9 ms·

> I swear. What happened here? Like why do things feel sluggish than software over 20 years ago? I just can't wrap my mind around it. We have SSDs and infinite

> I swear. What happened here? Like why do things feel sluggish than software over 20 years ago? I just can't wrap my mind around it. We have SSDs and infinite CPU and RAM now compared to those days, yet there is always this feeling the computer is doing something more than I asked for behind the scenes. Even on websites, you can feel when you click on a link, it is doing something more. It's a very uncomfortable feeling. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30875539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30875539

OtomotO 5y ago
Greed happened. It poisons whatever it touches. Mammon is the only thing that matters to a lot of primates.
- chiefalchemist 5y ago
  Keep in mind, "free" pairs with greed. The Market even pre-internet gravitated to free. I'm certainly not defending greed, but the general lack of market pushback doesn't discourage it either.
  - atoav 5y ago
    I think it is more. I see people who make a simple website for a small family guesthouse voluntarily add all kinds of scripts that give them not a lot but send a ton of data to the big players. Typically the reason is, that they don't know how to do it any other way.
  - hansworst 5y ago
    There is no market pushback because free services hide negative externalities. So when users choose something that’s free over something they’d have to pay for, I’d say they’re generally unaware of the negative consequences (either to them or to the rest of society) because by claiming a service is free of charge, the provider is effectively hiding those negative effects, and making their revenue in some opaque way (e.g. advertising) There will never be market pushback as long as those externalities aren’t priced in. And Imho the only for that to happen is for governments to introduce regulation, e.g. by taxing the externalities so that “free” service providers are forced to be more upfront about the actual cost of their service.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      Good diagnosis, terrible treatment. First, haven't we learned already that any government regulation always ends up favoring the status quo? FAANG will be able to eat those costs right away and make it impossible for any competitor to rise up Second, what happened with personal responsibility? We can still choose to patronize companies that do not rely on ads, we can still promote/fund the development of Libre Software that is focused on the users' welfare and not the corporations' bottom line. Most of us here on HN can even help other less tech-savvy people to avoid falling into those traps and educate them about less invasive alternatives. When you say "the government should do X", you imply that we can not do it ourselves. And we pretty much can.
      - 411111111111111 5y ago
        > First, haven't we learned already that any government regulation always ends up favoring the status quo? That premise is wrong. Government regulation has lately been mostly done on account of corporations which want to protect their monopolies and strengthen their position, but that doesn't make it inherently so.
        rglullis 5y ago
        > lately If by lately, you mean "basically always", then I'd agree. I'd be hard pressed to think of any regulation that was successfully enacted and led to actual distress and disruption in the big corporations. > that doesn't make it inherently so Why would it be different this time? Can you think of any kind of policy that has any slim chance of passing and would get us rid of Big Tech? And by "Big Tech", I mean all of it, not just the ones that you don't like.
        HWR_14 5y ago
        I'm not sure anyone wants to get rid of big tech. Just reign it in. And just enforcing anticompetitive regulations help. The GDPR helps. The EU regulations requiring federated messaging help. The laws in favor net neutrality help.
sergiomattei 5y ago
Oh please. Enlighten me as how software feels slower than 20 years ago, because I haven’t witnessed it outside of casual HN trope-y statements. We have competent design tools running in the browser now… we’re doing fine.
- TonyTrapp 5y ago
  I have some old machines for retro purposes, including some Pentium 2s running Windows 98. Things take longer to load, that's for granted, but once something runs it just feels infinitely more snappy than a modern desktop. This is not rose-tinted glasses misremembering how things were like 20 years ago; this is actually turning that machine on in the current decade and observing how an older version of the same software behaves on that machine vs on a modern Windows 10 machine.
  - neurostimulant 5y ago
    Just for experimental purpose, you can try disabling all UI animation to make ui interactions instant [1], and perhaps disable ALL antivirus and their filesystem filter drivers as they make all disk access slower [2] (including windows defender, you can re-enable it again after you're finished messing around). See if those tweaks can actually make your computer as fast as the old machines. [1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-off-office-animations-9ee5c4d2-d144-4fd2-b670-22cef9fa025a https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-off-office-a... [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/performance/deactivate-kernel-mode-filter-driver https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server...
    - TonyTrapp 5y ago
      I did something similar a while ago by explicitly adding a call to disable all theming in an app. That way you can even make the window decorations look like old Win9x borders in Windows 10. Disabling theming makes window creation measurably faster, by a lot. That includes lack of animations for that specific app, of course.
    - 5y ago
pimlottc 5y ago
I was paging through a fansite’s concert listings archives this morning trying to find a particular show. Used to be a time when a simple page like this [0] would load just about as fast as you could click the “previous page” link. Now it’s a few seconds each time. 0: https://spcodex.wiki/wiki/Billy_Corgan_2022-02-06_(early_show) https://spcodex.wiki/wiki/Billy_Corgan_2022-02-06_(early_sho...
longcommonname 5y ago
Security is not the number one impact. Its bloat and poor quality. We are rich in compute and we don't feel the need to optimize anymore. Optimization is an afterthought or a never thought and features run the world.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

