4 ms·

1. Well how is the format of plaintext the best method of getting information to the end user? What if you added a thin indexing layer on top of the plaintext?

1. Well how is the format of plaintext the best method of getting information to the end user? What if you added a thin indexing layer on top of the plaintext? That would allow people to jump through huge documents with ease, but it's no longer plaintext. Sounds more valuable to me. Where is the line? What's the ideal? 2. Fair enough 3. Referencing "increasing the entropy in the universe" isn't a good argument because the amount of entropy increase due to humans is much, much less than how much entropy is increased by particles being blasted out of all the stars in the universe (unless I fundamentally misunderstand what entropy is). I think that stars blasting out particles is a much larger contributor to entropy than humans not using computer bits effectively. And also what does entropy as a concept have to do with anything, anyway? Why should human engineering tasks have such considerations? If being super efficient with an abundant resource has a large cost (of some sort), but low efficiency has no business- or environmental- downside, then why be efficient with it? In your last bit you argue that it's acceptable to send a site that is bigger than even the most bloated HTML/CSS page; I don't think that's true for any site/app that wants to be fast. It slows you down and people notice and stop using your service unless it's required of them. I think that in general things are not as bad as you make them out to be, and your arguments have some merit but are mostly revealed as nonsense when the rubber hits the road. Universe entropy is completely unrelated to modern software engineering and web sites that have a lot of devs and are not SalesForce are not _that_ bloated.

cheezymoogle 8y ago
As far as #1 goes, I'm arguing that plaintext is the ideal to strive towards, not the living practical reality. As far as indexing and access, the Gopher protocol and Teletext are great options to look at. As previously noted, if you don't find that waste is fundamentally wrong on a moral level, there's no point forward from here. I view myself on a planet of dwindling resources, vanishing biodiversity, and warming at increasing rates. If you think the energy that goes into computation is free or lacking external environmental downstream effects, then at the root of it, you carelessly shit where you eat and I don't. That's a fundamental disagreement. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_protocol [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext
- _louisr_ 8y ago
  Well hold on, I don't disagree that we are on a planet of dwindling resources. It's the method of environmental improvement that will have the greatest positive effect that is the root source of disagreement. That's the crux of the problem - what is the process of solving these problems? I would argue that arguing over how big our websites are is not the important factor. I submit to you that PC electricity usage is the most relevant quantity we need to discuss when it comes to consumption of bits. I argue that the increased load on the network of sending more bits is negligible compared to the many endusers and their PCs that consume our data. If we agree that PC electricity consumption is the most important thing to address, then we must ask whether or not the electricity generation process is bad for the environment. Most likely, electricity is generated by hydroelectric dams or coal/combustibles power plants. Suppose we replace those two types of power generation with low-maintenance, 50-year-lifetime solar panels (for which the tech exists). Can you still argue that the increased amount of bits sent over the wire for heavy modern websites is an environmental negative that we should address? I would say, no, at this point we have reduced the environmental impact of most electricity-consuming devices, and we can ignore PCs for the time being. Therefore it is not the personal computer and the quantity of bits it consumes that should be your focus. It should be electricity generation. I would like to ask you to consider whether or not your compassion-based arguments contain any resentment. Are you acting and speaking entirely on the grounds of compassion? And if so, how can you be sure that your supposed actions are going to reduce suffering of people and the planet and not have the opposite effect? How can you suggest solutions, like decreasing the weight of websites, and know with a high degree of certainty that it will produce the desired outcome (environmental preservation)? Could it have an unintended consequence?
  - cheezymoogle 8y ago
    In all honesty--you're right about there being bigger problems. But let me put it this way, I still reduce, reuse, and recycle even though I know that one unconscientous suburban family will essentially dwarf my lifelong efforts in a year of their average living. I know that those efforts are futile for the end goal of environmental conservation. That doesn't mean that I'm going to stop doing them. Being dedicated to acting in accordance with an understanding of first principles is not a bad thing, even if those actions are relatively impotent or ineffectual in and of themselves in the current moment. As far as changing out power sources to nominally sustainable forms, yes, I would still find issue with people wasting those resources, just as I would find issue with people running air conditioners with the windows open. As far as compassion and unintended consequences, everyone might be here for a reason and maybe trashing the planet is part of that plan, but equally so I might be here to speak against trashing the planet as a part of said reason and said plan. It boils down again to if you need to find a reason to justify minimizing unnecessary energy usage, we're not going to see eye to eye and I doubt any argument will sway either of us towards the other's camp. Chalk it up to different contexts.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
> but low efficiency has no business- or environmental- downside, then why be efficient with it? But it has. Data transfer and processing isn't free. It works on electricity. You may think that a difference between 10KB (efficient) and 10MB (current web) is meaningless because resources are abundant, and it let you save couple hours of dev time[0] - but consider that this difference is per user, and you saved a couple hours for yourself by making thousands[1] of people waste three orders of magnitude more electricity that they would if you were a bit more caring. Like plastic trash and inefficient cars, this stuff adds up. -- [0] - Such savings on larger pages take obviously much more work, but then this time gets amortized over all the use the website has - so the argument still holds. [1] - Millions, for large sites.
- p1necone 8y ago
  I don't think people actually waste three orders of magnitude more electricity by loading 10MB vs 10KB - sure, that much more CPU time is used specifically on loading the extra data, but that would be a fraction of what's being used for all the other processing going on, and people don't just flip the power switch as soon as a page load finishes.
  - bacon_waffle 8y ago
    I agree with your point, but the GP's has validity too: the infrastructure to get that page to where it is read, does draw power in proportion with the amount of data it's handling.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > I don't think people actually waste three orders of magnitude more electricity by loading 10MB vs 10KB (...) Yeah, they actually waste more in this case. The base cost is that of processing of content, which is linear with size (on a category level; parsing JS may have a different constant factor than displaying an image). But in the typical makeup of a website, just how much stuff can be in the 10KB case? Content + some image + a bit of CSS and maybe a JS tracker. In the 10MB case, you have tons of JS code, a lot of which will keep running in the background. This incurs continuous CPU cost. > and people don't just flip the power switch as soon as a page load finishes CPUs have power-saving modes, power supplies can vary their power draw too. Or, for those with whom such abstract terms as "wastefulness" don't resonate, let me put it in other words: if you ever wondered why your laptop and your smartphone drains its battery so quickly, this is why. All the accumulated software bloat, both web and desktop, is why.

