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The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

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Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#821
post #466
post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t think this leads to market collapse You must have read that the Market for Lemons is a type of market failure or collapse. Market failure (in macroeconomics) does not yet mean collapse. It describes a failure to allocate resources in the market such that the overall welfare of the market participants decreases. With this decrease may come a reduction in trade volume. When the trade volume decreases signific…

The Wikipedia page for Market for Lemons more or less summarizes it as a condition of defective products caused by information asymmetry, which can lead to adverse selection, which can lead to market collapse. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons The Market for Lemons idea seems like it has merit in general but is too strong and too binary to apply broadly, that’s where I was headed with the suggesti…

The papers results are only barley accounted for in reality, as it misses many real world tactics and heuristics people actually use to get around the problem. Let alone many other market mechanism that exist around that market.

The real effects are way smaller then claimed in the paper and market collapses don't or almost never happen for that reason.

And in real live many people drive reliable used cars. And may people buy used cars over and over again. Because its not about verification, only about picking one of the better options, and many heuristics can be applied to do that.

If market forces push everything towards lower quality. Why are cars (and everything else) today so much more energy efficient and more comfortable. Why are phones so much better? Why is pretty much every product today so much better then it was 50 years ago?

Somehow everything gets worse, yet my operating system on my computer crashes far less often. Despite many more features. My hardware fails less often to, harddisk, then and now, its a joke.

The food is better, both in quality and diversity when I go to restaurants.

I really don't understand how people can argue against this claiming quality is going down over time. Outside of very specific things very temporarily, like twitter, this isn't the case.

There are many reason for this, and only focusing on finding a list of as many 'market failures' as economist can come up with, misses so much about how in the real world people (including governments) deal with many of these things.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear that such comments are similar to the old 'a monster cable makes my digital audio sound more mellow!' The eye percieves at about 10 hz. That's 100ms per capture. All the rest, I'd have to see a study that shows how any higher framerate can possibly be perceived or useful.

Well if you believe that, start up a video game with a framerate limiter and set your game's framerate limit to 10 fps and tell me how much you enjoy the experience. By default your game will likely be running at either 60 fps or 120 fps if you're vertical synced (depends on your monitor's refresh rate). Make sure to switch back and forth between 10 and 60/120 to compare. Even your average movie captures at 24 hz. Ag…

Sure, that can all be true, and it still doesn't make 500hz make a particle of use.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#823
post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear that such comments are similar to the old 'a monster cable makes my digital audio sound more mellow!' The eye percieves at about 10 hz. That's 100ms per capture. All the rest, I'd have to see a study that shows how any higher framerate can possibly be perceived or useful.

> The eye perceives at about 10 hz. Not sure what this means; the eye doesn’t perceive anything. Maybe you’re thinking of saccades or round-trip response times or something else? Those are in the ~100ms range, but that’s different from whether the eye can see something. This paper shows pictures can be recognized at 13ms, which is faster than 60hz, and that’s for full scenes, not even motion tracking or small localiz…

From that, then, we conclude that somehow 500Hz is important or meaningful?

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Philips Silentio vacuum cleaner is both quiet and powerful and is also within the EU limits on input power. It will stick to the floor if I turn up the power too high. And the Norwegian made and designed low flow toilets in my house flush perfectly every time. Have the flush volumes reduced further in the last fifteen years?

> My Philips Silentio vacuum cleaner is both quiet and powerful and is also within the EU limits on input power. It will stick to the floor if I turn up the power too high. I don't believe you and it besides the point because I suspect that it is an expensive vacuum cleaner. I don't want to put any thought into a vacuum cleaner. I just want to buy the most powerful (bonus points if it is really loud), I don't care ab…

Both the Silentio and the toilets are very much mid range or lower. Definitely not a fancy bathroom, just one that complies with regulations and is properly designed. The toilets are Gustavsen.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#825
post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack, teams, vs code, miro, excel, rider/intellij, outlook, photoshop/affinity are all applications I use every day that take 20+ seconds to launch. My corporate VPN app takes 30 seconds to go from a blank screen to deciding if it’s going to prompt me for credentials or remember my login, every morning. This is on an i9 with 64GB ram, and 1GN fiber. On the website front - Facebook, twitter, Airbnb, Reddit, most news…

> This is on an i9 On which OS?

