Yes. A similar scenario is when I use a cheap microcontroller in some one-off project that uses only one or two GPIOs. I'll use an esp32 because I've got a bunch lying around and it's only a few bucks, but the fact that it's loaded to the hilt with unused sensors & I/Os leaves me feeling guilty for some reason.
Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?
21–30 of 132 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?
#22To be honest an M1 (M1 Max, 64GB RAM) performs quite poor doing serious software development.
As an example, it takes 22 sec to run a test suite on the M1, in our CI the same test suite takes 9 sec.
These might be due to software that has not been written yet.
To be honest, the computer seems like a high end office computer, so I think that use case seems spot on.
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?
#23The compute power thing is becoming a pet peeve of mine.
Consuming too much power is already a big ecological issue, and here in Europe it's becoming a financial problem too. I still want my computer to perform as good as possible, be it running a game or compiling some code or transcoding videos or whatever. In that moment. But the rest of the time, it should consume as little power as possible. I've been looking into ways to upgrade, and most of the reviews focus 95% of their time/space on peak performance (basically torture tests) and peak power consumption (but more from a "what PSU/cooler do you need" perspective). Office-type work, which is 95% of what I actually use it for, is always an afterthought.
Back to your original question, I do understand where you're coming from. I'd love to use an old android phone as a webcam, it's just a shame that most don't work without a battery, and having a device like that permanently in a charging state will eventually lead to it ballooning.
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?
#24My devices have always taken more of a bai lan approach,
they do what I tell them and nothing else.
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?
#25No, because always running at maximum capacity is an indication that something has no room for failure, or for growth.
I have a M2 MacBook Air with the most amount of RAM and storage that Apple would sell me. I'm sure its CPU sits at about 5% utilization almost the entire day. This was intentional on my part. I bought a laptop with enough "extra" capacity that it will be able to handle increased inefficiencies, bloat, and new features from ever-expanding software for the next several years.
So by buying one "over-speced" laptop now, I avoid buying two or three of them in the future. This is how I like to buy devices, especially since some items, like the screen or keyboard or the like, are mostly fungible.
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?
#26To be honest an M1 (M1 Max, 64GB RAM) performs quite poor doing serious software development. As an example, it takes 22 sec to run a test suite on the M1, in our CI the same test suite takes 9 sec. These might be due to software that has not been written yet. To be honest, the computer seems like a high end office computer, so I think that use case seems spot on.
You say "a" test suite as if this was universal truth. I can tell you that it is not and your suspicion is correct. It depends. Our own test suites saw 25-50% performance increases / decrease in runtime on our developer machines when we switched to M1s for example.
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?
#27No. Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?
#28To be honest an M1 (M1 Max, 64GB RAM) performs quite poor doing serious software development. As an example, it takes 22 sec to run a test suite on the M1, in our CI the same test suite takes 9 sec. These might be due to software that has not been written yet. To be honest, the computer seems like a high end office computer, so I think that use case seems spot on.
I don't think that's a fair comparison, machines exclusively running those CI pipelines could be very powerful
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?
#29I would turn it the other way around. So many underpowered devices are produced that sit in drawers, collect dust, and end up in the landfill. For instance Intel makes "atom" devices that if they don't die early because of design flaws, they die early because they aren't really useful. There was a time when Intel was interested in having you buy a new computer because it was the best computer you ever had, now they a…
> For instance Intel makes "atom" devices that if they don't die early because of design flaws, they die early because they aren't really useful.
Setting aside the reliability concerns (see other comments) for a bit...
I think a number of years ago Scaleway (or someone else) offered VPSes with Intel Atom CPUs and had some ARM offerings as well. This discussion appears to be the best I can find at the moment: https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/77819/new-scalaway-c2-inte...
For my needs, really cheap VPS servers are essentially ideal since most of my workloads are RAM bottlenecked and can easily deal with a single core CPU. This would also be perfect for hobby projects. Why live on free tiers that have lots of limitations when you can just get new nodes per project (or group of projects) for 1-3 Euros a month?
Actually, my current homelab servers (that I also use as CI nodes) run AMD GE200 CPUs with a TDP of 35W. If I could find something that's AM4 compatible, readily available and cheap, you can be pretty sure I'd go for it!
Oh, and my notebook runs I think one of the Celerons, that have a Just look at how popular Raspberry Pi is as a platform for homelabs, now imagine doing the same with the x86 platform and not some overpriced novelty hardware that comes in small runs, but something to rival the mass production of Pi.
I want to live in that world.
If we weren't so heavily impacted by Wirth's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law) both in regards to our OSes (just try running anything heavier than XFCE4 on any of those pieces of hardware) and platforms (e.g. comparing the footprint of Go vs something like Ruby or Java; though each have their uses; though there's also the facet of lots of browser-based software nowadays, e.g. Visual Studio Code vs a native text editor like CudaText), far fewer people would consider hardware like that "underpowered" or e-waste.
Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?
#30To be honest an M1 (M1 Max, 64GB RAM) performs quite poor doing serious software development. As an example, it takes 22 sec to run a test suite on the M1, in our CI the same test suite takes 9 sec. These might be due to software that has not been written yet. To be honest, the computer seems like a high end office computer, so I think that use case seems spot on.
IMO the bigger problem is that MacOS is poorly equipped to handle modern development workloads. POSIX-certification is near-meaningless in 2022 and essentially hides a rotting UNIX ecosystem at the heart of MacOS. Unless you modify the OS (add a package manager, force recent coreutils, eschew Xcode, etc.) Macs will feel like the black sheep of your infrastructure.
A good 80% of my Mac gripes could be solved by running Linux full-time. Unfortunately the other 20% are ARM-related issues, so I'm sorta stuck between a rock and a hard place.