Nothing Much. Which is surprisingly the same as 2024. Apart from a possible recession.

In some way I feel things have stagnated. Apart from rapid progress on AI. We will continue to see development and progress on hardware. N2 finally from TSMC but not on Apple SoC yet. Blackwell GPU, continue price improvement in GPU competition due to Intel ARC. Etc Most of these are obvious and continue from current trend.

I used to post these trend and roadmap on HN. Now they no longer seems important or matter. iOS and Android have somewhat converged into very similar for the past 3-4 years, that I wasn't expected.

May be Trump winning election along with the pendulum swing back in such massive way wasn't expected as well.

May be this is a sign of depression but In some sense I feel everything is very boring. My most unpresent feeling is that A lot of things outside tech have declined in quality. And we are not improving on it.

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Edit: May be I will use this space to rant about things.

Video Codec - No x266. No VVC Encoder. No Progress on AV2. Stagnated H.267 research. The most popular codec is still AVC finalised in 2003, and AVC High Profile in 2005. So we are 20 years already and still using it.

AAC-LC is finally patent free. But the world no longer cares about Audio Codec. AAC-LC was the first version of AAC that came just after MP3 and we are on 27 years already.

JPEG-XL Not getting anywhere. Despite clearly being the better option for BBP 1.0+. JPEG is still most widely use, and JPEG was finalised in 1992 so we are 32 years in already.

Apple milking on hardware. iOS isn't getting any better. Although latest version of macOS finally have some useful addition.

Internet getting smaller. We can no longer search for things we once saw with Google. Google hasn't been great at most things since their IPO. But it does seems that people are getting excited with their latest AI development.

Amazon milking its AWS. No significant competition from HyperScaler. And no middle ground with Dedicated Sever and Cloud Offering.

Minimal Hardware progress on NAND and HDD. Especially in terms of Cost / GB. HAMR is late by at least 5 - 7 years depending on how you count it.

Retail are now going to Tech without understand anything about it. From QR Code Menu to ordering system inside restaurant with minimal Mobile Network reception. Adding WiFi but with old equipment, capacity constrain before loading anything is very very bad UX.

MNOs moving much slower into 5G telecom equipment upgrading. Basically milking 5G and 4G customer for as long as possible. Instead of trying to make its services better.

USB-C is still a pile of mess.

No Consumer NAS backup function with S3 Glacier Deep Archive.

Streaming is a pile of mess. Netflix gone down hill. Selection of Movies have completely disappeared. I have no idea how Youtube Music is still...... oh well after all it is google I guess I shouldn't expect anything.

Everything is subscription. No BluRay successor in the pipeline. Software continue to be bloated.

Mobile Gaming is just a repeat of the same thing. Literally the same engine with different IPs. And loot box gambling. I have finally deleted all games on my iPhone.

Even Desktop Gaming aren't better. There are finally enough people complaining about Unreal Engine, while simplify game development ultimately make most games looked the same. Along with low frame rate. One could argue this is development studio problem and nothing to do with Unreal, I think there are finally some voices concern about how EPIC encourages it.

Modern AAA Games are also so concerned about Graphics and other crap but completely forgotten about Game Play and Storyline.

On Gaming. I am waiting for Switch 2. But then it is not only delayed. But in terms of hardware released and used in Nintendo Console, Switch 2 will likely be the worst of all in its history using tech that will be 5-7 years old by the time it releases. I know it is not all about hardware but it could have been a generation better and we wouldn't repeat what happen with Zelda lag in some scenes.

Outside Tech, Shrinkflation is happening everything in the food and drinks industry. They are finally reaching another 10 - 15 years cycle where they are looking to cut corners. Both in ingredients and size.

Food quality across the board is decreasing. Mostly because of inflation.

Cheap Chinese Electric cars are everywhere. May be people like them. But they are of very low quality. A little sad German didn't react. But again this is to be expected. And why everything is boring.

Wireless Earphone industry is happy with their margin. May be I am the only person who want battery swap on these thing instead of thinking them as disposable gadget every 2 years. I was hoping someone outside Apple would do it since I first bought AirPod Gen 1. But no. nearly 10 years later we are still throwing them away.

Housing is still expensive. We still dont have ways to built high rise high quality neatly furnished building with substantially less time.

So much about Apple Pay replacing the wallet and we just passed 10 years anniversary. NFC hasn't improved.

I guess after typing a lot of these out I realised and can summarised it as, everyone is busy milking their product and services they all forgot about the content. That is what annoys me the most. Things aren't getting better.