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This feels like the sort of functionality that ought to just work now. Its a clearly useful thing for PCs all over the planet and it would be nice if they just

This feels like the sort of functionality that ought to just work now. Its a clearly useful thing for PCs all over the planet and it would be nice if they just went to sleep almost completely when idle and woke up on network or USB/PS2 input. The power savings would be enormous. Yet today I still have issues with power saving features, performance is lowered by having power saving on instead of flat out and various things don't work like Keepass looses connection to my browser for my passwords and one of the USB devices that came on the motherboard crashes the entire computer on some power transitions. Its taking an awful long time for power saving features to mature. I would love to have this for my NAS/server, it has a lot of performance for when its needed but its also idle a lot. This is not the way.

oceanplexian 4y ago
It's not really worth it, even though I'd commend the OP for wading through the WoL stack. I have a NAS that's running 8 drives and a modern Intel CPU and it runs around 40w from the wall under load, and idles <10W with the drive spun down and CPU not doing anything. The WoL setup made more sense 5-10 years ago when power save functionality was much more primitive and drives were way less efficient.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  It's also a solved problem for the vast majority of the population. You pay Apple or Google a few dollars a month and they handle backups for you. Those servers aren't sitting idle 99% of the time waiting for you to backup so there is no wasted power. Self hosting is fun but not the most practical option. And now iCloud has end to end encryption, there is little reason to bother doing it yourself.
  - Aerbil313 4y ago
    > a solved problem This is only because the vast majority of the population agrees that it’s a reasonable tradeoff to not bother with all the digital privacy and security stuff beyond what the defaults are and just go on with their lives. The reason behind this is that almost no one is significantly negatively affected by not being vigilant and self-hosting everything. The downside is that things like PRISM can exist and nation-states and any sufficiently powerful or skillful interested party can and do far more easily target, surveil and harm any individual they want. Again, those individuals are not your average Joe so the public doesn’t care. As long as you don’t leave the herd and stay in line, you’re safe. Personally, I didn’t give any f… about privacy until I felt there’s a good possibility US agencies can target me, due to things I would start to talk about online. Those things were not illegal neither in US nor in my country, just different ideologies from the status quo of modernity, but I knew for a fact people have been (illegally) arrested by US agencies before due to voicing similar things.[0] [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221203231121/https://muslimskeptic.com/2022/03/08/how-the-us-neutralizes-muslim-leaders-the-case-of-ahmed-omar-abu-ali/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221203231121/https://muslimske...
AnthonyMouse 4y ago
The main problem is defining what it means to be idle. Suppose you have some browser tabs open, so there is some javascript running to switch out the ads on the page every few seconds. Is that "idle"? There's CPU and network activity. Suppose there is an open ssh connection to a server. It sends keepalives because the client is remote and behind a NAT, but there is no "real" activity. Should the server go to sleep? It's entirely possible to be too aggressive. Samsung is proving this. They've disable "unused" apps by default. But "unused" just means you haven't opened it in a while, not that you e.g. don't have a reminder set in it to give you an alert for something which is happening in six months. Conversely, I wish web browsers were more aggressive about denying background tabs any use of the CPU whatsoever by default, and then allowing the user to make exceptions in the rare case where that's needed. But in general the way to do this on the hardware side is per-component, and that's largely already happening. Modern CPUs and other devices at idle shut down most of the silicon and use hardly any power. I've seen Core i7 desktops use 6 watts at idle. In that case you hardly even need suspend, what you really need is for the hardware makers to find what's using the last 6 watts and get it down below 1. Conversely, I've seen server hardware that uses over 10 watts when it's "off".
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  I think Chrome added something like this recently. It "hibernates" the tabs, but you can opt out. The only downside is that I think it loses the tabs' state.
  - nottorp 4y ago
    There's at least one extension that doesn't lose tab state, at least on Firefox. The one i use is called "Auto Tab Discard".
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  This sounds like something that can be defined at an arbitrary point by a committee.

oceanplexian 4y ago

It's not really worth it, even though I'd commend the OP for wading through the WoL stack. I have a NAS that's running 8 drives and a modern Intel CPU and it runs around 40w from the wall under load, and idles <10W with the drive spun down and CPU not doing anything. The WoL setup made more sense 5-10 years ago when power save functionality was much more primitive and drives were way less efficient.

Gigachad 4y ago
It's also a solved problem for the vast majority of the population. You pay Apple or Google a few dollars a month and they handle backups for you. Those servers aren't sitting idle 99% of the time waiting for you to backup so there is no wasted power. Self hosting is fun but not the most practical option. And now iCloud has end to end encryption, there is little reason to bother doing it yourself.
- Aerbil313 4y ago
  > a solved problem This is only because the vast majority of the population agrees that it’s a reasonable tradeoff to not bother with all the digital privacy and security stuff beyond what the defaults are and just go on with their lives. The reason behind this is that almost no one is significantly negatively affected by not being vigilant and self-hosting everything. The downside is that things like PRISM can exist and nation-states and any sufficiently powerful or skillful interested party can and do far more easily target, surveil and harm any individual they want. Again, those individuals are not your average Joe so the public doesn’t care. As long as you don’t leave the herd and stay in line, you’re safe. Personally, I didn’t give any f… about privacy until I felt there’s a good possibility US agencies can target me, due to things I would start to talk about online. Those things were not illegal neither in US nor in my country, just different ideologies from the status quo of modernity, but I knew for a fact people have been (illegally) arrested by US agencies before due to voicing similar things.[0] [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221203231121/https://muslimskeptic.com/2022/03/08/how-the-us-neutralizes-muslim-leaders-the-case-of-ahmed-omar-abu-ali/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221203231121/https://muslimske...

AnthonyMouse 4y ago

The main problem is defining what it means to be idle. Suppose you have some browser tabs open, so there is some javascript running to switch out the ads on the page every few seconds. Is that "idle"? There's CPU and network activity. Suppose there is an open ssh connection to a server. It sends keepalives because the client is remote and behind a NAT, but there is no "real" activity. Should the server go to sleep? It's entirely possible to be too aggressive. Samsung is proving this. They've disable "unused" apps by default. But "unused" just means you haven't opened it in a while, not that you e.g. don't have a reminder set in it to give you an alert for something which is happening in six months. Conversely, I wish web browsers were more aggressive about denying background tabs any use of the CPU whatsoever by default, and then allowing the user to make exceptions in the rare case where that's needed. But in general the way to do this on the hardware side is per-component, and that's largely already happening. Modern CPUs and other devices at idle shut down most of the silicon and use hardly any power. I've seen Core i7 desktops use 6 watts at idle. In that case you hardly even need suspend, what you really need is for the hardware makers to find what's using the last 6 watts and get it down below 1. Conversely, I've seen server hardware that uses over 10 watts when it's "off".

mardifoufs 4y ago
I think Chrome added something like this recently. It "hibernates" the tabs, but you can opt out. The only downside is that I think it loses the tabs' state.
- nottorp 4y ago
  There's at least one extension that doesn't lose tab state, at least on Firefox. The one i use is called "Auto Tab Discard".
MichaelZuo 4y ago
This sounds like something that can be defined at an arbitrary point by a committee.