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[Music]
all right welcome everybody day three
first talk on the bits and bom stage
how's everybody
[Music]
doing yes still a bit tired but uh we
have nice weather today not too much sun
uh so you can fully enjoy the talk by
Joseph deog he will talk um briefly uh
for about uh 25 minutes uh on the impact
of software um on energy and resource
consumption and give us an overview of
the environmental harm and the
potentials uh for for savings there and
how free software uh in special is well
positioned to address the issue and in
the end we will have a Q&A session and
um yeah if you have any questions you
can raise your hands and we will uh get
a mic to you so uh give Joseph a warm
Round of Applause again and enjoy the
talk yeah thank you thank you very much
um thank you to the organizers at bits
and boa this has been great so far um so
the title of my talk today is free
software software design for the
environment um and this is part of a
larger KDE Eco initiative um working on
sustainability issues in uh KDE and free
software um before I get started though
i' like to make my talks a little bit
interactive um feel free if when I'm
talking you have a question that's
burning and you want to ask it right
away you can just raise your hand and
either the mic will come to you or I can
repeat it for the audience um before we
get started though I wanted to ask you
what are some words and phrases that you
associate with free
software and I'll repeat here for the
people who are uh
online great great yeah good Empower
empowerment say it again powerful
powerful customizable
customizable collaboration
collaboration great suable sustainable
that's so most people don't say
sustainable and I hope by the end of
this talk all of you next time someone
asks you that question will say
sustainable um I have many uh links in
the slides if you want to download them
they're available at our repository I
will also return to the slide if you
remind me um at the end of the
talk just wait a second
great so to get started um just to frame
the issue that we're talking about so
this is a post on Macedon from um Ed
Hawkins he's a climate scientist um at
the University of reading um in which he
has a graph I don't expect you can
really see the graph but I hope you can
see that all but one have an upward
slope to it okay um you can probably
guess what these are measurements of um
this is the temperat global temperature
CO2 emissions sea levels there's only
one that's going down that's um the Ice
uh uh thickness um and he writes in the
post um changes are emerging across the
climate system everywhere we look the
climate is changing rapidly these
changes are not normal they're caused by
the burning of fossil
fuels fossil fuels are also being burned
in the ICT sector so informations and
Communications technology is right now
an area that's being researched um to
figure out how much um energy is
consumed and how much the ICT sector
contributes to CO2 emissions um this is
a um graph again all having upwards
slopes um which is a uh meta study
looking at various um research papers
trying to estimate what the CO2
emissions are of the ICT sector um these
uh one thing I want to point out here is
that the um estimates vary um you can
see some grow exponentially some grow
linearly um however they're all growing
um and if uh you take it sort of um try
to average over what all of the studies
seem to show um it appears that ICT
sector contributes between two and 4% of
CO2 emissions globally to put that into
perspective um that's roughly the
equivalent of the global aviation
industry which is estimated around
2.5% this um analysis for the ICT sector
includes everything from production
Transportation end of life treatment um
of devices um to energy consumption of
the internet uh to energy consumption
driven by the software you're running at
home or in your
office um also includes Bitcoin uh um
machine learning training
Etc um right now the current trajectory
uh if you look here um and uh as well as
here um if things don't change it's
going to continue growing and some
estimates put that up to about 30% of
global CO2 emissions by 2050 okay so so
it's growing it's increasing rapidly and
um one thing I want to point out here
and I like this quote from this uh it's
a tech brief from the association of
computing Machinery it says Computing
can help mitigate climate change how by
substituting other activities that we're
doing um but it must first cease
contributing to it because it's growing
in some cases faster than it's
substituting I'm going to focus today in
this talk on on the different ways that
software is driving energy consumption
specifically of course energy
consumption um does contribute to CO2
depending on what the uh power grid mix
is I'm not going to talk too much about
estimates of CO2 I'm going to talk
specifically about power consumption um
as well as uh uh production costs and
I'm going to do that in two different
ways I'm going to talk about efficiency
um Energy Efficiency in terms of um
achieving this the same result um when
doing the same task but uh consuming
less energy as well as conservation that
is reducing the waste that's driven by
software and let's look at some examples
of
this so first in terms of
efficiency this is a um comparison of
two word processors it's from the umelt
