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Frugal Computing (2021)

wimvanderbauwhede.github.io

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Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#61

Post by jka »

wink wrote: post #23

> To address these challenges, action is needed on many fronts. What will you do to make frugal computing a reality? I dunno, isn't this the same thing as blaming climate change on the people who take a single vacation by plane per year, no matter what else they're doing the other 51 weeks to try to live a non-wasteful life? I like my home server and having my data here, on LAN speed. Of course that's probably not th…

> I dunno, isn't this the same thing as blaming climate change on the people who take a single vacation by plane per year

It could be, yep. And it could be accurate. Although that behaviour is probably what a lot of us consider normal, an estimated[2] 80% of the world's population have not travelled by plane at all (not once per year -- ever!)

(travel and travel by air is not intrinsically the problem - it's the negative externalities of doing so. but it's interesting how normalized a damaging behaviour can become simply based on the behaviours of people around us)

[1] - https://ourworldindata.org/transport

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#62

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

I have at least totally given up on high-end personal computing (think your top-notch Alienware computers) and have been living with a 470S that I purchased from the company as X-hand a while ago.

I'll probably stay frugal on computing power for the rest of my life, unless forced to change.

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#63

Post by musingsole »

zokier wrote: post #10

> As a society we need to start treating computational resources as finite and precious, to be utilised only when necessary, and as effectively as possible. Considering that on AWS potentially every millisecond of compute time and every database write is billed separately, I think the financial incentives are already there to consider computational resources precious. > Extending the life time is also the key action…

> I think the financial incentives are already there to consider computational resources precious.

I'd argue we ARE already working with computational resources as precious commodities. If you are in an area where it matters, you consider the logistics of acquiring, retaining, and utilizing all of your CPU and memory. It's precisely this that fed the rise of AWS.

So, do we need a new economy putting pricing on these resources? No! We already have it. We're just shocked at how cheap it is. But why shouldn't it be? You're messing with virtual realities where it's possible to teleport objects from one side of the universe to the other at almost no cost. Compare that with the friction of moving a real world object to the other side of your house.

Thermodynamics apply. I'm pretty tired of navel gazing about the efficiency of computing when it was invented as a mechanism to increase the efficiency of the CRITICALLY inefficient systems.

Your smartphone and its code are not the bottleneck in the world system. Stop optimizing the wrong parts.

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#64

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

0thgen wrote: post #58
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #56

The incentives are still there for churning out more and more code, compile it on more and more CI/CD pipelines, run it on clusters of more and more powerful machines, and interface it to more and more powerful computers in our pockets which have gigabytes of RAM, terabytes of storage, mad gigahertz multi-core CPUs but somehow still amount to being slow dumb terminals. Damn, even open source world favors constant chu…

"If I were to become a dictator of a large part of the world, I’d tax heavily all the extra cycles, all extra watts of power wasted, all extra RAM, and all excess bytes sent over the wire, and tax it enough to eat into profits of big tech. Incentives done right would make the developers think of efficiency from day one" The best part about this is all the current first world countries could deal with that tax increas…

> The best part about this is all the current first world countries could deal with that tax increase, and all the developing countries can't.

Well, if your way of dealing with such tax would be to outsource all the "dirty" bits to developing countries where they just don't care, or be like Germany, claiming of being oh so green while buying dirty electricity made from coal from Poland and Czechia, sorry, can't stand behind this.

> dollars spent on automation moved us zero steps in the direction we've been aiming for?

Things do get automated in, say, factories, but not in the everyday life.

When it comes to dealing with some governments who jumped onto this newfangled digitalization bandwagon, it looks like they have taken all the shit parts from the online processes, all the shit parts from the old paper-based processes and jumbled them together into the most abominable, inefficient form ever, while pretending to be so 21st century.

Another thing is the increasing siloization of platforms and APIs moving like quicksand, so if you ever try to integrate stuff to automate some of your workflows, you get into this place where there's constant churn.

And don't get me started on home automation, the only things the existing home automation solutions really automate are frustration and despair.

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#65

Post by minroot »

KronisLV wrote: post #30
phtrivier wrote: post #11

> To address these challenges, action is needed on many fronts. What will you do to make frugal computing a reality? Frustrating that the authors ends with such an "open note", without any practical "first steps". (This [1] at least _tries_ to give some options, as arguable as they are.) There are obvious contenders: * keep your phone longer. Brag about it. Find a persuasive way to _demand_ that apps, updates, etc...…

You know, it feels like some of that advice isn't entirely viable, though i support it on some level. > * keep your phone longer. Brag about it. Find a persuasive way to _demand_ that apps, updates, etc... keep working. I don't know what difference 5 years vs 3 years do, though. > * make fun of people who change their phone all the time. (Or for that matter, make fun of consumerism _in general_.) Assuming peer pressu…

The problem with Android is despite using the Linux kernel it doesn't operate as a Linux distro.

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#66

Post by civilized »

Veedrac wrote: post #25

Abstinence-only climate education is such a depressing notion. There is plenty of clean energy. It is not running out. The idea that we should impoverish ourselves to protect against a problem we can solve without impoverishing ourselves is unjustifiably self-destructive.

This take seems to assume that clean electricity is the main issue here. But the opening of the article states that the production of computing devices is the main issue rather than their operation. Manufacturing is not just about clean electricity.

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#67

Post by giantg2 »

I'd imagine corporations and smartphones are mostly responsible. Phones seem to last only about 3 years. My company has probably upgraded my workstation/laptop 5 times in the 10 years I've worked there. I guess a pi and audrino are the newest computers I have. But my newest typical/traditional computer is 10 years old, and my personal laptop is 14.

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#68

Post by terminalcommand »

0thgen wrote: post #57
user-the-name wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, nobody mines bitcoin on GPUs. Surely you would know that if you're here trying to make argument about it?

I was under the impression that standard bitcoin mining leveraged GPUs for the heavy lifting. If that's not the case I'm happy to know what does

There are ASIC chips as far as I know.

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#69

Post by the-alt-one »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #64
0thgen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If I were to become a dictator of a large part of the world, I’d tax heavily all the extra cycles, all extra watts of power wasted, all extra RAM, and all excess bytes sent over the wire, and tax it enough to eat into profits of big tech. Incentives done right would make the developers think of efficiency from day one" The best part about this is all the current first world countries could deal with that tax increas…

> The best part about this is all the current first world countries could deal with that tax increase, and all the developing countries can't. Well, if your way of dealing with such tax would be to outsource all the "dirty" bits to developing countries where they just don't care, or be like Germany, claiming of being oh so green while buying dirty electricity made from coal from Poland and Czechia, sorry, can't stand…

>When it comes to dealing with some governments who jumped onto this newfangled digitalization bandwagon, it looks like they have taken all the shit parts from the online processes, all the shit parts from the old paper-based processes and jumbled them together into the most abominable, inefficient form ever, while pretending to be so 21st century.

This isn't the case in many European countries. So many things are super easy to do in Sweden digitally. Denmark was also pretty good, one thing I liked about Denmark's system was how easy it was to get a hold of a real human.

>And don't get me started on home automation, the only things the existing home automation solutions really automate are frustration and despair.

The real home automation solutions are the washer, drier, and dish washer. Maybe also the robot vacuum (I've heard good things but never used one myself). These are all excellent, though I don't use my drier in favour of a rack.

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