wiki/jevonsparadox Jevons ''paradox'' The Wikipedia entry reads https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox In economics, the jevons paradox (/ˈdʒɛvənz/; sometimes jevons effect) occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the rate of consumption of that resource rises due to increasing demand.[1] @eigenrobot tweeted https://twitter.com/eigenrobot/status/1285640690374971394 reminds me of teaching abt the St Petersburg Paradox in an econ course I noted as an aside that no it is not a paradox the model was just fucking wrong Economics is full of such "paradoxes" about "rationality" Dependency hell Gary Bernhardt @garybernhardt wrote https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/1291107647135989760 Grand unified theory of dependency hell: In the 90s, we had dependency hell via conflicts between versions of a few common DLLs. Now we have dependency hell via thousands of NPM modules. The amount of hell is constant because we raise dependency count as management gets easier. + https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/1291108601159770112 Non-joke version: it seems like programmers will decompose as much as their tools and social systems will allow them to. Sometimes decomposition leads to reuse, and sometimes reuse leads to efficiency, but neither is guaranteed to lead to the next. + (thread goes on) In response to Gary's first tweet, Simon Wilson @simonw wrote https://twitter.com/simonw/status/1291110952121729024 Kind of like how if you put in a new freeway everyone moves further away from work until their commute balances back out to averaging 45 minutes Performance Wikipedia entry on Wirth's law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law Website obesity https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/02/faster-internet.html https://merveilles.town/@rek/104663083350892197 Faster connections in themselves are not threatening the access to the internet. The problem is that most websites will adapt to the ever faster connections, which makes them gradually inaccessible for people with slower connections. Today, most websites are impossible to download with a dial-up connection, because they have become too corpulent. Wikipedia entry on induced demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand