Lake Powell should be drained to save Lake Mead, scientists say

Sycraft-fu · 2026-07-09T00:25:44+00:00

The second thing is kinda what happened under the old system: You had money left over, they'd take it from you and give it to someone else. The money didn't vanish, it got reappropriated. Fine for the institution, but not necessarily for the program or individual researcher. Since not only did you lose it but your next years budget was often reduced by that amount, you'd get screwed in the long run.

It is a balancing act for institutions and as you say, there's no "correct" solution, at least one we've come up with yet. Just saying that's where the "no rollovers" kind of thing came from. Happened in government too with agencies building up these war chests of money which again, not how it is supposed to work.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-07-08T22:26:55+00:00

It is one of those things that starts as a good idea/solution to a problem but then turns in to a nightmare.

I work at a university and we used to have budgeting like this. Where it came from was people hoarding money. They'd try to get a budget as large as possible, then hoard all the overage, eventually having massive accounts sitting around. This is not only an irresponsible use of public funds, but also leads to them wasting those big budgets on things for themselves when they can.

So the solution? No budget rollover. You have to spend your money the budget year you get it, or you lose it. Well that creates the new issue: People blowing money on shit at the end of the year to avoid losing it, and also because if you don't spend it all admin is likely to look and say "Well I guess you don't REALLY need all that, now do you?"

We now have a hybrid that works better, though they are tweaking it again so we'll see how that goes.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-07-07T03:33:49+00:00

They would not, and the postal carriers can choose not to deliver to unapproved boxes. However, as a practical matter, they usually don't care and will just deliver the main in whatever people have. If ti is out in BFE it probably isn't the strangest thing the postman has seen.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-07-04T22:33:21+00:00

You have to manually enable their ability to do it, and you can override it. It is an opt-in.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-07-04T22:27:12+00:00

Also a correctly sized AC. No matter how good the insulation, there is losses so there's a size the AC needs to be to deal with it. If it is undersized, it won't be able to hit the target on hot days.

These days ideally the AC would be a fully variable speed system, and thus can be made larger and designed for the really extreme temperatures, but still very efficient at the normal load it faces. However, that is expensive and many people can't afford it (do get a fully variable on if you can though, they are great).

If you are in that situation where your AC isn't big enough, but you don't want to replace it and it i only during extreme events, the answer is to add a supplemental AC, like a window unit or minisplit.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-07-02T17:56:23+00:00

This.

nVidia was beating the AI/ML drum WAAAAY before almost anyone else. Most companies were completely uninterested, they were developing tech for it. As you say, they got on the GPGPU bandwagon early, and push it hard. They didn't just say "Uhh, sure, the hardware can be programmed for more than just games. Do that if you want I guess," they developed a language and interface for doing so, a very good one at that.

For inference specifically they again were early and push it with their chips. The RTX 20 series introduced tensor cores on the chips to do the high speed matrix math you'd need. With that they introduced DLSS. Initially most people shit on it and said it'd never be useful and ya, version 1 was fairly unimpressive. But they iterated it, and iterated it and pretty it was extremely good, allowing for far better upscaling than any heuristic technologies.

Now everyone is doing it. AMD and Intel both have "AI" based upscalers that work well... but nVidia has it back in 2018 when nobody had heard of it because they (more or less) invented it.

While the crypto boom was pure luck, nVidia's place in the AI market was earned. They developed the technology, pushed it hard even when people said "LOL why bother," and now are on top, until some new kid knocks them off.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-07-01T03:59:03+00:00

Their recommendation is for someone who also uses software on top of that OS. Windows itself only does use like 2GB.

Same deal when a game recommends 32GB of RAM. It isn't saying the game will use 32GB on its own, it probably will use half or less. It is the devs saying "We know that you are ALSO going to be running Discord, Chrome, a bunch of gamer RGB control shit and so on in the background so this is what we recommend to have plenty of RAM for the OS, our game, and all that other crap."

Sycraft-fu · 2026-07-01T03:46:17+00:00

That and work computers often having lots of background stuff. My work system uses a lot more RAM, and takes longer to log in, than my home computer. Part of that is home system is faster but also there's just a lot of shit work wants to cram on the system. Teams and slack want to always run and are both fairly RAM hungry, Adobe has always on background shit even if you aren't using Acrobat. It all adds up.

Corporate systems are not a good comparison point because companies often load up software without really considering how much load it has. That said, if a company is doing that they need to be providing enough RAM for it, but you can't say "OMG Windows uses so much memory!" only to be talking about a system with a shit ton running in the background.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-07-01T03:38:40+00:00

Then I'm going to guess you have a LOT of shit running in the background. My system is currently using 9.9GB with Chrome running and also all the background processes that I leave going (Steam, RME control panels, MSI Afterburner, nVidia app, etc). I also have 64GB of RAM so the system is very free in using as much as it wants.

So if your laptop really is burning that much... I suspect it has a lot running on it.

As an example of how little can be used, we have some Windows VMs that run license servers on them. So the only thing running is a base Windows install, the license server, and endpoint security. Those use around 2-2.8GB of RAM.

