nah all of the datacenters they build for AI, will come to use then. 

they will say"Need computing? Don't worry, just rent from us, for an ever increasing and enshittifying subscription"

Have you considered that...that is the intent?

Stuff is just getting more expensive, because of demand competition with AI. There is no reason to think that production for non-AI computing will ever hit literally zero.

We used to get by with much less. If only we could start writing more efficient software again...

There‘s existing infrastructure, that runs on hardware from the 1980s. Especially in industrial applications there are still plenty of gigantic machines controlled by a 386 or a C-64.

The used vintage market can keep these running for a long time. Eventually you replace them with an emulator or an FPGA that runs the same software.

Big banking, insurance, airlines, shipping, governments, militaries bought huge IBM mainframes from the 1960s onwards. They ran for decades. Many of these were transformed into virtual machines, still running their ancient FORTRAN code.

There’s also the story of (IIRC Minutemen) nuclear missiles needing 5.25 floppies to program their guidance systems. These were still operational in the early 2000s. Lots of military weapons systems run on ancient hardware.

BART looking smug because there’s no vacuum tube shortage.

Aaron lot of out infrastructure still uses floppy discs.

Yup