I'm personally heavily testing LLMs on electrical engineering problems. I'm finding that it's not meaningfully better at figuring out what's up than the other models.
To give you an idea - here's a very abridged summary of one sample question (originally a full paragraph): I have a voltage divider with a precision resistor and a thermistor, my voltage reading is off by 17%, where's that coming from. None of the models I tested (including Opus 4.8 and Fable 5) could figure it out.
On my (admittedly weird) setup, GPT-5.5 Pro times out.
The reading is off because the thermistor resistance also depends on applied voltage, not just temperature. LLMs couldn't get this even after feeding them multimeter voltage readings, not just ADC readings. They went into guessing much more esoteric things like ADC switched-capacitor input current, burnout-detect current sources or IDACs left enabled, board leakage, leaky cap, etc.
This is the kind of problem I expect Claude to be useless at, and while I could see Gemini Deep Think making a good showing, I'd only bother with ChatGPT Pro. FWIW, I do believe it got the correct answer as one of its first two suggestions (though I am not an electrical engineer, so maybe I am not understanding this given the vague/summarized prompt).
Yesterday I did a price check on the PC I built two years ago. It went from $2300 to $3650. The bulk of that increase was that the ram went from $210 to $940. Its now more expensive than when DDR5 was new.
The value of my desktop pc has almost doubled, my ps5 is worth ~ $150 more than I bought it years ago.
It's gotten to the point where nvidia doesn't even bother to report their gaming revenue anymore. It's a clear sign that we're back to the bad old days of pc gaming being a 'prosumer' hobby, but don't worry I'm sure nvidia and their ilk are salivating at the idea of making pc gaming into a streaming stadia like solution that you pay for monthly
I think I paid a total of around $5,500 for the current components of my PC. Hard to say for sure since my PC has been a Ship of Theseus for over 30 years and started as a 486. The link merely reflects its current state.
At one point, PCPartPicker was showing my PC as worth $11,000. It's now at $7,200 without including the RAM or PSU. That would put it at $9,000.
> It's a clear sign that we're back to the bad old days of pc gaming being a 'prosumer' hobby
Yup.
I think it's especially bad since the gap between budget-grade and mid-grade feels like it's gotten wide. If you wanna play the latest AAA games and not feel like you need to upgrade in 3 years, you can't settle for the budget grade unless you're still gaming at 1080p.
I wouldn't recommend spending under $3,000 for a gaming PC these days, and that's just an absurd price.
You can get a $200 to $300 microcenter cpu+motherboard+16GB DDR5 bundle [1], then $300-$400 GPU, and you'll be able to play nearly every game on the market just fine at 1080p.
I'm sure there are pre-builts using stockpiled RAM that are similar $1000 price range.
And if you buy used you can do even better. $300-400 might get you a 5060 or a 9060XT right now [2][3] but if you go used you can get something like a 3080 instead.
I play games at 1080p with a 1660 Ti and, outside of some newer UE5 games that heavily rely on frame gen for performance (Monster Hunter Wilds performance was too poor to play), everything I've thrown at it has been playable and some games even 100+ FPS.
There's not necessarily anything wrong with gaming at 1080p, but I shudder to recommend anyone use a 1080p display for productivity. I feel like 27" 1440p is a good minimum experience. I also think that you're doing yourself a disservice going with an 8GB gpu in 2026, even for 1080p
Screens got larger and higher resolution, and UX engineers decided we should fill the extra real estate with white space because...reasons? Because they're trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator that finds more than 3 elements on their screen confusing?
Bring back skeuomorphic design. Make buttons look like buttons again.
We also have decade of studies showing that one of the best ways to boost productivity is to give people more screen real estate. This was true in the 80s, it was true in the 90s, and it didn’t really seem to plateau until something like 5-6K displays. The only reason people didn’t use bigger displays back then was due to the cost — a friend’s dad ran a prints go in the 90s and he really benefited from a display big enough to fit a whole page legibly, but that and an 11x17 printer cost enough that he needed a small business loan to buy them. He could justify it on productivity grounds but most people just accepted the hit.
Do you have links to any of these studies? I'm curious since it does not align with my personal experience, I find myself most productive on my single 720p screen -- perhaps I am missing something?
It varies from task to task, and operating system support is a confound, but basically it comes down to how often you have to scroll or switch windows to do whatever you are working on. For example, a print designer might do best with a single monitor large enough to hold the full document they’re working on at comfortable resolution while a programmer might be limited by having their editor and something like a debugger, browser, simulator, etc. simultaneously usable so two monitors might be better than one big one until it’s so big that those all fit.
