It is not ‘LLM companies’. It is OpenAI. And not from buying memory either. Last year they made two deals with two major memory manufacturers, which together meant they were purchasing a significant percentage of the world’s memory production. And they negotiated these two deals in secret, each company not knowing that the other was in discussions, and announced the two deals on the same day. They weren’t even buying memory chips you can put in a server, but finished wafers with memory chips printed on them. These wafers then have to be cut up into chips, those chips have to be put in packages, themselves tested, and then soldered down to memory modules. As far as I know, OpenAI has no ability to do this. So it seems likely they purchased a significant portion of the world’s memory production just to drive up prices and keep their competitors from having it.

Look up a product called Thrift. You can get it on Amazon. It’s a type of flake drain cleaner, comes in a bottle. Basically run your shower on super hot for a few minutes to heat up the pipe, then pour a bunch of this stuff down, and a bit more hot water. Leave it alone for a few minutes, then flush with hot water. Unlike Drano, this stuff actually works. Originally I found it on a plumbing subreddit. I’ve done it to my shower a few times and it seems to have a longer lasting effect every time, like it’s actually cleaning out the pipe.