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I don't believe asset and component delivery are the energy hogs this article implies. Actual computation uses more energy. Youtube transcoding the 500 hours of

by ogou 6y ago

I don't believe asset and component delivery are the energy hogs this article implies. Actual computation uses more energy. Youtube transcoding the 500 hours of video it gets every 60 seconds uses much more power than too many unoptimized PNGs do. We live in a time where people will run their car to charge their phone. It's not js packages. The inefficiencies are in the chair, the users chair.

II2II 6y ago
> The inefficiencies are in the chair, the users chair. If that is the case, then optimize for the user so they aren't running their car to charge their phone as often (or other such craziness). My biggest problem with the article is the failure to quantify the energy use of these optimizations. Sure, it is difficult to do since there are so many variables and most of those variables are difficult to generalize. On the other hand, it should be possible to come up with relative measures to facilitate the optimization process. For example: when is it better to do something on the server vs. on the client? When will the decision even matter? Of course, the suggestions offered by the article are also varied in quality. Some clearly offer better energy efficiency for both parties, such as not adding elements that you do not need. Others may indirectly benefit both parties: doing more server side processing on a popular website is going to benefit the consumer, but it also forces the provider to consider the cost of added overhead. Some simply have questionable merit, such as optimizing the size of resources that are infrequently used. Others are of dubious merit, such as the tendency of SEO to be used to find the provider's content rather than what the consumer needs. It is a much more complex issue than can be addressed from a few quick tips.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
> The inefficiencies are in the chair, the users chair. PEBCAK[0] Personally, I still like to optimize my pages. I learned Web design, at a time when pages were supposed to be about 50KB, or less. That seems quaint, these days. I use a lot of GIF and PNG8 images, and use CSS gradients and effects. I’ll do things like make a rollover image as a GIF in two parts, and use CSS to move the background image. Makes for a zippy rollover. But I’m still beholden to my site framework or theme, loading 1MB of useless JS and CSS for every page. Some of the new site builders, using things like Jekyll, are nice, but take more time for me (I am not actually a Web designer, although I have written many, many Web sites). As noted, the real hogs are on the big iron. We can write software and APIs to reduce CPU usage, but it’s a drop in the bucket, compared to the server. I think that server engineers are already doing everything they can to be efficient; simply because that confers a competitive advantage. But, also as noted, as long as there’s a vast demand for cat videos, there will exist, a vast cat video delivery infrastructure. [0] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/PEBCAK https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/PEBCAK
scns 6y ago
Big G prefers to send VP8/9 to save on bandwith costs. This externalises costs to users since only the newest SOCs decode in hardware. If you wanna save energy you have to use the h264ify browser extension.
bill_mon 6y ago
You're right, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything. If we can flip a bit somewhere to save some minute amount of energy, we should do that. For example: optimize PNGs, it's easy and a one time procedure. We can't change what's in the chair but we can change our product.
- scrollaway 6y ago
  If the effect is minute enough, you might be using more net energy thinking about this, typing this comment, discussing it with others and optimizing your final png than actual energy saved for your users. Feel-good savings are not helpful. You can do it but let's not pretend. Reminds me of an ex girlfriend that would account for coins she found on the ground in her monthly budget...
  - robin_reala 6y ago
    It depends on scale. I’m working on a site with multiple billion visits a year, so optimising a global asset will absolutely have an effect.
  - searchableguy 6y ago
    > Reminds me of an ex girlfriend that would account for coins she found on the ground in her monthly budget... Where do you find enough coins on the ground for that? I haven't come across any in my entire life.
    - XMPPwocky 6y ago
      Have you looked?
    - scrollaway 6y ago
      You don't, that was kinda my point :) she'd find maybe 1 eur a month if lucky.
  - staticassertion 6y ago
    I assume they mean minute relative to cars or something, not minute in an absolute sense. Just as a sort of thought about this, if the entire web moved to brotli over gzip, or if we introduced an even better compression algorithm that was widely distributed across the internet, what would that impact me? A 5% reduction in CPU usage for every computer loading every page? I'd be curious to hear what that would actually amount to, power-wise.
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
Voted straight to the top an opposing view that makes a single woolly and unjustified claim ("Youtube transcoding the 500 hours of video it gets every 60 seconds[0] uses much more power than too many unoptimized PNGs do" - but no figures to back either of those claims up). I see a lot of that on HN, strange thing. I run without JS. If I need JS I start up a VM. It's quite common for eg. google groups to max out the CPU for 10 seconds or more before updating. This is where your problem is. A 100 million CPUs permanently at 100% is where your energy is going. [0] I found this stat backed up here (https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/youtube-stats/ https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/youtube-stats/) You should post this fact to stop other people wasting their time.
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  From the above: Over half of YouTube users use the site to work out how to do things they’ve not done before This is one of the undersung advances of the web - it's become more than access to the worlds knowledge (like some uber library) but has become a new means of transmitting learning. On the other side if one could workout a way to identify a product related to this "new thing to learn" the retargetting value would be huge
cblconfederate 6y ago
> Youtube transcoding the 500 hours of video it gets every 60 seconds uses much more power than too many unoptimized PNGs do Youtube encodes the video only once, users decode them billions of times in their laptops/phones Plus datacenters have an incentive to be energy efficient and are becoming more and more green.
- kortilla 6y ago
  Don’t forget most videos see very few to no views (private/unlisted and people are mostly boring)l
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    That has a negligible impact on the ratio of <view time> / <encoding time>
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  > Youtube encodes the video only once My assumption always has been that Youtube is creating multiple renditions of videos at different resolutions and codecs.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - pitay 6y ago
    Pretty sure the GP meant only once for the encoding of each resolution. He was just pointing out the asymmetry of the work, YT only encodes once per distinct resolution it shows, each of these encodings can be decoded by clients millions of times if the video is popular enough to bring in that many clients.
nend 6y ago
This article is the software version of telling people to reduce their carbon footprint, when the be 15 biggest ships produce more pollution than all cars combined. I mean the articles not wrong, we should try and reduce the energy we use. But at the same time there's much more efficient ways to do so.

