Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2017 August 12

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August 12

How many jobs in Google (or in similar companies) are indeed IT

In a company like Google, how many jobs are indeed IT jobs and not accounting, business, design, HR and so on?--Hofhof (talk) 04:29, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

As far as the design jobs go, those are probably IT jobs, too. That is, while it is possible for somebody to design a logo, etc., by drawing on paper, it's unlikely in this day and age to end there. More likely, they would be expected to draw it on computer. StuRat (talk) 18:49, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Everything is IT if you rationalize enough (and I know a lot of people who do). The guy you swaps out bad drives in the server farm is IT because he is handling hard drives. He doesn't really know what they are on the inside, but he knows that a red light means it is broken and needs to be swapped. The guy who orders drives for the server farm is IT because he orders computer parts. The security guard out front is IT because he uses a computer to monitor the security perimeter of the building. Until you define what an IT job is, you can't really ask how many people are IT. 71.85.51.150 (talk) 18:59, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Support staff like HR, accounts, building services, canteens, security, cleaning etc typically make up about fifth of the workforce in a company so I would say 80% as a first guess are directly involved in the business of the company. Dmcq (talk) 10:01, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

The line in IRC under text

I searched all over the internet and I still couldn't find it. I've used IRC for many years, and still ponder about what this line means.

So, sometimes when I enter text in freenode, a line appears under the text I enter after about a few seconds. Does this line indicate that someone is typing? Does it indicate that someone may specifically be typing while about to ping me? What does it mean? Philmonte101 😊😄😞 (talk) 07:07, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Why is YouTube so much better at playing videos than other sites?

I can play YouTube videos at 720p and sometimes 1080p without it buffering but other sites often buffer even at low quality. 2.102.184.47 (talk) 18:50, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

What else are the other pages doing? When viewing a video on YouTube (which is a Google service), you are shown the video. I've been to sites where you are also force-fed multiple high-bandwidth advertisements over and over while you try to watch the video. That cuts into your local bandwidth. Then, there is the question of the server on the other end. Do they have bandwidth of their own? Google has very good servers and you shouldn't expect lag from YouTube. That doesn't mean that everyone has good servers. There is also the protocol used. YouTube uses a very lossy protocol. Yes, the display is 1080p, but doesn't mean it is identical to watching the same video on a BluRay disk at 1080p. It is downgraded when it is compressed and then resampled to show at 1080p. You see the issue very quickly if you watch a scene that pans from one side to the other. The video will jitter because there is too much to update frame-by-frame. 71.85.51.150 (talk) 18:57, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

(ec) Hard to say specifically, but here are some factors that may play in:

1) Compression. Different compression methods are appropriate for different content, and perhaps YouTube does a better job at this.

2) Ads. These can make the problem worse, if they try to launch another video ad at the same time your video is playing, or, could even make things better, if they play a low-res ad while pre-loading the regular content. StuRat (talk) 18:59, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Your question is unclear since you didn't specify what other sites. I've definitely had other sites which have no problems with 1080P, and I'm not even counting subscription sites like Netflix nor free TV catchup sites like iPlayer. Still YouTube is massive meaning they can afford the bandwidth and in particular servers all over the planet to reduce problems. While cloud delivery platforms like Akamai can help smaller sites, they still cost money and the platforms may be reluctant to deal with certain video sites (particularly those who don't have a good reputation when it comes to dealing with copyvios, and adult ones). It's also possible your ISP is a factor, while people often talk about net neutrality in terms of penalising sites like Youtube, it can also be the opposite. The importance of Youtube means ISPs may make far more effort in ensuring people get a good experience with Youtube since if it turns work well, their customers may turn to another ISP. They're less likely to care about less important sites. I can say here in NZ when ISPs were still highly shaping connections they generally tried to make sure they Youtube would at least function smoothly even during peak times although sometimes screwed up. Notably it took them a while to adjust the limits to ensure 1080P would work. By comparison, other sites sometimes barely worked even for non HD content. Nil Einne (talk) 05:19, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

There is another significant factor besides network performance. Assuming they're talking about watching videos on the YouTube website or in an official YouTube app, the player is a computer program that is executed on your computer. Google can afford to spend lots of money and time optimizing YouTube. There's a story I read some time ago about how a YouTube engineer changed the website to use JavaScript-based lazy loading and found that this resulted in a large increase in traffic from developing nations, because previously it took hours just to download the playback Web page over their poor connections, but I can't find it. Anyway, many other video hosts can't afford such effort. Often they use off-the-shelf video player software. (To test whether the player, scripts on the Web page, etc. are impeding performance, save the video file to your computer and play it using player software on your system.) --47.138.161.183 (talk) 04:54, 16 August 2017 (UTC)