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The article states that because the file sizes are smaller the format is more environmentally friendly because, they state, "All that stuff lives somewhere, and

The article states that because the file sizes are smaller the format is more environmentally friendly because, they state, "All that stuff lives somewhere, and wherever it is, it requires energy to operate." Cold storage exists, as well as different tiers of storage. The hard drive on my shelf isn't using any energy. Are they storing all of their images in RAM? Maybe you could say this would lead to less use of storage space so less use of raw materials for storage devices. I would posit that it is possible this format is less environmentally friendly because it takes more compute cycles to produce the output from the compressed data, but I have no real insight into this just intuition.

r00fus 2y ago
On the other hand, we have industry defined standards to compress TCP headers [1] - incurring a cost to compress/decompress but resulting in lower packet sizes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust_Header_Compression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust_Header_Compression
threeseed 2y ago
Most iPhone users would be storing photos in iCloud. And most professionals are storing their photos in Creative Cloud. And in both cases the photo data would be replicated on multiple hard drives for redundancy. So it would definitely be more environmentally friendly to have smaller photos. The more important reason is that cloud storage costs significantly more than local.
k310 2y ago
What is environmentally (OK, mentally) unfriendly to me is the creation of new formats that various apps, and notably, websites where I post images, can't handle, so I swear a bit, convert the image to jpeg or png, and post. People are part of the environment, too! But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. ... Thoreau.
- astrange 2y ago
  You wouldn't like a website that accepted raw phone photos, because they're in HDR, and you'd get blinded by looking at them. Instagram already does this to me when I look at it at night, because it accepts HDR video.
  - k310 2y ago
    I'm still dealing daily with webp. I get a link to one and post the link, and the site does not render it. I have to download, convert, and upload to an image hosting site. The site has two admins dealing with twitter gyrations, "Threads" and possibly Mastodon, besides the daily chores and intruder nonsense. My phone and cameras are kind enough to give me jpegs.
furyofantares 2y ago
> The hard drive on my shelf isn't using any energy. When it filled up you put it on a shelf and bought a new one.
- kybernetyk 2y ago
  That's essentially what I do with my RAW files. One hard drive per year. It's still less expensive than every cloud storage I looked at.
  - nottorp 2y ago
    You guys do do read tests occasionally, and transfer the data old drives to newer drives right?
  - mikae1 2y ago
    I hope you get two at least. Backups needed.
xxs 2y ago
> Are they storing all of their images in RAM? That part would not matter regardless. RAM is powered at all times, kept being refreshed too. Unless, of course you mean, they'd have to keep buying new machines to store more pictures.
jessekv 2y ago
> Are they storing all of their images in RAM? Consider the millions of iPhone users uploading new photos and scrolling their iCloud-hosted photo library. A substantial amount of photo data is in RAM at any given moment, spread across many network devices. > I would posit that it is possible this format is less environmentally friendly because it takes more compute cycles I'm curious how much energy it takes to send bits over cellular or wifi, my intuition is that this is orders of magnitude higher than compression or encoding.
- astrange 2y ago
  > I'm curious how much energy it takes to send bits over cellular or wifi, my intuition is that this is orders of magnitude higher than compression or encoding. Correct, but the computational cost of decoding a codec is generally correlated with the number of bits. So JXL is not necessarily more expensive to decode than older codecs, if it compresses better.
the_gorilla 2y ago
If people are going to take credit for crunching something down from 10 MB to 8 MB, I wish they'd also take the blame for massively bloating something into a modern monstrosity out of sheer laziness or betting that profit margins will be higher if they waste user time, storage, and cpu for the sake of releasing the project faster.
semi-extrinsic 2y ago
This whataboutism we are hearing now about "the energy needed to store your pictures" is just corporate whataboutism, trying to push blame onto consumers. Let's say you have 2 TB of photos stored. If that's consuming more than 2 watts of electricity on average, the cloud providers have to be quite incompetent (they are mostly not). 2 watts is 1 kWh in 20 days, so 18 kWh in one year. The emissions from 18 kWh in the US is around 6 kg of CO2. This is the equivalent of driving a car for about 20 minutes on the highway, one time per year. Or spending 5 minutes longer in the shower 4 times per year.
teddyh 2y ago
> The hard drive on my shelf isn't using any energy But it is losing its data: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41244143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41244143>
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
illiac786 2y ago
You encode the image once, but transmit it many, many times, in general. It it send from phone to iCloud, then from iCloud to your other apple device and so and so on. God forbid you share it with someone. Then iCloud has internal resiliencies and redundancies, etc. etc. Short point: I do think it’s environmentally better (or less worse). it’s a drop in the ocean though.

