Frugal Computing (2021) • Hacker News Board

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#51

Post by tremon » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:23 PM UTC

0thgen wrote: post #39

floatboth wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly… the projection that datacenters' demand for computing power won't be offset by silicon efficiency improvements is somewhat speculative; the projection that Bitcoin's demand for computing power won't be offset by silicon efficiency improvements is obvious and is by design of the fucking system .

bitcoin mining provides an opportunity for anyone, anywhere to convert their computing resources into value. the competitive pressure is to have more efficient energy usage than your competitors so in reality, bitcoin provides an direct incentive for more efficient computing (the kind that can't be handle with by building smaller, more efficient processors). it might do more to boost computational efficiency (and red…

I'm sorry, what? Bitcoin mining has spawned an entire new industry focused solely on converting a scarce shared resource (electrical energy) into perceived personal profits. It is wasteful pollution on a global scale: a single bitcoin transaction consumes as much power as an average U.S. household does in 77 days (https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption)

It's a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons. The energy already wasted on bitcoin mining will never be recuperated by the efficiency gains you so eagerly (and without merit) ascribe to bitcoin.

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#52

Post by 0thgen » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:27 PM UTC

user-the-name wrote: post #47

0thgen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bitcoin mining provides an opportunity for anyone, anywhere to convert their computing resources into value. the competitive pressure is to have more efficient energy usage than your competitors so in reality, bitcoin provides an direct incentive for more efficient computing (the kind that can't be handle with by building smaller, more efficient processors). it might do more to boost computational efficiency (and red…

Absolute bullshit. Bitcoin does not even use processors for mining, it uses massively specialised hardware that is absolutely useless for anything else. No advances in bitcoin mining will translate to gain in anything else. It also massively increases emissions and does nothing to decrease them. The difficulty adjustment algorithm of bitcoin will ensure that you always have to keep wasting more resources to mine, and…

by specialized hardware, you mean GPUs? which are extremely useful for graphics, machine learning, and large-scale mathematical calculations? the gains to society that GPUs brought can't be understated. how do you think they run the climate-projection models? [1]

and my argument is about second-order effects. even if bitcoin mining remains inefficient, the technological gains of directly incentivising lower energy usage than your competitors carries over to other markets / enterprises

plus, bitcoin is scheduled to run out. so eventually the mining issue is moot

a second-order prediction is obviously more noisy and holds less weight without any direct evidence, but 'lack of direct evidence' characterizes much of this debate

[1]: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2019/07/17/clima-climate-model...

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#53

Post by user-the-name » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:28 PM UTC

0thgen wrote: post #52

user-the-name wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolute bullshit. Bitcoin does not even use processors for mining, it uses massively specialised hardware that is absolutely useless for anything else. No advances in bitcoin mining will translate to gain in anything else. It also massively increases emissions and does nothing to decrease them. The difficulty adjustment algorithm of bitcoin will ensure that you always have to keep wasting more resources to mine, and…

by specialized hardware, you mean GPUs? which are extremely useful for graphics, machine learning, and large-scale mathematical calculations? the gains to society that GPUs brought can't be understated. how do you think they run the climate-projection models? [1] and my argument is about second-order effects. even if bitcoin mining remains inefficient, the technological gains of directly incentivising lower energy us…

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

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#54

Post by marcosdumay » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:30 PM UTC

phtrivier wrote: post #38

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.

> There is plenty of clean energy. Potential, yes. We just don't have the infrastructure to harness it at the moment, nor will we have it in the close future. In the meantime we're running on dirty energy. (Source: IEA) Yes, it's depressing. > It is not running out. Unless you have a technological breakthrough to announce, the problem is not so much "clean energy running out" as "clean energy not being there yet, and…

> nor will we have it in the close future

It would be better if people with broken crystal balls stopped insisting on business as usual on the middle of revolutions.

We are not on the "there's no reason renewables couldn't replace fossil fuels, we just have to invest a little in R&D" anymore. We are at the "yep, we replaced all of those on your left yesterday, today we are doing the next line" stage, and we are going through it fast.

