4 ms·

For real time communication— I’m not sure why people find high latency to be so difficult. You just pretend everybody is taking a moment to think. Virtual “talk

For real time communication— I’m not sure why people find high latency to be so difficult. You just pretend everybody is taking a moment to think. Virtual “talking sticks”, or radio etiquette is not hard to add either. What is difficult is audio quality issues. I wish voice and video software had a way to prioritize quality at the expense of latency (i.e. never compromise on delivering quality voice, but pause input or fast forward through quiet segments as needed to stay roughly in synch)

mmcclure 8y ago
This seems to be an unpopular opinion, but I generally agree and see latency (within reason) as a UX problem more often than not. A lot of the folks I talk to that think they desperately need sub 5 second latency would most likely be completely fine with ~15 seconds with a few minor UX/UI considerations. Since true low latency is fraught with scaling issues or is obscenely expensive, I think that leads to a lot of folks never actually getting ideas off the ground when they could have just hacked something together (cheaply) using off the shelf technology with "normal" latency in a few hours. That being said there definitely are use cases for low latency and a lot of products/projects would benefit from it, but I don't think it's the hard, upfront requirement a lot of folks see it as. Edit: For the sake of disclosure, I'm one of the Mux founders and we're currently working on low latency, but haven't released anything yet.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  > This seems to be an unpopular opinion, but I generally agree and see latency (within reason) as a UX problem more often than not. It is a UX problem. One that can be solved by lowering the latency. Many examples of latency being a problem have been mentioned in the comments here, not to mention the article: sporting events ruined because your neighbor cheered too early, reading tweets about the State of the Union before it appears on your feed, etc etc. How do you improve this without actually decreasing latency?
  - imtringued 8y ago
    Sweep the problem under the rug. Delay everything by the highest latency. Let everyone suffer equally! (this is what bluetooth audio does)
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
For what audience? A HAM radio operator is very aware of the technical process going on, the proper etiquette, etc. It's pretty easy to adapt in that situation. A random Twitch viewer has likely never thought about broadcast latency before, and has no real reason to. It's just an unintuitive experience when chat reacts to things that happened many seconds ago. Voice chat is probably the worst because the network and software is notoriously unreliable. Is it latency, is something broken, did they just not hear me? Are we talking over each other, something that can easily happen in casual conversation vs. a radio transmission? That mental overhead is constantly there. Imagine trying to explain to your mother that she should end all her statements with "over" and confirm whenever she hears something. Are you really not sure why people find this difficult, or are you just so proud of your own technical knowledge that you've lost any kind of reasonable perspective on the issue? Lower latency is an unambiguous improvement in every regard; of course people care about it.
- oconnore 8y ago
  How on earth did this turn into an ad hominem about my technical pride? Because I’m ok with slowing down the pace of a conversation?
  - FooHentai 8y ago
    No, but because you chose to open with: >I’m not sure why people find high latency to be so difficult. Phrasing it that way makes it likely you will be interpreted as believing you're effortlessly better than everyone else at the subject at hand.

mmcclure 8y ago

This seems to be an unpopular opinion, but I generally agree and see latency (within reason) as a UX problem more often than not. A lot of the folks I talk to that think they desperately need sub 5 second latency would most likely be completely fine with ~15 seconds with a few minor UX/UI considerations. Since true low latency is fraught with scaling issues or is obscenely expensive, I think that leads to a lot of folks never actually getting ideas off the ground when they could have just hacked something together (cheaply) using off the shelf technology with "normal" latency in a few hours. That being said there definitely are use cases for low latency and a lot of products/projects would benefit from it, but I don't think it's the hard, upfront requirement a lot of folks see it as. Edit: For the sake of disclosure, I'm one of the Mux founders and we're currently working on low latency, but haven't released anything yet.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago
> This seems to be an unpopular opinion, but I generally agree and see latency (within reason) as a UX problem more often than not. It is a UX problem. One that can be solved by lowering the latency. Many examples of latency being a problem have been mentioned in the comments here, not to mention the article: sporting events ruined because your neighbor cheered too early, reading tweets about the State of the Union before it appears on your feed, etc etc. How do you improve this without actually decreasing latency?
- imtringued 8y ago
  Sweep the problem under the rug. Delay everything by the highest latency. Let everyone suffer equally! (this is what bluetooth audio does)

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago

For what audience? A HAM radio operator is very aware of the technical process going on, the proper etiquette, etc. It's pretty easy to adapt in that situation. A random Twitch viewer has likely never thought about broadcast latency before, and has no real reason to. It's just an unintuitive experience when chat reacts to things that happened many seconds ago. Voice chat is probably the worst because the network and software is notoriously unreliable. Is it latency, is something broken, did they just not hear me? Are we talking over each other, something that can easily happen in casual conversation vs. a radio transmission? That mental overhead is constantly there. Imagine trying to explain to your mother that she should end all her statements with "over" and confirm whenever she hears something. Are you really not sure why people find this difficult, or are you just so proud of your own technical knowledge that you've lost any kind of reasonable perspective on the issue? Lower latency is an unambiguous improvement in every regard; of course people care about it.

oconnore 8y ago
How on earth did this turn into an ad hominem about my technical pride? Because I’m ok with slowing down the pace of a conversation?
- FooHentai 8y ago
  No, but because you chose to open with: >I’m not sure why people find high latency to be so difficult. Phrasing it that way makes it likely you will be interpreted as believing you're effortlessly better than everyone else at the subject at hand.