the.com/real time
the present tense, but with a computer breathing down its neck.
means processing or transmitting information as it actually happens, with delay small enough that the lag doesn't matter to the humans involved.
from emerged in 1950s computing to distinguish live systems (like air traffic control) from batch processing, where a computer crunched yesterday's punch cards overnight.
not zero delayreal time just means fast enough to matter
hard vs softmissing a deadline can mean literal plane crashes
gps timingsatellites correct for relativity to stay real time
for instance
air traffic control — radar updates every few seconds, lives depend on it
high frequency trading — firms pay millions to shave microseconds off latency
twitch chat — millions react to a stream within milliseconds, live
pacemakers — detect and correct heartbeat irregularities instantly, no buffering