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sharemywin parent
what if cool new tech is just slowing down and AI is masking it.
cratermoon
Not a "what if". Can you name 3 new cool technologies that have come out in the last 5 years?
dlivingston
1. Copilot for Microsoft PowerPoint

2. Copilot for Windows Notepad

3. Copilot for Windows 11 Start Menu

Ifkaluva
Nah man, I’m still waiting for Copilot for vim.
kylehotchkiss
Yeah. Where are all the great new Mac native apps putting electron to shame, avalanche of new JS frameworks, and affordable SaaS to automate more of life? AI can write decent code, why am I not benefiting from that a consumer?
ynavigator
Well, if you're a consumer of code, then technically you benefit. Otherwise, you probably won't notice it as much.
sp527
It's almost like a lot of our technologies were pretty mature already and an AI trained on 'what has been' has little to offer with respect to 'what could be'.
kylehotchkiss
oof that's profound. Really nice closing thought for 2025.
ar_lan
LLMs, Apple Silicon, self-driving cars just off the top of my head without really thinking about it.
AlotOfReading
GPT-2 was 6 years ago, the first Apple silicon (though not branded as such at the time) was 15 years ago, and the first public riders in autonomous vehicles happened around 10 years ago. Also, 2/3 of those are "AI".
alwillis
> the first Apple silicon (though not branded as such at the time) was 15 years ago

Nobody, not even Apple was using the term "Apple Silicon" in 2010.

The first M series Macs shipped November 2020.

jajuuka
1 year is being pedantic. Apple Silicon is clearly referring to the M series chips which have disrupted and transformed the desktop/laptop market. Self driving also refers to the recent boom and ubiquity of self driving vehicles.
iAMkenough
M series is an interation of A series, "disrupting markets" since 2010. LLMs are an iteration of SmarterChild. "Self driving vehicles" is an iteration of the self-parking and lane assist vehicles of the last decade.

I'm bored.

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reshlo
All of those things are more than 5 years old.
ar_lan
I could not get in a Waymo and travel across San Francisco five years ago, are you serious?
astrange
Incredibly cheaper batteries and solar panels. Much better induction stoves.
cratermoon
I was thinking computer-related, but those are good, and better battery technology helps with computing.
giancarlostoro
Neura Link, Quantum computers are making interesting milestones with Microsoft releasing a processor chip for Quantum computing. Green steel is another interesting one, though not as 'sexy' as the previous two.
stuckinhell
didn't believe the quantum stuff, so I googled it. I'm shocked how far its come. Even China has some kind of photonic quantum chips now.
zzleeper
Wait so quantum is going to actually deliver something useful within the next 10-20 years??
ericmcer
Uhhh, LLMs? The shit computers can do now is absurd compared to 2020. If you showed engineers from 2020 Claude, Cursor, and Stable Diffusion and didn't tell them how they worked their minds would be fucking exploding.
kylehotchkiss
So LLMs exist therefore nothing else is worth the time? That’s sort of the gist of HN these past few years
phantasmish
Moreover: people’ve been crowing about LLM-enabled productivity for longer than it took a tiny team to conceive and build goddamn Doom. In a cave! With a box of scraps!

Isn’t the sales pitch that they greatly expand accessibility and reduce cost of a variety of valuable work? Ok, so where’s the output? Where’s the fucking beef? Shit’s looking all-bun at the moment, unless you’re into running scams, astroturfing, spammy blogs, or want to make ELIZA your waifu.

ericmcer
No I was just skeptical of the GPs assertion that tech hasn't produced anything "cool" in the last 5 years when it has been a nonstop barrage of insane shit that people are achieving with LLMs.

Like the ability for computers to generate images/videos/songs so reliably that we are debating if it is going to ruin human artists... whether you think that is terrible or good it would be dumb to say "nothing is happening in tech".

throw310822
This was posted earlier today:

https://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2025/12/i-made-the-xkcd-impo...

The xkcd comic is from 11 years ago (September 2014).

manicennui
Surely you have realized by now that a large portion of the HN userbase is here for get rich quick schemes.
kylehotchkiss
ahh brings me back to the blockchain days, and the many excuses people tried to use them instead of a SQL database for whatever reason
solumunus
It’s really incredible how quickly people take things for granted.
saubeidl
LLMs are one, granted. GP asked for three, though.
FloorEgg
GGPs question doesn't make sense though. What does it mean for a technology to "come out".

Also what does three prove? Is three supposed to be a benchmark of some kind?

I would wager every year there are dozens, probably hundreds, of novel technologies being successfully commercialized. The rate is exponentially increasing.

New procedural generation methods for designing parking garages.

New manufacturing approaches for fuselage assembly of aircraft.

New cold-rolled steel shaping and folding methods.

New solid state battery assembly methods.

New drug discovery and testing methods.

New mineral refinement processes.

New logistics routing software.

New heat pump designs.

New robotics actuators.

See what I mean?

potbelly83
Great list, and most of those don't involve big tech. I think what your list illustrates is that progress is being made, but it requires deep domain expertise.
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