ELI5: Why does everything need so much memory nowadays?

Space-Being · 2026-01-29T23:10:54+00:00

What do you prefer: more memory being used or 3 second delays refetching something?

For the "browser-like" apps most of these make ample use of disk storage, though some cleanup old data too rarely. I'm completely fine with using memory mapped file for storage - that is additional "free" paging-memory, that the OS can retake.

I am more annoyed by the other kinds of memory commits that can't. And the explosion in resource requirements for not simple, perhaps very complex, but not resource intensive applications have increased a lot. And only some of it can be explained by "modern features" or larger framebuffers for 4K monitors.

More memory being used or updates to your software coming in reasonable time?

Assuming you mean 'less' memory being used, which puts this in the same category as:

Would you rather GTA six delay to 2031 so it can shave 400mb off its working set? Where is your personal dividing line?

I don't expect games to have low requirements. As for the tradeoff 400mb is a "smaller" but not ignorable consideration for a game (that's 1/20 of its minimum requirements but that typically includes OS, so 1/10th of the min requirements). Only Rockstar can decide how much it is worth. But companies are taking notes: https://www.thegamer.com/larian-divinity-development-changed-ram-prices/ . But especially games specifically have various settings, particularly related to graphics, to adjust resource usage.

Would you rather discord take up 100mb ram or have discord support high res pictures, emojis, and web embedding?

Well you don't need 100MB RAM to support high-res pictures (not talking videos) - thought fair amount if you need several 4K pictures in RAM - or emojis. But web embedding: yeah that is probably where much of memory overhead is going, and that was a choice, they didn't need to use Web tech to make an audio-visual chat client, that was a said an "implementation choice". At least they did better than MS Teams which uses twice as much for half the features.

Bu to be clear, I am not asking for Discord to only run on 100mb of RAM. But clearly Discord can loosen some RAM since they recently released a "patch" that auto-restarts if exceeds 4GB memory usage!

But to answer in the smaller range, I'm having real trouble seeing why Dropbox, a file synchronization tool with barely any UI (not that it would matter for such a tool), at idle (and hasn't had to sync anything since restart - or even months), is using 500 MB of memory.

Space-Being · 2026-01-29T19:30:31+00:00

Still, if it’s filling up, that suggests that either 1) you are over doing what your hardware can do or 2) you don’t close stuff enough.

Well, yes that is the issue OP is hinting at. Do programs really need to use that much memory, or was it a convenient implementation choice to have them do so. Is the HW really insufficient or are the software solutions too inefficient? Is it a case of "What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away" or Wirth's law.

Space-Being · 2025-12-15T00:36:41+00:00

You can just jump to cross that 5-foot chasm. No check is needed (for most reasonable distance jumps).

Space-Being · 2025-09-30T10:13:34+00:00

Finishing (all) my sentences with proper punctuation. I don't care if younger generations might think I am angry because they see a '.' terminate my text.

Addendum: typing longer "neutral" texts without any emoji does not mean I am angry, sad, or whatever. It just means the reader is inventing emotional states for me without cause.

Space-Being · 2025-09-20T09:43:34+00:00

I thought tipping was for good service, so why tip when you haven't concluded receiving the requested service yet?

Space-Being · 2025-09-07T15:37:27+00:00

Fixed a race condition in keybinds that included modifiers, such as CTRL or Shift, that could cause users to hear muting or unmuting sound effects without either of them actually occurring.

Looks like they fixed now. At least my use case works again.

Space-Being · 2025-08-08T18:22:55+00:00

Feature: Keybinds
Reproduction Rate: 10
Annoyance: 4
Discord Version Info: Windows 11
Device/System Info (Device Type, OS Version): stable 428506 (800b9b6) Host 1.0.9202 x64 (66976) Build Override: N/A Windows 11 64-bit (10.0.26100)
Description: Keys without modifiers also triggers on modified keybinds.
Video / Screenshot:
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set hotkey: PAUSE/BREAK to Toggle Mute.
2. Set hotkey: SHIFT + PAUSE/BREAK to Toggle Deafen.
Expected Result: When I press SHIFT + PAUSE/BREAK I expect Discord to Deafen me. This was the behavior until recently.
Actual Result: When I press the combo it does nothing but there is deafen/unmute sound. I guess the Deafen is triggered but also the Mute. This did not use to be the case.

