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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

#831

Post by jg0r3 »

naasking wrote: post #299
dahart wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dumbest and most obvious of realizations finally dawned on me after trying to build a software startup that was based on quality differentiation. We were sure that a better product would win people over and lead to viral success. It didn’t. Things grew, but so slowly that we ran out of money after a few years before reaching break even. What I realized is that lower costs, and therefore lower quality, are a compe…

> What I realized is that lower costs, and therefore lower quality, This implication is the big question mark. It's often true but it's not at all clear that it's necessarily true. Choosing better languages, frameworks, tools and so on can all help with lowering costs without necessarily lowering quality. I don't think we're anywhere near the bottom of the cost barrel either. I think the problem is focusing on improv…

Could you link any of these studies?

I couldn't find anything specific when searching.

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

#832

Post by dahart »

ajolly wrote: post #830
dahart wrote: post #826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, and I think a lot of people who’ve tried it would agree. I’ve heard the same from others too, and I believe it.

I don’t know what typical display latency of just browsing files with a monitor these days. I’d guess it’s probably a few frames, and I’d bet we would be able to feel the difference between 3 frames of latency at 144hz and 1 frame of latency at 144hz. I’m also curious if mouse cursor motion blur would make any difference.

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

#833

Post by froggit »

dahart wrote: post #217
caseyy wrote: post #91

There is an argument to be made that the market buys bug-filled, inefficient software about as well as it buys pristine software. And one of them is the cheapest software you could make. It's similar to the "Market for Lemons" story. In short, the market sells as if all goods were high-quality but underhandedly reduces the quality to reduce marginal costs. The buyer cannot differentiate between high and low-quality g…

The dumbest and most obvious of realizations finally dawned on me after trying to build a software startup that was based on quality differentiation. We were sure that a better product would win people over and lead to viral success. It didn’t. Things grew, but so slowly that we ran out of money after a few years before reaching break even. What I realized is that lower costs, and therefore lower quality, are a compe…

> There’s probably another name for this, it’s not quite the Market for Lemons idea.

"Enshittification." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

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

#834

Post by ranger_danger »

TFYS wrote: post #751
pixelfarmer wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no system that fulfills your requirements. It is even easy to explain why: Humans are part of all the moving pieces in such a system and they will always subvert it to their own agenda, no matter what rules you put into place. The more complex your rule set, the easier it is to break. Look at games, can be a card game, a board game, some computer game. There is a fixed set of rules, and still humans try to c…

Cheating happens in competition based systems. No one cheats in games where the point is to co-operate to achieve some common goal. We should aim to have a system based on recognizing those common goals and enabling large scale co-operation to achieve them.

> enabling large scale co-operation

This has been proven over and over not to work. Humans are inherently competitive, and so corruption ALWAYS takes over.

Even if you make everything and everyone equal, they eventually get bored and start trying to one-up each other and push the limits of what's allowed, which is just another way to say corruption.

Small government, big government, socialism, communism, capitalism, everything the world has tried has ended in mass corruption.

> It's possible to design systems that do not force people to compete

I have yet to see any real evidence of this working on a societal level.

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

#835

Post by nurettin »

If memory doesn't fail me, we kind of went through this phase back in the early 2010s when a lot of companies rewrote their php/ruby web applications and delayed jobs in go, blogging about experiencing speedups and lowering server costs.

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

#836

Post by TFYS »

ranger_danger wrote: post #827
TFYS wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's why we need new ways to make decisions using direct democracy. Any system that delegates decision making to an individual or small group is vulnerable to corruption. Everyone should participate in decision-making.

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

#837

Post by fennecfoxy »

Oh look, Carmack says something obvious again and people listen to it like gospel.

Don't get me wrong, I like the guy. But what has he done since getting booted from id/Doom team? Espousing VR but with no real breakthroughs in the space with his name on them?

I'm thankful for Doom 2016. Without booting him it would have never been possible. Although looking at the recent vikings-wannabe expansion with a ridiculous, dumb "story" seems they've lost the plot again-executives get their grubby fingers into franchises. People just wanna rip&tear, don't need a story for that - if anything focus on combat/environment/number of enemy improvements & leave it at that.

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

#838

Post by sidewndr46 »

Gigachad wrote: post #60
_aavaa_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we've squandered that 1000x not on bounds checking but on countless layers of abstractions and inefficiency.

Am I taking crazy pills or are programs not nearly as slow as HN comments make them out to be? Almost everything loads instantly on my 2021 MacBook and 2020 iPhone. Every program is incredibly responsive. 5 year old mobile CPUs load modern SPA web apps with no problems. The only thing I can think of that’s slow is Autodesk Fusion starting up. Not really sure how they made that so bad but everything else seems super s…

I obviously don't know anything about you, but if you used computers in the 486 & Pentium era most operations were instant. There were few things that took enough time to visually notice them happen, even in graphical interfaces. I remember even later in the Pentium III era trying to benchmark different practical operations and coming to the conclusion that when it takes less than 1 second to do most things, my benchmarks weren't worth much at all.

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

#839

Post by ranger_danger »

TFYS wrote: post #836
ranger_danger wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's why we need new ways to make decisions using direct democracy. Any system that delegates decision making to an individual or small group is vulnerable to corruption. Everyone should participate in decision-making.

"Everyone" is for lack of a better word, stupid, and routinely votes against their own interests, and don't know what they actually want. Just ask Americans.

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

#840

Post by TFYS »

ranger_danger wrote: post #839
TFYS wrote: post #836

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why we need new ways to make decisions using direct democracy. Any system that delegates decision making to an individual or small group is vulnerable to corruption. Everyone should participate in decision-making.

"Everyone" is for lack of a better word, stupid, and routinely votes against their own interests, and don't know what they actually want. Just ask Americans.

I agree, and that's why the decision-making process should be more complex than just a simple vote. It should be a process where everyone participating is forced to consider the issue from all sides.
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