bundis ampt um it's some research done
by the umelt compos beinfeld um in which
they compared various software products
doing the same thing and then looking at
their energy consumption differences um
word processor one the green bar plot is
a uh free and open source software
product they don't mention which one um
the blue one is a proprietary one again
they don't mention which one um and as
you can see here to do the exact same
thing to achieve the same result word
processor 2 consumes four about four
times the
energy okay for an individual this may
not make much of a difference um but you
can't think of software's energy
consumption on an individual basis word
process are in every office in every
University on everyone's computer people
are using it globally all the time if
you think about these numbers when you
scale it up they add up very quickly and
to give an example of that this is from
a talk from um hassop plaa Institute de
L Toms um in which he does a back of the
envelope calculation in which you reduce
a uh process by one CPU second okay it's
a very minimal change um that's about
the equivalent of a a saving of 10 watt
seconds and if you multiply that by 1.5
million users now that's not very many
users um and you assume that there are
20 such such reductions a day so this uh
reduction in the CPU usage um happens 20
times a day and you multi multiply that
by 230 working days a year you end up
with 19 megawatt hours of savings um now
if you're like me that doesn't mean much
to you um to put that into comparison to
put that into perspective um if you take
a modern electric vehicle and drive it
back and forth from Shanghai six times
that's about the equivalent of 19
megawatt hours okay so these are very
simple changes that result in big
savings once you scale it
up and the thing about software is that
you're not only changing it on one
computer but you're changing every
computer that gets that update right um
and when you act uh think about it on a
global level um these saving really add
up very quickly if I can convince just
500 developers and I've been giving
similar talks now for about a year and a
half um so this is a very realistic goal
500 developers to try to achieve just 10
of those efficiency gains um multiply
that by 19 megawatt hour savings and
you're talking about the energy
consumption of 30,000 2ers households in
one year so scaling it up you get to
really big efficiency
gains okay now uh
conservation um reducing the waste and
when we're talking about waste let's
start uh where the waste lands in the
landfill um in this is a uh graph uh
infographic um representing the ew from
2016 um already one year before that aam
Steiner from the UN um commented that
there's a tsunami of E-Waste uh rolling
out over the world um in
2015 there was uh 44.7 million tons of
e-w produced um that's about the
equivalent of 4,500 Eiffel
Towers um if you were to stack those
Eiffel Towers it would be about 17 times
of Mount Mount Everest High okay this is
in one year and it's growing in
2019 the world economic Forum said that
e-w is the fastest growing waste stream
in the world uh 2022 UH 60 million tons
of ewaste a 33%
increase um of that E-Waste about 20% is
estimated to be
recycled and in what ends up in the
landfill although e-w accounts for about
2% of the total waste um it's 70% of the
toxic
waste what does software have to do with
E-Waste right E-Waste is Hardware um
software can drive E-Waste um some of
you may have had this warning message
that uh your device is no longer
supported um if your soft software is
tied to that device then that device
becomes unusable at least not without
serious disadvantages to you as a user
um the software might become more and
more bloated as more features are added
um and the energy that's consumed or the
the processing power that's needed by
the hardware um grows so much that older
Hardware can no longer support that
software um as a result what you have is
devices that are now produced and
transported unnecessarily and fun
functioning uh devices end up as ewaste
in the
landfill um this is particularly uh
problematic thinking about it in terms
of CO2 um the this is a uh graph from a
book uh from um uh langa and sorus
called um
SM um this is a data from Apple's own
sustainability reports uh from an iPhone
um in which they estimate how much CO2
is produced per device and then what
it's attributable to and they find uh uh
Apple reports that uh the production end
of life treatment and transportation
accounts for about 80% of the CO2
emissions of a device so sending a
device into uh uh the landfill before
its time is a huge waste of
resources
often so to me they're both the same
thing right I mean if the hardware
doesn't allow the software it's because
the software can't function on that
Hardware right okay so the question is
so things like bootloaders being
proprietary and then not allowing uh
devices to then run other software right
that's that's a design decision um
that's maybe not directly a um software
in the sense of
uh it is a software decision because
that's proprietary you can't then uh uh
access the device um so I would say I
mean software and Hardware those are the
they're if what you're describing so the
question was about um when uh the
hardware is so locked down that you
can't install other software on it um
and um that's a situation where you have
a device that's tied to one particular