I get to spend less and still play any game at max, and I can actually run 2 instances of some heavy games for local coop using Nucleus (Nightreign specifically).
I use Niri as my desktop environment on linux, zero need for 4k.
My screen is 27'' since 8 years ago when i bought it
Hard disagree. Once I went 4K, I could never go back to 1080p.
Sure, in an action-packed scenes of close- to moderate-quarters combat, I don't really notice it.
But in long-distance combat? Having 4x the pixels per square inch is noticeable. In slower scenes and cut scenes it's definitely an appreciable improvement.
I had a 4K 26 inch monitor and yes it was nice. But I travel too much and didn't enjoy moving it from place to place. Gave it to a good friend that I was visiting. Missed it for a little bit but quickly got used to using laptop screen. It is to the point that even if I'm in a hotel room with a large monitor/screen I usually don't bother to connect to it.
My point. Once you get better things yes it's easy to think you could never use the lesser tools you once had. But if the incentives are there, it's really not that difficult to adapt.
> I had a 4K 26 inch monitor and yes it was nice. But I travel too much and didn't enjoy moving it from place to place.
Basically the same specs here. 4K, 27".
How often were you traveling with it? I go to a PC gaming event twice/year (PDXLAN) and bring it. I don't think it's that bad moving it to the event venue and back.
> Once you get better things yes it's easy to think you could never use the lesser tools you once had.
Yeah. 4K is nice for text, but doesn't seem like a great deal for gaming given the 4x hardware requirement and/or weirdo interpolation technologies that may or may not work on AMD + Linux anyway.
4k is really nice for text. Always annoyed by 1080p screens for work. But yeah gaming - 1080p is fine. I have a 9060 XT and I play games at 4k like Mortal Kombat X, Fallout 4, Evil Within 2, Dead Space Remastered and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus. All 60+ fps on Linux and an ancient cpu.
Doom: The Dark Ages is 1440p and still looks great.
Total waste of money paying so much more for a gpu unless you want local ai, and those weirdo interpolation technologies are a pain in the a* to get working.
> I wouldn't recommend spending under $3,000 for a gaming PC these days
Alternative wording: You recommend to spend more than $3000? There are people out there who don't toss money around as if it's an endless commodity. I spent a friction of that for gaming computers in my entire life.
I'm just trying to imagine what I would tell a younger cousin who was still in highschool. I'm not sure I could recommend they get into pc gaming the way things are now, and that makes me sad.
Fancy graphics won't make a bad game good, but they'll make a great game into a cinematic masterpiece.
Examples: Cyberpunk 2077 (Once all the bugs were worked out, I recognize it was dogshit on release), Baldur's Gate 3, Expedition 33. Would they be great games even with 15-year old graphical fidelity? Sure. But the stunning graphics definitely elevates the experience, especially in the case of Cyberpunk 2077. When you have the hardware to run everything maxed out, it's damn nearly photographic. It made me truly feel immersed in the game world in a way no other game has achieved, and I've played lots of VR games.
I think modern rendering techniques need more pixels. 1440p should be considered bare minimum, and 4K the norm. Unfortunately, the prices are what they are.
On the flipside, being a low-spec gamer is better than ever. Indies, oldies, mods... all in great shape.
The most I've ever replaced all at once is the CPU/mobo/RAM trifecta. But even when I do that, I still kept the same storage, case, GPU, PSU, mouse/keyboard, etc.
But otherwise, upgrades are piecemeal. New storage when my current storage is full or I want to upgrade to a new technology. New GPU when I feel like my current one is holding me back. New mouse or keyboard when my current one starts failing. The CPU/mobo/RAM trifecta when the performance gains make it worthwhile, which at this point is about every 5 years.
I guess most would probably assume at least one epic refresh where there wasn't really anything carried across except maybe the parking spot on your desk. And since the 486 era, most probably expect your desk and/or physical site changed too.
There were so many potential PC era boundaries like case and motherboard form factors, external peripheral buses, HDD controller types, expansion card buses, cooling and PSU demands, socket/RAM formats, display types, and display connection types, ...
So many opportunities to think, "this seems like a time for a clean slate." If for no other reason than to bring up the new computer and have the old continue in transition or as some kind of spare, backup, or hand-me-down.