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#55

Post by 0thgen » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:37 PM UTC

tremon wrote: post #51

0thgen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bitcoin mining provides an opportunity for anyone, anywhere to convert their computing resources into value. the competitive pressure is to have more efficient energy usage than your competitors so in reality, bitcoin provides an direct incentive for more efficient computing (the kind that can't be handle with by building smaller, more efficient processors). it might do more to boost computational efficiency (and red…

I'm sorry, what? Bitcoin mining has spawned an entire new industry focused solely on converting a scarce shared resource (electrical energy) into perceived personal profits. It is wasteful pollution on a global scale: a single bitcoin transaction consumes as much power as an average U.S. household does in 77 days ( https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption ) It's a perfect example of the tragedy of the comm…

So when bitcoin hits it's schedule max limit and can't be mined anymore, is the point moot?

I guess the question is: how much of a total energy bill will it have racked up before we get to that point, and should we consider the likely improvements to computing efficiency when we start speculating about the long term impact

"converting a scarce shared resource (electrical energy) into perceived personal profits" (1) is this entirely new?, and (2) it doesn't just exist for increasing profits, it provides a service: a digital cash infrastructure

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#56

Post by WesolyKubeczek » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:40 PM UTC

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 churn. New libraries come with breakage that demands every application out there to adapt with little to no reward, those applications aren’t becoming any better, they just keep chasing new languages, new frameworks, new windowing systems, re-solve problems solved long ago, and all of it is just to keep up.

Gosh, there was this comparison on how long would it take to cold boot a machine, open a document in a text processor, and print it out. The contenders were a 8-bit Commodore with floppies and a modern MacBook Pro. Guess what, while Mac won, it wasn’t by a wide margin at all. The Mac could likely easily emulate a dozen Commodores. Where are all the gains?

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.

There’s also this thing that while we rely on tech more and more, we are just as far from actually automating the boring stuff away as we have been for the last 40 years. The stories about a plucky worker automating their job and not telling anyone are just as appealing today as they were two decades ago. And all this tech has bugs, is fragile, sucks big time and brings in a lot of frustration.

(Steps away from the soapbox and walks into the sunset.)

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#57

Post by 0thgen » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:40 PM UTC

user-the-name wrote: post #53

0thgen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

by specialized hardware, you mean GPUs? which are extremely useful for graphics, machine learning, and large-scale mathematical calculations? the gains to society that GPUs brought can't be understated. how do you think they run the climate-projection models? [1] and my argument is about second-order effects. even if bitcoin mining remains inefficient, the technological gains of directly incentivising lower energy us…

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

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#58

Post by 0thgen » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:47 PM UTC

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 increase, and all the developing countries can't. It's a great way to ensure the technology gains of the world don't go to any of the countries that need them

"we are just as far from actually automating the boring stuff away as we have been for the last 40 years."

that's quite a statement. millions of white papers on new technology and billions (probably trillions) of dollars spent on automation moved us zero steps in the direction we've been aiming for?

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#59

Post by horsawlarway » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:53 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #54

phtrivier wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is plenty of clean energy. Potential, yes. We just don't have the infrastructure to harness it at the moment, nor will we have it in the close future. In the meantime we're running on dirty energy. (Source: IEA) Yes, it's depressing. > It is not running out. Unless you have a technological breakthrough to announce, the problem is not so much "clean energy running out" as "clean energy not being there yet, and…

> nor will we have it in the close future It would be better if people with broken crystal balls stopped insisting on business as usual on the middle of revolutions. We are not on the "there's no reason renewables couldn't replace fossil fuels, we just have to invest a little in R&D" anymore. We are at the "yep, we replaced all of those on your left yesterday, today we are doing the next line" stage, and we are going…

Yeah, we're in a weird set of times.

The rate at which electricity costs are decreasing from solar is pretty damn staggering. So much so that government estimates have been laughably wrong for decades now (they consistently over-estimate future costs and under-estimate utilization), without much sign of change (ex: https://maartensteinbuch.com/2017/06/12/photovoltaic-growth-...)

Which doesn't in any way change the fact that we're still nowhere close to having a comprehensive solution to climate change, but it does mean that I find the "energy austerity" side misguided at best. In the same way that economic austerity is also usually misguided.

Re: Frugal Computing (2021)

#60

Post by davegauer » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:58 PM UTC

ojciecczas wrote: post #9

The internet should operate like a sunflower, servers should follow the sun. Data centers should operate on solar energy, deploying themselves at the sunrise and shutting down at sunset in given location.

I like this a lot. Or even without a distributed system, just having a server deliver varying levels of compute/bandwidth based on the position of the Sun (a forum goes text-only at sunset, starts delivering images again at sunrise, does batch processing at high noon).