DLSS 5 and the Ghost of Sal's Amusement Arcade

I want to start by saying something about this website, Wccftech, before I even get into what it's reporting, because the layout of it — have you tried to read an article on there on a phone, an actual phone, not one of these glass slabs everybody's carrying around now — the ads shift the text down four times before you finish the second sentence, and by the time I got to "RTX 50" I'd already forgotten what RTX 40 was, which, fine, maybe that's the point, maybe that's what they want, keep you scrolling, keep you confused, and I am confused, I want that on the record, I am a confused man reading a confused website about a graphics card company that can't decide which graphics card it loves more, and that — THAT — is 1982 all over again, except backwards, because in 1982 nobody made you choose. You had one television. It had a dial. The dial went up to thirteen and you were grateful.

So NVIDIA. Deep Learning Super Sampling. Five of them now, apparently, DLSS 5, and they're telling the RTX 40 people — people who bought a perfectly good card, paid good money, I assume, I don't know what these things cost, more than a used Buick I'd wager — they're telling those people "yes, technically, you get it too" while all the real love, all the real *attention*, is going to the RTX 50, which doesn't even exist yet as far as I can tell, it's a rumor, it's a future, and here we are optimizing our affections for a girl who hasn't walked into the dance yet while the one who's already there, who already said yes, who already put on the corsage — that's the RTX 40 in this scenario — sits by the punch bowl getting "supported" instead of "prioritized." Supported! You know what "supported" means? Supported is what they told my aunt Verna when they closed the trolley line and put in the bus that never came on time. Supported is a word for something they're easing out the back door while the band's still playing.

And here's the thing nobody at Wccftech or NVIDIA or anybody wants to say out loud: this is a machine deciding which of its own children to love more, and we built the machine, and we're going to let it decide, and in 1982 the closest thing we had to that was the Frogger machine at Sal's, the one with the cabinet that ran a little hot, and Sal — this is not the old-days story yet, I want to be clear, this is just Sal, we'll get to the story — Sal would prioritize which machine got the fan repaired first based on which one made him more quarters that week, and that machine KNEW, I swear to you it knew, the Centipede cabinet next to it would go a little dim like it was sulking.

Which reminds me — and I know I haven't finished the point about the model optimization, I'll come back to it, I always come back to it — which reminds me of the bus route. The 14. Not the 14A, the 14, the real one, before they split it, and there was a fella who rode it every single day at 7:10, big ears, always had a paper bag, never a briefcase, a paper bag, folded at the top like his mother packed it, and nobody knew what was in the bag, we used to guess, my brother said tools, I said sandwiches, our neighbor Dot — different Dot than the Dot on Fenwick, this was Dot from the bus, unrelated — Dot said "birds," just birds, no explanation, and then one day, this would've been, I want to say the spring, maybe March, the fella got off two stops early, at the stop by the shoe repair that wasn't even a real stop, the driver had to actually pull over special, and he never rode the 14 again, not once, and to this day I don't know what was in the bag and I don't know why he needed the shoe man that one particular day and not any of the four hundred other days he rode past it, and I bring this up now because — I don't know why I bring this up now. I don't. Moving on.

Where was I. Model optimization. RTX 50. Here's what gets me, here's what really gets me, and I want to be fair about this because I am not, contrary to what my daughter says, a man who thinks everything new is garbage — I don't think that, I refuse to think that, the microwave is fine, I like the microwave — but there is something rotten in a company telling its existing customers "you're supported" instead of "you're first," and normally I'd say this is exactly the kind of thing the free market fixes itself, let the customer walk, vote with your wallet, that's the American way, that's — no. No, wait. Hold on. I don't actually believe that. I said that because it's the thing you're supposed to say and I caught myself saying it like a man reciting a jingle he hates. The market didn't fix the trolley. The market didn't fix Sal's fan belts. The market just tells you who they've decided to stop supporting, politely, in a press release, using a soft word like "supported," and expects you to nod along the way you nod when the dentist says "you might feel a little pressure."

And another thing — and I haven't forgotten the ears fella, I think about him more than is healthy — another thing is these company names. RTX. Everything's initials now. In 1982 things had names. The Zenith. The Frigidaire. My uncle drove an Impala, not an "I-series," an Impala, a name you could say to a woman at a dance and she'd know exactly what you meant. Now it's RTX 40, RTX 50, DLSS 5, and I guarantee you nobody at that company could tell you what DLSS even stands for without looking it up on the same phone that's going to make them dumber for having looked it up. And another thing, while we're stacking these up, because I'm not letting go of any of them, not one — the price. Nobody in this article says the price. You know what a ticket to see the Frogger cabinet cost? Free, because you already paid for the quarter, that's not a gotcha, I'm making a point about transparency, a point I had fully formed about four minutes ago and which has now mostly left me.

There was also — and this is a separate story, a whole separate story, I want to tell it properly — there was a man named Chester, or it might've been Chet, they were cousins, or brothers, one of them had the limp, I want to say Chester had the limp but honestly by now it could've been the other one, and Chester-or-Chet ran the newsstand two blocks from the arcade, and every single day, rain or shine, he'd have the papers out by 5:45, folded in that particular way, spine out, and he had a dog, a beagle mix, answered to "Boots" but only some of the time, other times you'd call Boots and Boots would just look at you like you'd insulted his mother, and one winter — this would've been the winter it snowed the eleven inches, everybody remembers the eleven inches — Boots got loose and ended up four blocks over at the Methodist church, just sitting on the steps, no leash, patient as a deacon, and nobody ever figured out how he got the four blocks, because there's a highway on-ramp between the newsstand and the church, a real on-ramp, cars doing forty, and Boots was not what you'd call a cautious dog, and Chester-or-Chet never talked about it again, not once, closed the subject like a man closing a cash register at the end of a bad shift, and I only bring it up because the RTX 40, sitting there getting "supported" while the 50 gets all the optimization — no, that's not — I don't actually see the connection, I thought I had one, I don't. Skip it.

Here's my actual position, and I'll say it plain, though God knows plain isn't my strong suit: a company should love the thing you already sold somebody at least as much as the thing you're planning to sell somebody else, and if that's a controversial opinion in the year of our Lord whatever-this-is, then fine, put me on the record as controversial, put me right next to the eleven-inch snow and the fella with the paper bag and Boots on the church steps, because those are also, near as I can tell, controversial opinions that nobody wanted to hear and everybody's forgotten by now anyway.

And another thing — I never got back to the ears fella. I never will. Some loops don't close, that's not a design flaw, that's just Tuesday, that's just what it is when you get old enough that your own memory starts pulling the DLSS trick on you, prioritizing whatever's newest and shiniest and letting the RTX 40 of your brain — the stuff you actually paid for, the stuff that's already installed, already yours — sit there getting "supported" while you go chasing whatever hasn't even launched yet.

Anyway. The fan belt on the Centipede machine. Never did get fixed properly. That's still bothering me, if anyone's asking, which nobody is.

— Edgar, waiting on a bus that isn't coming