5 ms·

I'm not sure about how 'low' low power computing is, but consider this: a jpeg is compressed, and on a 1990 Acorn Archimedes (ARM, 8Mhz 32bit, and the fastest h

I'm not sure about how 'low' low power computing is, but consider this: a jpeg is compressed, and on a 1990 Acorn Archimedes (ARM, 8Mhz 32bit, and the fastest home computer at the time), you could watch a jpeg image being rendered in real time. Uncompressed images, unsurprisingly, rendered instantly.

foobar33333 5y ago
Gemini has no media support so its only text. I'm not sure what computer people are using which struggles to uncompress text.
- fsiefken 5y ago
  Yes, but suppose I'm on a 200 bytes per second long distance radio link. One average UTF8 encoded page would perhaps take 10 seconds to load. With zstd or brotli compression it would take half the time. For ultra low power computing (for solar power) with zstd or brotli decompression support in a gemini client it would for example be doable on a raspberry pico running fuzix driving an e-ink display with keyboard. https://liliputing.com/2021/05/picomputer-kit-turns-a-raspberry-pi-pico-into-a-pocket-sized-computer-with-screen-and-keyboard.html https://liliputing.com/2021/05/picomputer-kit-turns-a-raspbe... https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-qt-py-2040 https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-qt-py-2040 https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adafruit-qt-py-rp2040-review https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adafruit-qt-py-rp2040-r...
  - efitz 5y ago
    This is a legit scenario. Many sailors use SSB [1] for data access and have ultra low bandwidth. [1] https://www.practical-sailor.com/marine-electronics/a-second-look-at-marine-ssb https://www.practical-sailor.com/marine-electronics/a-second...
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Some clients can be configured to load images inline. And if they don't, it's not a big problem to click on an image link for illustration.
mananaysiempre 5y ago
Well, I enjoyed using the “cached images only” mode in Opera as recently as 2007 on a pay-per-minute 56K dial-up connection that was more like 28K due to the crappy cheap modem. (It wasn’t impossible to get broadband, but nobody felt it was important enough to bother until the last couple of years, and then it took some time to actually get around to it.) The relief at seeing that the JPEG you just commanded to load turned out to be progressive (not that I knew how it worked) was visceral, and the hate towards people making GIF buttons with no alt-text practically unbounded. Uncompressed images were beyond the limit of practicality.
astrange 5y ago
If you design your low power computer to handle JPEG (eg with a hardware codec), then using JPEGs will be cheaper than uncompressed formats because there are less bits to move around.

foobar33333 5y ago

Gemini has no media support so its only text. I'm not sure what computer people are using which struggles to uncompress text.

fsiefken 5y ago
Yes, but suppose I'm on a 200 bytes per second long distance radio link. One average UTF8 encoded page would perhaps take 10 seconds to load. With zstd or brotli compression it would take half the time. For ultra low power computing (for solar power) with zstd or brotli decompression support in a gemini client it would for example be doable on a raspberry pico running fuzix driving an e-ink display with keyboard. https://liliputing.com/2021/05/picomputer-kit-turns-a-raspberry-pi-pico-into-a-pocket-sized-computer-with-screen-and-keyboard.html https://liliputing.com/2021/05/picomputer-kit-turns-a-raspbe... https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-qt-py-2040 https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-qt-py-2040 https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adafruit-qt-py-rp2040-review https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adafruit-qt-py-rp2040-r...
- efitz 5y ago
  This is a legit scenario. Many sailors use SSB [1] for data access and have ultra low bandwidth. [1] https://www.practical-sailor.com/marine-electronics/a-second-look-at-marine-ssb https://www.practical-sailor.com/marine-electronics/a-second...
selfhoster11 5y ago
Some clients can be configured to load images inline. And if they don't, it's not a big problem to click on an image link for illustration.

mananaysiempre 5y ago

Well, I enjoyed using the “cached images only” mode in Opera as recently as 2007 on a pay-per-minute 56K dial-up connection that was more like 28K due to the crappy cheap modem. (It wasn’t impossible to get broadband, but nobody felt it was important enough to bother until the last couple of years, and then it took some time to actually get around to it.) The relief at seeing that the JPEG you just commanded to load turned out to be progressive (not that I knew how it worked) was visceral, and the hate towards people making GIF buttons with no alt-text practically unbounded. Uncompressed images were beyond the limit of practicality.

astrange 5y ago

If you design your low power computer to handle JPEG (eg with a hardware codec), then using JPEGs will be cheaper than uncompressed formats because there are less bits to move around.