Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#341

Post by IggleSniggle » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 10:58 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #279

IggleSniggle wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...I'm a little confused. My computer still flashes the motherboard manufacturer until the fans are all assessed and then the windows logo. And while my connection is fast, it's a lot less reliable than the one I had 20 years ago, with about three 15-minute disconnects per day on average (although that has more to do with the general shit-quality of the Comcast monopoly than anything else).

But why do you turn the computer off? Thirty years ago the computer didn't have sleep. So it took a ton of power to have it sit on for no reason. I only reboot my machine for security updates now.

Now I find that I often come to my computer and it has been turned off for me, due to frequent updates.

20 years ago, I would turn off the monitor to avoid burn-in, but typically just kept the computer on.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#342

Post by therealdrag0 » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 11:14 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #334

therealdrag0 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then you got the wrong printer. And so did your mom. Many printers can plug-n-play on windows.

Sure, it was "plug and play", but like every printer, it took some work: you have to download and install a driver package and software suite, because this stuff isn't included in the Windows OS. This simply isn't the case in Linux: for many printers (particularly HPs), the drivers are already there.

Did you run Windows Update? Windows used to ship all drivers with the OS, but since 2018 they don't by default and instead match you in the cloud. You still might not have had to run the software suite; it might have been able to match and ship your drivers from the cloud.

I'm pretty sure that M$ has a bigger driver database than linux.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

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Post by OJFord » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 1:11 AM UTC

magduf wrote: post #92

OJFord wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not on iOS, I got one recently for while my Android phone's being repaired, and it was an unwelcome surprise that A) FF (or anything) can't be set as default browser instead of Safari; B) 'content blockers' only work in Safari, even though all browsers are forced to use it to render anyway.

You shouldn't be trying to set anything besides Safari as your default browser in iOS: Apple doesn't want you to. Your desires are not important if you're using an iOS device, and you're thinking wrongly to be wanting to do anything differently. If you want to do things your own way, Apple products are simply not for you; they've made this abundantly clear for decades now.

I thought I'd try it out while my usual phone's being repaired (plus I'm sceptical it can even be repaired, so that two weeks might turn into four if a replacement isn't forthcoming) - since Android has its issues too.

But yeah, I don't think it's for me. It may be a step forward on first-party privacy, but it's two steps back on third-party. And 20 steps back on 'platform freedom', no changing defaults, no file access for running apps like Syncthing, extremely limited customisation of the home screen (I like a simple alphabetical list of apps, nope, can't have that) or 'control centre' (not possible to put hotspot toggle there? Come on...) etc.

Plus fonts and UI elements feel massive, on the lowest text size. The Slack 'sidebar' takes up almost the full width, and about five channel names fill the height. (On an SE. Larger models of course have more space, but it's the size of things that irritates me, that presumably wouldn't change, there's just be a few more of them.)

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#344

Post by dragonsh » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 1:42 AM UTC

RHSeeger wrote: post #206

113 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have data / a citation to back up that statement? It's at the end of their comment.

The page in question discusses latency in terminals, not how it compares to performance of previous generations. That being said, it also seems to have to pull in the 99th percentile behavior in order for the timings to be an issue, and even then it's not horrible; it doesn't get actually "bad" until you consider the worst performance (99.9th percentile) of the worst performer (st). It seems overly picky to me.

Today's terminal has some difference, the fonts should look anti-aliased, flickering should be as minimal as possible, should be able to theme it based on preference. One terminal able to support so many different terminal type VT100, rxvt, and still need to perform fast. I have worked enough on text only and 256 graphics terminal in yester years and feel today is still better.

Another case, Google maps is a bad example in tours. Used it to explore many cities, not only turn by turn direction. It worked get although personally like openstreet maps, because I feel one company s shouldn’t control so many aspects of life and like open source nature of it.

Indeed able to discover a onsen built by community in Hokkaido. That’s based on a lake I saw by just zoom in out of the map to do exploration and saw it built by Ainu community living there. In that turn by turn map helped quite a lot to reach there subsequently just by click and dropping a pin there. Submitted a text describing it and subsequently visited by many people.

