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Nvidia won, we all lost

(blog.sebin-nyshkim.net)
981 points todsacerdoti | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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mcdeltat ◴[] No.44470051[source]
Anyone else getting a bit disillusioned with the whole tech hardware improvements thing? Seems like every year we get less improvement for higher cost and the use cases become less useful. Like the whole industry is becoming a rent seeking exercise with diminishing returns. I used to follow hardware improvements and now largely don't because I realised I (and probably most of us) don't need it.

It's staggering that we are throwing so many resources at marginal improvements for things like gaming, and I say that as someone whose main hobby used to be gaming. Ray tracing, path tracing, DLSS, etc at a price point of $3000 just for the GPU - who cares when a 2010 cell shaded game running on an upmarket toaster gave me the utmost joy? And the AI use cases don't impress me either - seems like all we do each generation is burn more power to shove more data through and pray for an improvement (collecting sweet $$$ in the meantime).

Another commenter here said it well, there's just so much more you can do with your life than follow along with this drama.

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bamboozled ◴[] No.44470105[source]
I remember when it was a serious difference, like PS1-PS3 was absolutely miraculous and exciting to watch.

It's also fun that no matter how fast the hardware seems to get, we seem to fill it up with shitty bloated software.

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1. mcdeltat ◴[] No.44472649[source]
IMO at some point in the history of software we lost track of hardware capabilities versus software end outcomes. Hardware improved many orders of magnitude but overall software quality/usefulness/efficiency did not (yes this is a hill I will die on). We've ended up with mostly garbage and an occasional legitimately brilliant use of transistors.