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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
I wonder if the fediverse is worse for the planet than Twitter was? Surely a few massive data centers use less water and power than thousands of servers spread out all over the place, right? Not to mention the extra internet traffic, content and infrastructure duplication etc. If we really care about the environment, shouldn’t we be championing massive centralization?
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Andrew Hodgson @andrew@hodgson.io
1y
@fastfinge I think you're making the assumption here that Twitter, Facebook et al are using a few centralised data centres. I suspect that it takes more infrastructure/servers to run Twitter than it does for the whole of the fediverse. Also these services ran by the big companies are spread out across multiple locations, for example providing caching.
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Tamas G @Tamasg@mindly.social
1y
@fastfinge here's another twist to that: What if multiple mastodon instances are hosted on a shared server through KVMs, and they're all pulling the same data and building multiple copies of that cache from the data but on the same infrastructure for duplication. Some of this sadly becomes a bit unavoidable during the streaming age - if we consider bandwidth and computing impact I would think the amount of throwaway data getting streamed would be a bit higher overall.
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MostlyBlindGamer @MostlyBlindGamer@dragonscave.space
1y
@fastfinge a lot of centralized infrastructure is on the edge. I notice this when I watch a Nebula video from a few years ago: it takes multiple seconds to load, because it’s not cached at whatever node is closest to me. On YouTube it would start playing instantly because they have much bigger edge infrastructure.

I wouldn’t make any blanket statements on which alternative is better or worse, but I think it’s worth noting that some of our decentralization and federation is roughly equivalent to caching, edge processing and all that fun CDN and even loaf balancing stuff.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@MostlyBlindGamer Loaf balancing? I assume this has something to do with cat pictures. lol jk
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MostlyBlindGamer @MostlyBlindGamer@dragonscave.space
1y
@fastfinge it does, yes. This site will make it clear:

http.cat

I wish it was accessible, but I think it’s worth throwing an image description generator at.
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Ben @ben_zen@social.sdf.org
1y
More batch-loading and "I'll watch that later"-style interaction is probably the better answer here; reliably fast delivery is costly because it requires duplication even when it's not needed because you can't predict what someone needs when.

@MostlyBlindGamer @fastfinge
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MostlyBlindGamer @MostlyBlindGamer@dragonscave.space
1y
@ben_zen @fastfinge yeah, for sure. I’m A-OK with the slowness because I’d rather pay the people who make the videos and supply the infrastructure instead of the advertisers.

The reason I mention it is that it’s a demonstration of our expectations requiring that duplication. So federating and delivering isn’t bloat, it’s equivalent to a CDN.
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Adam MacLeod @adam@adamm.cc
1y
@fastfinge If you want to put it in those terms, why not just ban all computer and technology planet-wide? Surely that will save it. There is no correct answers to the environment crisis. Energy can not be created or destroyed, only transformed. I say that humanity has a lot bigger fish to fry on the environment issue.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
Dark thought @adam Well, yes. When we create true AI, the first thing it’ll do is eliminate humanity. It may be correct to do so.
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modulux @modulux@node.isonomia.net
1y
@fastfinge Very hard to measure, and the fedi does not do a lot of things centralised alternatives do such as surveillance and advertising, which does take up considerable resources and storage. But probably per user it is less efficient, I would think.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@modulux Also, how many of us massively overprovision our servers? I know I’m guilty of that. Estimating exactly how much ram or CPU a federated service requires is a skill, and I don’t have it. I’m not a business, so I have no economic pressure to squeeze out every last drop of performance either.
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modulux @modulux@node.isonomia.net
1y
@fastfinge On the other hand, I run a lot of stuff on the same server I run fedi stuff on. Email, websites, IRC bots... And it runs on bare metal, no container or virtual machines or cloud indirection. So not sure how much of a factor that may be.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@modulux Same, but I had to containerize everything for security and ease of maintenance. I don’t think docker is too bad. However, it does mean my resource needs are wildly unpredictable to me.
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modulux @modulux@node.isonomia.net
1y
@fastfinge I don't understand containers and all that stuff... I'm just too old school and haven't put in the time and effort to learn, so I just run everything on dedicated servers and use normal package management or manual builds for things.
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modulux @modulux@node.isonomia.net
1y
@fastfinge Anyway, one thing I agree on is the replication is excessive, and it's also a cost that could be significantly reduced. Imagine images and so on stored on a DHT where everyone puts in some storage and can retrieve from it. Only one copy of a file would need to be stored. (Realistically, say 5 copies for redundancy.) I know there are people interested in making something like this happen.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@modulux Sounds like IPFS?
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modulux @modulux@node.isonomia.net
1y
@fastfinge Yes, something like it. Not sure IPFS is exaclty the right way to do it, but certainly the same sort of concept.
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