5 ms·
I’m not following. Why would disabling the GPU use more power? If anything, I would think it would reduce power consumption.
by IAmGraydon 3y ago
I’m not following. Why would disabling the GPU use more power? If anything, I would think it would reduce power consumption.
- TylerE 3y agoHardware implantations of things like graphics routines can be hundreds of time more efficient than software implementations running on general purpose CPUs. Try to decode mpeg video at HD resolution in software sometime.
- chii 3y agosurely, the user will be taught to enable the hardware for video if they start seeing stutter. Or the browser can prompt the user to switch to "high-end graphics" if it detects prolonged video decoding. If a website that has no obvious case for using the GPU, but is instead using it to fingerprint, then the user won't experience any slow downs from a software renderer (as it is usually done relatively quickly). If a website needs the GPU for their videos/graphics, but also incidentally wants to fingerprint you, you're shit out of luck in that case. But this is no worse than what we have current day.
- TylerE 3y agoOh expect users to understand this? The same people who have spent the past 40 years getting confused and worked up about cookies?
- pietro72ohboy 3y ago> Do you have any concept of how many gigawatts per day that would waste? It would still be way less than what large companies are burning on training proprietary LLMs. Do you think the ChatGPT model you use daily was the success at first go? And in that same world, consumers should not even try to protect themselves from GPU fingerprinting? > The same people who have spent the past 40 years getting confused and worked up about cookies? Stop with the condescension. It's not about being confused; it's about mitigating genuine privacy concerns. We're not idiots, and dismissing genuine worries won't make the issues disappear.
- TylerE 3y agoMaybe reflect on the irony presented by the two halves of your comment?
- subtra3t 3y agoIf the user experiences stuttering while decoding a video, they won't learn to enable special permissions for the website but instead switch to a different browser that hasn't yet implemented this "feature". And most websites most users visit will need the GPU to be remotely usable. For them enabling specific permissions for every website they visit is very inconvenient.
- Dalewyn 3y agoPerhaps a middle ground: Default to software acceleration when in Private Browsing mode, because obviously you want to be private, default to hardware acceleration otherwise.
- lukan 3y agoThe native GPU video decoding (and CSS and canvas GPU acceleration) can work without problems, if only webGL gets deactivated, what this was about here. But you can probably also use those to fingerprint, but probably not as precise.
- kuschku 3y ago> Try to decode mpeg video at HD resolution in software sometime. Firefox has only started to ship hardware accelerated video decode a few versions ago. Until very recently, all my video playback was software decoded.
- dzhiurgis 3y agoYoutube disabling h264 because of licencing wastes about same amount of energy as very small country