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Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

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Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#191

Post by api »

Money and power, folks. Money and especially power change everything.

There's always been money in computing, but I'm talking about really huge money and serious political power. I'm talking about nation-state-scale money, elections hinging on social media meme wars, countries creating troll armies as part of new cold wars, etc.

When the stakes go up, the fun goes away. Serious players get involved, not to mention lots of hard-core psychopathic types that are not fun at all to deal with.

There's no better place to see this than the computer underground. Hacker (pop culture sense) culture used to be fun, exploratory, and cool. I was really into it as a teen. Now I wouldn't let my kids near it. It's loaded with serious and dangerous criminals, incredibly toxic ideology, real prison sentences if you get caught, and actual harm as opposed to pranks and exploration. Today's "hacking" (black or grey hat) involves destroying peoples livelihoods with scams and ransomware, attacking democracy and civil society, and even killing people.

Guns, armies, and serious crime have come to what was once a neat little bubble of pure thought and exploration.

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#192

Post by hwers »

gilbetron wrote: post #163
tiluha wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 22. I feel like there hasn't been any major technologcal shift since ~2014. Phones have gotten faster and more capable, but are still mostly the same. Social media has gotten bigger, but hasn't innovated in a meaningful way. "AI" has gotten better which is fascinating, but in the end it will most likely just be used for manipulation, surveillance and manipulation. I can't really think of any technology to look fo…

Autonomous cars, AI/ML, and fusion are three things that will significantly change our world in the next decade or so. There will absolutely be downsides, but that's how tech works! And this doesn't even get into biological spheres of tech! Also, remember, people in 2005 had same thoughts as you're having right now! Throughout my entire life, people have been saying that tech and science is basically done. They've al…

Autonomous cars and fusion are very different creatures than the growth of the internet or computers in general. The latter was widely distributed and had low hanging fruit that just about everyone in society could pluck and have fun with, the former is something a handful of companies and a few hundred researchers will get to develop while the rest of us will have to have our creativity satisfied with the fulfilling act of paying for it. (Even ML to an extent, since it's so data and compute expensive - generally far from a low hanging fruit -, though less so.)

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#193

Post by atlasunshrugged »

user_7832 wrote: post #187
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #68

In my impression it really accelerated after the '08 financial crisis (+- a few years for all the people who left wall street and went to HBS) after being an ibanker was no longer cool or well paid and the people who would have gone there decided to come to Silicon Valley. That's a huge mass of people who are grinders who just want to make money and quick and have a totally different mindset than the people who wante…

Slightly off-topic (but related to your comment) - do you know of any company or organization that's truly for public welfare? Or, any VC that cares more about society than a super-high rate of return where such a society-focused company can be launched/funded?

I think lots of nonprofits have public welfare in their mission but I think by organization you mean for profit entities? In that case my answer is the same as to the one for VCs in that there are lots that care about society and specific sectors and have that as a thesis with returns being equal (or perhaps secondary for a select few); climate tech startups and investors for instance or companies making alternative proteins (although maybe that's "animal society" not human that they care about)

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#194

Post by nicoburns »

sokoloff wrote: post #160
eternauta3k wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What microcontroller are you thinking of?

ESP8266/32 is slightly over a $1 but still within the spirit of “more like $1 micro”. Confining more strictly to $1.00, STM32F030F4P6 (48MHz 32-bit M0) is in spitting distance to a 386 or 20MHz 68030 for some workloads. (50 MHz 486-DX2 was introduced in ‘92, but the typical desktop PC of 1992 was much lower spec.)

It was indeed the ESP8266/ESP32 I had in mind. The ESP8266 is slightly over $1, but not much! (e.g. available here for $1.17 https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32651747570.html)

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#195

Post by achenatx »

you probably need to open your eyes more. Most software has been database CRUD for a long time. However there are always interesting things going on

1) robotics are amazing right now

2) self driving cars

3) satellite systems, like starlink

4) drones and drone meshes

5) artificial limbs/prosthetics, including eyes, ears, spinal stimulation etc.

6) genetics and genetic analysis, protein folding, etc.

7) DIY - 3D printing/raspberry pi/arduino

8) crypto/blockchain and decentralized networks

9) virtual reality

Yeah if you are trying to sell more cheap chinese products or do social media, that kind of sucks.

