3 ms·

I generally agree: it's about weighing trade-offs, and calling software companies "lazy" is perhaps an oversimplification. However, I do believe the speed of li

by tabtab 8y ago

I generally agree: it's about weighing trade-offs, and calling software companies "lazy" is perhaps an oversimplification. However, I do believe the speed of light and size of atoms puts an upper limit on the degree you can keep throwing hardware at the problem. We may continue to find tricks such as quantum computing, but I suspect it will get ever tougher. There's a theoretical limit to how small you squeeze data and to how fast it can transfer.

the8472 8y ago
> We may continue to find tricks such as quantum computing Quantum computing does not magically speed up general purpose computing tasks. We only know a handful of algorithms where quantum computers provide algorithmic complexity reductions and even that that does not mean they necessarily calculate fast in terms of IPC, they just calculate previously intractable problems in reasonable timescales. TL;DR: you won't pop quantum GPUs/CPUs into your computer and suddenly get 50 times the framerates in DOOM.
- jfoutz 8y ago
  Totally glib reply, but here it is. If I can represent screen state as quibits, and I have a whole lot of quibits, I can represent a game as a little list of player inputs. Set up an enormous superposition, and as players hit keys, collapse the next frame. The imaginary hardware could be super quick! TL;DR: yeah probably, but you never know.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- tabtab 8y ago
  Some have suggested that certain common algorithms (or needs) can be rewritten into the types QC are good at. I'm not an expert so cannot confirm such. It may await new algorithm discoveries to answer anyhow.
TheCoelacanth 8y ago
Software companies are lazy in exactly the same way that the entire rest of the economy is lazy. Companies in every industry try to cut costs as much as they can.
- chubot 8y ago
  That's only half of it. Users choose software, and that includes developers when choosing programming languages / OSes / servers. We are "lazy" too. If you really cared about security without regard to any other property, you would probably be using DJB's software to serve your website and such. But you probably don't, because it doesn't have the features you want and you might not want to spend the time figuring out how to set it up.

by tabtab 8y ago

the8472 8y ago

> We may continue to find tricks such as quantum computing Quantum computing does not magically speed up general purpose computing tasks. We only know a handful of algorithms where quantum computers provide algorithmic complexity reductions and even that that does not mean they necessarily calculate fast in terms of IPC, they just calculate previously intractable problems in reasonable timescales. TL;DR: you won't pop quantum GPUs/CPUs into your computer and suddenly get 50 times the framerates in DOOM.

jfoutz 8y ago
Totally glib reply, but here it is. If I can represent screen state as quibits, and I have a whole lot of quibits, I can represent a game as a little list of player inputs. Set up an enormous superposition, and as players hit keys, collapse the next frame. The imaginary hardware could be super quick! TL;DR: yeah probably, but you never know.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
tabtab 8y ago
Some have suggested that certain common algorithms (or needs) can be rewritten into the types QC are good at. I'm not an expert so cannot confirm such. It may await new algorithm discoveries to answer anyhow.

TheCoelacanth 8y ago

Software companies are lazy in exactly the same way that the entire rest of the economy is lazy. Companies in every industry try to cut costs as much as they can.

chubot 8y ago
That's only half of it. Users choose software, and that includes developers when choosing programming languages / OSes / servers. We are "lazy" too. If you really cared about security without regard to any other property, you would probably be using DJB's software to serve your website and such. But you probably don't, because it doesn't have the features you want and you might not want to spend the time figuring out how to set it up.