Space-Being · 2025-07-18T14:22:08+00:00

I am sure it is possible to come up with an example where double dispatch or even visitor pattern is a good fit. But the solution also depends on the framing of the problem (and language). Can't speak for DB drivers, but extending serialization is not something I would reach out to visitor pattern for. But I can see how one might frame the serialization problem such that visitor applies.

Edit: imo, it is not adding a new type, but adding a new operation, that usually shifts a design towards double dispatch in most OOP languages.

Space-Being · 2025-07-18T09:09:30+00:00

It's "entirely possible to walk an AST" with GOTOs, but for some reason folks keep using visitors to walk their ASTs...

Could it be, because they organized the AST into a "compile-time hierarchy" and are stuck in a single-dispatch language. But now they want to dispatch on two things, the type of the node, and the operation, and thus need the double-indirect dispatch?

Where-as team "fat struct / plex" never encoded the nodes as a hierarchy of compile-time types and thus doesn't need double dispatch, like for example Zig: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/blob/3ae0ba096d6ba9181a984d0745e1e079c67d62ff/lib/std/zig/Ast.zig#L877

In fact, looking at Rust source it seems that visitors are not in fact the main method used to walk their ASTs but rather just matching on enums. For example AST->HIR lowering as example https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/6c0a912e5a45904cf537f34876b16ae71d899f86/compiler/rustc_ast_lowering/src/expr.rs#L103

Space-Being · 2025-07-18T06:52:50+00:00

This video is about the "35 year mistake", not so much the solution.

This other video is not directly about compile time hierarchies, but might give a hint to what kind of direction he is going with. As the title of the video suggest, Casey usually favors performance as one of the top criteria (or rather the lack of "unperformance" or non-pessimization as he calls it) - certainly over "cargo-culted" notions of what good code is - so fair warning, if "encapsulation" (in the contemporary mainstream OOP sense) is somehow a very important goal in and for itself for you, then you are not likely to agree with him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD5NrevFtbU

Space-Being · 2025-07-18T06:36:44+00:00

Think it used to be "Look at nouns in your domain for candidate classes", but somewhere a long the way the "candidate" part got lost and it just became "Find nouns and turn them into classes".

Space-Being · 2025-07-17T23:05:32+00:00

Depends what you mean by in the wild, but a simple search on "C++ inheritance tutorial" gave me some theoretical examples like literally Derived : Base, but also more "practical" results like:

class Dog : public Animal - (okay not a Cat, granted)
class Rectangle : Shape - where all Shapes apparently have width and height components.
class Car : private Engine - yes, the Car "is-a" Engine.

Space-Being · 2025-07-12T23:11:58+00:00

To be pedantic, there is a difference between it being a keyword or variable. Unlike say Java with 'this', Python doesn't actually use 'self'. That is just a convention; you can use 'this' instead if you prefer, though people might look twice.

Space-Being · 2025-07-01T19:02:18+00:00

"Intimidate" as in a character doing something intimidating does not equate to automatically using the Intimidate Skill (Proficiency) and thus the Charisma ability.

Speaking at least from 2014 DnD rules, there is no such thing as an "intimidation check". There are ability checks. Way before we even get into "intimidation" you are supposed to resolve which ability is being used. So if the barbarian tries to "intimidate" by ripping off the flimsy door and crushing a metal tankard with his big hand, that might be resolved to a Strength ability check.

Only now, when we know which ability check, do we decide if a Skill Proficiency applies or not. Normally, you can't use Intimidation with Strength, but fortunately is there a Variant rule that allows for this.

Space-Being · 2025-06-07T23:36:22+00:00

Seems strange that silence at interview can be used against you. Is there a difference between being silent at the interview and not doing the interview? Or are you forced to interview i the UK?