by ogou 6y ago

II2II 6y ago

> The inefficiencies are in the chair, the users chair. If that is the case, then optimize for the user so they aren't running their car to charge their phone as often (or other such craziness). My biggest problem with the article is the failure to quantify the energy use of these optimizations. Sure, it is difficult to do since there are so many variables and most of those variables are difficult to generalize. On the other hand, it should be possible to come up with relative measures to facilitate the optimization process. For example: when is it better to do something on the server vs. on the client? When will the decision even matter? Of course, the suggestions offered by the article are also varied in quality. Some clearly offer better energy efficiency for both parties, such as not adding elements that you do not need. Others may indirectly benefit both parties: doing more server side processing on a popular website is going to benefit the consumer, but it also forces the provider to consider the cost of added overhead. Some simply have questionable merit, such as optimizing the size of resources that are infrequently used. Others are of dubious merit, such as the tendency of SEO to be used to find the provider's content rather than what the consumer needs. It is a much more complex issue than can be addressed from a few quick tips.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

> The inefficiencies are in the chair, the users chair. PEBCAK[0] Personally, I still like to optimize my pages. I learned Web design, at a time when pages were supposed to be about 50KB, or less. That seems quaint, these days. I use a lot of GIF and PNG8 images, and use CSS gradients and effects. I’ll do things like make a rollover image as a GIF in two parts, and use CSS to move the background image. Makes for a zippy rollover. But I’m still beholden to my site framework or theme, loading 1MB of useless JS and CSS for every page. Some of the new site builders, using things like Jekyll, are nice, but take more time for me (I am not actually a Web designer, although I have written many, many Web sites). As noted, the real hogs are on the big iron. We can write software and APIs to reduce CPU usage, but it’s a drop in the bucket, compared to the server. I think that server engineers are already doing everything they can to be efficient; simply because that confers a competitive advantage. But, also as noted, as long as there’s a vast demand for cat videos, there will exist, a vast cat video delivery infrastructure. [0] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/PEBCAK https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/PEBCAK

scns 6y ago

Big G prefers to send VP8/9 to save on bandwith costs. This externalises costs to users since only the newest SOCs decode in hardware. If you wanna save energy you have to use the h264ify browser extension.