software product right but that's that
that's a design decision and it's still
related to software and I would say we
should all be fighting for the right to
repair to include software um including
things like opening up bootloaders so
that you can install other uh software
products on
it
um so so yeah production and end of life
treatment and uh Transportation are
going to contribute to much of the CO2
emissions of a device um but it's not
only CO2 emissions um the end of life
treatment also contributes uh to um uh
polluting uh air soil Etc often in
countries uh in the global South both
where the devices are um the metals are
mined often under horrible conditions um
and then they return there uh to then
end up in uh treatment centers or in
landfills um this here is in
Ghana um so I mentioned at the beginning
that um there are cases where
digitization can substitute other
activities
um and one of the questions there is is
what is the relative harm difference
between the digital product and the
non-digital one um this is again from
langa and centus it's a comparison of
e-readers um in terms of their
environmental harm and books uh paper
books um paper book production also
contributes to envir environmental harm
in terms of polluting water um and soil
uh with the chemicals used to create the
paper um and uh the production of an
e-reader is uh contributes also to
environmental harm and in terms of the
different materials that go into it
often toxic um the per device 300 L of
water are required um and uh one
estimate has CO2 emissions at 170 kg per
device and L and centus uh estimate that
if you read about 30 to 60 paper books
um or more um at that point the
environmental harm it's worth getting
the e-reader um from what you're
contributing this is one estimate these
are very hard estimates to make um the
point being that these are these are uh
things that you have to consider um
substitution is not in itself always
better um and the case of e-readers uh
statistics about how many books people
read per year uh comparison to how long
devices are supported um so one
Wikipedia article uh had the end of the
uh start date and end date for
production of e-readers as 1.5 years on
average um the average US American reads
60% read less than five books per year
so to get to the number of 30 to 60 it's
going to require using that device for a
long time um which likely won't be the
case uh given the uh short-term lifespan
of these
devices so so one of the things I want
to point out there in those parts is is
software design in terms of the uh
energy consumption um as well as its
support for Hardware can influence Ence
the environmental harm of um uh uh the
ICT sector and this was the motivation
for uh ecos certifying software many
people ask well what does software have
to do with eco-certification um that's
what I'm going to talk about now um the
Blue Angel released the award criteria
for software in
2020 um the award criteria are uh
aligned with uh false values of
transparency um and um user
autonomy um and um the there are three
main categories to the award criteria
resource and Energy Efficiency um
potential Hardware operating life and
user autonomy just to get an overview
before I focus on some of the user
autonomy characteristics which are
inherent to software license with a free
software license um before we get there
though let's look at some of the
different criteria resource Energy
Efficiency that's related to the um
energy consumption
of software um the criteria don't have a
threshold but rather a transparency
requirement so that users are aware of
um how much energy this software
consumes when running typical
tasks um potential Hardware operating
life um the requirements are that it
runs on Hardware at least 5 years old um
I think this is uh a little too low um
especially given that uh many Linux
distributions run on Hardware much older
than that um and the user autonomy uh
requirements include things like un
installability
modularity U which influences um the
sort of software feature creep and bloat
um continuity of support documentation
so that there's long-term reuse and
repairability of software um
transparency so that users can decide
which software products to use so you're
not locked into an inefficient program
as well as offline capability and
freedom from advertising both of which
um consume
energy um just uh some background the
Blue Angel um uh ocular uh from KDE is
the first Blue Angel certified software
currently it's the only one um I hope to
convince at least some people that it's
worth at least meeting the award
criteria um if you're interested in the
topic or considering applying for Eco
certification um so here getting to the
characteristics about free and open
source software and how it relates to um
uh Energy Efficiency and uh resource
consumption so looking at the criteria
um it's hard to single out a single one
when it comes to the topics of
efficiency and conservation they're all
interrelated um but here I want to focus
on a couple of them um together in in
three different parts um so first I want
to look at the energy consumption and
Hardware performance um related to
uninstall ability and
modularity and perhaps uh related to
offline capability um and and freedom
from
advertising so we take it for granted in
the free and open source software
community that um you can uninstall
