Why is the input latency so bad on the display? The touch/draw visibly lags behind by 500ms or more, is that an issue with the software or with the hardware? Also seems to be an issue with registering touches, as Kornacki often has to press two or more times when toggling between screens.
IMO we should have the technology to make the input lag an order of magnitude smaller, right? I didn’t see any mention of latency on the blog post so I’m wondering if the author doesn’t see it as a problem.
> Why is the input latency so bad on the display? The touch/draw visibly lags behind by 500ms or more, is that an issue with the software or with the hardware?
One likely factor: the video we're watching is from 2016. I think input latency has gotten more attention (optimization effort) since then.
Was hoping it would cover this year, particularly since there seemed to be performance issues.
Also wished it covered more technical details: framework? hardware? test harnesses? I was wondering about these while watching and guess we won't know.
> The workflow on election night, from my couch: edit some JSON, VPN into the NBC network, SSH into the server, git pull from master, pm2 restart all, text the producer that it's updated — then watch my change go out on air a few minutes later through Hulu. Doing that live in an emergency and seeing it on television minutes later is a pretty cool feeling.
Less "cool" and more asking for trouble if you make one misplaced comma, quote, or curly brace. The entire apps crashes and shows nothing to the broadcast audience or worse an error screen they'll screencap and meme.
If you know, you know. Lots of bystander comments in this discussion, finding fault or claiming they’d do it better. Maybe NBC News should be recruiting from here.
And all that is missing the real story, which is how one guy made tech magic happen, and how it feels to be praised for a technical accomplishment when those praising have very little idea what it really took.
> Doing that live in an emergency and seeing it on television minutes later is a pretty cool feeling.
I once heard a story of the slomo camera used during MLB games stopped working during a World Series game which meant that a huge feature of the broadcast was going to be unavailable. One of the engineering crew took it upon himself to look into it. Apparently, another camera angle caught the extra person at the camera during the broadcast which was seen by a high ranking executive who promptly called the director to see what was going on. His response boiled down to "someone is either getting fired, or getting promoted". A few innings later, the slomo feature was again available for the broadcast.
Sometimes, you just got to "get 'er done" on the air.
It sure seemed like there were a bunch of moments of live updating? Discussion with Chris (producer), saying, ok, it's updated now, try this. Yes a lot was data updates but there were a bunch of other times it seemed more systems code etc.
Yeah I hope that’s a simplification. At the very least I hope some automated testing is scanning that code change in a PR before it gets pulled down to the server.
> worse an error screen they'll screencap and meme.
Or even worse, you misattribute a result to the wrong candidate, it gets screencapped and used as evidence in another “election fraud” conspiracy theory.
I actually think the safety guards they’d add for software like this would be the more interesting part of the story!
Why is the input latency so bad on the display? The touch/draw visibly lags behind by 500ms or more, is that an issue with the software or with the hardware? Also seems to be an issue with registering touches, as Kornacki often has to press two or more times when toggling between screens.
IMO we should have the technology to make the input lag an order of magnitude smaller, right? I didn’t see any mention of latency on the blog post so I’m wondering if the author doesn’t see it as a problem.
> Why is the input latency so bad on the display? The touch/draw visibly lags behind by 500ms or more, is that an issue with the software or with the hardware?
One likely factor: the video we're watching is from 2016. I think input latency has gotten more attention (optimization effort) since then.
No, it definitely has not gotten better based on what I’ve watched this midterm cycle.
This. I can't watch people like Harry Ente, not least because of the pain in watching the delay when they draw or click on something.
Needs (2018) in the title.
Was hoping it would cover this year, particularly since there seemed to be performance issues.
Also wished it covered more technical details: framework? hardware? test harnesses? I was wondering about these while watching and guess we won't know.
> The workflow on election night, from my couch: edit some JSON, VPN into the NBC network, SSH into the server, git pull from master, pm2 restart all, text the producer that it's updated — then watch my change go out on air a few minutes later through Hulu. Doing that live in an emergency and seeing it on television minutes later is a pretty cool feeling.
Less "cool" and more asking for trouble if you make one misplaced comma, quote, or curly brace. The entire apps crashes and shows nothing to the broadcast audience or worse an error screen they'll screencap and meme.
True but on election night you’re just changing things from null to one of two strings.
I’ve spent 17 years in news and it’s not uncommon to operate short term journalistic stuff off a Google sheet or xml file. It’s basically fine.
If you know, you know. Lots of bystander comments in this discussion, finding fault or claiming they’d do it better. Maybe NBC News should be recruiting from here.
And all that is missing the real story, which is how one guy made tech magic happen, and how it feels to be praised for a technical accomplishment when those praising have very little idea what it really took.
> Doing that live in an emergency and seeing it on television minutes later is a pretty cool feeling.
I once heard a story of the slomo camera used during MLB games stopped working during a World Series game which meant that a huge feature of the broadcast was going to be unavailable. One of the engineering crew took it upon himself to look into it. Apparently, another camera angle caught the extra person at the camera during the broadcast which was seen by a high ranking executive who promptly called the director to see what was going on. His response boiled down to "someone is either getting fired, or getting promoted". A few innings later, the slomo feature was again available for the broadcast.
Sometimes, you just got to "get 'er done" on the air.
That part stood out to me too. However this article was from 2018, not last week it seems to me.
We did live debugging like this at the time, wouldn’t today.
It sure seemed like there were a bunch of moments of live updating? Discussion with Chris (producer), saying, ok, it's updated now, try this. Yes a lot was data updates but there were a bunch of other times it seemed more systems code etc.
Maybe they have the CI even if not the CD…?
Yeah I hope that’s a simplification. At the very least I hope some automated testing is scanning that code change in a PR before it gets pulled down to the server.
> worse an error screen they'll screencap and meme.
Or even worse, you misattribute a result to the wrong candidate, it gets screencapped and used as evidence in another “election fraud” conspiracy theory.
I actually think the safety guards they’d add for software like this would be the more interesting part of the story!