cheezymoogle 8y ago

As far as #1 goes, I'm arguing that plaintext is the ideal to strive towards, not the living practical reality. As far as indexing and access, the Gopher protocol and Teletext are great options to look at. As previously noted, if you don't find that waste is fundamentally wrong on a moral level, there's no point forward from here. I view myself on a planet of dwindling resources, vanishing biodiversity, and warming at increasing rates. If you think the energy that goes into computation is free or lacking external environmental downstream effects, then at the root of it, you carelessly shit where you eat and I don't. That's a fundamental disagreement. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_protocol [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext

_louisr_ 8y ago
Well hold on, I don't disagree that we are on a planet of dwindling resources. It's the method of environmental improvement that will have the greatest positive effect that is the root source of disagreement. That's the crux of the problem - what is the process of solving these problems? I would argue that arguing over how big our websites are is not the important factor. I submit to you that PC electricity usage is the most relevant quantity we need to discuss when it comes to consumption of bits. I argue that the increased load on the network of sending more bits is negligible compared to the many endusers and their PCs that consume our data. If we agree that PC electricity consumption is the most important thing to address, then we must ask whether or not the electricity generation process is bad for the environment. Most likely, electricity is generated by hydroelectric dams or coal/combustibles power plants. Suppose we replace those two types of power generation with low-maintenance, 50-year-lifetime solar panels (for which the tech exists). Can you still argue that the increased amount of bits sent over the wire for heavy modern websites is an environmental negative that we should address? I would say, no, at this point we have reduced the environmental impact of most electricity-consuming devices, and we can ignore PCs for the time being. Therefore it is not the personal computer and the quantity of bits it consumes that should be your focus. It should be electricity generation. I would like to ask you to consider whether or not your compassion-based arguments contain any resentment. Are you acting and speaking entirely on the grounds of compassion? And if so, how can you be sure that your supposed actions are going to reduce suffering of people and the planet and not have the opposite effect? How can you suggest solutions, like decreasing the weight of websites, and know with a high degree of certainty that it will produce the desired outcome (environmental preservation)? Could it have an unintended consequence?
- cheezymoogle 8y ago
  In all honesty--you're right about there being bigger problems. But let me put it this way, I still reduce, reuse, and recycle even though I know that one unconscientous suburban family will essentially dwarf my lifelong efforts in a year of their average living. I know that those efforts are futile for the end goal of environmental conservation. That doesn't mean that I'm going to stop doing them. Being dedicated to acting in accordance with an understanding of first principles is not a bad thing, even if those actions are relatively impotent or ineffectual in and of themselves in the current moment. As far as changing out power sources to nominally sustainable forms, yes, I would still find issue with people wasting those resources, just as I would find issue with people running air conditioners with the windows open. As far as compassion and unintended consequences, everyone might be here for a reason and maybe trashing the planet is part of that plan, but equally so I might be here to speak against trashing the planet as a part of said reason and said plan. It boils down again to if you need to find a reason to justify minimizing unnecessary energy usage, we're not going to see eye to eye and I doubt any argument will sway either of us towards the other's camp. Chalk it up to different contexts.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> but low efficiency has no business- or environmental- downside, then why be efficient with it? But it has. Data transfer and processing isn't free. It works on electricity. You may think that a difference between 10KB (efficient) and 10MB (current web) is meaningless because resources are abundant, and it let you save couple hours of dev time[0] - but consider that this difference is per user, and you saved a couple hours for yourself by making thousands[1] of people waste three orders of magnitude more electricity that they would if you were a bit more caring. Like plastic trash and inefficient cars, this stuff adds up. -- [0] - Such savings on larger pages take obviously much more work, but then this time gets amortized over all the use the website has - so the argument still holds. [1] - Millions, for large sites.

p1necone 8y ago
I don't think people actually waste three orders of magnitude more electricity by loading 10MB vs 10KB - sure, that much more CPU time is used specifically on loading the extra data, but that would be a fraction of what's being used for all the other processing going on, and people don't just flip the power switch as soon as a page load finishes.
- bacon_waffle 8y ago
  I agree with your point, but the GP's has validity too: the infrastructure to get that page to where it is read, does draw power in proportion with the amount of data it's handling.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > I don't think people actually waste three orders of magnitude more electricity by loading 10MB vs 10KB (...) Yeah, they actually waste more in this case. The base cost is that of processing of content, which is linear with size (on a category level; parsing JS may have a different constant factor than displaying an image). But in the typical makeup of a website, just how much stuff can be in the 10KB case? Content + some image + a bit of CSS and maybe a JS tracker. In the 10MB case, you have tons of JS code, a lot of which will keep running in the background. This incurs continuous CPU cost. > and people don't just flip the power switch as soon as a page load finishes CPUs have power-saving modes, power supplies can vary their power draw too. Or, for those with whom such abstract terms as "wastefulness" don't resonate, let me put it in other words: if you ever wondered why your laptop and your smartphone drains its battery so quickly, this is why. All the accumulated software bloat, both web and desktop, is why.