3 ms·

> but what is the solution here ? Like always for consumer protection, the only recourse is legal action. Ask your govt representatives to make slow software

> but what is the solution here ? Like always for consumer protection, the only recourse is legal action. Ask your govt representatives to make slow software illegal. Carbon tax on inefficient code. IIRC Germany has started looking into it ?

rql10 6y ago
“We can’t fix software, so let’s call the police.”
- jcelerier 6y ago
  It is not a technological issue, but a social one - the incentives to create consumer-friendly software are not good enough so companies settles on the lowest possible denominator.
- rakoo 6y ago
  It's not calling the police, it's changing the law to something people agree. It's the basis of any society
Jiocus 6y ago
I've read about manufacturers limiting RAM to e.g. 8GB to be able to stay within some power-consumption deemed acceptable for a notebook device. More RAM draw power. Given that RAM size can have those ramifications energy-wise, it sounds almost like it would be a win, to go against the grain of the article and push for an upper limit of memory, say 4-8GB, if the environmental factor was the lone metric to judge on. Secondary effects follows due to restraints, software makers who doesn't want to see users churn from their applications start scrambling to optimize codebases so the executives won't loose out on their bonuses for that fiscal year.
tracer4201 6y ago
I think this could be a can of worms that’s more damaging. What if the software is completely usable when it’s slow? What if it’s slow by design? That’s not outlawed? And what’s the metric for being slow? Latency? Latency across what dimension? Who measures it and policies this exactly? Or do we slap fines based on resource consumption? What if my software just runs slower on the JVM if I’m on Java 11 instead of Java 8? What if that problem isn’t my fault but because someone in my dependency graph has a regression? Oh they open sourced their code. Am I liable now because I have a dependency on it and upgraded to the new version? What if it’s network conditions that are causing the slow performance. Am I liable? Is your internet provider liable? What’s the minimum bar for performance, across what dimensions, and who defines it? And where do we find people with the education, background, training to define such a vast standard? How do we ensure it’s fair? Maybe I can’t write as performant code as the well funded people at Google or Amazon. Am I just shut out of the market entirely? Or is it applied selectively based on market cap of a company?

rql10 6y ago

“We can’t fix software, so let’s call the police.”

jcelerier 6y ago
It is not a technological issue, but a social one - the incentives to create consumer-friendly software are not good enough so companies settles on the lowest possible denominator.
rakoo 6y ago
It's not calling the police, it's changing the law to something people agree. It's the basis of any society

Jiocus 6y ago

I've read about manufacturers limiting RAM to e.g. 8GB to be able to stay within some power-consumption deemed acceptable for a notebook device. More RAM draw power. Given that RAM size can have those ramifications energy-wise, it sounds almost like it would be a win, to go against the grain of the article and push for an upper limit of memory, say 4-8GB, if the environmental factor was the lone metric to judge on. Secondary effects follows due to restraints, software makers who doesn't want to see users churn from their applications start scrambling to optimize codebases so the executives won't loose out on their bonuses for that fiscal year.

tracer4201 6y ago

I think this could be a can of worms that’s more damaging. What if the software is completely usable when it’s slow? What if it’s slow by design? That’s not outlawed? And what’s the metric for being slow? Latency? Latency across what dimension? Who measures it and policies this exactly? Or do we slap fines based on resource consumption? What if my software just runs slower on the JVM if I’m on Java 11 instead of Java 8? What if that problem isn’t my fault but because someone in my dependency graph has a regression? Oh they open sourced their code. Am I liable now because I have a dependency on it and upgraded to the new version? What if it’s network conditions that are causing the slow performance. Am I liable? Is your internet provider liable? What’s the minimum bar for performance, across what dimensions, and who defines it? And where do we find people with the education, background, training to define such a vast standard? How do we ensure it’s fair? Maybe I can’t write as performant code as the well funded people at Google or Amazon. Am I just shut out of the market entirely? Or is it applied selectively based on market cap of a company?