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Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

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Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#11
post #7

Headline is wrong. 68GJ per month, not GW, which is roughly 26kW.

When converting 68GJ to another unit of energy, it would be 18,888KWh or ~18GWh (note that h!).

EDIT: But of course, 18GWh/68GJ "per month" also gives us an average continuous power consumption of 26KW, as you have said.

Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#13
post #10
post #7

Headline is wrong. 68GJ per month, not GW, which is roughly 26kW.

Yes. I was not sure how familiar people are with joules, so as I said in the post: > (In the headline I used GW because people are more familiar with that, and it's kind of the same.) Saying "kind of the same" won't please engineers who know what they're talking about and are used to correct units, but for the general public who won't read beyond the headline and (if I'm lucky) the conclusion, I think it's close enou…

Rather than just being flat out wrong, why not use gigawatt-hours which is a well known unit.

Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#14
I do not understand what extra functionality is gained by making the site so much slower. I go on Reddit primarily for text content. Threaded comments and HTML tags.

WHY does it NEED to be so SLOW?

For this degree of sluggishness, it feels like you could build a site that fulfills all of reddit's functionality—and have a crypto miner running in the background.

Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#15
post #8

Given the old site was built off of older libraries/frameworks and the newer site is presumably built using more modern ones, wouldn't this be an indicator of latest tools being heavier and/or more bloated?

The old site also did mostly server-side rendering while the new site is largely client-side rendering of structured data.

One of those isn't necessarily heavier-weight than the other, but it does shift the energy usage from the company's data-center to the user's computer or mobile device. Server-side rendering also opens up more opportunities for cross-user caching, which AIUI Reddit used extensively.

Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#16

What are the best Reddit clones these days? I've seen voat but heard it's overrun by the alt right. Hubski seemed interesting but basically seems dead now. Anything else out there? Reddit is really losing its appeal to me with their desktop/mobile site changes. That and I feel the contents been getting less interesting. Like it's just memes or sensational politics everywhere. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Hacker News isn't a bad alternative ;)

This place has a really strong pro-cloud pro-JS bent tho

Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#17
post #14

I do not understand what extra functionality is gained by making the site so much slower. I go on Reddit primarily for text content. Threaded comments and HTML tags. WHY does it NEED to be so SLOW? For this degree of sluggishness, it feels like you could build a site that fulfills all of reddit's functionality—and have a crypto miner running in the background.

I had the same feeling when Chase redesigned their online banking and I had to upgrade my dedicated linux banking computer from an old Lenovo Ideapad to a somewhat more powerful old Thinkpad.

Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#18
post #10
post #7

Headline is wrong. 68GJ per month, not GW, which is roughly 26kW.

Yes. I was not sure how familiar people are with joules, so as I said in the post: > (In the headline I used GW because people are more familiar with that, and it's kind of the same.) Saying "kind of the same" won't please engineers who know what they're talking about and are used to correct units, but for the general public who won't read beyond the headline and (if I'm lucky) the conclusion, I think it's close enou…

https://www.google.com/search?q=68GJ+in+kwh

It's not that hard to specify kW.h, which is what people are used to paying for in their utility bills.

18888.9 kW.h are worth about 3k USD, depending on your local rates.

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