> There were so many potential PC era boundaries like case and motherboard form factors
Only one change really from AT/Baby AT to ATX. We've been on ATX now for 30 years. I could grab an A-Bit BH6 motherboard from 1998 and put it in my modern Hyte Y60 case if I wanted to.
> external peripheral buses
Since we're talking starting from 486 era, that only means going from PS/2 to USB for keyboard/mouse, parallel port for your printer, maybe serial port for a modem. During the transition period, adapters were cheap and common.
I don't know about the ESDI to IDE transition, but I know from IDE/PATA to SATA there was a period where motherboards had both. During the transition from VGA to DVI, then DVI to DisplayPort, GPUs had both.
> cooling and PSU demands
If you overbuy on the PSU a little, you can get a ton of futureproofing. CPUs came with stock coolers until just a few years ago.
> socket/RAM formats
Which is why the CPU/mobo/RAM upgrade was typically done as a trifecta.
> So many opportunities to think, "this seems like a time for a clean slate."
Never felt the need. As mentioned above, there was frequently a transition period for when hardware supported both old and new tech.
Yeah, I guess I have a longer view since our first IBM compatible PC was a 286 based XT form factor. And in households with multiple computer users, upgrades could look more like mitosis (or nuclear decay?), with some parts splitting off to form new computers and less clear lineage of one computer just mutating.
The buses I was thinking of included ISA, EISA, VLB, PCI, PCIe. Yes there were ways to carry some things across since motherboards often had a couple bus types at once. But in my experience, the older peripheral cards often just got retired as they became either obsolete concepts or totally integrated in the next motherboard. I.e. you once commonly had serial port and parallel port expansion cards, game controller cards, sound cards, disk controller cards, and basic 2D graphics cards.
Cases also got smaller because the motherboards needed less space, people needed fewer expansion cards, and also because people needed fewer and fewer "drive bays". In the early days, you saw both 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives, CD-ROM drives, big chunky HDDs, and possibly other weird removable media drives. Now you can easily have a capable corporate-style PC with no expansion cards, and no drives other than the M.2 stuck into the motherboard.
On the external side, I can think of PS/2, serial, parallel, USB, external SCSI, Firewire, e-SATA. Some of these coexisted with USB until it became high speed enough to subsume them. With graphics there was VGA, composite video, DVI, DisplayPort. Sound had 3.5mm, coax, toslink, coax digital. Communications commonly had POTS modem, coax ethernet, twisted pair ethernet. Somewhat esoteric were WiFi and bluetooth adapters. These could be on dedicated expansion cards, integrated into sound/graphics/comms cards, or integrated into the motherboard.
There were also weird expansion cards that paired with a particular external device, like a scanner or Hercules monochrome monitor. And more unusual cards like video-capture and digital TV or radio tuners.
The PSU issue wasn't just overall wattage but different set or balance of voltage rails and kinds of internal connectors needed for powered components. And shifts like standby power/soft-off behaviors.
I also recall AT to ATX and later uATX. Earlier motherboards were massive with socketed DRAM and SRAM chips and lots of simpler logic chips all over. They just kept shrinking as everything got more highly integrated. If you ever got a surplus Dell you might have encountered BTX too, which was like the left-handed universe.
I also had a phase with two uATX cases and almost had a "two space garbage collection" upgrade cycle, shifting parts in, between them, and out. One was my desktop PC and the other a "media PC" attached to TV and home stereo.
Some folks like me had a phase of trying to accelerate the down-sizing, abandoning our ATX/uATX for things like the Shuttle XPC mini/bookshelf computer formats. This meant more incompatible chassis, motherboard, and PSU formats. For me, a computer after 2000 was case/PSU + mobo/CPU/RAM + disk. The disk was either a single HDD/SSD or small software RAID array. At one time, we needed multiple disks for capacity, but now it can just be one or two M.2 drives on the motherboard and no disk bays at all.
This also leads to periodically thinking just a laptop will suffice, and then that becomes another thing that sees little upgrade and carry forward over longer time periods...
> Yeah, I guess I have a longer view since our first IBM compatible PC was a 286 based XT form factor.
The first time I used a PC was an Amiga in 1989. As my username implies, I was only 7 years old at the time.
My first IBM-compatible PC was a 486, I think in 1993. My dad got a used one and bought some multimedia kit that included a CD-ROM drive and audio card (Likely Sound Blaster, or at the very least, Sound Blaster compatible). Played a bunch of Stellar 7 and King's Quest, but also got into DOOM and Master of Orion.
