Our world is near-limitless in bandwidth, but highly restrained in cache size and latency. 10x compression means you can keep 10x more stuff in cache.
And it doesn't matter what level you operate on, cache and latency is always relevant. Whether it's registers, L1, L2, L3, same-core NUMA RAM, cross-core, SSD, disk controller cache, disk, same-location distribution server, cross-location distribution server, tape archive backup, etc, going up a level of cache is always a lot slower regardless of bandwidth if you're doing a small read.
> None of which really seems to make any difference in a world of near-limitless bandwith.
Does to me - I have more than a terabyte of field-recorded FLACs that I'd like to put up on the net for people to listen to or download.
Compressing them to q1 OGG (and I'm not sure that's good enough quality for some of them) only gets that down to about 20-25% of the size (eg 200408_0403.flac at 540M goes down to 128M) - even if I host them on S3 or B2, it's still going to be costing me a not inconsiderable sum if people actively listen or download.
If this can get them down to 5-10% with usable quality, that makes life a lot easier (but obviously would depend on browser support, etc.)
Doesn't really let people play or download them singly - what I'm after is basically a self-hosted Soundcloud where I can add commentary around each file (location, content warnings[1], etc.) and people can listen on the page.
Currently contemplating doing this using Hugo since there's nothing really workable out there.
[1] I've got a lot of recordings of the local square and there's frequently screaming children, screaming alcoholics, the occasional person having a mental crisis, dogs barking violently, etc.
> None of which really seems to make any difference in a world of near-limitless bandwith. It just isn't the constraint it once was.
Tell that to Youtube, Netflix and Facebook - These companies don't have near-limitless bandwith by default, they have to spend many millions to get their networks serving customers.
Or people like me, who can quite easily max out my mobile data-plan with Youtube and high-quality audio.
Near-limitless bandwidth just means that the world generates more ephemeral trash, like another Youtube video or TikTok bandwagoning on the topic of the day. These will be viewed for maybe a few weeks, and then they'll never come up on anyone's feed again, they'll just lie dormant on a server somewhere.
And it doesn't matter what level you operate on, cache and latency is always relevant. Whether it's registers, L1, L2, L3, same-core NUMA RAM, cross-core, SSD, disk controller cache, disk, same-location distribution server, cross-location distribution server, tape archive backup, etc, going up a level of cache is always a lot slower regardless of bandwidth if you're doing a small read.