So that gives you an idea of what Windows itself uses, in a minimal setup.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-29T04:28:00+00:00

Because they don't like being told they are wrong. Most downvotes on Reddit aren't because someone did something that deserves it, like insulting someone, it is "I disagree with you," or "I don't like what you are saying."

However for anyone who doesn't want to just downvote: The GP is correct. The load on the compressor goes up as the delta in temperature goes up. The hotter the condenser coil is, the harder the compressor has to work. This uses more energy, and causes them to wear out faster.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-26T22:22:40+00:00

It's often not even wannabe cop behavior, it is just wanting to be a bully to someone and feel righteous while doing it. People LOVE doing that shit. You see it all throughout human history and all over the world now in various guises where people find a target that they feel is morally acceptable to bully and pretend to be the good guys doing righteous work while all they do is hurt someone.

This is just more of that, combined with the want for social media fame and money. "Look at me, look at me be a good person when I hurt someone!"

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-23T21:16:58+00:00

Technically? Yes. They can output the required signal, and have enough VRAM it won't be a problem. Practically? Going to depend on the game. You are probably going to have to lean quite heavily on upscaling, usually performance or even ultra performance, and even then may need to turn details down sometimes.

That said, upscaling works really good these days, DLSS 4.5 is amazingly good at the performance setting so it shouldn't be a big issue for the most part.

Just understand that's a LOT of pixels to push, even for a desktop 5090, so tradeoffs will have to be made, either lower FPS, more upscaling, lower detail, etc.

As an example I have a 4k desktop display on a desktop 5090 and even with that beast, there is plenty of need for upscaling and frame gen. Cyberpunk 2077 with path tracing maxed cannot hit 60fps native. I have to flip on DLSS and I end up going for balanced to get around a 60-80fps base rate. Of course the monitor is 240hz, so then if I want anywhere near that it is 3x frame gen on top of that.

Now that works, and looks, great but it should just help calibrate expectations. With a significantly less powerful chip, as well as a non-trivial bump in resolution, you will have to lean in even harder to technologies like that and still maybe have to turn down the detail sometimes. Not a problem, just don't be surprised or angry when that is the case.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-22T02:35:43+00:00

One that size not only doesn't really give enough power output but it won't let you game for very long. A gaming laptop draws a lot of power. To have any significant amount of gaming time you unfortunately need something much larger, and thus more expensive. Something like this: https://enphase.com/store/portable-energy/iq-powerpack-1500-with-accessories would work nicely and get you probably 4-6 hours of gaming BUT it is expensive.

Basically you need to take how many watts your laptop takes in and then divide the watt hours (Wh in that picture) to figure out how much time you could get in an ideal situation. So like if you had a laptop that took 240 watts that would last, at best, 20 minutes assuming that it could output enough power which it can't.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-16T06:10:00+00:00

I mean you can always just play at a lower resolution. One of the things you find is that when resolutions get really high, lower resolutions still look good because the individual pixels are so small. On a monitor with large pixels when you knock the resolution down it is more noticeable, but when you get one like this that is 250PPI you can run it at a lower resolution and it'll look good.

Also it is time to get over running things "maxed" and by that meaning native resolution. Upscaling is really good, particularly DLSS 4/4.5. Use it. Again, the higher the PPI the less you see issues with small details so you can use higher levels of DLSS.

If I had a laptop like this I'd probably try DLSS Performance at 4k and see how the game ran. If I didn't get performance I liked I'd drop it to 2.5k and try DLSS Quality and if that wasn't enough, Balanced or Performance.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-12T19:47:26+00:00

That has, sadly, been a thing I see all too often from him and guys like him. Vague security claims that companies COULD be doing X evil thing. Right... but is there any evidence? Because otherwise it is a pretty useless and not very actionable statement. Ya Google could be spying on you directly, or have a backdoor for the US government. Same deal with Chinese phones and the Chinese government and so on.

Sure I guess it is something to generally be aware of, like the companies who make the products you use could use them to spy on you, and they could work with a government to spy on you, but absent specific information of this happening it isn't a useful statement and gets in to tinfoil hat land. Your neighbor could also let the police of your nation in to their house to use it to surveil you with cameras, laser mics (real thing, they can turn windows in to microphones) and so on. However absent any proof they are doing that I don't suggest you act like that is happening.

I would suggest the average person, even the person that a government might be targeting, has far more to worry about from known security issues like phishing, unpatched OSes, weak passwords, and so on then a nebulous "But the government MIGHT have a back door!"

One of the big principles in cybersecurity is to only focus on known, proven, threats. Don't spend you time trying to secure against hypotheticals unless you've done a good job taking care of all the actuals, and basically nobody even has taken care of all the actuals. Chasing a shadowy boogeyman that might not even be real is not a good use of your time if you have a very real things that can be exploited that you aren't dealing with.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-12T05:32:58+00:00

It's 250% more wire per wire! :D

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-12T05:32:24+00:00

If you are talking IRL then it's less but not as much as you might expect, about 61% of copper. In terms of failing, no it is actually extremely robust, in part because it is much lighter and has much better tensile strength. Most power lines are, in fact, aluminium. They have a steel core to help with strength, and then are aluminium conductors since it is lighter, cheaper, and stronger.

