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Zulgrib

@natecull Well, people don't optimize for resources anymore

24 comments
Angle

@Zulgrib @natecull Human time is more valuable than computer time in most circumstances. Or at least, thats the way the incentives lean. :/

Zulgrib

@natecull @Angle But if human time is wasted due to waiting result from unoptimized code ?

Angle

@Zulgrib @natecull *Shrugs* As long as it's someone elses time. :P

Markus

@Zulgrib @natecull @Angle I think the usual reasoning is: "Get a better computer then."

Natasha Nox πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦πŸ‡΅πŸ‡Έ

@Zulgrib A real shame. Imagine what a current high-end computer would be capable of doing if everything was perfectly optimized straight down to the kernel. You could probably run the personal computing needs of a small city on a single machine. @natecull

Zulgrib

@Natanox @natecull
Don't know if that much could be accomplished, but surely more than what we do now

0xC0DEC0DE07E8

@Zulgrib @Natanox @natecull I’m immediately concerned about privacy in this hypothetical community processing unit. When we look at multi-tenant (particularly multi-level security) computer systems, we find that there are a lot of concerns. For MLS, you need to disable simultaneous multithreading (SMT) to minimize risk of data leakage between threads that may not be in the same process.

0xC0DEC0DE07E8

@Natanox @natecull @Zulgrib I know the point was that we’re just amazingly wasteful with resources, and that’s certainly true. The phone I’m typing this on is faster than the first several of my computers.

Chris Simpson

@Natanox this is my eternal bugbear. It is the same issue with society too. If it wasn't for all the inefficient rent seeking we would all be moderately well off.

Natasha Nox πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦πŸ‡΅πŸ‡Έ

@chris_e_simpson haha, yeah. That's also why more and more jobs are for ridiculous tasks in systems solely made to generate and raise sales volume - not even revenue at times.
Nobody would have to suffer anymore, they only do because mankind didn't learn to collectively control their worst cravings.
UBI would be a first step, however we'll have to overcome our current late stage capitalism for that first.

Chris Simpson

@Natanox I'm a big UBI advocate though I agree there's a fair bit of work to get there (esp. around education)

Natasha Nox πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦πŸ‡΅πŸ‡Έ

@chris_e_simpson Indeed. It's not *just* education though. I recently watched a very educational documentation on the current science of food and especially sugar, showing how bad food during pregnancy but also childhood and everyday life can severely impact not just your mood, but your very psychological foundation. For example, they conducted tests showing that rational & social behaviour improved after a meal with high nutritional value, while it took a hit after bad ones. Esp. sugar is bad.

Natasha Nox πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦πŸ‡΅πŸ‡Έ

@chris_e_simpson Of course I'm not saying US americans are often weird because their local cuisine is, uhm... bad. It's merely one piece of an enormous puzzle. πŸ™ƒ

Chris Simpson

@Natanox Oh I could talk for hours about this stuff (been studying it for 3 years). Humans are very bad at resisting calories or, in fact, any short term gain, even if they "know" there is a long term loss but we are way worse at this when we are in "scarcity" mode. So poverty makes everything worse.

Peter Brown

@chris_e_simpson @Natanox very interesting on the sugar and also completely logical.

οΏΌ Financial stress is also a major factor in decision-making and can lead to very poor long-term decisions. οΏΌ It’s not necessarily the case that being stupid makes you poor, but it is certainly true that being poor makes you make stupid decisions.

HJVT

@Natanox @chris_e_simpson I mean, it's not like people are choosing to live in food deserts. (spoiler food deserts exist because of capitalism, it is deemed unprofitable to properly feed those communities)

Chris Simpson

@Natanox there are lots of challenges but I think they can all be mitigated somewhat by starting with the right kind of education. Today's victorian style system where kids just seem to be taught how to get good grades is not adequate for good rational or empathetic thinking

JessπŸ‘Ύ

@Natanox @Zulgrib @natecull However, aside from the technical novelty, it would be an incredibly fragile system and virtually impossible to patch without breaking everything.

In any system optimization problem, you optimize based upon what's the most scarce and the most expensive. These days, the scarcity is not in cpu, memory, or even network, it's in how many actual people hours does it take to build and maintain the thing.

Dervish

@avani @Zulgrib @natecull For the Americans, tell them a nanosecond is a foot? Don't forget the Cray computer design was in part because of this fact.

Avani

@Dervishpi @Zulgrib @natecull
As an American, I'm pro SI units all the way :)

Woke Leftist Trash

@Zulgrib @natecull

Most engineers are taught not to. It's not even a suggestion to avoid it; you're doing programming wrong if you show any signs of giving a whiffle about performances.

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