Comment by Beltalowda | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Beltalowda | Hacker News Reader

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> Without a doubt 5 years now JPEG XL will become like Opus and set the standard for next generation image formats.

I wrote a little X11 screenshot tool last year; one of the reasons I wrote it is because I wanted to save images as WebP rather than PNG that most tools use, since it's quite a bit smaller. Not that I'm running out of disk space, but it just seemed nice; one of those "no, it's not really needed but it's fun and why not?" weekend projects.

Anyhow, I discovered that loads of stuff doesn't support WebP. This was unexpected as it's been around for ages and supported by almost everything, but things like uploading to GitHub, Telegram, and many services doesn't work. It was disappointing and I had to add PNG support just for that.

I fear that JPEG XL will be in a similar situation in the future, where loads of websites can and do use it for their images, but also loads of services don't support it so it's a lot less useful than it could/should be. I hope I'm wrong.

You could make a similar case for audio. GP described Opus as "the definitive codec for lossy compression", which made me do a bit of a double take. Opus is absolutely the technically superior audio format, but when you want to give users a file you'll be sure they can play, you give them an MP3.

I expect JPEG and PNG to become for images what MP3 is today. And I expect H.264 to become that for video. These formats are too ingrained, whatever their technical limitations.

Technologists consistently underestimate the power of backwards compatibility. Itanium was better than AMD64, DVORAK is better than QWERTY, and I'm sure Esperanto is lightyears ahead of the monstrosity that is English. But backwards compatibility always wins, because it fits what the world was already designed around.

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(To be fair to GP, they said Opus is the definitive choice for the web, which may be true for integrated in-browser playback. But in other contexts, well, Amazon sells MP3s, not Opus files.)

> Itanium was better than AMD64,

No, AMD64 is far superior, Itanium's benefits never materialized. Any BOTH offer backwards compatibility, anyhow.

> DVORAK is better than QWERTY,

Not by enough to matter except in extreme circumstances. I say this as a Dvorak typist.

> I'm sure Esperanto is lightyears ahead of the monstrosity that is English.

It's not. It is needlessly complicated. "Basic," "Simple," or "Technical" English (which came along a few years after Esperanto) is far simpler and quicker to learn.

> But backwards compatibility always wins, because it fits what the world was already designed around.

Besides all the above being incorrect, some examples like the rise of ARM serves as a count-point.

ARM enabled a class of devices that x86 outright didn't support at the time (and largely still does not). In my eyes, that's the exception to the rule: when something is not merely incrementally better, but actually a difference in kind. That's what it takes to supersede backwards compatibility.

I said in my last post that I expect h.264 to become the MP3 of video files—but if that doesn't happen, I suspect it will be due to the format's lack of HDR support. That's also a difference in kind—something every consumer will immediately notice, if high quality HDR displays become common in the future.

> ARM enabled a class of devices that x86 outright didn't support at the time (and largely still does not).

What time, and which class of devices? Certainly it's true of very low-power embedded devices, but those aren't of particular interest... Embedded devices can easily switch between architectures without end users even noticing.

If we are referring to ARM being used for more computationally intensive devices... Like smart phones, tablets, and servers, then x86 has always had competitive options.

The earliest couple Nokia Communicators were x86 based, not ARM. Years before they switched to ARM, the National Semiconductor (later AMD) Geode processors debuted and were surely competitive with ARM, having power ratings as low as 0.7watt. Blackberry phones came years later, and iPhone and Android devices much later yet. The OLPC project using Geode CPUs on their XO-1 certainly proves their viability.

> It's not. It is needlessly complicated. "Basic," "Simple," or "Technical" English (which came along a few years after Esperanto) is far simpler and quicker to learn.

I'm sure it's easy to say that when you are already an English speaker. I personally doubt it very much. Is there some data maybe that supports this point of view?

As a non-native speaker, I think it's "easier" in the sense that many non-native speakers already tend to have some exposition to English through music, films, and other media. For Esperanto, this exposition is basically 0 unless you're a geek and watched that William Shatner Esperanto film.

The amount of exposition varies based on a number of factors, but anything is better than nothing.

I see, that makes perfect sense. But I wouldn't call the language itself being "easier" but rather the process of learning it. However I don't think parent meant it like that.

> I personally doubt it very much.

It might help if you specified exactly what it is you doubt...

It's a simple fact that Basic English has a shorter wordlist than Esperanto, simple rules, and being based on English it omits things like gender for objects.

While perhaps exaggerated, the claim was: "it would take seven years to learn English, seven months for Esperanto, and seven weeks for Basic English."

Some references to start with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Criticism

https://englishharmony.com/english-is-easy/

https://academickids.com/encyclopedia/index.php/Basic_Englis...

The first doubt was around the fact that a language with the pronounciation background coming out of the English language will be "easier" to learn than a strictly phonetic one.

Just looking over the list of words in your last link, I'm pretty sure that any number of them would trip someone that is a blank slate. For example: "who", "wheel" and "humour" are vastly inconsistent with regards to how they sound. Having to learn these idiosyncrasies, even for 900 words, would be - in my opinion - more difficult than the basic rules of Esperanto (and Ido, which seems even simpler).