software right this is something that is
obvious to us and many of us probably
have never thought about that in terms
of uh efficiency gains but software uh
unwanted software components that remain
on a system contribute to uh um longer
boot up times longer shutdown times um
perhaps extra processes running when
you're using that software Etc all of
which if you go back to the uh one CPU
second reduction all of which adds up
when you uh multiply that over millions
of
users so uninstall ability is a way to
um create a more efficient
system um again going back to this graph
comparing the two different two
different uh word processors if you want
to take a a deeper look at what the
energy consumption looks like over time
um here's a plot again from that same
measurement looking at the word
processor um the open source uh word
processor which is on the bottom plot um
and comparison to the proprietary word
processor was on the top
plot and um what you can see here is uh
doing the exact same thing right um they
have very different energy profiles the
um xais is showing over time while
running different tasks things like
opening a document um changing the
layout and then saving the document and
I want to focus here on what happens
after that blue line that's the point at
which the document is saved and the
software goes idle um and what you can
see here is that uh the proprietary
software continues doing things in the
background it does it quite a bit
actually um and in comparison the propri
the free and open source software
product um goes idle as you would expect
right um the report doesn't say what
exactly is happening um in this uh time
period there is also measurements in
this approach where they're looking at
Network traffic um uh um writing to disk
Etc um that data is not in the report so
I don't know what's happening here um we
can uh might be Telemetry I mean I think
that's a reasonable guess um if it's
proprietary software you can't turn this
off necessarily unless the the company
decides that you're allowed to right if
this is free and open source software uh
developers can then take a look see what
it's doing and then decide to remove
this functionality if users don't want
it right all of this is contributing to
that energy profile of these two word
programs so
again yeah just that this adds up when
you start thinking about it um scaling
it up across U millions or billions of
users okay um the next topic so um
potential Hardware operating life um as
well as continuity of support which is
what determines how long you can use
that device um and be uh um not have
disadvantages opening yourself up to
malware and things like this known
malware um documentation um how long can
that that software be supported over
time will depend to some extent on how
well it's documented um transparency
that uh users can decide um which
software they want to use um and then
move to different software products if
they uh want to and this will all
influence how long you can continue to
use a uh particular piece of Hardware
this is a image from a 2009 uh MacBook
um this uh end of life was in 2019 where
it was no longer supported by Apple and
um uh so the last uh version of Macos
that was supported was 10 10 um this is
from a KDE contributor was asking around
uh if uh KDE users were using Hardware
that was no longer supported by the
original vendors um this is now uh
currently still in use today uh running
kbuntu
working just fine um I know I have this
experience I'm running also older
Hardware at home um on my desktop
computer um which is no longer supported
running uh Linux um this device would
otherwise end up uh in the closet or uh
you know perhaps worst case where it
doesn't end up being treated or it goes
to end of life Treatment Center um and
all of that CO2 that is associated with
the production um has now uh um yeah
been wasted
[Music]
okay and the um last um section that I
want to talk about in terms of the um uh
user autonomy criteria is the offline
capability and freedom from advertising
um this is a report um from a um
research and consultancy group um which
does policy reports for the EU um in
which they look at what is called
unwanted data use um and they Define
unwanted data use as the uh data um for
uh Data Mining and advertising that
users can't shut off um given a
statistic that in the
EU um about 60% of users would shut it
off if they could so they call this
unwanted data use and they try to
estimate what the uh um energy
consumption and CO2 emissions are
associated with that unwanted data use
um this graph here is just showing that
there are several components to energy
consumption I've been focusing on
desktop software that's most of what uh
KDE does um but of course if you're
doing anything that's distributed a
client server um or similar type systems
um you're also going to be consuming
energy in the network and in data
centers and this unwanted data use um is
um at best um attributable to about 3
million metric tons of CO2 to according
to this uh report um at worse 8 million
metric tons and this would be um
according to this report equal to the
Caron foot footprint of of about 370 to
950,000 EU citizens okay this is for
something people don't
want um so the Blue Angel recognizes
that if users can turn it turn it off
when they want you remove this energy
consumption from the it ICT um uh um
contributions to energy consumption and
CO2
emissions um of course these things are
all intertwined um things like uh
advertising and um um uh data mining Etc
might also make it hard uh to um run a
browser on an old piece of Hardware um
in fact I find one of the biggest
problems when uh upcycling Hardware is
the um uh opening a browser the minute
you try to do anything on the internet
um currently uh website design is so
energy consuming um that it can break
your uh uh system um that's related to
uh Roberto's uh great talk yesterday um
um yeah so these things are are of
course um interrelated you know offline
capability capability for your
advertising will influence how long you
can run Hardware Etc
um these so we wanted to document our
experience um uh applying for the the um
Blue Angel Eco certification uh so that
other free and open source software
developers can also do this um we
released a handbook in February uh this
year um applying the Blue Angel criteria
to free
software um you're welcome to download
it uh from our website e.k
de.org um the book goes over of the what
I'm calling the three steps to Eco
certification um measuring your software
um so to do that you need to Define what
typical usage of that software would
look like emulate it using a script uhu
which is all documented in this um um
handbook um and then run it several
times run some statistical analyses um
which you can do with a tool provided by
the umel compus um called Oscar the open
source software consumption analysis in
R um and once you have that you document
your user autonomy uh uh um criteria um
that you're compatible with them and
submit it um the book though is more
than that I want it to be something that
you can send to your friends if you're
interested in this send it to your
marketing department if you work at a
company um send to your project manager
if you're on a team um in which it goes
over various aspects of this topic um
the first part is the why why does this
matter um so related to energy
consumption resource consumption driven
by software um what what is the Blue
Angel um what's what's its history um
how do people uh um um how is it
recognized internationally as well as in
Germany
um and then how do you fulfill then the
requirement for
software um you can also read it online
um here um for those of you who are uh
interested in this but don't have access
to a power meter power meters are um so
the approach that the Blue Angel
recommends and the one that we're using
in our lab is an external power meter
attached to a um machine that then is
emulating user behavior um Power meters
are expensive um really good power
meters are really expensive um the
off-the-shelf solutions which are okay
um they don't have great resolution um
you the one that that is recommended the
guda power meter gets like um five
measurements per second um which you can
then average and get an idea of what's
Happening um better ones can get like a
thousand measurements per second
um however you're going to be out of3 to
400 to buy one if you're interested in
just checking this out um but don't have
uh €500 um you can uh invest € 10 and
buy a power plug and hack it and turn it
into a power meter that gets about um
one measurement for every 200
milliseconds um and that's also
documented in this
um say it
again I don't know
um so
so um can we can we ask that at the end
and then maybe because I also wanted to
open up um I usually like to do Q&A
where also other people in the crowd
because I'm don't have a monopoly on
this information at all um so if someone
here might know the answer that but I
don't know it ask it again in the
Q&A um the uh lab setup um looks like
this you have a system under test that's
a machine that you're testing um a power
meter attached to it and then another
computer that's then collecting the data
and then used to evaluate it um you can
um um we set up a lab in kab Berlin um
uh this is um a picture of one of the
Sprints um this is Arna tar Tara from uh
green coding Berlin um who was very uh
helpful with uh fulker Kaa um Nicholas
fella um and several others in the KD
Community um who helped us get this lab
set up
um the current setup is only accessible
if someone is there in person and um
we're working on that I'm going to come
back to those slides um right now in a
project which should be done by next
month um in which we are making the lab
remotely accessible so that a developer
and we want to open this up to all free
software developers this is not only a
KDE thing um can uh design their usage
scenario that they want to measure um
upload it with their code and then it
will automatically run in the lab in
kdab and then give you a report back um
so that all you have to do is Define the
usage scenario and then you get some
energy consumption measurements related
to your software um it's yeah
this and of course all of this is KDE uh
free software so anyone can take it
adapt it to their needs um as they see
fit um what you would need to do if you
wanted to use um a lab like this um uh
you have to define a standard usage
scenario that requires identifying
typical tasks um uh done by a user
um perhaps identify particularly the
high energy ones to get an idea of the
energy consumption related to that um
create a flowchart of actions and then
emulate it um there are many ways to
emulate it um right now uh KDE is uh
focused on um using a selenium um which
