Comment by 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)
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.