I would imagine that coupled with a phonetic transliteration of the common sounds it would be easier but then the language would probably become a different thing all together.

I hope that clarifies a bit.

I don't think you're right about H264 for video. Video is big enough that there is real money to be made in better formats.

In 2020, 90%+ of online Video are still served with H264. And then you have to factor in storage cost. Remember Network bandwidth cost continues to drop with clear roadmap ahead. While Storage, both NAND and HDD cost reduction has many roadblocks. Storing additional video in different codec can be costly depending volume.

> DVORAK is better than QWERTY

Not if you're a programmer, punctuation, which is much more frequent in programming languages than english, is a lot harder to type.

I've heard colemak is better for developers, but as a vim user, relearning touch typing AND my vim muscle memory doesn't appeal to me, so i haven't given it a serious try.

In vim wouldn’t you just remap everything so that the physical keys stay the same in normal mode, and only use an alternative layout in insert mode?

There's too much cognitive overhead if you do this. For example, to change a word we use `ciw`, which roughly means "Change Inner Word" as a mnemonic. There are quite a lot of similar keys with mnemonics, which would prolly make no sense if you keep the QWERTY keypresses on a Dvorak layout.

I find such mnemonics only useful for initially learning how vim works. After a while it's all just muscle memory and I don't even think about how to do stuff, I just do it.

I was at that point several times (using Neo2).

The problem is that there is too much to remap, basically you need every letter on the keyboard. And if you keep positions, mnemonics do not make sense anymore. "Change Inner Word" would become "JC," (on Dvorak).

If you keep the letters (instead of the positions) all commands in muscle memory do not work anymore. I tried to relearn those ... but in the end it is too much effort for too little gain.

These days, whenever I get fancy I just switch the keyboard layout to Neo2 when writing longer texts and switch back when going back to command mode. (I guess there is a way to automate that switch, that would be interesting now that I think of it).

> because it fits what the world was already designed around

There is this quote from Edward Bernays that I like

> “The great enemy of any attempt to change men's habits is inertia. Civilization is limited by inertia.”- Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda

> Itanium was better than AMD64

I thought the consensus was that Itanium turned out to be a significant mistake and represented a misestimate of how we could utilise it in software?

Yeah, axiolite‘s reply caused me to read up more on the history of Itanium, and I think that was a poor example on my part.

> But backwards compatibility always wins, because it fits what the world was already designed around.

Early Itanium included a x86 unit. Intel tried everything it could to push it.

> and I'm sure Esperanto is lightyears ahead of the monstrosity that is English

A lot of the complexity in English comes from active use and adapting to new concepts and integrating foreign words. Hopefully Esperanto will never be in a position to suffer the same issue and join the ranks of Itanium instead.

> You could make a similar case for audio

It wasn't really my intention to "make a case"; just an observation/lament/complaint.

Oops, that was just a figure of speech, I didn't mean anything by it!

>but when you want to give users a file you'll be sure they can play, you give them an MP3.

Or AAC-LC. Which is so much better than MP3 while having the 99.9999% compatibility. ( It is pretty hard to find something that support MP3 and NOT AAC )

Apple didn't support WebP for the longest time. A bunch of fairly major sites started using them. While they worked in the browser, when downloading the image macOS couldn't open it. The same went for the video format.

I just tried downloading a couple and they seem to work now, but I've grown to hate WebP. Even if they open today, I likely won't keep anything saved as WebP, because I won't trust it will work down the road, where jpg and png will likely work for decades.

Apple could force the industry forward if they added Opus, FLAC, and JPEG XL support everywhere. Ok, they’re often the ones holding everyone else back in these areas.

It's not too wrong to say Safari is the new IE being the anomaly of all.

Steve Jobs was asked a question related to this many years ago [1]. Older Jobs was asked as well [2].

The trouble is that you may want Opus, FLAC, and JPEG XL, but someone else wants a different set, and someone else wants yet a different set... then in 3 years everyone changes their mind. There is value to some stability and consistency to these file formats so our media is durable and broadly supported over time.

I'm not sure Apple is the only one holding this stuff back. I just checked out a JPEG XL site [3] and it only shows partial support and it's hidden behind a feature flag. As long as this is the current state of things, Apple isn't holding back anything. It's simply not ready for prime time.

I get the desire for open source standards used for media, but they never seem to be as broadly supported, and for your average user, that's all they care about. "Can I view my image? Can I listen to my music?" If the answer is no, they don't care about anything else. Most users won't know if they are looking at a PNG or JPEG XL, or listing to an m4a file vs Opus.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48j493tfO-o [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmRNIGqzuRI [3] https://jpegxl.io/#tutorials

Telegram supports WebP in a very irritating way; you can simply copy paste and it works perfectly, but it assume it is a sticker and so it is shown sticker sized and without the ability to zoom.

Can you share any links here of your tool?

Sorry, I haven't published it. At this point it (mostly) "works for me" but there are a bunch of things that don't (yet) and there are a bunch of caveats and problems.

Also, it's really not that interesting of a project as such, but it was/is interesting for me anyway in the sense that I now know more about image processing and X11 ("outdated", allegedly, but works fine for me, so whatever).

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