r00fus 2y ago

On the other hand, we have industry defined standards to compress TCP headers [1] - incurring a cost to compress/decompress but resulting in lower packet sizes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust_Header_Compression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust_Header_Compression

threeseed 2y ago

Most iPhone users would be storing photos in iCloud. And most professionals are storing their photos in Creative Cloud. And in both cases the photo data would be replicated on multiple hard drives for redundancy. So it would definitely be more environmentally friendly to have smaller photos. The more important reason is that cloud storage costs significantly more than local.

k310 2y ago

What is environmentally (OK, mentally) unfriendly to me is the creation of new formats that various apps, and notably, websites where I post images, can't handle, so I swear a bit, convert the image to jpeg or png, and post. People are part of the environment, too! But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. ... Thoreau.

astrange 2y ago
You wouldn't like a website that accepted raw phone photos, because they're in HDR, and you'd get blinded by looking at them. Instagram already does this to me when I look at it at night, because it accepts HDR video.
- k310 2y ago
  I'm still dealing daily with webp. I get a link to one and post the link, and the site does not render it. I have to download, convert, and upload to an image hosting site. The site has two admins dealing with twitter gyrations, "Threads" and possibly Mastodon, besides the daily chores and intruder nonsense. My phone and cameras are kind enough to give me jpegs.

furyofantares 2y ago

> The hard drive on my shelf isn't using any energy. When it filled up you put it on a shelf and bought a new one.

kybernetyk 2y ago
That's essentially what I do with my RAW files. One hard drive per year. It's still less expensive than every cloud storage I looked at.
- nottorp 2y ago
  You guys do do read tests occasionally, and transfer the data old drives to newer drives right?
- mikae1 2y ago
  I hope you get two at least. Backups needed.

xxs 2y ago

> Are they storing all of their images in RAM? That part would not matter regardless. RAM is powered at all times, kept being refreshed too. Unless, of course you mean, they'd have to keep buying new machines to store more pictures.

jessekv 2y ago

> Are they storing all of their images in RAM? Consider the millions of iPhone users uploading new photos and scrolling their iCloud-hosted photo library. A substantial amount of photo data is in RAM at any given moment, spread across many network devices. > I would posit that it is possible this format is less environmentally friendly because it takes more compute cycles I'm curious how much energy it takes to send bits over cellular or wifi, my intuition is that this is orders of magnitude higher than compression or encoding.

astrange 2y ago
> I'm curious how much energy it takes to send bits over cellular or wifi, my intuition is that this is orders of magnitude higher than compression or encoding. Correct, but the computational cost of decoding a codec is generally correlated with the number of bits. So JXL is not necessarily more expensive to decode than older codecs, if it compresses better.

the_gorilla 2y ago

If people are going to take credit for crunching something down from 10 MB to 8 MB, I wish they'd also take the blame for massively bloating something into a modern monstrosity out of sheer laziness or betting that profit margins will be higher if they waste user time, storage, and cpu for the sake of releasing the project faster.

semi-extrinsic 2y ago

This whataboutism we are hearing now about "the energy needed to store your pictures" is just corporate whataboutism, trying to push blame onto consumers. Let's say you have 2 TB of photos stored. If that's consuming more than 2 watts of electricity on average, the cloud providers have to be quite incompetent (they are mostly not). 2 watts is 1 kWh in 20 days, so 18 kWh in one year. The emissions from 18 kWh in the US is around 6 kg of CO2. This is the equivalent of driving a car for about 20 minutes on the highway, one time per year. Or spending 5 minutes longer in the shower 4 times per year.

teddyh 2y ago

> The hard drive on my shelf isn't using any energy But it is losing its data: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41244143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41244143>

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

illiac786 2y ago

You encode the image once, but transmit it many, many times, in general. It it send from phone to iCloud, then from iCloud to your other apple device and so and so on. God forbid you share it with someone. Then iCloud has internal resiliencies and redundancies, etc. etc. Short point: I do think it’s environmentally better (or less worse). it’s a drop in the ocean though.