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999900000999today at 5:22 AM5 repliesview on HN

Or, we can expect better from software. Maybe someone can fork Firefox and make it run better, hard cap how much a browser window can use.

The pattern of lazy almost non existent optimization combined with blaming consumers for having weak hardware, needs to stop.

On my 16GB ram lunar lake budget laptop CachyOS( Arch) runs so much smoother than Windows.

This is very unscientific, but using htop , running Chrome/YouTube playing music, 2 browser games and VS code having Git Copilot review a small project, I was only using 6GBs of ram.

For the most part I suspect I could do normal consumer stuff( filing paperwork and watching cat videos) on an 8GB laptop just fine. Assuming I'm using Linux.

All this Windows 11 bloat makes computers slower than they should be. A part of me hopes this pushes Microsoft to at least create a low ram mode that just runs the OS and display manager. Then let's me use my computer as I see fit instead of constantly doing a million other weird things.

We don't *need* more ram. We need better software.


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walterbelltoday at 5:40 AM

> hopes this pushes Microsoft to at least create a low ram mode

Windows OS and Surface (CoPilot AI-optimized) hardware have been combined in the "Windows + Devices" division.

> We don't *need* more ram

RAM and SSDs both use memory wafers and are equally affected by wafer hoarding, strategic supply reductions and market price manipulation.

Nvidia is re-inventing Optane for AI storage with higher IOPS, and paid $20B for Groq LPUs using SRAM for high memory bandwidth.

The architectural road ahead has tiers of memory, storage and high-speed networking, which could benefit AI & many other workloads. How will industry use the "peace dividend" of the AI wars? https://www.forbes.com/sites/robtoews/2020/08/30/the-peace-d...

  The rapid growth of the mobile market in the late 2000s and early 2010s led to a burst of technological progress..  core technologies like GPS, cameras, microprocessors, batteries, sensors and memory became dramatically cheaper, smaller and better-performing.. This wave of innovation has had tremendous second-order impacts on the economy. Over the past decade, these technologies have spilled over from the smartphone market to transform industries from satellites to wearables, from drones to electric vehicles.
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tazjintoday at 11:05 AM

> Or, we can expect better from software. Maybe someone can fork Firefox and make it run better, hard cap how much a browser window can use.

You can already do this. For example, I use `systemd-run` to run browsers with CPU quotas applied. Firefox gets 400% CPU (i.e. up to 4 cores), and no more.

Example command: systemd-run --user --scope -p CPUQuota=400% firefox

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viccistoday at 5:50 AM

Yeah I'm sure that will happen, just like prices will go back down when the stupid tariffs are gone.

MangoToupetoday at 7:24 AM

> I was only using 6GBs of ram.

Insane that this is seen as "better software". I could do basically the same functionality in 2000 with 512mb. I assume this is because everything runs through chrome with dozens more layers of abstraction but

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dottjttoday at 5:37 AM

That's not happening though, hence why we need more ram.

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