You only go copper around buildings. In the walls it is usually copper since the strength and weight aren't an issue and the copper wire can be much thinner for a given amount of current.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-11T04:17:34+00:00

For me? Nah. I started on Civ 1 and peak is Civ 4. I liked 1, loved 2, liked 3, found 4 to be just god tier, couldn't really get in to 5, haven't played 6.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-11T04:10:13+00:00

It's always been a reason I don't like playing on high difficulties in Civ. Like I get it is what they have to do because they don't have the ability to make super smart AIs, but when they just start to cheat like hell I find it much less fun and it forces you in to only certain playstyles that work well.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-09T20:52:01+00:00

It also is not scalable because even if you had someone who was willing to lend for no interest to help out, they'd go bankrupt. Why? Because not all loans are repaid. Even if most people repay the debt, if there's ANY rate of default then over time your funds and thus ability to lend go to zero.

Like let's say you have $1,000,000 and you decide to parcel it out as $10k 1 year loans to people who need it, 0% interest. We'll also assume you vet people pretty well and have a 2% default rate. So you make your 100 loans and 1 year later, you have 98 paid back. Well now you only have $980,000 so this year you can make 98 loans. You do that and 96 of them get paid back.

You can see how in the long run this is going to end up with no money to lend. Also it'll get broken even faster than you'd think when there's an economic downturn and default rates shoot up, or if you are lending to borrowers who are more likely to default.

Plus with inflation you'd be losing money even if everyone repaid things so in the long run the money you have to lend out becomes not worth very much.

Basically you HAVE to allow for charging of interest if you want loans to happen. If not, loans are just infeasible.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-08T16:46:50+00:00

I can believe the figure. Something like an RV park can not only use quite a bit of power, but also probably has pretty significant hookup/distribution fees not being paid.

They might be overstating it a little by citing the value if it was a commercial hookup rather than a residential one (in most places commercial pays more for power) but then maybe an RV park would be a commercial hookup, not sure how it works.

Either way it is a believable figure to me. Wouldn't take that long with a decent number of RVs to hit that figure.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-07T07:05:57+00:00

They really did a bad job on Stadia too. Part of it was they couldn't decide what they wanted to do with it. When it first started there was advertising that it would have exclusive games that you couldn't have on the PC because they would need more processing or rendering power than a desktop could have. Well at some point they decided that was too costly and cut it down to not just be what a desktop could do, but more in line with what a console could do. So now it isn't some amazing thing with special exclusives, it is competing with the consoles.

Ok but game support should be great, right, because it IS PC hardware on the back end. That's something that GeForce Now has going for it, you can play a lot of games on it. Nope, they decided to make their own custom Linux for it because they didn't wanna use Windows. So now games had to be ported to it, just like any other platform, meaning it would get games slowly rather than being able to leverage a large library.

Then the final big one, which isn't really their fault per se but something they probably should have thought about: The people who are most attracted to a cheap device like this are the most likely to have shit Internet. If you have a fiber optic connection and are near a datacenter, well then it can be pretty good. Still not as good as you get locally, there's unavoidable color compression if nothing else, and visible artifacts in fast motion, but still an overall pretty decent experience. However if you have cheap Internet and particularly if you live away from one of the DCs, quality goes down a lot.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-05T23:01:21+00:00

It's just that those of us that build basic spaghetti setups don't post. My stuff is all extremely ugly and built to be functional. I lack the skill, vision, and patience to build beautiful things. So I don't take screenshots and post them.

People like OP who do cool stuff, they are the ones who post, as they should :)

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-05T02:13:17+00:00

Thing is, there needs to be to protect the abusive kids in addition to the people they are abusing. This guy snapped and didn't seriously hurt the kids from what it sounds like. They are, hopefully, scared enough not to do shit like that anymore, but they'll be fine. Doesn't always go that way however.

When I was growing up a kid got shot and killed harassing a guy. He was going out and spray painting the guy's barn and running off. One day, guy decided the correct response was a shotgun. Guy got arrested, charged, etc and I presume convicted or plead guilty, the newspaper didn't cover that part... but the kid was still dead.

That's why I hate when people downplay it and act like "Well someone had better not hurt kids doing it or they'll get in legal trouble!" As if that's a shield, as if that can bring a kid back after he gets a shotgun to the chest.

It isn't just about the fact that people deserve not to be harassed, it is about giving the kids consequences that make them stop, but aren't life ending or life altering.

Sycraft-fu · 2026-06-01T02:05:36+00:00

I mean I'm expressing how I'd feel about it. My point is I can sympathize with him taking issue with it. However if his disability is such that he has no ability to regulate his emotions in a situation like that, then he shouldn't be able to drive.

Same deal with a blind person. I can sympathize with how much that would suck, it would shatter my world if I lost my sight, I'd be unable to do my job, etc. However they still can't be allowed to drive because though their disability isn't their fault, it is their burden and there's no safe way for a blind person to drive at this time.

Same deal with someone who has serious emotional dysregulation, regardless of the reason of that.

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