I see they're still using dithered PNGs instead of JPEGs for images.
The first time I saw it (I don't have the numbers handy now) I ran some experiments and it seemed clear to me that a JPEG would work much better, and if dithered PNGs were really a good option, more people would be doing them. This was on photographs, where JPEGs are kind of a home-run and PNGs aren't good no matter what you do to them.
This time they're doing diagrams, which would probably be best as regular PNGs - The dithering requires you compress a pattern that's almost noise, and a JPEG would add artifacts without being any smaller.
Here's some other thoughts:
- WebP does exist, but of course you have to do some negotiation to avoid blank images on browsers that won't decode it.
- The site is behind CloudFlare anyway, so if it's a static site with no auth you can probably just put the whole thing on CF / AWS / whatever and it won't use more energy in the cloud than proxying for your own server already does.
- CloudFlare probably has a button that re-compresses everything as WebP for you.
- Economies of scale always apply.
On scale: The transmission losses for the whole US grid is well under 10%. If solar is such a great idea, build a solar farm and run 1,000,000 websites. Or 1,000 houses. It'll be more efficient than putting panels on individual houses or servers. There is no power source that gets more efficient when you have a bunch of individuals running it instead of a power company. Whether the power company is trustworthy is a question of politics, not technology.
This always gets to me when I see EV chargers with VAWTs at a grocery store. If VAWTS are so great, why isn't the grid building them? The grid already has the big wind turbines which are presumably more efficient than a VAWT. So why not buy power from the grid? Because it's a PR stunt.
In short, I wish they'd be more clear about it being a cool thing and not a practical thing. Solar is practical. Wind is practical. At scale.
“At scale” has to include several standard deviations of insufficient light/wind availability. When batteries deplete, you have no power. This gets very expensive when you’re backing up for cases that won’t happen more than one day per year (or decade).
The first time I saw it (I don't have the numbers handy now) I ran some experiments and it seemed clear to me that a JPEG would work much better, and if dithered PNGs were really a good option, more people would be doing them. This was on photographs, where JPEGs are kind of a home-run and PNGs aren't good no matter what you do to them.
This time they're doing diagrams, which would probably be best as regular PNGs - The dithering requires you compress a pattern that's almost noise, and a JPEG would add artifacts without being any smaller.
Here's some other thoughts:
- WebP does exist, but of course you have to do some negotiation to avoid blank images on browsers that won't decode it.
- The site is behind CloudFlare anyway, so if it's a static site with no auth you can probably just put the whole thing on CF / AWS / whatever and it won't use more energy in the cloud than proxying for your own server already does.
- CloudFlare probably has a button that re-compresses everything as WebP for you.
- Economies of scale always apply.
On scale: The transmission losses for the whole US grid is well under 10%. If solar is such a great idea, build a solar farm and run 1,000,000 websites. Or 1,000 houses. It'll be more efficient than putting panels on individual houses or servers. There is no power source that gets more efficient when you have a bunch of individuals running it instead of a power company. Whether the power company is trustworthy is a question of politics, not technology.
This always gets to me when I see EV chargers with VAWTs at a grocery store. If VAWTS are so great, why isn't the grid building them? The grid already has the big wind turbines which are presumably more efficient than a VAWT. So why not buy power from the grid? Because it's a PR stunt.
In short, I wish they'd be more clear about it being a cool thing and not a practical thing. Solar is practical. Wind is practical. At scale.