is often used for uh web uh emulation um
adapting that for um desktop software um
uh there's were several talks at academy
uh just a few weeks ago which you can
watch about this approach um but it's
also useful for user emulation um once
you have that then you upload it to the
um uh machine you want to test you get
the results back and then there's this
tool Oscar where you can then upload the
data and get a report
back um the nice thing is that with this
lab setup with a remote access all of
that's
automated um just a little bit of uh
more generally KDE has a current goal of
sustainable soft software um every year
uh every two years we vote on three
unifying goals for the community um one
of the things that we're working on is
measuring our software um but there are
several other things uh related to this
such as documentation of the ways that
free software in particular our software
and at KDE um support
sustainability and I maybe I'll end on
this and then we can open up to a Q&A um
so when you look at the big picture
right
Um this can seem like uh you know small
drops on hot Stones this is this is you
know perhaps nothing compared to what
it's required to train uh uh you know a
large language model um or the uh um
explosion of iot devices Etc
um and so this is a comic from X kcd of
course there is a comic about this um in
which uh you know uh um cubal says I'm
trying to fix you know problem of the
world um can you help and uh white hat
says it's obvious you don't actually
care if you did you'd be trying to fix
this other bigger problem right um and
then uh CU ask well okay you want to
help me fix that bigger problem and and
why has says well no for another reason
I'll think of later right um the bigger
problem fallacy saying there's something
bigger that's a bigger problem than what
you're trying to fix um is a fallacy it
doesn't mean the other problem is not a
problem right um and also sometimes
tackling the biggest problem is not the
most effective
approach um you have to think about what
resources you have available to you at
KDE we are desktop software developers
we can influence this and and I hope
I've convinced you it does add up once
you start looking at the numbers and I'd
also say climate uh change and combating
climate change is going to is require
changes in every single aspect of
society right this is where we can
contribute and where we can focus our
energies there are areas that maybe you
can contribute to um and I hope that
I've convinced you it's worth working on
because most people here are involved in
some sense with ICT and you can make a
change and you can make a difference and
I want to leave it on that note and then
go to
[Applause]
Q&A thank you thank you so much Joseph
for that insightful talk um by the way
before we start with the Q&A uh just the
reminder that if you found that talk so
insightful as I did and learn something
new maybe you can post that out to the
fediverse the hashtag from this stage is
bits and B um and now to the Q&A um we
have our wonderful stage manager Rico
who can come along and pass your
microphone so everybody will hear you
just
fine and and as I said earlier I don't
have a monopoly on information um if
anyone here has an answer um please feel
free to speak up I feel like this is a
wonderful crowd to crowdsource um
information
gathering well actually it seems to me
that this problem is an
efficiency problem more or less like we
want to do a task with uh the most that
with with the fewest resources possible
in the fastest way of course um which is
like shouldn't we just continue to
optimize our code which is the way to do
it and to remove stuff we don't need
that's
basically put it in a short way is it
this correct or are there other things
uh Al to it so thinking about um things
like uninstall ability right that's
beyond just optimization that's a design
decision for how you then allow users to
use that
software so I would say it's beyond just
this one efficiency I think that's
absolutely important not but you have to
think about it also in that holistic
sense of can users okay you might make
the most efficient software but can
users uninstall it if they don't need
it right and that's a that's a design
design decision and I don't think many
people think of free software licensing
as as as a design idea right but in many
ways it determines how users can
interact with your software and this is
an example one of of uninstalling
something or only installing what you
want um so it's more than just
optimization I would
say um my question is there there is a a
sustainable uh supply chain law in the
uh European union and in German Le K
gazettes which uh if it would be taken
serious you could not import any other
or sell any other phone here except the
fair phone because all other phones
would uh fall under this uh law which uh
is prohibiting importing things where
parts of it in the in the production
process have violated human rights
or environmental laws so my first
question is um is there anybody talking
about this in this community about this
not fulfilling this Law And my second
question is if um this Le K that's this
Supply supply chain law could be applied
also to
software is there some idea that you
just say it could not sold if it doesn't
uh comply some minimum standard of
environmental
responsibility so I don't so I don't
know anyone talking about that um the
