange (EWS) support in 145: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/11/thunderbird-adds-native-microsoft-exchange-email-support/
- Raspberry Pi Foundation, memory-driven price rises: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/more-memory-driven-price-rises/
- GamersNexus, SSDs WTF (NAND makers sold out for 2026): https://gamersnexus.net/features/ssds-wtf
- Gartner, surging memory costs (125% DRAM / 234% NAND surge): https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-02-26-gartner-says-surging-memory-costs-will-reduce-global-pc-and-smartphone-shipments-in-2026
- TechPowerUp, Samsung and SK Hynix $870B capacity plan and fab timelines: https://www.techpowerup.com/350478/samsung-and-sk-hynix-to-expand-semiconductor-capacity-with-usd-870-billion-plan
- BBC, Samsung's memory-driven profit surge: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1kyy8yrpxdo
- IDC, why the memory market stays tight and makers aren't rushing capacity: https://www.idc.com/resource-center/blog/why-the-memory-market-is-still-tight-what-comes-next/
- Tom's Hardware, SK Group chairman says the shortage runs until 2030: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/sk-group-chairman-says-memory-chip-shortage-will-last-until-2030
- SemiAnalysis, China's CXMT challenging DRAM incumbents: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/chinas-cxmt-is-set-to-challenge-dram
- Tom's Hardware, China's YMTC and homegrown NAND tooling: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/chinas-ymtc-moves-to-break-free-of-u-s-sanctions-by-building-production-line-with-homegrown-tools-aims-to-capture-15-percent-of-nand-market-by-late-2026
- TrendForce, China's GPU makers scaling as enterprise accelerators: https://www.trendforce.com/news/2025/10/07/news-chinas-gpu-trio-rise-as-nvidia-retreats-decoding-moore-threads-metax-and-cambricon/
- CSIS, China and global cyber supply chain risk: https://www.csis.org/blogs/strategic-technologies-blog/chinas-weaponization-global-cyber-supply-chains
- AndyOnTech, Andy's hub for all his output: https://www.andyontech.com
- Project Runspace, the organization behind the show: https://www.projectrunspace.org
- SysAdmin Weekly GitHub Discussions, share your hardware battle stories: https://github.com/ProjectRunspace/sysadmin-weekly/discussions
