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On a side note; I really wish there were more of an effort to provide a low bandwidth version of the internet, e.g., methods that allow common web technologies

On a side note; I really wish there were more of an effort to provide a low bandwidth version of the internet, e.g., methods that allow common web technologies to automatically step down to deliver low bandwidth versions of their content, services, and tools on request. As someone that grew up on the internet of yesteryear it is really frustrating when, e.g., some google site is once again buffer overflowing all over my browser or some website of low content quality is a bloated 100-200 MB disaster. Does AirBnB really need to be 200MB just to load the homepage (note saying airbnb is the disaster)? I'm just saying. There is always this lamenting about climate change, while very many types who lament that issue, are often heavily in one way or another involved in an extremely wasteful and inefficient sector ... the internet. What is the energy cost of a 100MB website over a 10MB website? How about GB of wasteful and unnecessary data being served up every single month. I suspect a lot at scale. To pick on AirBnB again; sure, offer the 200MB site, but how about also making a big deal about offering a low power consumption version for repeat visitors. We are trying to save the planet and such, aren't we? Or is that just for those without private jets? Just my two cent.

yopawngungmstyl 4y ago
That's a great idea! Some news websites do offer low-bandwidth options, like NPR: https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/ You also used to be able to interact with Twitter solely through SMS. I think there are two big reasons why this sort of design philosophy is uncommon: * Addiction to heavy JS frameworks and libraries. * More bandwidth = more ads.
danhor 4y ago
While I also dislike bloated websites, I suspect the climate impact is rather neglible. The internet as a whole needs a few percent of global power, and the vast majority of that is going to be (video) streaming. Most heavy JS is going to be static and running on very efficient end devices. The worst case estimates seem to be 7kWh/GiG (2012) (the best case much less than a 0.1 kWh/Gig, but only including network), which is ~60 km in electrical cars or 15 km in petrol cars. (The latter two only including the incremental energy usage). The additionally induced trips by AirBnB (especially flying) are going to be so much worse than their website could ever be. Energy usage data is from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jiec.12630 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jiec.12630 (with very old & high estimates disregarded). In 2022 the internet will probably be more efficient, the study estimates a halving every 2 years. So naively (very naively) extrapolating the 7kWh/Gig figure from 2012 to now is less than half a kWh/Gig.

yopawngungmstyl 4y ago

That's a great idea! Some news websites do offer low-bandwidth options, like NPR: https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/ You also used to be able to interact with Twitter solely through SMS. I think there are two big reasons why this sort of design philosophy is uncommon: * Addiction to heavy JS frameworks and libraries. * More bandwidth = more ads.

danhor 4y ago

While I also dislike bloated websites, I suspect the climate impact is rather neglible. The internet as a whole needs a few percent of global power, and the vast majority of that is going to be (video) streaming. Most heavy JS is going to be static and running on very efficient end devices. The worst case estimates seem to be 7kWh/GiG (2012) (the best case much less than a 0.1 kWh/Gig, but only including network), which is ~60 km in electrical cars or 15 km in petrol cars. (The latter two only including the incremental energy usage). The additionally induced trips by AirBnB (especially flying) are going to be so much worse than their website could ever be. Energy usage data is from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jiec.12630 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jiec.12630 (with very old & high estimates disregarded). In 2022 the internet will probably be more efficient, the study estimates a halving every 2 years. So naively (very naively) extrapolating the 7kWh/Gig figure from 2012 to now is less than half a kWh/Gig.