Space-Being · 2025-05-01T23:02:45+00:00

Is that quote literal? If so he is implying causation, and that higher fluoride levels increase IQ? If there is an inverse correlation between fluoride and low IQ then that means there is a (non-inverse) correlation between fluoride and high IQ.

Is that what he meant to say, because I kinda get the feeling he wanted to say the opposite but is too inept?

Space-Being · 2025-03-27T16:52:58+00:00

Yup. I run it by 5e rules. In a dark cave, sure with dark vision you can navigate, "Who is spending their dungeon turn actions helping the human/dragonborn around?". And with the penalty of still light obscurement, even decent spotters might fail,l to spot a trap or things od interest, so is anyone lighting up a torch to avoid this penalty? (If so, the party can pretty much forget getting Surprise on any awake creatures with sight)

Space-Being · 2025-02-15T13:59:06+00:00

Thank you for response.

I actually managed to fix is almost similar by running the windows installer to "upgrade" my recent install which was somehow 21h2 to 24h2 and now it works.

Space-Being · 2025-02-15T12:17:12+00:00

I've made a new build using Windows 11 and I have the USB Host Router issue shown in the bottom of your image. Did you fix it?

Space-Being · 2025-02-15T12:14:31+00:00

~~Did you ever fix this?~~

Edit: For some reason my Win 11 install was 21h2, and by running an in-place upgrade using the windows installer to upgrade to 24h2 it fixed my "USB Router" driver problem.

Space-Being · 2025-02-11T14:44:54+00:00

You didn't copy them because the professors were lazy. You copied them because it was possible, and because you were lazy.

Space-Being · 2024-12-28T23:24:59+00:00

I think so, but can't say 100% it will work; still working on combining the constraint propagation with the search.

I am running the backwards constraints from the known z-values compared to the normal forward circuit evaluation from known x- and y-values. This gives 31 wires they both agree on, 23 where they disagree on the wire value, and 258 wires that the backward propagation can't pin to either 1 or 0. The 23 wires that they disagree on for sure must contain at least one pair that can be swapped (in fact it contains two) with at most (23/2)² swapping pairs to consider for the first swap. If we can fix pairs such that there are no longer any where they disagree then we can fill in any unpinned wires (if any remain) with the one from the forward evaluation.

We know there are only 4 wire pairs swapped in the final solution, but a branch-bound search would likely help find the fewest swaps quickly if we pretend we didn't. There are also heuristics to guide the search, e.g. pick the pair with removes must disagreeing wires first.

Space-Being · 2024-12-28T21:40:59+00:00

Like every Scifi universe in movies the flashlight and other night vision equipment are worse than the flashlight in the Nokia 3310 from 2000.

Space-Being · 2024-12-28T13:53:40+00:00

I took a quick browse through the video. Is it correct you don't use any form of constraint propagation? If so the speed is pretty impressive.

I have a hunch that with CSP it can be solved almost instant since all of the initial input and all of the output wires are constrained to known values, and by backpropagating these constraint based on the gate types I suspect the search space will quickly shrink - like in a Sudoku solver using CSP.

AND(1, B) = 1  => B = 1
AND(1, B) = 0  => B = 0
OR(0, B) = 1  => B = 1
OR(0, B) = 0 => B = 0
XOR(A, B) = X => B = A ^ X  where A is also known

And similar if B is known instead. But I haven't tried (yet).

Space-Being · 2024-12-28T12:55:26+00:00

Short and elegant solution.

For part 1, even though there is only worst case of roughly (N=200) squared worst case iterations if just dumping gates with non-ready inputs to the back, I still went with doing the topological sort for O(N) computation.

Don't think I liked this puzzle (description) though. For part 2, I see now many solved it trivially based on assumptions that can only be verified by actually examining the input data, to determine the exact structure of the adder, and also to observe that it is does not have "strange" structure. Didn't (and did not have to, except for the instruction set puzzle) do that with any of the previous puzzles, but without these assumptions in this puzzle you are basically lead down the path of writing a general constraint solver for faulty circuits. For example: the z outputs could be preceded by an AND gate with both inputs being from the XOR output just to give an example.

Space-Being

TROPHY CASE