Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 192 posts

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

#71

Post by TaylorAlexander »

frfl wrote: post #22

Anyone from reddit's dev team reading this? Or youtube's dev team, because my question applies to both. The previous design was great. The new version of both sites is slow, sluggish and provides me with no benefit. Why was the change implemented? The previous design wasn't broken! How's the user feedback? A/B testing really indicated to you this was a good choice?! If you have any insight -- I'm sure this was a deci…

I have definitely noticed that YouTube is one of the few sites that causes my desktop to struggle when loading the page. Gmail is oddly heavy in this regard too. I worry that google might not be paying enough attention to load times or resource utilization.

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

#72

Post by dredmorbius »

graeme wrote: post #59
cool_shit wrote: post #43

I deleted my Reddit account which kept the old design on it. Now when I occasionally browse Reddit as a non-user, it looks like an awful implementation of material design with tons of wasted space. For example, I see about 1.5 cards per page on my 13" laptop. Who designed this? It is horrid and nearly unusable. Not that I'll be using Reddit that much anymore, but it's like they deprecated the desktop version for mobi…

Interesting. New users can't access the old design at all?

https://old.reddit.com

I believe it's possible to set that as a default regardless of account age. But it's a PITA.

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

#73

Post by softrock »

meesterdude wrote: post #66
Scoundreller wrote: post #37

Reddit's Digg moment!

I was hesitant to think/say this, because it is a different beast.... but the more i read about what other people think, as well as my own usage of it - it might be. Although to be fair, reddit has had it's fair share of past dramas too. I think it's time we move beyond reddit and build something bigger and better. It was nice while it lasted.

Reddit getting bigger is the whole reason started going bad.

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

#74

Post by [deleted] »

nilkn wrote: post #42

Between... * feeling completely overrun with sensationalized politics; * the new design feeling sluggish and painful even on my maxed out late-2016 MBP; * the general community feeling more hostile and downvote-heavy than ever before; * and the content being increasingly image-, video-, and meme-focused... reddit has really lost a lot of its magic and appeal to me. I do still use it, but I find it almost intolerable…

[deleted]

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

#75

Post by eigenvector »

blutfink wrote: post #7

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

And this is why it's always good to do a quick order of magnitude "does this make sense?" check on computations. Off-hand, the total electricity generating capacity in the US is about 1,000 GW, so it'd be quite obvious that making one webpage less resource-intensive wouldn't result in a reduction of 6% of that total.

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

#76

Post by Reason077 »

yongjik wrote: post #28

My favorite comment from TFA: > None of your math makes sense. All your measurements have only the consumption at one exact instant, not over time, the total energy used is the integral of the energy flow over time. You'd need to measure the consumption over time, or total discharge of the battery, to actually have the energy used to load a page (in J, not W, you can't measure the energy required to load a page in W)…

Haha, yeah. I was considering jumping in with my usual "learn the difference between power (W) and energy (Wh)!" lecture, but couldn't have improved on that response.

This is the same mistake typically made by the "electric vehicles will overload the grid and we'll need 500 new nuclear plants!!" folks.

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

#77

Post by KirinDave »

lucb1e wrote: post #46
yongjik wrote: post #28

My favorite comment from TFA: > None of your math makes sense. All your measurements have only the consumption at one exact instant, not over time, the total energy used is the integral of the energy flow over time. You'd need to measure the consumption over time, or total discharge of the battery, to actually have the energy used to load a page (in J, not W, you can't measure the energy required to load a page in W)…

Everyone's dodging the point of the post (versus the exact numbers and terminology). As I said on reddit as well: > The issue is that the redesign uses more power across millions of devices, and that has an impact. > I might have gotten the exact number wrong, but the exact number doesn't matter that much. It's about it being a significant difference.

The only reason we're even talking about this article is because of your outrageous number. When folks who recognize how these kind of measurements actually are done say, "this seems extremely wrong" you should definitely expect some pushback.

To be honest, this reads to me like a reddit user angry about a site change trying to make a sensational article to protest it, knowing cynically that even if it's very wrong it won't matter, the headline is too sticky for reddit to ignore.

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

#78

Post by wil421 »

softrock wrote: post #73
meesterdude wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was hesitant to think/say this, because it is a different beast.... but the more i read about what other people think, as well as my own usage of it - it might be. Although to be fair, reddit has had it's fair share of past dramas too. I think it's time we move beyond reddit and build something bigger and better. It was nice while it lasted.

Reddit getting bigger is the whole reason started going bad.

I created my HN accout 7 years ago after lurking for a couple years. People have been saying the same thing about HN the whole time I’ve been around.

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

#79

Post by stephengillie »

meesterdude wrote: post #58
frfl wrote: post #22

Anyone from reddit's dev team reading this? Or youtube's dev team, because my question applies to both. The previous design was great. The new version of both sites is slow, sluggish and provides me with no benefit. Why was the change implemented? The previous design wasn't broken! How's the user feedback? A/B testing really indicated to you this was a good choice?! If you have any insight -- I'm sure this was a deci…

> Why was the change implemented? There's no easy back peddling from a year of development. It may be crap, but they put so much time & effort into it they can't turn back now - even if a lot of users hate it. They're also working more on becoming an Advertising platform, and this redesign allows for more flexibility there, like linkedin's auto-play videos when scrolling into view.

> There's no easy back peddling from a year of development. It may be crap, but they put so much time & effort into it they can't turn back now - even if a lot of users hate it. They're also working more on becoming an Advertising platform, and this redesign allows for more flexibility there, like linkedin's auto-play videos when scrolling into view.

Yes there is - you call it what it is, a failed Epic. Pivot and see what you can salvage before moving on.

As for the why did this change / previous design wasn't broken - you're abstracting away the interface and systems from the careers which built them. We must endure constant change to allow new generations space to fail and grow. A cynical perspective would say that careers aren't made through maintenance work.

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

#80

Post by deathanatos »

frfl wrote: post #22

Anyone from reddit's dev team reading this? Or youtube's dev team, because my question applies to both. The previous design was great. The new version of both sites is slow, sluggish and provides me with no benefit. Why was the change implemented? The previous design wasn't broken! How's the user feedback? A/B testing really indicated to you this was a good choice?! If you have any insight -- I'm sure this was a deci…

The new design hasn't worked. In particular, when browsing a subreddit, the first page or so of posts will load, but that's it. The "Next" button that used to take you to the next page is gone, which rather limits what you can view. I think its supposed to be infinite scrolling, but that simply hasn't worked, if that's what is supposed to happen.

Make it work. Make it fast (or pretty). That order.

Post reply on HN