this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2025
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I feel as if technology has stagnated, all that are left are grifts or just make everything terrible, like AI. I was thinking Zoom calls maybe? The tech has definitely improved since Skype.

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[–] SootySootySoot@hexbear.net 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

As someone who works in IT, I don't think anything has. I was thinking SSDs, but they became good by ~2013 really. Phones are still garbage in my experience. AI is probably the closest to being slightly useful, at times. Honestly, as someone who used free Skype extensively back around ~2010, I don't find Zoom to be meaningfully better (and I've yet to find anything beat Skype's original noise-cancelling algorithm).

No, I've really thought and genuinely have nothing else. If technology regressed 10 years I think I'd personally be unaffected (and happier, I could avoid upgrading my hardware for so long).

[–] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

And as they say, hardware being ever faster is balanced by software being ever more bloated. The only exception is SSDs which makes booting a lot faster and solves a lot of issues inherent with HDDs being electromechanical instead of being pure electronics, but I don't see a major difference in SSDs between 2015 and now outside of them becoming cheaper.

[–] someone@hexbear.net 7 points 10 months ago

software being ever more bloated

Javascript and its consequences...

[–] SootySootySoot@hexbear.net 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

hardware being ever faster is balanced by software being ever more bloated

This is the key, really. I get that for a while, developers spent a lot of time and effort on optimising stuff to a tee, but we very much now go the other way, and developers will increase software size 10-fold before they spend a couple days work to make it actually efficient.

Games nowadays will just include a 4GB texture for every dirty brick wall before they think about coding a shader for a prettier, smaller, less GPU-load, effect.

Adobe Acrobat Reader is now about a gigabyte. To read PDFs. Yet far as I can tell outwardly the PDF format hasn't changed in two decades, when the Reader was more like 10MB.

So many modern days programs package in whole-ass web browser engines for like, one screen.

[–] wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If tech regressed ten years the internet would be more usable

[–] crime@hexbear.net 6 points 10 months ago

Let's do 20 years, javascript is bourgeois decadence and the proliferation of dogshit js frameworks was pre-2015

[–] FumpyAer@hexbear.net 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

SSDs have doubled in speed over the last decade, haven't they?

[–] quarrk@hexbear.net 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah they’ve improved in every aspect since the early SSDs. Cost, physical size, storage size, read/write speed, and longevity. SSDs have existed for a long time, but they’ve improved a lot too.