That 486 was the start of the Ship of Theseus PC, though I didn't play a part in replacing parts until 1999 when I was 17 and bought a new hard drive with the money from my first job. Until then, my dad did the upgrades, but I always watched with great interest.
> Some folks like me had a phase of trying to accelerate the down-sizing, abandoning our ATX/uATX for things like the Shuttle XPC mini/bookshelf computer formats.
The tiny form factors like uATX and ITX never really interested me. Even when I started going to LAN events, I preferred a normal sized PC, even though my current rig probably weighs like 30-35 lbs. My GPU alone is like 3 lbs, and the Hyte Y60 case is 21 lbs empty.
> This also leads to periodically thinking just a laptop will suffice
I could never. My demands for being able to upgrade, not to mention to have something aesthetically pleasing, are too much for a laptop. I don't even have a laptop for casual use.
I was running Linux on my 386 in college in '93. And within a year or so I had upgraded it to 486DX3 and had a DEC Alpha alongside it also running Linux, with the two connected by ethernet.
I haven't bought a discrete graphics card since those days and it was an XGA compatible 2D accelerator. Every 3D card I've used has been in a work machine. At home, I've always used iGPU solutions with my AMD Ryzen laptop being my most powerful. And I had more than one phase where a Thinkpad was all I had as we moved around.
Instead of graphcics, I went crazy with HDD arrays at times. Software RAID with 3-5 disks was the most cost effective and reliable way to do bulk storage for a time period before huge HDDs and SSDs were affordable. I even built a 10 disk mini tower PC for a family member who was obsessed with recording broadcast TV via MythTV.
Hah, yes, I have stuck to relatively classic 2.5D and 3D games that work on current iGPUs. It's nearly a nostalgia thing since I met Doom in college.
I struggle with the gaming hardware ROI, when I see how things become obsolete. E.g. my work bought me a Titan-X in 2015 for numerical/image processing work. Ten years later my Ryzen 7840u had nearly the same GFLOPs, though of course with less memory bandwidth. It also does it with vastly less heat/noise.
I know I would enjoy immersive VR. But I don't hink I would use it often enough to justify all that dedicated gear and the computer strong enough to drive it.
> I struggle with the gaming hardware ROI, when I see how things become obsolete. E.g. my work bought me a Titan-X in 2015 for numerical/image processing work. Ten years later my Ryzen 7840u had nearly the same GFLOPs,
10 years is an eternity in computer hardware. The idea that you should be able to get 7+ years from your hardware is a more recent thing. Imagine comparing the 2.8 Ghz Pentium 4 you could get in 2002 with the 66 Mhz 486 that was state-of-the-art in 1993.
It used to be that processor speeds were literally doubling every ~18 months. The computer you bought to run Windows 95 would have choked on Windows XP 6 years later.
Hardware ROI has gotten better in terms of how long you can use a system. Just look at how many people on HN talk about using 10 year old hardware for both productivity and gaming. I've got a 5090, sure, but that's mainly because of wanting to play MS Flight Simulator 2024 and Cyberpunk 2077 with all the details cranked in 4K at 240 fps, and wanting enough VRAM to do local models. If I was okay with lower detail settings in 1080p at 60 fps, I could get by with even a 9 year old 1080 Ti.
Meanwhile, imagine trying to use a computer from 1992 in 2001 as Windows XP is dropping.
EDIT:
> I know I would enjoy immersive VR. But I don't hink I would use it often enough to justify all that dedicated gear and the computer strong enough to drive it.
It takes surprisingly little to enjoy VR. I think most games are written for the Quest 3 which isn't all that powerful, and then ported to PC with the same graphical fidelity. When I first got a VR headset, I was on a GTX 1070 and it played Beat Saber at the 90 fps that my headset did just fine.
I was well aware of the progress rates. But, not being tied to Windows, I have a different perspective on computer utility. As a kid, I used word processors and games on CP/M, Amiga, Apple II, and DOS before Windows 3.0, and then I got into Linux and stayed there. Basic "productivity" was always possible in my view, whether we're talking WordStar, WordPerfect, MacWrite, MS Word, AMI Pro, Libre Office, or the current cloud document editors.
I encountered subsequent Windows and Mac versions in work environments, but mostly kept them at arms length. I didn't embed myself the different Windows or Mac eras. Instead, I always had the same baseline, internet-connected machine experience with a similar environment of CLI, Emacs, X Windows, C programming, shell, Python, and other scripting languages like Scheme and Common LISP. The web arrived with Mosaic and evolved long with the content. Things like FTP sites, gopher, and USENET fell by the wayside.
