A Speed Limit for Computers

Discussion (11 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

tekne•about 2 hours ago

Though no one cares, I feel compelled to put down my 2 cents.

Such a "speed limit" is an unfathomably bad idea, in every way, and moreover is a violation of fundamental human rights. I deeply oppose it. That is all.

Nevermark•about 1 hour ago

> Though no one cares, I feel compelled to put down my 2 cents.

I am not sure if you are insulting everyone who reads your point, or your own ability to communicate.

But maybe interpret the ideas less as a dichotomy you can't untangle and so must reject, which is a fragile place to reason from, and instead identify what are good points, what are not, and improve upon either.

Because there is certainly a great deal of truth to the problems being addressed.

zdragnar•about 1 hour ago

What truth? The whole article is absurd. Speed limits exist to reduce fatalities, not reduce inequality. Road speed limits in my area have been increasing, not decreasing, as road designs have improved. Distance didn't scale with speed either - the West was settled well before the automobile.

eightysixfour•about 2 hours ago

I'm still thinking through this and you seem to have strong opinions. What do you think of speed limits for cars and e-bikes?

hnuser123456•about 2 hours ago

Well, to start with, If you drive your car too fast, you might kill people. If you drive your computer too fast, it might get data corruption and/or reboot unexpectedly.

wyrdcurt•about 2 hours ago

Or you might build a data center that poisons a community's water and drives up the cost of energy for your neighbors. We can't pretend there are zero negative externalities that accompany unconstrained compute.

To be clear I'm not necessarily agreeing with the idea, but to be fair, there's more to it than you're suggesting.

wyrdcurt•about 2 hours ago

I don't know if it's a bad idea or not, but I'm struggling to understand how the idea as presented in the post would be a violation of fundamental human rights. Do you care to elaborate?

nvch•about 2 hours ago

We have speed limits for vehicles because speed kills.

In computing, waiting kills (indirectly, by wasting time). Speed is life.

Some roads have minimum speed limits. If we're talking about limits, that's the kind of limit we want.

vivid242•about 1 hour ago

I like the idea, and it reminded me that the „Vim book“ had the subtitle: „Edit text at the speed of thought“.

How much faster should an ‚automated thinking‘ than a ‚manual thinking‘ be (allowed to be)?

A Speed Limit for Computers

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Discussion (11 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews