Hacker News Reader

Comment by robertwt7 | Hacker News Reader

Noo, 219 dies in 6 months? That's a lot for grey whale is it not?

I really wish I could help somehow with software..

If only there's something open source like call for code that's being used to help the environment. Would 100% dedicate hours to do that after work

View on HN

I wish it would be possible to know the amount of energy used unnecessarily with software and have it bucketed. I think that there’s a lot of telemetry and unnecessary video rendering that would add up (among many other things not listed...)

There totally is, power budgeting is a very common thing. But you need an incentive to apply it first, otherwise it's just ignored if it stands in the way for shipping. Smartphones for example always have that because they run on battery power and runtime is a big factor. But we need to apply this to more than just battery powered devices with long runtime needs.

This group is often looking for SWE types, though not at the moment: https://boi.ucsb.edu/

According to this source, Russia killed 137 Grey Whales in 2019: https://iwc.int/total-catches

Sounds like there might be a simple way to offset the die-off...

Those are marked on that page as "Aboriginal subsistence catches":

"In some parts of the world, whale products play an important role in the nutritional and cultural life of native peoples. Four IWC member countries conduct aboriginal subistence hunts today: Denmark (Greenland), Russia (Chukotka), St Vincent and the Grenadines (Bequia) and the United States (Alaska and also potentially a resumption of hunts previously undertaken by the Makah Tribe of Washington State)."

https://iwc.int/aboriginal

Looks like they manage allocations based on whale populations. The gray whale's conservation status is marked as "Least Concern".

The article submitted to HN notes that grey whales are fairly numerous, and I'd say these recent incidents are a canary-in-coal-mine scenario.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com