[cshimmin]

Fair enough! Bubble or not, I certainly have very regularly (weekly?) seen headlines on hn about transformers for at least a few years now. Like how bitcoin used to be on hn frontpage every week for a couple years circa 2010 (to the derision of half of the commenters). Not everyone is in the crypto space, but they know what bitcoin is.

Anyhow I suppose the existence of such questions on hn is evidence that I'm in more of a bubble that I esteemed, thanks for the reality check :)

(also my comment was in defense of parent who linked the wiki page, which defines transformer as per request, and is being downvoted for that)

[stavros]

I, too, haven't seen the word "transformer" outside an ML context in months. Didn't stop me from wondering if the OP meant the thing that changes voltage.