Linus's comments make a lot of sense but the fact of the matter is this: a number is a number is a number. If I run the same "flawed" benchmark suite on last year's iPhone 5, it will tell me that, yes, its CPU is indeed slower than that of a 6S. The tests might not holistically represent real-world usage but they output just enough data to tell me quantitatively how much better one phone performs over another in a vacuum.
The "real" benchmark; actually running automation on a cross section of phones against a few popular apps, would probably be a more useful test. But Anandtrch and their cohorts don't seem to agree.
i wasn't really referring to linus's comments although he is pretty much spot on, i hate to say (i have no great love for him XD).
you are right that numbers are numbers, but that says nothing about what they mean or measure. i can write a program that has benchmark in its name and just pulls any old number out, like how many millseconds since the last hour ticked over and give that back as a number. you will get meaningless results.
the argument the author of the geek bench software makes sounds kind of valid but there is something i learned many years ago about optimisation and performance. measurement trumps everything. given that the futuremark physics demo uses bullet physics, complete with its own tight inner loops is a great example of a measurement showing that this benchmark does not correlate with real world uses. the large number of other benchmarks that agree are even more data to support that argument.
that being said his argument is technically baseless afaik too. no app, not even a simple renderer of a blank screen will spend all of its time inside of a short tight innermost loop - it will spend its time bouncing between multiple of them, doing a lot of waiting and having its time stolen at any given point by the OS. i'd be curious to know how he thinks these behaviours will go away in the future? the i-cache setup and L1 cache sizes are not enough for even some quite simple loops even if they are 8-way associative and bristling with all the latest features - its often quite trivial to construct pathologically bad cases using common programming practices - e.g. writing your code using objective-c or swift there is a lot of scope for cache missing and pollution. i can go into excruciating detail about this if you are interested and provide repeatable experiments to back my claims, i've done plenty of work on these things writing and optimising code... but this is long already. :)
Sure, measuring one iPhone against the next makes some sense with synthetic browser benchmarks, but I think where the hype breaks down is in using that browser benchmark to say that the iPad Pro can squash any other portable device out there. At the very least these benchmark results indicate that it's (surprise!) more of a mixed bag than has been reported.
Regarding the need for a "real" benchmark, from the article:
"While Geek Bench 3 attempts to create what its makers think is an accurate measure of CPU performance using seconds-long “real world” algorithms, BAPCo’s approach is actually more “real world.” BAPCo’s consortium of mostly hardware makers set out to create workloads across all the different platforms that would simulate what a person does, such as actually editing a photo with HDR, browsing the web, or sending email."
The author goes on to concede that they have custom apps for each platform to accomplish this task, but it seems that the TabletMark developers are aware of the exact issue you raise.
The Echo is awesome; my girlfriend and I have had it for the last few months and LOVE being able to just play music by telling it to play. It's also an AMAZING bluetooth speaker; seriously, it's so fucking loud and on point. It's worth every penny.
I met a TSA airport agent a few months ago and, naturally, asked him exactly this. Apparently, the TSA purposely does not release accurate statistics as a security measure and that he and his colleagues have definitely stopped a lot of potential, but minor, scenarios from happening.
I could be wrong and uneducated about this, of course.
I worked for the TSA for about 6 months a few years ago. They convince employees that catching a knife from some traveler who forgot to put it in their checked baggage is a huge win and that somehow we saved the day yet again. Happened on a daily basis.
Our biggest catch while I was there: one day we caught a guy with a sword. The guy obviously didn't know what he was doing, apologetic, and confused. Of course, our managers talked it up as a big win for TSA security. Can you imagine a terrorist trying to take over a plane with a sword?
Without statistics it's hard to say what "potential" meant, doesn't it? The TSA reports that they find 4-5 guns each day. People forget that they have their gun one them or in their luggage.
These incidents are reported. Are these part of the "potential, but minor, scenarios"? It's hard to say without knowing the statistics. But it's safe to assume that "minor" means "not terrorism related."
I can't come up with any scenarios where the release of accurate statistics would cause a security problem, except to lower the security of the TSA's own existence. To take it up a notch, are all of the accurate statistics from 2010 still so sensitive that none of them can be revealed? I don't think so. But I don't think those have been released at all.
> As a dark-skinned man who oftentimes sports a beard, I'm treated like a terrorist every single time I walk through security. To them, I'm a second-class citizen - no question about it.
As another (very) dark-skinned man who has also donned something close to a beard, I've noticed that (a) I've been treated the same as everyone else at all of the major hubs and (b) Everyone else gets treated like cattle.
Same for when I've travelled with my family, and my Mom and Dad are dark.
I've definitely had my fair share of stupid racists (okay, maybe less than my fair share; I got lucky somehow); going through airport security hasn't been it.
I think one of the best and clearest examples of a useful monad is the Error monad in OCaml (and Haskell, I think). Error is a type that can return two different things depending on the result of a computation. One could use exceptions for this sort of thing, but this is much, much cheaper.
Some people find it hard because they are not interested enough to really take the time to understand it.
Others just don't have the mind for it, like how some don't have the body to dance or play sports at a professional level.
There are, indeed, some concepts that come naturally to only a handful of people (kernel development is hard for me; interesting, but hard), but I think the fundamentals are pretty easy to grasp for most of the mainstream languages.
You don't need that much memory if you're setting up a simple IMAP server; you could probably do it on a super cheap instance on AWS, Rackspace or similar.
I am failing to see what the big stink is about "giving up one's privacy" when using "the cloud." Yes, there are some shady providers that might put their hands in the cookie jar at their convenience. That sucks. Google isn't one of those providers, though. What advantage would they gain from reading people's mail at a whim?
Regardless, one's privacy is already compromised the moment they sign up for Internet service; that information can be made available to the right people after one subpoena.
Google read your email and use it to throw targeted ads at you.
There is a fine line between profiling, tracking and analysing communications and utilising that data for something nefarious. The only deciding factor on how far it goes is cash.
The "real" benchmark; actually running automation on a cross section of phones against a few popular apps, would probably be a more useful test. But Anandtrch and their cohorts don't seem to agree.