snczl

Not to mention, we aren't exactly sure how many commonly used / prescribed drugs work. Acetaminophen, for example - we have theories, we know it inhibits COX enzymes, maybe metabolite interactions with endocannabinoid receptors, but we don't exactly know how it relieves pain. We're not sure how lithium stabilizes moods, or how inhaled anesthetics cause you to lose consciousness. We know Metformin halts the liver's production of glucose but we're not sure how. Not at all uncommon for drugs to be used in medicine without knowing their exact mechanism. If a drug works and is proven safe through testing obviously we should use it, especially I think for something like cancer.

The story here is about what lesson was learned by the DRAM cartel after they got busted and hit with large fines. One might hope the lesson learned would be, "we should not fix prices", but what got them in trouble was colluding secretly. What if we just did it via earnings reports, press releases, and other public statements?

While there is some market variance like the 2022 to 2023 glut, DRAM prices haven't fallen in real terms in over 15 years. This was all done by controlling supply, and it was all done in public. It starts with one of the big three putting out a statement like, "Samsung is considering reducing DRAM wafer output due to softness in the mobile PC segment." The actual reason varies and often makes little sense.

This is followed by similar public statements from the other large vendors expressing a willingness to reduce supply. Once everyone commits in this way, the companies follow up with announcements of actual supply reductions. You can watch this happen any time prices start to dip.

My bet is if the DOJ investigates, they will not find the same sort of embarrassing smoking gun emails between representatives of Micron, Hynix, and Samsung. The collusion was all done in public. The companies will claim it is just good business management, a strategy known as "conscious parallelism." They used this exact defense to get a 2022 antitrust lawsuit dismissed.

That said, their goal seemed to be just keeping prices fixed. They wanted to avoid boom and bust cycles, keep profits high, and keep prices stagnant. A massive price hike invites investigations and creates problems. If DRAM prices just never fall, they can enjoy healthy profits with little risk.

But what happens when your intentionally constrained supply hits a sudden large spike in demand? Prices skyrocket, everyone gets mad, and demands investigations. My guess is instead of being thrilled with the price spike, the executives at the large DRAM manufacturers are very worried someone put something incriminating in a document somewhere that can be subpoenaed ("how we're going to fix prices in public and get away with it").

Or use the layer-4 load balancer built into the Linux kernel - IPVS (http://kb.linuxvirtualserver.org/wiki/IPVS).

Use Keepalived (http://www.keepalived.org/) for HA and health checking or use Gorb (https://github.com/kobolog/gorb) and you can dynamically change services / backends using a REST API.