[HN Gopher] Jevons Paradox
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       Jevons Paradox
        
       Author : rememberlenny
       Score  : 7 points
       Date   : 2022-01-11 22:37 UTC (22 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
        
       | karmakurtisaani wrote:
       | In data science and machine learning you can see this paradox in
       | the fact that no amount of data is enough: once you get enough
       | data to run a simple model, you will want to make the model as
       | complicated as the available data allows and beyond. And you're
       | short on data again.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | jasonhansel wrote:
       | A theory I've often had: the Jevons paradox explains why desktop
       | software remains so slow despite the massive improvements in
       | hardware speeds. When you improve the efficiency of the hardware,
       | software starts to demand more CPU cycles, since there's less of
       | an incentive to optimize.
        
         | Syonyk wrote:
         | > _...software starts to demand more CPU cycles, since there 's
         | less of an incentive to optimize._
         | 
         | Node and Electron and crew would agree.
         | 
         | A "modern" chat client (Element, Signal, etc) will lag on a
         | quad core 1.5GHz system in terms of "typing into the text input
         | box" (RasPi4, yes, I've set the governor to performance), when
         | a single core 66MHz 486 could manage that trick without any lag
         | in a range of chat clients. Hexchat still works fine, at least.
         | 
         | What we need to do is stop letting developers use high end,
         | modern systems, and put them on something a decade old for
         | daily use. Then maybe they'll stop writing crap that only works
         | well on a 1-2 year old Xeon workstation. Google, I'm looking at
         | _you_. Buy all your devs a Pi4 and make them use it once a week
         | for a day.
        
         | awb wrote:
         | > When you improve the efficiency of the hardware, software
         | starts to demand more CPU cycles, since there's less of an
         | incentive to optimize.
         | 
         | Or rather, there's always more work to be done.
        
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       (page generated 2022-01-11 23:00 UTC)