But, the entire hardware history with Linux was a lot more incremental, overlapping, or blurry as far as different capabilities or needs. E.g. SMP, multi-core, large files, 3D acceleration, 64 bit, high speed networks, LCD monitors and associated video output formats. You could chase these different bits to your heart's content, but could also run for a long time with the same basic kit.
Due to CS in college and my career, I always had exposure to a range of IP networking technologies. My work computers were connected to the internet via ethernet and quite high speed WAN uplinks, while home went through the sequence of POTS, ISDN, ADSL, and cable modem. I was using Linux on Laptops, and we had WiFi at work since its very early days around 1997. We were also early adopters of 1000-BaseT in the LAN, so I remember the days when our data transfers were often limited by computer speed rather than trivially saturating the link.
To me, the increases in RAM and disk space over those decades were the most notable. I could do the same kinds of algorithmic work, but data sizes could be bigger. You can often let a program run longer, but a limited working-set size is a fundamental issue.
Of course, there were commensurate speed increases to make practical use of that extra space. I.e. how long does it take to transmit, store, and process these larger data that would exploit it? The realtime threshold brings associated eras. When was it practical to record/store/playback WAV audio, MP3, MPEG video, etc.
Did you mod the case? I can't imagine a case designed for a 486 would be super great for thermals for a modern CPU and discrete GPU combo. For me, it was such a pain in the butt to try and mod it vs. $100 for a case that "just works", so that was the nail in the coffin for my old AT case.
As much as I hate to say it, the move at this point is GeForce Now, at least for the time being... I just subscribed to the 200 USD/year Ultimate plan with a free 007 game. My ping to the datacenter is a mere 5ms, with 5080, RTX, 4k@60Hz (which my projector can drive) I am getting way more performance and similar latency than I would if I were using my own, semi-affordable rig or even a PS5. It's mind-blowing, really, and I recommend anyone to at least give it a try.
If I take out the cost of that 007 game, that plan i 140 USD a year. If you consider the cost of the electricity, it alone would likely cover it. In the past one would typically include hardware depreciation cost in such calculations to drive the point home...but the 3-4k USD I am not spending spending on a similar rig alone can generate me some 100-150 USD in bank over a year – not to mention the inflation! So, all in all, it's basically free, comparatively speaking.
It makes economic sense. A lot of my gaming happens on GeForce Now.
At home, I am still rocking a plain old GTX 1080 with an i7 6700k, it's still kicking ass a decade later and plays most of what I throw at it, and I have an M-Series MBP for work, though it's capable of running plenty modern titles on Ultra.
My Steam Deck absorbs the majority of my local gaming, however, even though I have to run games at lower spec. It's just an extremely convenient device and I dock it to my projector, which I run at 1080p@240Hz anyway because I prefer it over 4K@60Hz.
For things the deck can't handle though, GeForce Now rocks. If the Steam Machine doesn't become too expensive, I might snag one and a Steam Frame headset as well, and that will probably have me set through any impending breakdown in the supply chain for at least a decade. I'll probably be rocking this GTX 1080 until 2040, the way things are going.
Sorry buddy, I am not gonna singlehandedly spend 5k on a similar rig just to fight a fight I can't win. This happened to a lot of fields in IT and it's inevitably happening to gaming, too.
Also, gaming does not equal computer ownership. Majority of gamers use consoles, anyway. Gaming PCs are niche nowadays.
I routinely use it over a 5G mobile connection, often while moving, far from any datacenter, and it's usually fine as long as my signal is good. They do a fantastic job out of squeezing what they can from your connection.
I'm actually some 200 miles from the data center, but Nvidia has been doing a stellar job in connecting to the backbones of all the major ISPs around. If I actually lived down the road from them, it would be as low as 1 to 2ms, as reported by plenty of users. This isn't uncommon, especially in the EU.
I thought I read that Samsung SATA SSDs were discontinued, but apparently that was a rumor and Sansung has denied it. I wonder why they exceed NVMe prices. They're the only SATA drives left with DRAM. I guess they could just be milking that fact.
Well boo-hoo. It's about time more people got to know what it's like not to be on the bleeding edge. I've always had second-hand computers and only once bought myself a new laptop, the asus EeePC after the price dropped.
Ten years from now I'll get to watch inception in 4K.
A few weeks ago I needed a computer to be a Debian server for some at-home simple Web dev / learning stuff. I bought an HP Prodesk 400 G3 SFF PC with i5-6500, 8GB RAM and a 256GB off a popular auction site for £44. It'll do. I might upgrade to 16GB. An additional 8GB stick costs £19.
