You didn't follow the link, did you? It's a situation that's called "a tragedy of the commons", which doesn't mean it's a tragedy.

And anyhow, it's not about battery life, but applications using more than their fair share of memory, IO or other resources contribute to starvation for other apps that run at the same time, possibly causing crashes in other apps when they cannot allocate memory (because they're well behaved and allocate when needed and free when done), cannot update alarms in time, can't take a phone call(!), can't AV scan an incoming e-mail, or a million other things that can go wrong if too many apps on a system are hogs.

That this is false is my point - it's only true if your app is the only app on a system. On a shared embedded system, the portions that don't do critical tasks are just as important to optimize for the rest of the system.
Because there's no penalty to your own app, it becomes a tragedy of the commons.

To follow up on my own post, what we see in environments like the Android world is a tragedy of the commons. If everybody played nice, everybody would benefit. But there's no penalty to yourself for being greedy, so you are. And so are all others.

Android really needs something like strictly enforced cgroups.

Of course they are. But that's beside the point. Development is a trade-off - you have to work with the market you have, within deadlines that means you'll sell, and developers you can find and afford. So yes, you make do with what makes the task feasible.
But you don't have to make it any worse than necessary by allowing bloat and doing things inefficiently. Adapting a mindset that you do work in a shared embedded environment, and do things frugally doesn't incur a great cost.

It's not just about cycles. It's also about resource use in a shared environment. The key word being shared. Whether something doesn't impact your own application isn't the problem - unless you have thought about how it could impact other applications and the overall system, you haven't done your job.

It's impossible to personally attack an Anonymous Coward.
But I'm glad you recognize what you are doing.

As for "What wasting", I asked you(?) to re-read the guy's second paragraph, but this was apparently too hard. So let me quote it:

That wasting. Right there.

Re-read his second paragraph, AC.
Or did you just intend to troll and see how many moderators you could trick?

The sort of person who continues to believe these things work is the sort of person who believes that magnet motors can deliver "free" power.

Ah. We had the same problem with exploding cans of lunch meat. No, really, after being transported on a Hercules and stored in heat for a couple of days, we would often enough hear a "pop" or "pffft". And if we didn't clean the "savory juices", the stench would start.
The guys who smuggled in pizza made a fortune.

How do you use a portable GPS as a screen saver for your car? Or an X-Acto knife as a screen saver, for that matter?

I use Rain-X on top of the screen protector. It works wonders for resisting fingerprints, and lasts for a long time as long as you only use clean water when wiping it - never alcohol.

Carnuba hard wax is even better, but you have to mask the edges and speaker hole with tape until it's buffed, or you'll get white residue. Apply 2-3 times, and you'll have the slickest and clearest display possible.

And from this, ladies and gentlemen, we can conclude...

The problem is that your baby is not the only thing running on the system. When you waste resources, you do it on behalf of everything else that runs too. Even if your baby isn't doing anything critical when you waste it.

It only takes one selfish programmer to screw up an embedded system. You are he.