Took a journey through treacherous mountain and went up to 2500 meters high and crossed it via a tiny off-road designed for motorcycles. That too did based on exploration of map on phone.

Paper maps didn’t provide such convenience. Yes POS is slow, but then it has different expectations today. Try integrating old POS with 10 payment network working under milliseconds to authorise transactions. Worked enough since 1990 with dos based POS and also wrote IBM MQ C++ code for integration. Don’t want to go back there.

I think today is a step forward. Like always there will be good and bad as it was in 1980 or 1990. But largely today we do much more with computers than we ever did in those days.

So not everything is perceptually slow on computers. Apple Watch, iphone, androids are responsive and usually fast. Windows 10 for certain tasks might be slow but then overall it’s not that bad either.

As far as exploration goes you can do the same or even more today than before. I can discover planets. Built3D model in physical form, use CNC on desktop, do laser cutting in my home.

Built a computer like BBC micro, raspberry pi, fly a computer using fly by wire and test it using real physical model plane. Can do farming on a small scale using hydroponics at home. Can just go on and on about it. All possible thanks to advancement in speed and reduction of size in computing devices and peripherals.

So I feel it’s not slow, just the work we do with old computers is very different from what we do with modern one’s.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

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Post by prostheticvamp » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 3:19 AM UTC

scottlocklin wrote: post #280

dhconnelly wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working on Google Maps for close to five years now. I somehow missed the previous postings of this thread, but a little hyperbole never hurt anyone :) Your larger point about the inability in our profession to take a step back and consider the overall situation is spot-on. The mindset I most commonly encounter among other engineers when discussing any kind of systemic problems in our practices is a kind of…

hey did you ever use the old Verizon map app that came with their pre-Android phones? That was really, really good.

Huh. I did, and thought it was atrocious. Its only benefit at the time was live re-routing: the competition at the time, short of buying an actual GPS, was printing out directions from mapquest and hoping you don’t make a wrong turn.

I recall a few times driving out of state where I’d miss an exit, be unable to figure out my way to where I needed, pull over at a phone booth or public business, and start calling to see who was home and could run mapquest for me to get me back on the road. Don’t miss that.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

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Post by TheRealPomax » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 4:08 AM UTC

ryanlol wrote: post #75

TheRealPomax wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, I still can't set up a linux that's both graphical and feels snappy to this day.

I run xmonad on Debian bullseye with 5.5.3-grsec kernel, it’s definitely snappy. There’s no perceptible input lag, even when testing using the iPhone slo-mo thingy. I mostly use Chromium, electrum, signal-desktop and urxvt. Everything goes to shit as soon as you install one of those “desktop environments” though.

The thing is, the only thing that makes a computer pleasant to use, as opposed to merely functional, is that "desktop environment".

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

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Post by 6510 » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 6:30 AM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #321

6510 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pretty much all games in the early 80's had [so called] pixel perfect scrolling. Each frame showed exactly what was required. Today it is entirely acceptable for a map to be a jerky stuttering pile of crap. The same goes for the infinite scroll implementations. Its preposterous to start loading things after they are needed. There is a good analogy with making things in the physical world. The professional doesn't sta…

Games have huge advantages of constraint of application that mapping applications don't. You can get pixel perfect scrolling when you constrain the max rate the user can pass through the dataset, you deny them random access into the dataset, your dataset isn't trying to represent a space the volume of planet Earth, etc. There's a huge gulf between the use cases you're comparing here, and I don't believe for one secon…

Illl ignore the pedantic part since it was just an analogy, if it doesn't work for you there is little to talk about.

> Games have huge advantages of ....

I have thoughts like that but I consider them "making up excuses". You don't have to see it that way but I can't see someone fix a problem by making up excuses for it to exist. For me it is just like you can always come up with an excuse not to do something.

8 gigabytes of memory / 64 kilobytes of memory = 125 000 times as much memory.

14 gigahertz (4 cores x 3.5 GHz) / 1.023 MHz = 13 685 times as much processor power.

4108 gigahertz (2560 Cuda cores / 1605 MHz) / 2 MHz = 2 054 000 times as much video power.

Can I just call 2 Mhz memory bandwidth 16 Mbit/s?

