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Reducing the usage and having an actual degrowth of electronic devices consumption, and especially power consumption. If we are not choosing to go there, physi

Reducing the usage and having an actual degrowth of electronic devices consumption, and especially power consumption. If we are not choosing to go there, physics will teach us the hard way (it already begun). Basically any region/country that is able to do the same, with less hardware, less energy will have a big advantage over the other regions/countries in the upcoming years.

dmos62 5y ago
Things don't seem to be going there. We had dumb phones lasting around a week in the 00s, then switched to semi-cordless smartphones that need to be charged sometimes more than once a day. Same for RAM and CPU usage, when looking at browsers. We, developers, seem to expand our resource usage to consume whatever is available, irregardless of some theoretical minimum we could be aiming for.
- seoulmetro 5y ago
  Yeah it's kind of like how people have stopped opening windows in their car because they would stand out, even if it's relatively cool outside and the air is nice. People still opt to keep their air con/heat on at all times. When's the last time you heard someone's conversation in the car beside you? Or even just their normal volume music? This is true even in nice, mild climates. This example is the same with homes to a degree too. People are addicted to the new, inefficient way of doing things. But I doubt we'll actually go backwards. There will be a kind of morality trend pushing us backwards but nothing much else.
cinntaile 5y ago
Hardware has gotten more power hungry over the years not less. As long as people are more expensive than energy/hardware, I don't see this changing anytime soon. Maybe we'll get better at utilizing our high performance hardware by offloading the computations more and more to the cloud but overall energy usage will likely keep going up. Growing economies and cheap, abundant energy go hand in hand.
- majewsky 5y ago
  > Hardware has gotten more power hungry over the years not less. Hardware has massively improved in the power/watt and computation/joule categories. The increased power consumption is because of rebound effect. If we really only used cellphones for telephone calls and SMS, we could build them to last for months on a single charge. Yet we have to charge them every day because they are built to do not just telephony, but also maps, reservations, banking, 3D games, and so on and so forth.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    I'm aware of the efficiency gains, it doesn't change what I said though. Power consumption for computing won't go down anytime soon in my opinion.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    > Yet we have to charge them every day because they are built to do not just telephony, but also maps, reservations, banking, 3D games, and so on and so forth. While I agree with you here, I feel like people don't try to optimize an already working base. For example, I recently updated the clock app on my android phone. There is no difference in functionality in the new app, but it has the android 12 design. This time could have been spent optimizing the app in a way or another. I do the same thing on my phone as I did 5/6 years ago: read a lot online, sometimes listen to music, sometimes look at maps, sometimes use apps, telephony. My battery lasts longer these days, but not as much because my phone also has to show sweet animations and be able to run high-performance stuff (I made the error of buying a flagship phone).

dmos62 5y ago

Things don't seem to be going there. We had dumb phones lasting around a week in the 00s, then switched to semi-cordless smartphones that need to be charged sometimes more than once a day. Same for RAM and CPU usage, when looking at browsers. We, developers, seem to expand our resource usage to consume whatever is available, irregardless of some theoretical minimum we could be aiming for.

seoulmetro 5y ago
Yeah it's kind of like how people have stopped opening windows in their car because they would stand out, even if it's relatively cool outside and the air is nice. People still opt to keep their air con/heat on at all times. When's the last time you heard someone's conversation in the car beside you? Or even just their normal volume music? This is true even in nice, mild climates. This example is the same with homes to a degree too. People are addicted to the new, inefficient way of doing things. But I doubt we'll actually go backwards. There will be a kind of morality trend pushing us backwards but nothing much else.

cinntaile 5y ago

Hardware has gotten more power hungry over the years not less. As long as people are more expensive than energy/hardware, I don't see this changing anytime soon. Maybe we'll get better at utilizing our high performance hardware by offloading the computations more and more to the cloud but overall energy usage will likely keep going up. Growing economies and cheap, abundant energy go hand in hand.

majewsky 5y ago
> Hardware has gotten more power hungry over the years not less. Hardware has massively improved in the power/watt and computation/joule categories. The increased power consumption is because of rebound effect. If we really only used cellphones for telephone calls and SMS, we could build them to last for months on a single charge. Yet we have to charge them every day because they are built to do not just telephony, but also maps, reservations, banking, 3D games, and so on and so forth.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  I'm aware of the efficiency gains, it doesn't change what I said though. Power consumption for computing won't go down anytime soon in my opinion.
- Zababa 5y ago
  > Yet we have to charge them every day because they are built to do not just telephony, but also maps, reservations, banking, 3D games, and so on and so forth. While I agree with you here, I feel like people don't try to optimize an already working base. For example, I recently updated the clock app on my android phone. There is no difference in functionality in the new app, but it has the android 12 design. This time could have been spent optimizing the app in a way or another. I do the same thing on my phone as I did 5/6 years ago: read a lot online, sometimes listen to music, sometimes look at maps, sometimes use apps, telephony. My battery lasts longer these days, but not as much because my phone also has to show sweet animations and be able to run high-performance stuff (I made the error of buying a flagship phone).