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Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by generalizations on Thursday June 16, 2022 @04:13PM (#31770423)
I ran across an animation once that showed graphically the time it takes light to travel between the planets and the sun. It's weird, but light doesn't seem that fast anymore.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by ineedasername on Thursday June 16, 2022 @05:28PM (#31771203)
The speed of light has really not kept pace with Moore's Law. Engineers have focused overly much on clock speed and transistor density and completely ignored C, and it's really beginning to show.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by bombcar on Thursday June 16, 2022 @07:39PM (#31772328)
People still using C as if C++ isn’t available for faster-than-light code.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by aneeshnl on Friday June 17, 2022 @01:20AM (#31774377)
Its still just 1 m/s improvement. Not worth it.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by ben_w on Friday June 17, 2022 @03:52AM (#31775312)
Only in metric units. If you’re using natural units, it’s twice as fast as c.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by gilbetron on Thursday June 16, 2022 @08:26PM (#31772649)
dammit that took me a second to get
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by orzig on Thursday June 16, 2022 @05:56PM (#31771485)
Another consequence of our society’s reduced investment in fundamental physics - instead we go ether.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by AnimalMuppet on Thursday June 16, 2022 @06:08PM (#31771615)
I recently read a science fiction short story on reddit, where humans had developed faster-than-light communication because they needed to reduce lag in networked games.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by scarmig on Thursday June 16, 2022 @06:09PM (#31771623)
Perhaps the solution is more on the bioengineering side of things: make smaller people so they can fit in smaller rooms.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by Scalene2 on Friday June 17, 2022 @02:15AM (#31774646)
So, there's actually a proposal for "real-time" communication between galaxies. Just upload your consciousness to a computer and run it slow enough that a few hundred million years feels like a couple seconds.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by gpderetta on Friday June 17, 2022 @03:49AM (#31775285)
Slow time is a thing on a few Egan books were the population (of effectively immortal post humans) of some planets collectively decide to slow their internal clocks to allow some of their members to take interstellar trips without missing out too much of their original life.

The trips themselves of course consist on transmitting the mind to be downloaded on a new body on the other side.

Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by RaoulP on Friday June 17, 2022 @03:52AM (#31775309)
I don’t really see the benefit. But running that slow, you might experience the heat death of the universe in your lifetime!
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by inkblotuniverse on Friday June 17, 2022 @06:10AM (#31776140)
The idea is that you've already dismantled the stars and stockpiled all the energy in the universe, to use at your leisure. (i.e. everyone lives around black holes they can throw mass into to reap the bawking radiation). Since you have control over the last non-entropic systems, you can tune how fast the candle burns.

And you're a mind running on a computer! You were already going to experience the heat death! This is just a scheme to get the most subjective time out of it as possible. (Running slower is more efficient.)

Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by _dain_ on Thursday June 16, 2022 @08:58PM (#31772871)
Bay Area, 1960s: "Soon we will have computers the size of a single room"

Bay Area, 2020s: "Soon we will have rooms the size of a single computer"

Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by ben_w on Friday June 17, 2022 @03:58AM (#31775351)
"Vertical sleep pod, extra large (room for iPad on ceiling!), $3500/month"
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by ruined on Friday June 17, 2022 @01:59AM (#31774569)
this has been tried before. the vast majority of the smaller people that get made simply keep getting bigger until they become normal size.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by necovek on Friday June 17, 2022 @05:19AM (#31775853)
We need to make them make even smaller people before they grow (up? :)!
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by ineedasername on Thursday June 16, 2022 @07:44PM (#31772347)
That would have a nice side benefit or making space exploration much more economical. Faster too if you can bioengineer higher G resistance at the same time. Maybe someday the outer planets will be colonized by tiny humans measured in millimeters, with 125mm humans darting around the various moons shot out of repurposed tank canons, all laughing at the slow giants stuck down the gravity well on Earth.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by hermitcrab on Friday June 17, 2022 @03:11AM (#31775029)
Their tiny brains might be an issue for space exploration. But ideal for setting up a government when they arrive.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by taneq on Friday June 17, 2022 @05:34AM (#31775954)
Or just normal sized humans simulated on a supercomputer the size of a matchbox…
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by fendy3002 on Thursday June 16, 2022 @09:11PM (#31772946)
Then how will tinder be? "If you're less than 10 cm don't talk to me midget".

OTOH can the heart perform equally good if human get miniaturized?

Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by Scalene2 on Friday June 17, 2022 @02:17AM (#31774657)
This is one reason an all female astronaut team has been considered.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by somenameforme on Friday June 17, 2022 @02:12AM (#31774627)
The much more remarkable thing is to consider that that speed of light is also the speed of causality itself. It takes light from the sun about 8 minutes to reach Earth. If the sun suddenly disappeared, we'd still see it shining brightly in the sky, and the Earth would continue revolving around it - all for another 8 minutes until reality finally caught up to us. So we're already computing at a rate on the verge of the speed of reality itself.

It's interesting to consider this paired against how technologically primitive we ostensibly must be, given that digital computers didn't even exist 90 years ago.

Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by CMCDragonkai on Friday June 17, 2022 @02:21AM (#31774689)
Is the speed of light really the speed of causality? Would the effect of gravity (the lack of) affect Earth earlier than us perceiving the lack of light.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by d110af5ccf on Friday June 17, 2022 @02:26AM (#31774722)
Nope. All physical effects are bounded by the speed of light. (As far as anyone knows, anyway.)

