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I can’t believe this is a thing. Are software engineers in the “ban straws” phase of global warming now?

by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago

munmaek 7y ago
A better question is Why Not? Is it really so inconceivable to try to apply energy conservation to computing as well?
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
  More meaningless policy, more meaningless laws. Addressing not the root of the problem but the fashionable tail. Always busy but never effective. The mark of a subpar engineer and a subpar citizen.
  - teawrecks 7y ago
    You're sliding down the slippery slope argument you've created. No one said anything about laws.
  - namuol 7y ago
    What matters is that you found a way to sound smarter without doing anything.
    - dang 7y ago
      Please don't reply to a bad comment with another. That only makes the thread worse. Especially please don't cross into personal attack. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  Just as importantly, energy use loosely correlates with resource use => cost. If we save the planet, great, but it's also good for our bottom line.
jandrewrogers 7y ago
As the scale of data infrastructure rapidly grows, the carbon footprint of that infrastructure grows as well. It is already non-trivial. Consequently, the widespread use of excessively wasteful software implementations that require several-fold the hardware infrastructure of a more efficient design are becoming material contributors to total carbon emissions, more so than many things we focus on for the sake of climate change. Unlike some other methods for reducing carbon emissions, which require subsidies to be competitive, massively reducing server infrastructure footprint often improves the absolute economics through radical reductions in OpEx/CapEx for data intensive businesses.
- TJSomething 7y ago
  I'm skeptical that you couldn't get similar reductions in carbon footprint through investing the money you gain by delivering early on renewable energy infrastructure and carbon sequestering charities. Of course, how that cost-benefit analysis works out depends entirely on required engineering hours and the growth of your business, which are both notoriously difficult to predict. That said, if your goal is reducing expenditures, reducing your carbon footprint is a great cherry on top.
dang 7y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
arithma 7y ago
I think people confuse two important things. 1- Energy consumption of the lower stack versus total of a single implementation (could possibly be very low) 2- Energy consumption of the lower stack multiplied by everywhere it is deployed 1- Yes, optimizing for lowering this consumption by an app-developer can definitely be an ill-advised endeavor economically (you're saving 0.1-10% of your cost.. by adding a huge investment of time, possibly larger than the application development itself) 2- Optimizing across all deployments, can definitely move the needle, in a very significant way, against the effort required, since you're automatically deployed on 1000-1M places. It's the same reason library developers (especially system/langugage/heavily-used-libraries) have a very good reason economically (and therefore ecologically as well) to optimize. Competition here is a huge benefit to everyone, including the environment.
paulddraper 7y ago
I was still trying to figure out was the co2 spelling meant, when I read this light grey text. If you want to see what real computing energy looks like, look at Bitcoin.

I can’t believe this is a thing. Are software engineers in the “ban straws” phase of global warming now?

munmaek 7y ago

A better question is Why Not? Is it really so inconceivable to try to apply energy conservation to computing as well?

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
More meaningless policy, more meaningless laws. Addressing not the root of the problem but the fashionable tail. Always busy but never effective. The mark of a subpar engineer and a subpar citizen.
- teawrecks 7y ago
  You're sliding down the slippery slope argument you've created. No one said anything about laws.
- namuol 7y ago
  What matters is that you found a way to sound smarter without doing anything.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't reply to a bad comment with another. That only makes the thread worse. Especially please don't cross into personal attack. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
Just as importantly, energy use loosely correlates with resource use => cost. If we save the planet, great, but it's also good for our bottom line.

jandrewrogers 7y ago

As the scale of data infrastructure rapidly grows, the carbon footprint of that infrastructure grows as well. It is already non-trivial. Consequently, the widespread use of excessively wasteful software implementations that require several-fold the hardware infrastructure of a more efficient design are becoming material contributors to total carbon emissions, more so than many things we focus on for the sake of climate change. Unlike some other methods for reducing carbon emissions, which require subsidies to be competitive, massively reducing server infrastructure footprint often improves the absolute economics through radical reductions in OpEx/CapEx for data intensive businesses.

TJSomething 7y ago
I'm skeptical that you couldn't get similar reductions in carbon footprint through investing the money you gain by delivering early on renewable energy infrastructure and carbon sequestering charities. Of course, how that cost-benefit analysis works out depends entirely on required engineering hours and the growth of your business, which are both notoriously difficult to predict. That said, if your goal is reducing expenditures, reducing your carbon footprint is a great cherry on top.

dang 7y ago

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

arithma 7y ago

I think people confuse two important things. 1- Energy consumption of the lower stack versus total of a single implementation (could possibly be very low) 2- Energy consumption of the lower stack multiplied by everywhere it is deployed 1- Yes, optimizing for lowering this consumption by an app-developer can definitely be an ill-advised endeavor economically (you're saving 0.1-10% of your cost.. by adding a huge investment of time, possibly larger than the application development itself) 2- Optimizing across all deployments, can definitely move the needle, in a very significant way, against the effort required, since you're automatically deployed on 1000-1M places. It's the same reason library developers (especially system/langugage/heavily-used-libraries) have a very good reason economically (and therefore ecologically as well) to optimize. Competition here is a huge benefit to everyone, including the environment.

paulddraper 7y ago

I was still trying to figure out was the co2 spelling meant, when I read this light grey text. If you want to see what real computing energy looks like, look at Bitcoin.