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#196

Post by wink »

> Tom's Hardware, playing and modding video games

I think there's your "problem". There was a time (I'd put it 94-2004ish, but only because I'm too young) where there were major shifts every year. So if you were interested in that space... 286 - interesting, 486 - interesting, the first Pentiums - eh, kinda interesting ;), 3dfx - VERY interesting, and so on.

You could replace your hardware every year and the latest games would hardly run on a 1-2y old model/gfx card. Now compare it to "today". I last upgraded in 2019, from a 2012 CPU (with a 2015/16 gpu) and it was mostly "eh, about time, this is one of my main hobbies" and not because it was strictly needed. Now the machine is 2.5 years old and I can run everything I throw at it at 2560 with max details and I think this will hold up for a bit.

TLDR: If you're thinking about the same timeframe it was just a weird outlier of tech breakthroughs in the narrow field of personal computing/games every year. +20% more CPU performance is simply not exciting if the game already works.

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#197

Post by dvh1990 »

koonsolo wrote: post #161
rob74 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's partly an age thing, but I also agree that the times have been more exciting in the past technology-wise. I grew up as a eighties tech geek kid. I learned BASIC on a SHARP programmable calculator ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_PC-1403 ), then moved on to an Atari 800, then to an Amiga, and finally to a PC. Each of these machines was orders of magnitude more capable than the previous one - you…

Are you crazy? I'm from '79, so probably a bit younger than you. We can now buy an Arduino board for the price of a computer game, and make a flying drone. Even with a small camera or some sensors if you want. Or create some small robots with all the motors and sensors that you want, custom 3d printed. My son is now 13 and doing STEM. I only wish I had access to all the things that they can now do for cheap, especial…

Well yes, but flying drones are not exciting when everybody can build/buy one.

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#198

Post by wessorh »

When did it stop being cool to you? Plants are fascinating tech that is really old. There is tons of physics tech that is cool, check out space weather, very cool stuff. My question is "when did you stop being inspired by the world around you?"

I would prefer to inquire as to when tech became net negative for society

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#199

Post by mercutio2 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #113
rob74 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's partly an age thing, but I also agree that the times have been more exciting in the past technology-wise. I grew up as a eighties tech geek kid. I learned BASIC on a SHARP programmable calculator ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_PC-1403 ), then moved on to an Atari 800, then to an Amiga, and finally to a PC. Each of these machines was orders of magnitude more capable than the previous one - you…

> Each of these machines was orders of magnitude more capable than the previous one - you don't have that anymore nowadays. As you mention, computers can become "orders of magnitude more capable" simply by shrinking to a smaller form factor. We're about to have smartphones that are fully usable as computers, or smart watches that you can run free OS's and homebrew applications on. > Then in the late 90s there was the…

All sorts of cool things that we’re now getting back to with Starship 40 years later… sounds like the very definition of a dead end to me! No one took Shuttle and iterated on it. It had a bunch of impractical ideas combined for primarily political reasons that resulted in actual shuttle flights being incredibly dangerous.

It delivered lots of pork, but at the cost of actual progress.

Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?

#200

Post by thr0wawayf00 »

jart wrote: post #128
autoexec wrote: post #62

For me it was when tech no longer served me and my interests. Anything tech does for me these days is usually just a means to get me to use it so that someone else can collect data, push ads, or control me. There's rarely a product or service that doesn't have some hidden cost or give someone else power over you. Cars have internet, but track your location, can listen in on your conversations, and optional features o…

Does anyone remember what it was like growing up in the 90's when people would pay $100/month for television that was 33% ads? Life was miserable before most of us had Internet access. I think there's simply no comparison. Also does anyone remember what it was like back then trying to sell software? I remember back in 2003 whenever I wrote a piece of software, for every guy who paid me $20 via paypal for it, there'd…

> The tech industry is absolutely the most benevolent force for good these last few decades.

It's hard to agree with that statement knowing that Facebook allowed genocidal rage to fester on its platform, ultimately facilitating the Rohingya genocide[0].

The tech industry may be the most force for good in your life today, but when you take a step back to read about hardware manufacturing in China, state/privately-sponsored social media psyops, the industry's pushback against pro-consumer policy like right-to-repair, etc., etc., it's really hard to take a statement like that seriously.

0: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

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