4 ms·

Where are the Trinitron displays and ICs made with 1 µm process?

by rzzzt 6y ago

chubot 6y ago
It's a heuristic. Although I bet you can find those things in use somewhere. This article is a little different -- "things my son would use" implies that they're still popular, not just extant. Both questions are interesting, and influenced by the same principles. The Lindy effect is one reason I'm working on https://www.oilshell.org/ https://www.oilshell.org/, because shell is now more than 50 year old, much older than Python/JS/Ruby, etc. Concrete example from the last few days: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26746280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26746280 i.e. When people want to explain a modern cloud platform, they use shell. Go would have been more obvious, but shell is clearer. Lindy prediction: shell will outlive Go :)
michaelmrose 6y ago
I think you can argue that its not true for things in which item A and item B are members of a broader class of things wherein changing from A -> B incurs no or trivial costs or little fundamental changes in fulfilling the purpose of the class of items and there exists no immediate need to stop using A. For example nobody expects the 2004 Toyota Carolla to be forever but the gas powered car will be far harder to kill.
wiml 6y ago
Big CRTs are pretty much gone as far as I know, but 1-micron ICs are all over the place. They're just not interesting any more.
AussieWog93 6y ago
I run a retro games business. Trinitrons are still to this day the best tech for displaying old games, and people will pay over $100 for even a consumer-grade unit without SCART. For the professional grade PVM and BVM monitors, people will pay thousands for a large (21"+) one and they sell like hotcakes.
chubot 6y ago
Adding to my first reply: if Trinitron displays were gone (it appears they aren't), and some newer tech isn't, that would NOT contradict the Lindy effect. If you already KNOW that Trinitron displays are gone, then there's no uncertainty. The Lindy effect is a heuristic for making decisions under uncertainty. The relevant situation is if you have two things that still exist, and you want to guess which one will last longer. This doesn't override other facts about the domain -- it's SOME information in the absence of any other knowledge. It's for poker players, not scientists. The example I gave was the new cloud blog startup vs. the old hosting platform. Which one would you put your blog on if you wanted people to read it 5 years from now? All other things being equal, I'd take the old hosting platform. But if you think the startup has a really good business model or you like the founders, maybe you choose that one. It's just common sense. Another example might be cold-blooded crocodiles vs. a warm-blooded mouse as an example. All things being equal, you could guess that the crocodiles will survive further into the future, since they were here first. But someone with a specific theory or expertise could also argue that the bigger animal is less likely to survive, etc. Similarly, we already know that dinosaurs are gone. This isn't a situation where you need to act or make a prediction. Someone who understands Bayesian statistics can probably explain it better than me, but you have to take into account existing knowledge, and update it with new knowledge. Picking out something that you know is obsolete isn't relevant.

Where are the Trinitron displays and ICs made with 1 µm process?

by rzzzt 6y ago

Where are the Trinitron displays and ICs made with 1 µm process?

It's a heuristic. Although I bet you can find those things in use somewhere. This article is a little different -- "things my son would use" implies that they're still popular, not just extant. Both questions are interesting, and influenced by the same principles. The Lindy effect is one reason I'm working on https://www.oilshell.org/ https://www.oilshell.org/, because shell is now more than 50 year old, much older than Python/JS/Ruby, etc. Concrete example from the last few days: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26746280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26746280 i.e. When people want to explain a modern cloud platform, they use shell. Go would have been more obvious, but shell is clearer. Lindy prediction: shell will outlive Go :)

michaelmrose 6y ago

I think you can argue that its not true for things in which item A and item B are members of a broader class of things wherein changing from A -> B incurs no or trivial costs or little fundamental changes in fulfilling the purpose of the class of items and there exists no immediate need to stop using A. For example nobody expects the 2004 Toyota Carolla to be forever but the gas powered car will be far harder to kill.

wiml 6y ago

Big CRTs are pretty much gone as far as I know, but 1-micron ICs are all over the place. They're just not interesting any more.

AussieWog93 6y ago

I run a retro games business. Trinitrons are still to this day the best tech for displaying old games, and people will pay over $100 for even a consumer-grade unit without SCART. For the professional grade PVM and BVM monitors, people will pay thousands for a large (21"+) one and they sell like hotcakes.

chubot 6y ago

Adding to my first reply: if Trinitron displays were gone (it appears they aren't), and some newer tech isn't, that would NOT contradict the Lindy effect. If you already KNOW that Trinitron displays are gone, then there's no uncertainty. The Lindy effect is a heuristic for making decisions under uncertainty. The relevant situation is if you have two things that still exist, and you want to guess which one will last longer. This doesn't override other facts about the domain -- it's SOME information in the absence of any other knowledge. It's for poker players, not scientists. The example I gave was the new cloud blog startup vs. the old hosting platform. Which one would you put your blog on if you wanted people to read it 5 years from now? All other things being equal, I'd take the old hosting platform. But if you think the startup has a really good business model or you like the founders, maybe you choose that one. It's just common sense. Another example might be cold-blooded crocodiles vs. a warm-blooded mouse as an example. All things being equal, you could guess that the crocodiles will survive further into the future, since they were here first. But someone with a specific theory or expertise could also argue that the bigger animal is less likely to survive, etc. Similarly, we already know that dinosaurs are gone. This isn't a situation where you need to act or make a prediction. Someone who understands Bayesian statistics can probably explain it better than me, but you have to take into account existing knowledge, and update it with new knowledge. Picking out something that you know is obsolete isn't relevant.