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Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?

#91

Post by techsupporter »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #73
techsupporter wrote: post #25

No, 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…

Just out of curiosity- which computer did you replace with the M2 Air?

A 2018 Mac Mini. I would have kept it longer but I really wanted to switch to the M-series/ARM platform. Going back to a portable device (I had a "cheese slicer" MacBook Air before that) was a nice-to-have that kept me from buying the M1 Mini when the M2 launched.

Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?

#93

Post by geocrasher »

I think the better question: Does the device serve a purpose? And is it doing so in a reasonable manner? ? There's no need to have everything fully utilized all the time. My 64GB 8c/16t Ryzen build (which I haven't got yet...) will be partly utilized for work, and sometimes for play. But it'll last me at least another 5 years, which is part of its utility.

Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?

#94

Post by vineyardmike »

dirheist wrote: post #55
mk_stjames wrote: post #8

It would only be considered 'wasted' if energy was free. But energy is not free, and thus choosing how to use compute resources is still important. e.g. I own a few high powered workstations for fluid dynamics computations. If energy was free, I would be just running 'what-if' solves all the time just for the hell of it. But because energy isn't free, they stay in sleep unless I need them for what is deemed 'necessar…

That's fair, but I have a half a dozen servers sitting in a colo with networking/energy/cooling included in the lease agreement so energy is not a concern. I usually just run game servers with the extra RAM/cpu threads for my friends. If my elasticsearch cluster is particularly unused some days and I have extra bandwidth I might turn on wireguard and let the 450GB disk of torrents I have on disk seed. Anything that m…

> I might turn on wireguard and let the 450GB disk of torrents I have on disk seed

Your colo does that mind this use?

Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?

#95

Post by tharkun__ »

trap_goes_hot wrote: post #83
tharkun__ wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does marketing come in? The OP made a claim of basically (paraphrasing here): "this thing blows, it results in a 50% performance drop for test suites". I believe him for his case. Our case was showing the oppositebehavior. Thus it seems to depend. Simple logic.

People review products for their own use case. I see the comment and I go okay - thats a one star review. You may give it a 4/5 star, so its all good then?

I apologize in advance to other readers, but feeding this troll is sort of fun. I only have this one cookie left anyway.

In fact, yes, that is exactly how reviews should work, if there wasn't so many fake reviews that it's not helping. People have a tendency to review and especially comment on a review, if they have an issue with something. Even a product with 3 stars could actually be a 4.5 star overall.

The comments are more important than the number. Like with most 'metrics'. They can make you look but you really have to take a qualitative look after that. Take lots of Amazon reviews that are 1 star and if you read the review comment it says something along the lines of "Product came damaged in the box and Amazon support wouldn't replace it". Or 5 star reviews with text like "Arrived super fast, haven't had a chance to try it yet". The reviews are meant to be for the product not Amazon's service or shipping speed.

Likewise if someone buys say a fish knife and then comments with a 1 star review of "Useless, can't make proper feather sticks or split wood at the camp site." And then I may give a 5 star w/ comment "Awesome fish knife, cut up and filleted the fish I caught beautifully. Been using it for a year now and shows no signs of wear."

Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?

#96

Post by xboxnolifes »

Not really. It seems like hardware tends to get replaced more often because software gets slower rather than the hardware failing, so buying over-speced devices will last longer.

I buy new gen GPUs not because I need all of the compute, but because I only want to buy a new GPU every 5 years or so.

Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?

#97

Post by vineyardmike »

itake wrote: post #50
thoughtFrame wrote: post #48

What bothers me is that I don't know how to squeeze all of the juice out of my CPU (or any programmable device for that matter). I see instances of the Jevons effect everywhere (e.g. the use of Electron), and on the other side I see DOS-era programmers whose experience transfer really well to more modern machines, so they know how to get the best throughput on their data, how to isolate slow but necessary parts of th…

My issue is concurrency is so hard. One time tasks don't make sense to make concurrent, b/c migrating from sync to async takes 2-5x longer + higher bug risks and more complexity. So most tasks remain inefficient...

> b/c migrating from sync to async takes 2-5x longer

I very firmly believe that the future of concurrency is with language features that let you basically “write blocking code and run it in parallel” like fibers/CSP/etc. It’s how I’ve started pushing everyone to write where I work and it’s made everyone so much more comfortable (and error free) at writing things in parallel.

It’s way easier to reason about than async+await/callbacks/etc. It fits with how people thing about sequential programs, and it’s how the operating systems most people use expose concurrency today.

Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?

#98

Post by unregistereddev »

I do not feel badly underutilizing a device, particular its computing power. I do feel badly replacing a device before the end of its useful life.

Buy that fancy MacBook, high end phone, or shiny PC - buy quality. Buy longevity. Then use it as long as possible. It's better to underuse a powerful device that lasts 8 - 10 years rather than it is to buy a new low-end device every couple of years.

Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?

#99

Post by a_square_peg »

I think the same but about people. The wasted potential of a product is probably capped to just the price of the product so at the end of the day, it's probably not much. The wasted potential of people on the other hand, due to either socio-economic circumstance, mental health, political situation - this I do feel bad about.

Re: Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?

#100

Post by Canada »

Yes. In the past I've been guilty of this... buy gear and than not use it. I stopped, I only buy it if I'm going to use it immediately.

But it also now annoys me to see people under buying... people cheap out to save a few hundres bucks or a grand on something they are going to use more than most thing they own. Like yes, drop that cash and max out the storage on that laptop! Sure, it seems unnessary now, but those few extra terrabytes available in a couple years are worth so much more in time savings later than the money now. When were talking hardware you cant easily upgrade later.. which everything but PCs and servers.

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