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Comment by kazinator | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps, but the difference between 3 and 30 milliseconds?

Call me skeptical.

I can edit fine over a remote desktop connection to a machine across town where a VirtualBox is running Ubuntu, where I have Vim in a Gnome Terminal.

> The lower you can get it, the better.

Really? There is no point of diminishing returns? If you have 5 microseconds latecy in your terminal, 2 is better?

That's literally what you're saying.

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Correct. If I had access to a reasonably priced 1000Hz monitor, I would use it, for exactly this reason. It's not just this one thing in isolation, it's the whole tool chain, and latency is cumulative. So, for a simplified example, if I have a bluetooth keyboard in the mix, and it adds 50ms, then with your numbers, I'd have 52ms total, which is indeed better than 55ms. It all adds up, and with enough links in the chain adding their own little bit, it can easily add up to be perceptible and meaningful.

I wish I could link you to byuu's deep dive on emulator latency so you could see where I'm coming from, but their site is now offline and has been excluded from the Wayback Machine. This is the old link, in case anyone knows of a mirror: byuu.org/articles/latency/

Edit: found a mirror: https://github.com/higan-emu/emulation-articles/tree/master/...

The above GH link don't work for me - too much JS coupling.

This however yields content: https://archive.is/IoShg

With my numbers, you'd have 50 ms total. The bluetooth delay of 50 ms has two significant figures in it at best, and so when we add the 0.002 ms (2 microseconds), that's just noise.

Apologies, I glossed over your mention of "microseconds", and was reading it as "milliseconds". In that case, you're right, I have no intention of splitting hairs amongst thousandths of milliseconds. However, that does make me unsure of the point you're trying to make, unless it's just to be absurdly pedantic.

OK, so 5 ms versus 2 ms keystroke delay isn't pedantic; 5 μs vs 2 μs is.

Yes? There's a 1000x difference between those speedups.

There is also a 1000X difference between a nanosecond keystroke delay and a microsecond keystroke delay. So that must be equally relevant since 1000 = 1000.

Makes sense. You can expect people to find microsecond speedups a lot more relevant compared to nanosecond speedups.

Are you really equating people's perception of tens of milliseconds of latency with their perception of nanoseconds? Is it surprising that people would notice a 50 ms slowdown more than a 50 nanosecond slowdown?

Yes, but to be pedantic, absurdly so.

> 1000Hz monitor

Wouldn't you have to first upgrade to faster cells in your retinas?

A glance through some research in this area doesn't indicate a benefit to going beyond 250 Hz.

If I use a terminal with 30msec latency to connect to a host with another 30msec network latency, it's now 60msec - pretty noticible by an average human being. That's why reducing latency where you can to the minimal possible value is important.

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