Windows 11. It was windows 10 before that and it was still bad but definitely got worse with win11. Unsure if it win10 vs win11 was the culprit or a windows defender change happened at the same time.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#826
post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The eye perceives at about 10 hz. Not sure what this means; the eye doesn’t perceive anything. Maybe you’re thinking of saccades or round-trip response times or something else? Those are in the ~100ms range, but that’s different from whether the eye can see something. This paper shows pictures can be recognized at 13ms, which is faster than 60hz, and that’s for full scenes, not even motion tracking or small localiz…

From that, then, we conclude that somehow 500Hz is important or meaningful?

Is it only 500 or 10, and nothing in between? You could have argued against 500 with the GP comment instead of countering with something that’s demonstrably untrue. I handed you the study you asked for.

Movies’ 24Hz is too slow, just watch a horizontal pan. 24Hz is good enough for slow things, but it was chosen that low for cost reasons, not because it’s the limit of perception. US TV’s 60hz interlace isn’t the limit either, which is also shown with horizontal pans. 60hz progressive looks different than 30hz, just watch YouTube or turn on frame interpolation on a modern TV.

The limit of meaningful motion tracking perception might be in the 100-200Hz range. The reason 500Hz is meaningful to gamers is, I think, because of latency rather than frequency. Video systems often have multiple frames of latency, so there actually is a perceptible difference to them between 60Hz and 500Hz.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#827
post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did Political corruption not exist? In what system in history did the people in power have so few rotten apples that corruption was an anomally? Blaming corruption on capitalism is silly. As long has worldhas resources, people want control of reasources, and bad actors will do bad actors thingies.

You're right, political corruption is a problem in other systems as well, not just capitalism. I guess it would be more accurate to say that power concentration causes political corruption. We should try to figure out if it's possible to manage the economy in a way that limits the amount of power any individual can have to such an extent that corruption would be impossible.

So far I have not seen that it is possible, because you cannot get the majority to agree on who gets to say what the limit is.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#828
post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not century. Mao and communism brought famine and death to millions. The move from that to "capitilism with Chinese characteristics" is what has brought about the greatest standard of living increase in human history. What they're doing now is a mix of socialism, capitilism and CPP dominance. I'm not an American, but I understand FDR wielded socialism too, and that really catapulted the US towards its golden era.

Chinese do capitalism better than anyone else. Chinese companies ruthlessly compete within China to destroy their competition. Their firms barely have profits because everyone is competing so hard against others. Whereas US/EU is full of rent seeking monopolies that used regulatory capture to destroy competition.

How is consistently low profits across the board "better capitalism than anyone else"?

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really stealing. You could off course build software that is more optimized and with the same features but at a higher cost. Would most buyers pay twice the price for a webb app that loads in 1 sec instead of 2? Probably not.

Try loading slack and youtube on a 4 year old laptop. It’s more in the 10s, and good luck if you only have 8GB of ram.

That is not stealing. Try transporting a large bed in a tiny city car. And of course you can use youtube in say a mac m1 with only 8 gb of ram.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#830
post #826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From that, then, we conclude that somehow 500Hz is important or meaningful?

Is it only 500 or 10, and nothing in between? You could have argued against 500 with the GP comment instead of countering with something that’s demonstrably untrue. I handed you the study you asked for. Movies’ 24Hz is too slow, just watch a horizontal pan. 24Hz is good enough for slow things, but it was chosen that low for cost reasons, not because it’s the limit of perception. US TV’s 60hz interlace isn’t the limit…

I find a big difference between running my desktop at 60 HZ versus 144 HZ in how smooth the mouse moves and how easy it is to click on a small area of the screen with fast mouse movement.
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