If so, 500 Mbit / 16 Mbit = 31.25 fold the bandwidth

We are not rendering many layers of colorful animated game content. A map is just a bunch of boring lines. The modern screen however is a lot bigger. I see a glimmer of hope for an excuse!

320x200 px = 64000 px

1920x1080 px = 2073600 px

2073600 / 64000 = 32.4 times the screen size

meh?

We must applaud everyone involved in making all this hardware progress. It truly blows the mind and defies belief. No one could have imagined this.

Then came weee the software people and... and.....

I'm cringing to hard to continue writing this post.

The numbers don't lie, we suck. Lets leave it at that.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

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Post by modo_mario » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 7:31 AM UTC

friedman23 wrote: post #52

I remember programming culture in the 2000s and it was so stupid. Every programmer whining 24/7 about 'bloat', they were complaining about Java though not electron. Thank God the whiners never got anything they wanted.

Oh we still exist. I had this discussion not too long with a colleague about how some slowdown because of bloat he could have easily avoided was a very minor thing. Would require the dude that made it a day to change, would cost another half day to distribute, etc He found it really strange that i was so adamant about such a tiny bit of slowdown that nobody was probably bothered by until i after low-balling the amount of people using the software and amount of times they experienced that delay every workday over the past years calculated how much that had been in total and came out on months of lost time. Even if just a fraction of that ctime ould have been used it would have been worth it.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

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Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 8:19 AM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #197

TeMPOraL wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, the market equilibrium is usually the worst possible garbage that's still fit enough for purpose that it won't break (on average) before the warranty period ends. Some of the money you save on this isn't really saved, you just pay for it in having to replace the product sooner, or being constantly stressed and irritated with the quality and fragility of your tooling (it's essentially death by a thousa…

Is that true or does it just seem that way? Cars today are pretty reliable. Random other stuff seems pretty decent as long as you don't buy the absolute cheapest stuff around. I'm working on a solid wood desk with no nails or screws (it's called a "puzzle" desk because it fits together in a stable configuration without any connectors). I'm looking at a backpack, which I assume is nylon, and it seems pretty tough and…

> Is that true or does it just seem that way?

Definitely seems that way, but I don't think it's just an illusion.

Cheapest stuff is absolute garbage, arguably to the point you could consider it a waste of natural resources (for a few cents here and there, you could make things not break halfway their first use). What worries me though is that price isn't a reliable quality signal anymore - there's profit being made in selling cheap garbage at high prices, because many people are fooled into believing a more expensive good must be quality. Brands are no longer a quality signal either. Even ignoring that the market is currently DDoSed by throwaway "brands", even the proper ones don't mean much anymore. For instance, witness any discussion about white goods. Next to the people telling you which brands are historically quality ones, you'll find people reporting that recently, those quality brands started to cheap out on hardware and their products are no longer reliable or repairable.

Ultimately what I'm trying to say is that the market equilibrium for price-sensitive customers is complete garbage; some companies can survive on less price-sensitive customers, but I see a trend towards converting quality into better margins even there. It's true that we have more of everything now, but it also seems most of those things are short-lived, and increasingly shorter-lived. It would be fine if matter and energy were too cheap to meter, but they aren't - especially not if you factor in the environmental costs.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

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Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 8:24 AM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #290

ncallaway wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also doesn't change the fact that Google Maps is very bad at being a map. It's entire UI flow is oriented for giving turn-by-turn directions for people who know where they are and where they are going; As it turns out, that is probably the most popular use case for maps in the world. Note also that for most smartphone users of Google Maps the use-case is actually much broader than that. The UI flow also totally…

> As it turns out, that is probably the most popular use case for maps in the world. I don't think fully deciding an entire path was ever the major use of paper maps. But well, now that apps only allow for this usage, I am pretty sure it's the most popular one. Personally, I very rarely use maps this way. What makes Google shit useless for me (worse, actually, because it insists on opening by default, and people now…

Personally, I never use turn-by-turn even to walk around in unknown places, because it loses context. Instead, I stop at the screen that shows the route options; I don't press "Start" to activate the nav. Besides being more useful when walking around, it doesn't eat such ridiculous amounts of battery power that the turn-by-turn nav does for some reason.