bill_mon 6y ago

You're right, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything. If we can flip a bit somewhere to save some minute amount of energy, we should do that. For example: optimize PNGs, it's easy and a one time procedure. We can't change what's in the chair but we can change our product.

scrollaway 6y ago
If the effect is minute enough, you might be using more net energy thinking about this, typing this comment, discussing it with others and optimizing your final png than actual energy saved for your users. Feel-good savings are not helpful. You can do it but let's not pretend. Reminds me of an ex girlfriend that would account for coins she found on the ground in her monthly budget...
- robin_reala 6y ago
  It depends on scale. I’m working on a site with multiple billion visits a year, so optimising a global asset will absolutely have an effect.
- searchableguy 6y ago
  > Reminds me of an ex girlfriend that would account for coins she found on the ground in her monthly budget... Where do you find enough coins on the ground for that? I haven't come across any in my entire life.
  - XMPPwocky 6y ago
    Have you looked?
  - scrollaway 6y ago
    You don't, that was kinda my point :) she'd find maybe 1 eur a month if lucky.
- staticassertion 6y ago
  I assume they mean minute relative to cars or something, not minute in an absolute sense. Just as a sort of thought about this, if the entire web moved to brotli over gzip, or if we introduced an even better compression algorithm that was widely distributed across the internet, what would that impact me? A 5% reduction in CPU usage for every computer loading every page? I'd be curious to hear what that would actually amount to, power-wise.

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

Voted straight to the top an opposing view that makes a single woolly and unjustified claim ("Youtube transcoding the 500 hours of video it gets every 60 seconds[0] uses much more power than too many unoptimized PNGs do" - but no figures to back either of those claims up). I see a lot of that on HN, strange thing. I run without JS. If I need JS I start up a VM. It's quite common for eg. google groups to max out the CPU for 10 seconds or more before updating. This is where your problem is. A 100 million CPUs permanently at 100% is where your energy is going. [0] I found this stat backed up here (https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/youtube-stats/ https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/youtube-stats/) You should post this fact to stop other people wasting their time.

lifeisstillgood 6y ago
From the above: Over half of YouTube users use the site to work out how to do things they’ve not done before This is one of the undersung advances of the web - it's become more than access to the worlds knowledge (like some uber library) but has become a new means of transmitting learning. On the other side if one could workout a way to identify a product related to this "new thing to learn" the retargetting value would be huge

cblconfederate 6y ago

> Youtube transcoding the 500 hours of video it gets every 60 seconds uses much more power than too many unoptimized PNGs do Youtube encodes the video only once, users decode them billions of times in their laptops/phones Plus datacenters have an incentive to be energy efficient and are becoming more and more green.

kortilla 6y ago
Don’t forget most videos see very few to no views (private/unlisted and people are mostly boring)l
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  That has a negligible impact on the ratio of <view time> / <encoding time>
madeofpalk 6y ago
> Youtube encodes the video only once My assumption always has been that Youtube is creating multiple renditions of videos at different resolutions and codecs.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- pitay 6y ago
  Pretty sure the GP meant only once for the encoding of each resolution. He was just pointing out the asymmetry of the work, YT only encodes once per distinct resolution it shows, each of these encodings can be decoded by clients millions of times if the video is popular enough to bring in that many clients.

nend 6y ago

This article is the software version of telling people to reduce their carbon footprint, when the be 15 biggest ships produce more pollution than all cars combined. I mean the articles not wrong, we should try and reduce the energy we use. But at the same time there's much more efficient ways to do so.