Living with Lag [video] | Hacker News Reader

Living with Lag [video]

livingwithlag.com

66 pointsdiafygi22 comments

"you wouldn't accept lag offline, so why do it online? get up to 1000 Mbit/s fiber today."

I find this contradicting. They talk about lag, but offer bandwidth. What about latency? Shouldn't they talk about milliseconds of delay from your computer to the server and back?

>I find this contradicting. They talk about lag, but offer bandwidth. What about latency? Shouldn't they talk about milliseconds of delay from your computer to the server and back?

It's not necessarily contradicting, but it shows a fundamental misunderstanding, or rather, lack of knowledge. You are absolutely right that they should talk about latency.

But at the same time, one has to acknowledge that nowadays latency seldom is a problem, and bandwidth usage by various applications has increased. But when stuff online happens too slow for whatever reason, it's colloquially referred to as 'lag'. So it's somewhat understandable that some people (begin to) confuse things.

EDIT: Had a second look at the Advert; now it's obvious why the distinction is missing; as they (naturally) separate their offerings by bandwidth, not latency.

You're both right and wrong. You're right because serious internet lag issues stem from problems along the line, or simple physical distance. However they're also right to advertise with bandwidth, because bandwidth does impact lag. On a 10MBit line, you will need 10 ms to upload 12.5kbyte, and another 10 ms to download the same as the response from the server, making turnaround time for such a package 20 ms. That's more than one whole frame for an application running at 60 fps. With a 1000 MBit line, the turnaround time for the same will be 0.2ms, basically nothing. On the other hand: For both cases you need to add the distance as a flat factor, so whether you notice it or not depends on whether you're communicating to a server close by (20-50ms) or one a continent away (150-300ms).

"With a 1000 MBit line, the turnaround time for the same will be 0.2ms, basically nothing"

How do you figure this? That doesn't follow at all. The proverbial[1] van full of microSD cards may have much more bandwidth than a 1Gbps line, but it will never turn around in 0.2ms.

[1] http://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2013/09/never-underestimate-t... - 67Tbps estimated bandwidth for a station wagon going between LA and NYC.

Please read the sentence following the sentence after which you paused to comment. :)

his point is that bandwidth sets a lower limit on lag, for a fixed packet size. high bandwidth is a necessary condition, but not sufficient.

If you were to request 67Tb from LA, the response would reach you faster by van than by cable - which is "less lag".

This is completely ridiculous, like those TV commercials where some clumsy person nearly severs their own hand with a knife because they're not using the infomercial's special chopping tool. The guy making pancakes was especially egregious. His friends were laughing at his stupidity, and he likely hammed up the remainder of his "performance"... who swings an egg by half a meter to crack the shell on the edge of a bowl? It's as if they went out of their way to find people who have absolutely abysmal proprioception and watch them bumble along even more as their inability to perceive the world they live in gets magnified.

Next on the front page of HN - "Living with weight". A video showing "experiment" where people are going on with their daily lives, except they have 4 bricks strapped to their face and it's hard for them to keep head straight, they are laughed at, one is fired from office. At the end, text "Living with weight is hard. Samsung New Phone. Weights 10g less than iPhone."

Cool idea! I would have liked to see a control experiment with no lag.

Wouldn't you be able to combat some of the misalignment by going really slow?

I think in the long term you'd learn to cope with this, a lot of the user issues seemed to do with depth perception more than lag.

I'd love to try this for a day but I think after a few minutes with the dev Rift you tend to strain your eyes in my experience. Fantastic ad though.

Yeah the use of a single forward looking camera seams to be the main cause of most of the problems.

1. No depth perception

2. Everything seams to be a bit closer than they actually are.

3. The camera view field is allot smaller than your eyes view filed.

Cool nonetheless.

The idea of having the camera on the front is powerful. I have heard people complain with the rift about the fact that they cannot see their arms. I.e. that their "virtual arms" do not match up. it would be cone if their was a way of filming the arms, extracting then from the background (possibly by playing in front of some kind of green screen), and overlying this on the display.

The potential would be great if the games could then query the arms locations and allow the use to interact with the game. I.e. hold a fun, or manipulate menus Minority Report style.

And a unrelated question here: Is there a way to edit my comment? I typed it on my phone, and reading it back, it appears the auto-correct did not favour me.

I couldn't find any information on this in the faq or the "Unofficial Hacker News FAQ".

The edit link stays open for a limited time window. (I forget how long, but it's 2 or 3 hours.) If you want to email your corrected text to hn@ycombinator.com, I'd be happy to put it in for you.

This is an incredible piece of advertising and the very definition of advertising done correctly.

It's funny, relatable, and immediately makes you want to buy the product they're selling. Also, very cool use of hot new technology.

I bet many people on wallstreet will (not) order internet service from them for their HFT (high frequency trading)... their lag is measured in nano-seconds (they even disable firewalls and such to decrease latency)

Ever been owned by a HPB? High latency can be compensated for.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=HPB

Only in the same sense that you can "compensate" for deafness by learning to lip-read.

Source: Played all my games across the Pacific ocean in the 90s with 300+ latency.

I like the creativity, but for me the slogan sounds like "Living with AIDS/Cancer" and such. Maybe it's just me.

I'd bet that was intended.

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