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> 512GB of RAM Keep these things the hell away from the people who develop Chrome and desktop JS apps.
by lenerdenator 2y ago
> 512GB of RAM
Keep these things the hell away from the people who develop Chrome and desktop JS apps.
- draw_down 2y agoI come here for the tech news, but also the assmad potshots you guys always take at JS. Never change, HN.
- dylan604 2y agoIf legitimate complaints about your faveLanguage hurts your feelings, then how do you survive code reviews?
- eyelidlessness 2y agoNot OP, and not my favorite language, but I don’t see how “Apple ships large amount of RAM in expensive workstation” is a legitimate complaint about any language. It isn’t even in the same universe of topics. Completely off-topic JS (and Rust!) drama permeating every single discussion isn’t something that happens in code review. It’s very much an expression of the HN community and its culture. And it’s really tiresome, especially when there are both better complaints and better topical venues for these languages and more.
- dylan604 2y agoEveryone knows that an Electron app consumes a lot of RAM. Take Slack for example. Running slack in a tab in a browser uses less RAM than running the Electron app for Slack. The joke being that Apple realized that so many apps are built in Electron and made a decision to provide a shit ton of RAM to just to handle Electron. It seems very on point to the discussion
- eyelidlessness 2y agoA joke whose punchline can be and frequently is retrofitted to any setup… isn’t a particularly funny joke.
- dylan604 2y agoA joke is not deemed funny by everyone that hears it. Those that do enjoy it. At this point, it's more satirical than haha funny. Electron is so bloated that it requires way more RAM than say native apps. To poke fun of its inefficiencies isn't going to win Last Comic Standing, but it is valid criticism even if attempted to be told in a humorous manner. Just because it's stuck in your craw doesn't mean the rest of us are in the same place as you, yet you are unwilling to accept that your view isn't the only view.
- eyelidlessness 2y agoIt’s not stuck in my craw. It permeates damn near every discussion no matter how remote the connection. It detracts from actual discussion of the actual topic in the process. I actually almost totally agree with the perspective the “joke” comes from! I just don’t see it as a topic that warrants so frequently disrupting otherwise interesting discussion.
- draw_down 2y ago[dead]
- whizzter 2y agoIn 2025 the question isn't "will it run crysis", it's "will it run a simple CRUD app".
- esafak 2y agoWill it run Electron?
- bloomingkales 2y agoGonna pile on: At this point we may need TSMC to make a specialized chip to run Electron.
- vvillena 2y agoThere are already specialized instructions in the Apple Silicon chips. IIRC there's something tailored for the Objective-C runtime, and something useful for Javascript runtimes.
- favorited 2y agoUncontended acquire-release atomic operations are basically free on Apple Silicon, which synergizes with the Objective-C (and Swift!) runtimes, where every retain/release is an atomic increment/decrement. https://web.archive.org/web/20201119143547/https://twitter.com/Catfish_Man/status/1326238434235568128 https://web.archive.org/web/20201119143547/https://twitter.c...
- throwaway2037 2y ago> Uncontended acquire-release atomic operations are basically free on Apple Silicon While I don't doubt you, the poster, specifically, how is this possible? To be clear, my brain is x86-wired, not ARM-wired, so I may have some things wrong. Most of the expense of atomic inc/dec is "happens before", which essentially says before the current core reads that memory address, it will be guaranteed to be updated to the latest shared value. How can this be avoided? Or is it not avoided, but just much, much faster than x86? If the shared value was updated in a different core, some not-significant CPU cycles are required to update L1 cache on current current with latest shared value.
- Waterluvian 2y agoSomething I’ve been surprised to find over the years working at software companies is just how many C++ writing, Linux using senior engineers there are who simply do not understand how allocation works and what HTOP is actually telling them. I really think a sizable chunk of people in the “omg my RAM!” camp are basing it on vibes, backed up by a misread of reported usage. This reminds a long time ago when I was trying to figure out why the heck my Intel Mac was allocating all my RAM and most of my swap to Preview or Chess.
- klik99 2y agoI’m surprised how many people bring up “Erm that memory is actually not being used” as if there isn’t plenty of knock on effects from how memory pressure is actually done. For example, if I keep chrome open long enough my builds slowly use less and less threads because the build thinks there’s less memory available, so I have to periodically close chrome and reopen and restore last session. It’s true reported memory allocation does not equal actual memory used and that’s very clever of everyone who brings it up, but it does actually cause real annoyances.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago>so I have to periodically close chrome and reopen and restore last session. I thought ublock was forced out of Chrome months ago... how are you people still using it? I switched back to Firefox a couple years ago already, even if it's occasionally painful.
- klik99 2y agoYeah I actually use Firefox almost exclusively, I only use Chrome when websites mysteriously don't work in firefox, 99% of the it's lack of firefox support. But in my example I was thinking of a particular 2-month stretch where this kept biting me and I was using Chrome at that point. In terms of memory usage, Firefox is no better though (at one point it was, but not any more). Now I'm afraid of saying "memory usage" lest someone pops out to comment "that's not how memory works" like whack-a-mole.
- kees99 2y agoChrome has to run on chromebooks, quite a few of which are still-supported models with 4GB of non-upgradeable RAM.
- ant6n 2y agoThese chromebooks won’t run chrome, they’ll meander it.
- lenerdenator 2y agoI wouldn't even call it meandering. Know that scene from one episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force where George Lowe (RIP) is a police officer and has his feet amputated, so he drags himself while pursuing a suspect? Yeah. It does that.
- ewoodrich 2y agoHmm, that hasn't been my experience. My Mediatek 4gb Chromebook is surprisingly snappy (and gets incredible battery life, better than my Macbook that cost 10x as much). Starts to slow down a bit if I go over a dozen tabs while having a video playing but otherwise, it's solid. I can even use VS Code remote on it in a pinch, though that's pushing it...
- superjan 2y agoSo that means it can run with 4GB. Is there a way to block it from using more?
- Mistletoe 2y agoWho do you think buys these? :)
- doublerabbit 2y agoRenderfarms Animation Studios We had some hefty rigs at the last studio I worked at.
- nicce 2y agoAre these really cost effective for that usecase?
- whywhywhywhy 2y agoNot really. Smaller scenes you’d use nvidia GPU, larger scenes you’d probably save money doing normal servers.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoYou run a render farm made of macs?
- doublerabbit 2y agoDid. Until I locked all the artists out of their work accidentally when I went one lunch break. Screwed up a Fw config. The old xeon stations were power houses.
- layer8 2y agoThey should make a “webdev” edition with like 4 GB.
- Hamuko 2y agoThe Mac Mini M2.
- DwnVoteHoneyPot 2y agoRaspberry Pi 4GB
- singularity2001 2y ago512GB only available on M3
- reustle 2y agoThat’s almost the full deepseek r1!
- seunosewa 2y agoAlmost is a painful word in this case. Imagine if it could actually run R1. They'd make so much money. Falling short by a few dozen GB is such a shame.
- asah 2y ago$10k and up
- amy_petrik 2y agomy first thought was, "what does it look like fully specced out, 512 GB RAM cannot be cheap" fully specced out it's ~$15k now I bet that'd be a fine $15k AI machine but if I wanted a CPU AI rig a cobbling of multi-core motherboards could get higher performance at a lower cost, and/or some array of used nvidia cards. the good news is 3 or 4 years from now hardware specs such as this will be much cheaper, which is exciting