Over the last 15 years, ~50% of improvement in chess engines is due to smarter programming, not better hardware: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/76cwz4/15_years_of_chess_engine_development/
What other domains are like this? Lossy audio/image compression is definitely better today. There must be others situations.
miniblog.
Related Posts
Amazing blog post about running a modern Linux kernel on Chumby hardware, investigating bad CPU numbers from top, and finding a Linux kernel bug from 2009!
When someone says "you should use the cloud", I'm never sure if they mean:
1: use a virtual server rather than running your own hardware, or
2: use hosted services rather than running your own e.g. database
2 is often surprisingly expensive IME.
Remotely bricking satellite modems as part of (presumably) nation state hostilities: https://www.reversemode.com/2022/03/satcom-terminals-under-attack-in-europe.html
If over-the-air update systems aren't receiving regular patches, maybe it would be better for industry to use hardware that can't be reflashed remotely?