The only weird one is quantum entanglement, but even then information transfer doesn't travel faster than light and that's about all I know on that subject.

Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by rl3 on Friday June 17, 2022 @02:41AM (#31774817)
>The only weird one is quantum entanglement, but even then information transfer doesn't travel faster than light ...

For anyone wondering why that is, I found this explanation super interesting:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/01/02/no-w...

Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by drewtato on Friday June 17, 2022 @03:51AM (#31775303)
I also liked this explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7jctqKsUMA

In short, the only information you gain is about the outcome of the other side's measurement. They cannot introduce information into the particle, and thus can't transmit information. The only thing you learn is what you already knew: the other particle had a 50% chance of being in one state or another, with the added fact that it's now correlated to your particle with a 75% (depending on experiment) chance. This is information that didn't exist until that moment, so it couldn't have been sent out and reach you before you measure your particle, which would inform you with 75% certainty how your particle would act and break causality.

Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by dorgo on Friday June 17, 2022 @01:13PM (#31781235)
> All physical effects are bounded by the speed of light.

The universe expands faster than light. So this expansion is not a physical effect?

Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by orestarod on Monday June 20, 2022 @07:23AM (#31808965)
The universe expanding is a property of space itself. And "faster than light" is only because miniscule space expansion in any quantum of space adds up with distance, e.g. 1 picometer per kilometer per second, add enough trillions of kilometers and you get that faster than light expansion. There is no mass, particle or information moving THROUGH space faster than the speed of light, which is what the said limit concerns.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by saberience on Friday June 17, 2022 @04:42AM (#31775609)
Why does gravity travel at the speed of light?
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by rieTohgh6 on Friday June 17, 2022 @05:57AM (#31776074)
Well the other way to look at it is: gravity travels at maximum possible speed in this universe. Light in vacuum can also reach same maximum speed. I guess we would say the light travels with speed of gravity if we measured them in other order.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by e63f67dd-065b on Friday June 17, 2022 @02:26AM (#31774724)
The speed of light is the speed of information propagation. Information about the sun disappearing would only reach earth at after c/1AU.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by HWR_14 on Friday June 17, 2022 @02:39AM (#31774804)
The change in gravitational force also propagates at the speed of light. It's weird.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by edbaskerville on Thursday June 16, 2022 @04:19PM (#31770491)
The thing that did for me is realizing that people on opposite sides of the United States can't play music together if it requires any rhythmic coordination, even with a true speed-of-light signal with no other sources of latency.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by aeonik on Thursday June 16, 2022 @05:32PM (#31771241)
jamtaba and ninjam are an open source solutions to this problem.

They allow you to buffer everyone's playing, at a user specified interval, then replays the last measure of music to everyone.

It's definitely not the same as live playing, but it's still pretty fun, and actually forces you to get creative on different ways.

https://jamtaba-music-web-site.appspot.com/

Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by edbaskerville on Friday June 17, 2022 @12:17PM (#31780424)
Interesting! Presumably last 12 measures if you're playing a 12-bar blues, etc.

Big downside is you're stuck playing to a metronome, which would be enough for me to skip it, but it depends on the kind of music you're playing.

I could imagine that if the music is rhythmically slow and vague and improvised, big latencies are OK, and actually might yield some pretty interesting creative results.

Another model I've thought about is to structure players in a rooted DAG, and players can hear only people upstream of them.

E.g., you could build an orchestra by having a conductor and section leaders in a room together (or at within very low latency of each other). Other players could hear the leaders and play along, and then an audience could hear everyone. You could also do something more complicated like build things out in linear or power-of-2 layers, where each layer can hear everything upstream of it, and therefore many players would get a partial sense of the orchestral effect.

This could work nicely for improvised music, too, with causality preserved.

Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by Aeolun on Friday June 17, 2022 @01:35AM (#31774446)
How does that work for the one playing ahead of everyone else? He just doesn’t hear anything? Or he hears his own music from 1 second ago? Or worse, other people’s music from 1 second ago.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by rocqua on Friday June 17, 2022 @02:12AM (#31774623)
I think everyone hears everyone else playing x milliseconds ago? Where x is probably decided based on the beat.

The weird side-effects are why I guess the parent said that "it's still pretty fun, and actually forces you to get creative on different ways."

Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by dizhn on Friday June 17, 2022 @08:56AM (#31777406)
You have to think in bars not seconds.I believe you hear your own playing in near real time and is overlayed on the bars coming from others.

It works pretty well with well structured music like the blues. You probably couldn't play well if the piece was changing tempo or key all the time.

Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by sklopi on Friday June 17, 2022 @02:31AM (#31774757)
You could have a metronome in the middle
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by ZoomZoomZoom on Friday June 17, 2022 @05:15AM (#31775833)
It is actually the way to go with client-server programs, such as Jamulus. People from distant locations try to chose/run a server closer to their geographical (or, more properly, with a correction on how the fiber runs) middlepoint.
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by shultays on Thursday June 16, 2022 @05:47PM (#31771394)
I feel like it is more like we cant comprehend how big and empty space is
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by booleandilemma on Saturday June 18, 2022 @10:34AM (#31790130)
I saw that exact animation you're talking about and my first thought was "there's no way that's the fastest thing in the universe."
Re:The computers are fast, but you don't know it by generalizations on Friday June 17, 2022 @05:57PM (#31784925)