• TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    I am so tired of people, especially people who pretend to be computer experts online, completely failing to understand what Moore’s Law is.

    Moore’s Law != “Technology improves over time”

    It’s an observation that semiconductor transistor density roughly doubles every ~2 years. That’s it. It doesn’t apply to anything else.

    And also for the record, Moore’s Law has been dead for a long time now. Getting large transistor density improvements is hard.

    • Phen@lemmy.eco.br
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      5 hours ago

      I’m gonna go on “no stupid question” and ask why my old hard drives aren’t doubling in size.

      • ikidd@lemmy.world
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        42 minutes ago

        You need to properly feed, water and fertilize them. If you don’t do this, your old hard drives will just waste away until they’re just a few megabytes, not flourish into giant petabyte trees.

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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      6 hours ago

      Sure, but also no.

      More’s law is at the most fundamental level a observation about the exponential curve of technological progress.

      It was originally about semiconductor transistors and that is what Moore was specifically looking at but the observed pattern does 100% apply to other things.

      In modern language the way language is used and perceived determines its meaning and not its origins.

      • CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
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        2 minutes ago

        but the observed pattern does 100% apply to other things.

        Sure, if you retroactively go back and look for patterns where it matches something but that isn’t a very useful exercise.

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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        4 hours ago

        In modern language the way language is used and perceived determines its meaning and not its origins.

        This is technically correct but misleading in this context, given that it falsely implies that the original meaning (doubling transistor density every 2y) became obsolete. It did not. Please take context into account. Please.

        Furthermore you’re missing the point. The other comment is not just picking on words, but highlighting that people bring “it’s Moore’s Law” to babble inane predictions about the future. That’s doubly true when people assume (i.e. make shit up) that “doubling every 2y” applies to other things, and/or that it’s predictive in nature instead of just o9bservational. Cue to the OP.

        • udon@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          Please take context into account. Please.

          (this is a lil’ lemmy thread and I think everyone understands what OP had in mind)

      • LunchMoneyThief@links.hackliberty.org
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        5 hours ago

        In modern language the way language is used and perceived determines its meaning and not its origins.

        So we should start calling monitors computers, desktop towers modems (or CPUs (or hard drives)), wifi as internet, browsers as search engines and search engines as browsers. None of this is incorrect, according to the average person.

        • basmatii@lemm.ee
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          4 hours ago

          Yes, that is how language evolves. Your used of monitor in place of screen is an example of that.