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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

Isn't Hacker News the home of "software eats the world"? That's a massive part of the de-correlation of economic growth and emissions. Except for AI training and proof of work, software is a low carbon activity. And it's massively cumulative -- it's not consumed, the software produced 20 years ago still has value.

Some other examples: would anybody deny the iPhone 12 is better than the iPhone 11? It's smaller and presumably has a lower carbon footprint.

How about the F-150 Lightning? Each one of those that replaces a standard pickup eliminates demand for about 50,000 pounds of gasoline. The aluminum frame was likely produced using hydro-power so much fewer emissions than the traditional steel frame. The 100 pounds or so of lithium in the vehicle is highly recyclable.

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Software needs hardware to create economic growth, namely data centers and disposable computers (smartphones, notebooks, smart watches, routers and so on). It doesn't matter if they are more energy efficient either if you keep making more and more of them. Just the environmental impact of making them is unsustainable. Similarly it doesn't matter how much value new paradigms like Bitcoin or AI adds to the economy, it's just more environmental impact. Replacing hundreds of millions of cars with electric cars is just more impact too.

Those are negligeable compared to their physical counterpart they are replacing though, they so replace a lot of car trips and expensive manufacturing which is now unneeded

Demand for cars is higher than ever, so is the manufacturing of almost all goods, as proven by the supply chain bottleneck in the last 2-3 years. The demand is still there, and is growing thanks to millions of people in places like India, China and Africa getting out of poverty.

What exactly have smartphones been replacing lately? Other than PC computers, which ironically also saw a comeback thanks to WFH?

You're probably seeing things only from your own tiny bubble, not from the global perspective.

We're talking about developed countries here so yeah tons of stuff has been dematerialised, I call my doctor by video instead of driving there, I download movies instead of driving to the cinema, I get deliveries which are batched instead of going to the mall, I no longer need to send letters and buy paper maps, I don't need to drive to the library anymore to get books, the electricity company does not need to drive on the whole city just to read the electric meters... The list is endless, and this is just individual stuff, whenever you get to the whole supply chain, that gets compounded at every level.

Let me guess, you live in the US/North America? I also live in a developed country in Europe and here you have to go to the doctor in person for almost everything except COVID, people still go to the cinema (at every new blockbuster the cinema is almost full), people still go shopping for groceries as grocery deliveries aren't a thing here or most people can't afford the extra costs, WFH is very rare so everyone still goes to work in person, car sales are up, etc.

Your bubble does not reflect the worldwide situation.

No I live in western Europe.

When I was in high school, the standard weeknight entertainment was driving up and down main street in vehicles that got about 8 mpg.

Today, standard weeknight entertainment for high school boys is multi-player video games.

Yes, multi-player video games are still slightly carbon positive. But they're about a million times better than driving up and down main street. That's massive progress.

Next, what's the environmental and economic impact of a forest ranger? They're adding significant economic value to the economy and also hopefully doing significant good for the environment.

It's not a hard stretch to imagine that the economy of 2200 will consist mostly of holodeck's and forest rangers. It's very possible that GDP will be growing and the environment will be getting better in most ways. Just like the rivers and forests of North America are better than they were 80 years ago.

On the contrary, consumption and energy use went up, not to mention waste. That video game needs 600-700 watts per client and most of it is created very inefficiently, using fossil fuels.

People still drive up and down too, and there are more people.

> the economy of 2200

The planet will be barely habitable, if at all.

Sorry I exaggerated. Video games are only 1000x better than driving an 80s car, not a millions.

I don't even know what are you talking about, most teenagers didn't own a car in the 80's. In fact there are more cars now than there were back then, more people too. I don't see how the video game industry helped the environment, on the contrary it had a measurable negative impact on it thanks to the energy consumption and the waste.

The only thing video games have going for them is that they don't get you laid.

Minor correction but consumer game consoles tend to cap out at 220 watts, and even for PCs 600-700 watts is on the higher end.

And the average of both is under 100 watts.

That's fair, but you have a game console, a TV, a desktop, a notebook, a smartphone, e-book reader, router and so on.

The average electric power consumption per capita more than doubled in the last 40 years, and keeps growing almost linearly.

AI training does not use a lot of energy. It is estimated that GPT-3 needed about 1GW-h. A 747-400 aircraft uses 120MW of primary power while cruising (10 tonnes of Jet A per hour). Every time an aircraft flies between Atlanta and London, it uses more energy than was used to train GPT-3. Every single time.

>the software produced 20 years ago still has value

Which unmaintained piece of software written 20 years ago still generates revenue?

Two goal post shifts in 1 sentence! "unmaintained" and "revenue".

Then what's your definition based on your own goal posts?

Making software that's sitting around and doesn't generate any revenue? That's either a hobby which is fine, or is a waste of resources, both in development and in storage/deployment.

And if the 20 year old software isn't unmaintained but is actually constantly getting updated and support, then is it still 20 year old software or is it basically up-to-date software (the Ship of Theseus problem)?

It doesn't have to produce revenue, it just has to aid in the production of GDP. I don't pay for Linux, but it is a key part of the GDP I am responsible for.

And while Linux is maintained, the vast bulk of the value it provides is quite old and almost unchanged.

But the Linux we use today isn't 20 year old software. Sure, the foundation is over 30 year old, but most of the Linux code we use today is relatively fresh and is constantly being improved and updated. Again, I bring the ship of Theseus argument. I doubt my Android phone has too many lines of code written by Linus on it.

Not many places are running software that saw no more active development for over 20 years. Even governments and banks are pushing updates to ancient codebases.

Unmaintained 20 year old software would be the firmware running on your 20 year old car or microwave oven, as that's frozen on that system, not getting any more development.

So, out of all products made by humans, software has by far the shortest expiration date, with the exception being food products.

bitrot is real.

Is it comparable to actual food rot or the one way transformation of fossil fuels into energy?

No.

You completely misunderstood my point. Yes bit-rot exists, but that's not what I was talking about. Software doesn't rot like food, it just stops being useful for its intended purpose if left un-updated for too long.

Just look at my 10 year old Android phone. It still boots and works just fine, but having not received anymore SW updates for 8 years, it's completely unusable for its intended purpose today despite it still running. There's nothing wrong with the hardware, OLED screen is still very bright and sharp and I changed the battery and everything, but with such old unmaintained software it's basically an e-waste paperweight now.

Most software doesn't stay useful forever, and without updates it has a shelf-life, as most software becomes useless after a while if left un-updated. So yes, my point stands, old un-updated software provides no value in most cases.

I would imagine that there's probably a _lot_ of industrial machinery control software out in the wild that's still running on Windows 95/98/etc., where the company that wrote it probably went out of business 20 years ago.

Agree, but old industrial software that saw no development and updates in 20 years is too small of a sample from which to generate the conclusion that all software generates value forever. Yes, in the case of industrial machinery it does, but that's mostly due to the hardware itself not becoming obsolete, not the software running on the machine. Often times, machine operators would love to have the software updated and modernized, as he hardware on which it runs is good for decades without any improvements.

Therefore I disagree with this conclusion. I think software is the thing which gets obsoleted and rots the fastest, not the hardware. Which is why SW development is in so high demand and wages so high in contrast to HW and mechanical engineering.

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