supply chain issues but maybe someone
here does does if someone has a direct
yeah you have
a I'll let the moderator decide if
someone has a comment on that please
feel free
well I wanted to ask a question that
goes into the similar Direction because
I was wondering like are there
legislations being discussed about like
reducing the energy consumption of
software and to the supply chain law I I
personally thought that it's more about
the human rights um problem um mainly
about Hardware then and that then this
law would not apply to software but
that's only
how can can you pass the mic so
that I
yeah to comment on that did so yeah so
anyone else have a comment on that yeah
um software in general and yeah Le
kitten we also have kind of Le kitten um
Supply chains we have uh we have
libraries we have operating systems we
have whatever uh and these things also
need to be produced in some way someone
needs to sit down and code them um so it
would make sense that it applies there
um I'm not a lawyer I cannot really
answer this question but it makes sense
that we also uh look at our supply
chains and how they are ecologically
that we uh good or bad uh for example uh
we could choose a framework that is more
efficient we could ose a framework that
makes stuff easier for us and of course
um
software can also be produced under
conditions which are not compatible to
Human Rights uh you can force people to
sit down and program stuff and this code
would be unethical to yet to use in a
way as
programmers of a comment please oh no no
it was another question so if you want
just keep discussing the do we have time
for another question yeah yes so what do
you have to say about the law of
diminishing returns like for example
when is the point uh do is there a way
to know what's the point when we already
reached those uh deinition returns and
we have to move on to something else to
keep uh optimizing and doing that stuff
is there is that some is is there some
uh finger finger rule thumb rule for I I
don't have a a a rule of thumb for uh
when that is
um yeah I I do think I think we still
have a lot of low hang fruit to be
honest um before we get to the the
problem of uh diminishing returns um I
think there's enough that we could do uh
in terms of you know designing your
website uh following green coding
practices um uh being able to turn off
advertising continuing to support
Hardware opening up bootloaders so you
can install any software on any device
that you bought um these are all things
I think are pretty low hanging fruit um
which would already make a big
contribution before we're even at that
point okay that's my my personal opinion
on that yeah
thanks uh what's your opinion on uh
these like uh bloat Solutions like
Docker of snap and stuff who actually
for a small application ship whole
operating system and thode my dis so
that I think oh next time I need a hard
bigger bigger SSD in my laptop top
because uh some applications take up to
a couple of hundred uh gigabytes uh is
this uh is there an estimation what's
the different in CO2 footprint of a half
a terabyte and one terabyte what's the
your opinion
there so I don't have a a a particular
opinion I do think it's an empirical
question that we have a lab we can maybe
start testing to see if these
differences um in how you install which
uh approach you take to installing
software if that influences things like
General energy consumption um so I think
we could look at that and see it I can
imagine that there are arguments that um
upgrades can result in more efficient
software that might outweigh the
disadvantages of uh installing it
through a flat pack um that um if there
is a difference there but I don't
know so we have two more questions left
unfortunately then we have to close but
uh discussions can also unfold
afterwards maybe you're around here for
a while I'm definitely around for a
while great please I want comment on
the yeah on the CO2 footprint of
software Docker Solutions and and
something
else look just into the power
consumption of hello world in C or in
Python so it's 20 times more in Python
to realize a hello world program then in
C or in some other languages so it is
all the time in the backhead when we
talk about software or something like
that um yeah the big blo Solutions who
do
need Python and bigger compilers rust
and whatever has a high power
consumption so
um yeah yeah we we have to go in our
mind if it's useful to make this all
including big systems in software and
Hardware or if we do not split it in
small pieces which can be done in a
sampler and see and save us a lot of
energy thank you thank you for that
comment last question but not
least um I would like to highlight that
besides efficiency there's another thing
that I would say is rather important and
we talk too little about which is um
sufficiency um using Less in general for
example this applies to social media or
streaming services um being nudged into
using those media for many hours a day
which is probably not very healthy for
ourselves but also if we didn't use the
software um for that long and the
hardware as well um we we might be
happier in the first place and use less
resources fully agree sufficiency is
definitely a good question to ask thank
you so much and I think these are good
closing remarks you want to add anything
for the audience uh no I I would love to
talk with you some more
so