
The Hidden Life of an Amazon User - rudenoise
https://www.janavirgin.com/AMZ/
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ginko
>The average amount of energy needed to load each of the twelve web
interfaces, along with each one’s endless fragments of code, was 30 watts.

What is that supposed to mean? A watt(= 1 J/s) is a measure power so energy
per unit of time. Shouldn't this rather be given in joule?

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saagarjha
The unit appears to have been fixed to “wh”.

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ginko
So now it says 30wh, which seems just wrong. If the transaction took 10
seconds or so, during that short time it would have had to consume over 10
kilowatts of energy.

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gorpomon
It's presented too dramatically IMO, but the core argument is one we need to
raise awareness of: you use energy and emit carbon so a company can run code
that in part grooms you into being a better consumer of their products.

Brick and Mortar stores do this too. Some ways are fun and nice like air
conditioning and wine while browsing. Others not so much: facial recognition
at Target's nationwide, and companies like ShopperTrak and others.

No matter if it's online or in person it's getting increasingly creepy. Any
awareness of it a net positive, even if it is a tad dramatic.

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onesmallcoin
And those buttons sure look like amazon buttons

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isoprophlex
Shouldn't there be figures in watts (a measure of power) rather than watt-
hours (measure of energy) on the project page?

Right now it seems to me there's non-monotonically increasing energy
expenditure when looking at the Wh figures.

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zarkov99
Life has to be pretty great when people have to go to such extraordinary
contortions to find something to complain about.

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yowlingcat
Are you sure the subject is a complaint and not an exploration? It seemed more
to be an exploration of the energetic and computational cost of serving an
average Amazon user. I found it fascinating. 30 watts and 88MB to load a page
of otherwise static content does seem a little ludicrous, and I've definitely
thought the same thing about much of the content I see on the internet that
loves loading a bunch of crap that slows my machine down to a halt.

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zarkov99
Yes, it seems pretty clear that the author feels oppressed by Amazon: "To put
it bluntly, the user is not just exploited by means of their free labor, but
is also forced to assume the energy costs of such exploitation."

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yowlingcat
Leaving the author's admittedly sanctimonious tone aside (which I find a
little grating), don't you think that the topic of energy costs of these "fat"
applications is worthy of exploration?

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zarkov99
Yes, I think that is interesting, but not enough for me to get over the
oppression narrative. Furthermore, I am skeptical that there is anything there
at all, I can't image that the energy I waste the few times a week I go to
Amazon to be anything but a rounding error on my overall energy expenditure.

~~~
yowlingcat
I get that, but hear me out. I think what's fascinating is not necessarily the
rounding error on your overall energy expenditure, but the likely sheer
overall cost of that on the whole. I think similar thoughts about bitcoin
mining -- the truth us, if you add up a lot of this computation in aggregate,
how much of it is wasteful as a whole to the organization or network paying
for it? That number, while maybe not huge enough for many orgs to do anything
about it, is still pretty large, and certainly interesting for me to think
about.

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zarkov99
Sure, but that applies to anything, does it not? If one multiplies anything
one does by 7 billion there is a good chance a large number will come out.
Maybe that is a little interesting at first glance but not in any larger
sense.

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Jowdaym
Irritating color scheme.

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aberforth123
Great project! The energy footprint of the internet is huge and should be
addressed.

For example:
[https://webtest.app/?url=https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/](https://webtest.app/?url=https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/)

~~~
tempguy9999
True. And you can address it yourself by blocking JS mainly, and ads, and be
amazed at how snappily a web page renders (when it does, which is often but
not always sans JS).

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octosphere
Never liked when Amazon increases the price a few days later after witnessing
you researching something to buy. This is why I only purchase items 'on-the-
spot' in a small window of time which allows me to escape such a practice.

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ars
> after witnessing you researching something to buy.

Amazon has never done that (different prices for different customers), their
prices are the same for all users.

They didn't raise it because of anything you personally did.

Their prices just go up and down all the time randomly.

Leave the item in your shopping cart and check it daily (or more) and watch
the price bounce around. You can use this to your advantage if you are not in
a rush and wait for a good price. You can also use camelcamelcamel as a price
tracker.

~~~
octosphere
> Amazon has never done that

Well maybe they do? I know Amazon's algorithms are opaque to the user, but
after several purchases on Amazon I noticed this trend of items I researched
showing a small uptick in the price after a few days when I go to buy it. The
price uptick is there for all users, but Amazon knows only one specific person
will buy it, so the price is adjusted for that person and no-one else. After
buying, the price goes back to its default in a few days.

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corndoge
_Thus, the 8,724 pages of code that track and personalize user behavior and
experience and were involuntarily loaded by the customer (me) through the
browser, are evidence of Amazon’s core money-making strategy at work.
Moreover, all the energy needed to load this relatively large amount of
information was effectively unloaded on the customer (me), who ultimately
assumed not just part of the economic cost of Amazon’s hidden monetization
processes, but also a portion of its environmental footprint._

Holy crap. Are you telling me, when I visit a website, that it uses
electricity? That I'm downloading code onto my computer? That when I tell my
browser to load a webpage, that page loads _against my will_?

Why aren't more people talking about this?

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graphememes
90% of the code is jQuery / third-party (also includes jquery / polyfills) /
polyfills btw.

At some point, convenience wins.

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jstummbillig
It will come back to haunt Amazon as soon as they start to scale

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dylan604
I think they are waiting for FB and Netflix to show results of their scaling
attempts before they truly go full scale

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bransonf
off topic, but I first read the domain as Java Virgin and had a good
chuckle...only to realize that I misread

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rootw0rm
pretty cool art project, thanks for sharing.