Good work. I bought an AMD Ryzen 3 3100 for €35 with shipping. A Radeon W5500 would set me back €150 at the moment. 16 GiB of RAM another €90. And that's on a relatively cheap site in my country.
I bought a 5090 12 months ago, just checked - that’s basically up 50%! I used to joke i’d retire on all the old tech in my loft, everyday now it feels less like a joke!
The memory in the PC I put together early last year is now worth about three times the total cost of all the parts I used to build the thing. It is absolutely crazy.
Memory is still a commodity product, in that there isn't a huge amount of difference between vendors selling products that comply with a certain technical standard. Sometimes the prices of commodities (wheat, silver, crude oil, etc) go way up when supply and demand get out of balance.
I'm still flying under the radar with a Dell Precision T5820. 128GB of DDR4 and a Quadro P4000 graphics card (8gb). Handles everything I need it to do including photo/video editing, and some random FPS games without any issues.
I was thinking of upgrading the video card to something better, but looking at the cost of replacing that Quadro? I might just stay put for now. Costs on those have also pretty much doubled.
I regret not building the PC when I was looking at it. It's not a money thing, at the end of the day, but I can't bring myself to do it.
I had it all priced out, but a bunch of birthdays in my family were coming up and I felt like I shouldn't buy something for myself if it's really their time.
My old laptop will have to cut it for a while. :-)
Similar situation—just as I was about to buy, an emergency occurred, and when I came back two months later my ₹1,00,000 build was ₹1,20,000, and I felt I couldn’t quite justify it any more. And after all, my laptop had stabilised and no longer seemed to be dying like it had been a year earlier. Well, now my build would be ₹1,75,000 and feeling even less justified.
Pre-built PCs are the way to get a deal right now. The price of individual components is much more expensive than buying something from Micro Center or one of the Chinese integrators.
Just beware that for some people (myself included), it causes stomach issues (quite intense in my case). There are mitigation strategies (slowly build up the dose, use more water, take with food, split up the doses across meals, and consider using the less studied HCL variant).
I was sort of hoping that they were bootstrapped or at least non-VC funded. I'm wary of them introducing consumer-unfriendly revenue-generating schemes.
Exactly the same thoughts here (I've been looking into FCC part 15 myself too). And IIRC nRF has some pre-cert stuff to avoid going through the full gauntlet.
I'm guessing he's using the fact that dev boards are excepted (as opposed to final products). Somewhat unfortunate though, as these do end up in a lot of people's boards.
nRF modules are pre-certified to avoid this issue, but OP integrated the chip into their own design so the certification is entirely on them to obtain compliance.
I remember Last.fm's value proposition was 1) discovery and 2) community. (1) is (mostly, for most people) covered by "feed" algorithms of Spotify and YouTube.
I wonder how they're going to position themselves now.
As someone who used to hang out on various music forums...a human recommendation based on careful analysis of your last.fm scrobbles was infinitely more useful and accurate than anything Pandora/YouTube/Spotify/Tidal ever recommended me. Humans can infer not just what you like, but what you don't like.
Community largely died out already by 2012. Originally Last.fm enabled a lot of IRL socializing, connecting hipsters who lived in the same town and listened to the same music. Changes in music-listening habits, the atomization of tastes in a world where so much was available, and CBS not having a clue what to do with the site -- that killed Last.fm except for just a way to track one's own plays.
I'm surprised that Perplexity isn't mentioned in the article or on HN. It has replaced Google for all but the most trivial queries. It runs circles around Google for finding anything niche or underspecified.
I use it through OpenRouter - I love how the pricing is per search and isn't a subscription.
I use Perplexity heavily as my general research clerk, and it's great at that, but I find trivial queries still make up a majority of my search activity. Waiting for an AI response to each of them would be an enormous time sink.
There is one very clear example that I ran across due to the reasons outlined in the article. If you have a wavelet and you're trying to slide it around to make it fit, that will fail spectacularly. There are lots of problems that boil down to basically the above.
The neural net answer is being able to spawn a wavelet at any position, as opposed to tweaking the position of an existing one.
To give you an idea - here's a very abridged summary of one sample question (originally a full paragraph): I have a voltage divider with a precision resistor and a thermistor, my voltage reading is off by 17%, where's that coming from. None of the models I tested (including Opus 4.8 and Fable 5) could figure it out.
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