4 ms·

> It likely didn't have enough RAM for it to work. How is 2GB not enough to send a few numbers describing the payment through the network? OP is using a potato

by dangus 2y ago

> It likely didn't have enough RAM for it to work. How is 2GB not enough to send a few numbers describing the payment through the network? OP is using a potato with the same amount of RAM as a smartphone from 2012 and is complaining about performance issues. You pay your rent. Send a check. Pay it when the call center is open and don’t wait until the last minute. Don’t blame your phone or the technological progress of modern software.

g-b-r 2y ago
He probably meant free ram And it wouldn't be a potato were it not for the operating system and the apps' increased usage
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- dangus 2y ago
  But of course if you take that argument to its logical conclusion we are back on feature phones that can only talk and text. At some point it’s not just bloat and its actual functionality that customers demand. For example, your 2011 netbook can’t do basic HD video streaming. Your new smartphone can play high quality console ported games (e.g., Resident Evil 7 is a Mac/iOS cross platform release). “Increased usage” is a feature not a bug.
  - g-b-r 2y ago
    It's a feature for high quality console ported games, not for apps that few years ago did the same things using a lot less resources
    - dangus 2y ago
      But my point is that eventually that argument fades away with enough new capabilities. Incremental progress compounded eventually makes a big difference. When you say that the apps a few years ago did the same things that is not true. Apps used to do fewer things. Some examples: Older smartphones didn’t run machine learning on your photos to categorize them by person. Smartphones used to take videos that we would consider to be unacceptable on a modern HDTV screen now because they didn’t have enough storage. I remember when 4K video had a time limit because the simple act of taking the video would overheat the processor. Now, people shoot entire films that get played in theaters using smart phones. TikTok is the most popular social media app in the world and it was not possible to implement on prior phones with prior cellular networks. Continuous live video over a cellular network at scale with decent device battery life is a relatively new phenomenon. Computational photography features like night mode and changing focus points after capture depend heavily on processing power to quickly analyze sensor input. You can dismiss games as well, but the mobile gaming market is larger than the console gaming market. It is actually extremely important for a lot of people for phones to be capable of high-quality gaming. Top earners like Genshin Impact and Fortnite used to be games that you would upgrade to a higher spec phone to be able to play, and that trend will probably continue as new games hit the market. I know that AI isn’t really useful yet via underbaked software like Apple Intelligence, but there is a decent argument to be made that local AI capability will bring significant new features that will be above and beyond what your 5 year old phone can do.
mherkender 2y ago
There is almost nothing my current phone can do that a phone from 2012 couldn't do, it's just the one from 2012 can't run today's bloated software.
- dangus 2y ago
  That’s just a gross simplification of the things modern devices need to do today. Simple stuff like encrypted handshakes used to be a significant performance consideration, and they are now a necessity for doing basic tasks like banking. Modern software isn’t just bloated for no good reason and it’s such a tired trope among nerdy circles. Sure, a phone from 2012 is powerful enough to do that specific task, but I am just using encryption as a pretty good example of how at some point you just need newer hardware in order to exist in the modern device ecosystem. No efficiency of software will make a commodore64 a usable device to use SSL in 2025. And nobody is forcing you to exist in that system anyway. You can just physically go to the bank like my parents do. You can write checks like my parents do. This whole article is about needing technology to make a last minute payment that was highly predictable and should have been planned ahead of time.
  - mherkender 2y ago
    Encryption doesn't require 16 GB of RAM. Phone upgrades are like subsidies to mediocre software projects.
    - dangus 2y ago
      No of course not but you’re now at the other end of the extreme. An example of a more reasonable deprecation is 32-bit processors. Another thing about old hardware is that especially in the case of phones and other mobile devices they get physically degraded and damaged.
      - mherkender 2y ago
        It's not that extreme -- I had to get a new phone recently and it has 12 GB. There is such a thing as reasonable upgrades and necessary replacements. But long-term FAANG software projects are built like sedimentary rock -- layers upon layers. This bloat has a real cost in performance but hardware upgrades help defer the problem and users pay for it.
Hizonner 2y ago
Not being able to do a 64kB task with 2GB of memory is "technological progress" how, exactly?
- dangus 2y ago
  Okay, since this is such a common HN trope to claim that modern software is bloated for no reason, I challenge you to write an SSL handshake with an acceptably modern cipher on a piece of hardware with capability in the realm of 64kb. So we are talking about a Commodore64 securing a basic bank transaction with modern encryption protocols in a reasonable amount of time.
  - Hizonner 2y ago
    You may be talking about that, but I'm not. I was talking about the task-specific memory footprint. I didn't say anything at all about the rest of the computer. And even that wasn't meant to be taken literally. I kind of thought that was obvious[1]. But in the end, OK, you're right. You probably could fit the banking app logic in 64K, but you'd have to rely on the OS to provide things like crypto, the network stack, and the I/O. So the machine as a whole would need more than that to get the job done. And the UI would be pretty bad if you stuffed even the app part into 64k. No problem fitting it all into megabytes, though. Definitely no need for it to be gigabytes. I challenge you to explain what needs to be there that would make the entire system, OS, app, and all, need even one gigabyte of RAM to run even a very pretty, featureful banking app. Or even a quarter of a gigabyte. By the way, you can put TLS itself in less than 64k (see for example https://github.com/wolfSSL/wolfssl https://github.com/wolfSSL/wolfssl). But you have to profile it way down, maybe to the point of leaving out X.509, so you don't really have "full on" TLS. On the other hand, a lot of the footprint is because the TLS protocol itself is bloated and overcomplicated, and no, that bloat doesn't improve the security. [1]: ... and I mean, if we're going to get pedantic like that, nobody can write an SSL implementation with modern ciphers for any computer, because modern ciphers weren't introduced into the protocol until after it was renamed TLS. Actual SSL isn't something anybody should be using now. Even TLS 1.1 isn't.

