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NVIDIA has removed all tech demos that rendered a woman from their website

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First post, by antrad

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I never had a Nvidia GPU and few weeks ago I got my hands on an old computer with a "fabulous" GT 610. I started going through old Nvidia tech demos on their website that I previously couldn't run on my ATI/AMD GPUs.

Today I noticed all Nvidia's tech demos with female characters are removed from the official Nvidia website; Dusk, Dawn, Nalu, Luna, Adrianne, Medusa and A New Dawn are all gone. I last accessed the website on September 22nd when those were still there, so this removal happened during the last week.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/community/demos/

Luckily Internet Archive has stored the official Nvidia webpage with the demos and they can still be downloaded there:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200921115422/ht … ommunity/demos/

It is obvious they are very specific about what is being removed or "canceled" how they call it these days. I think old Matrox, Ati, Nvidia and even Futuremark benchmarks and demoscene are a very unique technological art form showing both the evolution of computer graphics hardware and programming and should stay accessible to public. For millennia other art forms have been depicting women and those are not being removed from museums and public spaces...yet. Even ignoring the artistic aspects of them, they have a very important practical value today, like how our member here Dege uses DirectX and Glide based demos to test his dgVoodoo.

This was an unnecessary move and it still blows my mind how the world has changed so rapidly. A New Dawn has been released with pride just 7 years ago to showcase the latest advancements in consumer graphics hardware and software and now it has been canceled by the same company. And if you want to start a discussion about it on Nvidia's reddit page they will delete your topic.

https://antonior-software.blogspot.com

Reply 6 of 18, by The Serpent Rider

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Maybe one of the digital characters got AI and then identified as a real person and tried to sue them

Adrianne is real life model. They specifically invited her for 3D modeling to showcase how realistic modern graphics could get (mostly face).

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 9 of 18, by Cyberdyne

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Ohh that backwards ultra left antifa feminist blm cancel culture in action 🙁

I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.

Reply 10 of 18, by Shreddoc

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All part of the swinging pendulums of social trend.

For example, counter-objectification is now rife in mainstream media - you won't have to watch long before seeing a female character openly going "raorrr!" and "look at that butt!", "what a hunk!" and similar about random attractive men, and no fuss being made of it whatsoever, despite that being a direct reflection of a behaviour type that feminism hates and campaigns against on behalf of it's own gender.

But meh. Life's too short to give a crap.

Reply 12 of 18, by Big Pink

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Shreddoc wrote on 2020-10-01, 21:26:

you won't have to watch long before seeing a female character openly going "raorrr!" and "look at that butt!", "what a hunk!" and similar about random attractive men, and no fuss being made of it whatsoever, despite that being a direct reflection of a behaviour type that feminism hates and campaigns against on behalf of it's own gender.

We already had the Spice Girls 20 years ago 😉

I thought IBM was born with the world

Reply 13 of 18, by SodaSuccubus

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ZellSF wrote on 2020-10-01, 08:06:

I'm surprised Nvidia still have any old tech demos up, I would have expected them all to be removed long ago so can't even be mildly upset they deleted some of them.

Corporations are about making money, not preserving history.

Yeah I'm gonna have to agree with this. I honestly doubt someone at Nvidia, looked at a bunch of old tech demos with skimpy latex suited girls and intentionally decided to play sides by removing them.

They're old. They don't represent Nvidia's current linup. They don't show off any of Nvidia's latest tech. To the average Nvidia employee, they probably arnt worth perserving. Maybe they just wanna leave the era of cheesy action movie CGI character demos from the early 2000s behind. Who knows.

But I doubt it has anything to do with Feminism, Cancel Culture, or whatever else the social media birds are chirping these days.

Reply 14 of 18, by Shreddoc

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SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-10-02, 00:49:

Yeah I'm gonna have to agree with this. I honestly doubt someone at Nvidia, looked at a bunch of old tech demos with skimpy latex suited girls and intentionally decided to play sides by removing them.

I can't speak about intentions or motivations, but cherry-picking out the demos which featured female characters does appear to be exactly what has happened here.

All other 'cheesy old tech demos' are still on nvidias site, going back to the year 2000. It is specifically the female character based ones which have been removed.

Which would seem to imply it's a pretty clear-cut example of this "cancel culture", or whatever name the cool kids are calling it.

Reply 16 of 18, by Snover

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Hi everyone.

It’s helpful to note that a vendor has removed some content from their servers, and it’s OK to express discontent about this, but please do not foment conspiracy theories, use discriminatory jokes, or make insulting comments about other people or groups of people on VOGONS. These behaviours are against the site rules. Using pejoratives and loaded language like “cancel culture” is extremely likely to lead a flame war and/or an echo chamber of hate, so please try not do that either.

In this particular case, consider that while it is possible these demos were removed because NVIDIA decided that they were no longer in line with their values, it is also possible that they were removed because a nation state with conservative values blocked or threatened to block NVIDIA’s entire site over this content, and it wasn’t worth it just to keep some old demos around. Or, that some contract related to those demos expired or was disputed. Or something else entirely. Who knows! (Probably not you, unless you work at NVIDIA and were involved.) It’s not super helpful to speculate since the actual reason why this happened isn’t relevant to the goal of this site, so please do your best to avoid it.

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 17 of 18, by Shagittarius

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There is so much to be said about your message Snover, it's quite obvious I would disagree with you on many issues, but being that this is a forum for computers and not politics I will respect the request. I just wish you hadn't been so demeaning towards others opinions in asking.