The Stages Of Hardware Terror

The utopian future we'd have if developers actually used byte units correctly! The meme highlights the eternal confusion between binary prefixes (TiB/GiB/MiB/KiB) and decimal prefixes (TB/GB/MB/KB). For the uninitiated: 1 KB (kilobyte) is 1000 bytes, while 1 KiB (kibibyte) is 1024 bytes. Same pattern for mega, giga, tera. This 2.4% difference compounds as you go up, creating storage nightmares when your "1TB" drive mysteriously has only 931GB of actual space. Hard drive manufacturers love using decimal (makes their drives seem bigger), while operating systems use binary. The result? That flying car future remains theoretical while we're stuck explaining to users why their storage capacity seems to evaporate into the ether.

Remember when we thought these janky polygons were the peak of technology? In 2000, we'd sit there amazed at what was essentially a potato with hair clipping through a horse's neck. Now I'm disappointed when my 4K ray-traced game drops below 120fps. The best part? Those old games actually shipped without needing 50GB day-one patches. They just worked... mostly... if you ignored the nightmare fuel character models.

Ah, the classic "let me unmask this villain" meme perfectly captures modern game development! A 2006 game like Oblivion somehow takes up 120GB after being "remastered" (aka slapping on some prettier textures). But pull off that mask and—surprise!—it's actually Unreal Engine 5 bloating everything up like it's getting paid by the gigabyte. Remember when games fit on a single CD? Now you need to clear half your SSD just to install the main menu. The storage requirements are expanding faster than my coffee budget during debugging week.

Remember when we thought Apple's RAM upgrade pricing was highway robbery? Fast forward to 2024, and RAM prices are skyrocketing while GPU prices keep promising to "fall any day now" like that friend who says they'll pay you back "next week." The crypto miners, AI boom, and supply chain chaos have turned hardware pricing into a twisted joke. Your $3000 gaming rig from last year? Practically vintage at this point. At least Apple's consistent with their extortion—everyone else is just getting creative with theirs.

That's the Portal cake logo with "The MSRP is a lie" repeated like a dystopian mantra. Graphics card prices haven't been this fictional since cryptocurrency miners were building rigs in their mothers' basements. Manufacturers slap on MSRPs that belong in fantasy novels while retailers mark them up to "market value" – which is corporate speak for "whatever desperate gamers will pay." Nothing says "modern computing" like needing a second mortgage for a GPU that'll be obsolete before you finish paying it off.

The gaming industry's legal battles have reached new geometric heights! Nintendo apparently filed a patent claiming ownership of... *checks notes*... cube shapes. Yes, CUBE SHAPES. Because clearly, they invented 3D geometry in 1889 when they were making playing cards. Meanwhile, Valve (maker of Steam and the black cube-shaped Steam Deck) is getting sued for having the audacity to use the revolutionary concept of "six equal square faces." Next up: Sony patents spheres, Microsoft claims exclusive rights to rectangles, and EA announces you'll need to pay $9.99 to unlock the concept of edges. The patent lawyers must be absolutely thriving right now. "Your Honor, my client clearly invented the concept of three-dimensional objects with right angles back in 2001 with the GameCube!"