by dangus 2y ago

g-b-r 2y ago

He probably meant free ram And it wouldn't be a potato were it not for the operating system and the apps' increased usage

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dangus 2y ago
But of course if you take that argument to its logical conclusion we are back on feature phones that can only talk and text. At some point it’s not just bloat and its actual functionality that customers demand. For example, your 2011 netbook can’t do basic HD video streaming. Your new smartphone can play high quality console ported games (e.g., Resident Evil 7 is a Mac/iOS cross platform release). “Increased usage” is a feature not a bug.
- g-b-r 2y ago
  It's a feature for high quality console ported games, not for apps that few years ago did the same things using a lot less resources
  - dangus 2y ago
    But my point is that eventually that argument fades away with enough new capabilities. Incremental progress compounded eventually makes a big difference. When you say that the apps a few years ago did the same things that is not true. Apps used to do fewer things. Some examples: Older smartphones didn’t run machine learning on your photos to categorize them by person. Smartphones used to take videos that we would consider to be unacceptable on a modern HDTV screen now because they didn’t have enough storage. I remember when 4K video had a time limit because the simple act of taking the video would overheat the processor. Now, people shoot entire films that get played in theaters using smart phones. TikTok is the most popular social media app in the world and it was not possible to implement on prior phones with prior cellular networks. Continuous live video over a cellular network at scale with decent device battery life is a relatively new phenomenon. Computational photography features like night mode and changing focus points after capture depend heavily on processing power to quickly analyze sensor input. You can dismiss games as well, but the mobile gaming market is larger than the console gaming market. It is actually extremely important for a lot of people for phones to be capable of high-quality gaming. Top earners like Genshin Impact and Fortnite used to be games that you would upgrade to a higher spec phone to be able to play, and that trend will probably continue as new games hit the market. I know that AI isn’t really useful yet via underbaked software like Apple Intelligence, but there is a decent argument to be made that local AI capability will bring significant new features that will be above and beyond what your 5 year old phone can do.

mherkender 2y ago

There is almost nothing my current phone can do that a phone from 2012 couldn't do, it's just the one from 2012 can't run today's bloated software.

dangus 2y ago
That’s just a gross simplification of the things modern devices need to do today. Simple stuff like encrypted handshakes used to be a significant performance consideration, and they are now a necessity for doing basic tasks like banking. Modern software isn’t just bloated for no good reason and it’s such a tired trope among nerdy circles. Sure, a phone from 2012 is powerful enough to do that specific task, but I am just using encryption as a pretty good example of how at some point you just need newer hardware in order to exist in the modern device ecosystem. No efficiency of software will make a commodore64 a usable device to use SSL in 2025. And nobody is forcing you to exist in that system anyway. You can just physically go to the bank like my parents do. You can write checks like my parents do. This whole article is about needing technology to make a last minute payment that was highly predictable and should have been planned ahead of time.
- mherkender 2y ago
  Encryption doesn't require 16 GB of RAM. Phone upgrades are like subsidies to mediocre software projects.
  - dangus 2y ago
    No of course not but you’re now at the other end of the extreme. An example of a more reasonable deprecation is 32-bit processors. Another thing about old hardware is that especially in the case of phones and other mobile devices they get physically degraded and damaged.
    - mherkender 2y ago
      It's not that extreme -- I had to get a new phone recently and it has 12 GB. There is such a thing as reasonable upgrades and necessary replacements. But long-term FAANG software projects are built like sedimentary rock -- layers upon layers. This bloat has a real cost in performance but hardware upgrades help defer the problem and users pay for it.

Hizonner 2y ago

Not being able to do a 64kB task with 2GB of memory is "technological progress" how, exactly?

dangus 2y ago
Okay, since this is such a common HN trope to claim that modern software is bloated for no reason, I challenge you to write an SSL handshake with an acceptably modern cipher on a piece of hardware with capability in the realm of 64kb. So we are talking about a Commodore64 securing a basic bank transaction with modern encryption protocols in a reasonable amount of time.
- Hizonner 2y ago
  You may be talking about that, but I'm not. I was talking about the task-specific memory footprint. I didn't say anything at all about the rest of the computer. And even that wasn't meant to be taken literally. I kind of thought that was obvious[1]. But in the end, OK, you're right. You probably could fit the banking app logic in 64K, but you'd have to rely on the OS to provide things like crypto, the network stack, and the I/O. So the machine as a whole would need more than that to get the job done. And the UI would be pretty bad if you stuffed even the app part into 64k. No problem fitting it all into megabytes, though. Definitely no need for it to be gigabytes. I challenge you to explain what needs to be there that would make the entire system, OS, app, and all, need even one gigabyte of RAM to run even a very pretty, featureful banking app. Or even a quarter of a gigabyte. By the way, you can put TLS itself in less than 64k (see for example https://github.com/wolfSSL/wolfssl https://github.com/wolfSSL/wolfssl). But you have to profile it way down, maybe to the point of leaving out X.509, so you don't really have "full on" TLS. On the other hand, a lot of the footprint is because the TLS protocol itself is bloated and overcomplicated, and no, that bloat doesn't improve the security. [1]: ... and I mean, if we're going to get pedantic like that, nobody can write an SSL implementation with modern ciphers for any computer, because modern ciphers weren't introduced into the protocol until after it was renamed TLS. Actual SSL isn't something anybody should be using now. Even TLS 1.1 isn't.