OtomotO 5y ago

Greed happened. It poisons whatever it touches. Mammon is the only thing that matters to a lot of primates.

chiefalchemist 5y ago
Keep in mind, "free" pairs with greed. The Market even pre-internet gravitated to free. I'm certainly not defending greed, but the general lack of market pushback doesn't discourage it either.
- atoav 5y ago
  I think it is more. I see people who make a simple website for a small family guesthouse voluntarily add all kinds of scripts that give them not a lot but send a ton of data to the big players. Typically the reason is, that they don't know how to do it any other way.
- hansworst 5y ago
  There is no market pushback because free services hide negative externalities. So when users choose something that’s free over something they’d have to pay for, I’d say they’re generally unaware of the negative consequences (either to them or to the rest of society) because by claiming a service is free of charge, the provider is effectively hiding those negative effects, and making their revenue in some opaque way (e.g. advertising) There will never be market pushback as long as those externalities aren’t priced in. And Imho the only for that to happen is for governments to introduce regulation, e.g. by taxing the externalities so that “free” service providers are forced to be more upfront about the actual cost of their service.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    Good diagnosis, terrible treatment. First, haven't we learned already that any government regulation always ends up favoring the status quo? FAANG will be able to eat those costs right away and make it impossible for any competitor to rise up Second, what happened with personal responsibility? We can still choose to patronize companies that do not rely on ads, we can still promote/fund the development of Libre Software that is focused on the users' welfare and not the corporations' bottom line. Most of us here on HN can even help other less tech-savvy people to avoid falling into those traps and educate them about less invasive alternatives. When you say "the government should do X", you imply that we can not do it ourselves. And we pretty much can.
    - 411111111111111 5y ago
      > First, haven't we learned already that any government regulation always ends up favoring the status quo? That premise is wrong. Government regulation has lately been mostly done on account of corporations which want to protect their monopolies and strengthen their position, but that doesn't make it inherently so.
      - rglullis 5y ago
        > lately If by lately, you mean "basically always", then I'd agree. I'd be hard pressed to think of any regulation that was successfully enacted and led to actual distress and disruption in the big corporations. > that doesn't make it inherently so Why would it be different this time? Can you think of any kind of policy that has any slim chance of passing and would get us rid of Big Tech? And by "Big Tech", I mean all of it, not just the ones that you don't like.
        HWR_14 5y ago
        I'm not sure anyone wants to get rid of big tech. Just reign it in. And just enforcing anticompetitive regulations help. The GDPR helps. The EU regulations requiring federated messaging help. The laws in favor net neutrality help.

sergiomattei 5y ago

Oh please. Enlighten me as how software feels slower than 20 years ago, because I haven’t witnessed it outside of casual HN trope-y statements. We have competent design tools running in the browser now… we’re doing fine.

TonyTrapp 5y ago
I have some old machines for retro purposes, including some Pentium 2s running Windows 98. Things take longer to load, that's for granted, but once something runs it just feels infinitely more snappy than a modern desktop. This is not rose-tinted glasses misremembering how things were like 20 years ago; this is actually turning that machine on in the current decade and observing how an older version of the same software behaves on that machine vs on a modern Windows 10 machine.
- neurostimulant 5y ago
  Just for experimental purpose, you can try disabling all UI animation to make ui interactions instant [1], and perhaps disable ALL antivirus and their filesystem filter drivers as they make all disk access slower [2] (including windows defender, you can re-enable it again after you're finished messing around). See if those tweaks can actually make your computer as fast as the old machines. [1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-off-office-animations-9ee5c4d2-d144-4fd2-b670-22cef9fa025a https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-off-office-a... [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/performance/deactivate-kernel-mode-filter-driver https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server...
  - TonyTrapp 5y ago
    I did something similar a while ago by explicitly adding a call to disable all theming in an app. That way you can even make the window decorations look like old Win9x borders in Windows 10. Disabling theming makes window creation measurably faster, by a lot. That includes lack of animations for that specific app, of course.
  - 5y ago

pimlottc 5y ago

I was paging through a fansite’s concert listings archives this morning trying to find a particular show. Used to be a time when a simple page like this [0] would load just about as fast as you could click the “previous page” link. Now it’s a few seconds each time. 0: https://spcodex.wiki/wiki/Billy_Corgan_2022-02-06_(early_show) https://spcodex.wiki/wiki/Billy_Corgan_2022-02-06_(early_sho...

longcommonname 5y ago

Security is not the number one impact. Its bloat and poor quality. We are rich in compute and we don't feel the need to optimize anymore. Optimization is an afterthought or a never thought and features run the world.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]