Thread

1. zkmon · 1791182118 · focus · HN ↗

   Some great soul said something like "God has given everything to meet your need, not your greed". As long as the greed continues to increase exponentially, no amount of innovation is going to support it.

   The amount of energy and material wastage in developed countries is enormous and abominable. Large screens being on 24x7 without anyone watching, cities explicitly designed for forcing the use of vehicle, consumer life-style requiring huge supply chains, powerful cars carrying just one person, ... and so on.

   Business drivers will continue to drive the greed of people and nations and act against any measures to fix the problem. A business knows nothing about climate or human good.

   1. Gigachad · 1791185407 · focus · HN ↗

      This is why I'm somewhat apathetic about the current price increases in tech and oil. We just consume such insane amounts of resources unnecessarily. We throw old tech in the junk drawer because the latest model came out, drive tanks to the supermarket, and buy endless amounts of junk clothing that ends up in landfill.

      At least in developed countries I feel like most consumption could stop and daily life wouldn't be any worse off.

      1. [deleted] · 1791187673 · focus · HN ↗

         [deleted]

      2. blitzar · 1791192643 · focus · HN ↗

         Once you have got yours this is fine - like people who own big houses and are somewhat apathetic about house prices going up by multiples over a few years.

         People who dont have computers should simply cancel their expensive netflix subscription and not eat avocados on toast. Within 5-7 years they too will have saved up enough for a deposit on an entry level GPU and some RAM.

         1. Gigachad · 1791194678 · focus · HN ↗

            I was going to add a disclaimer about the comment referring to the average person likely to read this website and not someone who does not own a computer at all.

            Personally my gaming pc is from 2019 which by industry standards is bordering on obsolete junk. But compared to the game consoles I was playing not that long ago this thing has virtually infinite power and should be expected to last far longer than it currently is.

      3. surgical_fire · 1791192680 · focus · HN ↗

         The old tech thing is maddening. In no small part that is consumerism pure and simple, but there's also ridiculous planned obsolescence at play.

         My cellphone is inching towards 5 years, and it is perfectly serviceable. I could likely keep using it for years more. I am having to look at a replacement in the near future because there will be mo more updates for it.

         And for computers, most people could probably make do with machines that are many years old and not feel a difference in their capabilities.

         1. Gabrys1 · 1791193351 · focus · HN ↗

            > And for computers, most people could probably make do with machines that are many years old and not feel a difference in their capabilities.

            That would be true if not for 50MB-heavy JavaScript webpages.

            Same goes for smartphone apps. Facebook app used to be a few megabytes in size and it was already very big compared to other apps you had on the phone.

         2. Gigachad · 1791195084 · focus · HN ↗

            The other day I took out my old Nintendo ds and started playing some games. I was surprised how fun it still is today, then I looked up the hardware specs. This thing has 4MB of ram, FOUR megabytes. And yet developers fit a full size game on it.

            Now I have 32 gigabytes of ram and games still sometimes run terribly. Which highlights the point that consumption is limitless. If I had 4 terabytes of ram devs would just build the game in node and never free memory just because they don’t have to.

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