https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Salt_Lake#History

Record high water levels in the 1980s caused a large amount of property damage for owners on the eastern side of the Great Salt Lake, and the water started to erode the base of Interstate 80. In response, the State of Utah built the West Desert Pumping Project on the western side of the lake. It began operation on April 10, 1987. This project consists of a pumping station (41°15′9.28″N 113°4′53.31″W) at Hogup Ridge, containing three pumps with a combined capacity of moving 1,500,000 US gallons per minute (95 m3/s), an inlet canal, and an outlet canal. Also, there are 25 miles (40 km) of dikes and a 10-mile (16 km) access road between the town of Lakeside and the pumping station.[17]

This pumping project was designed to increase the surface area of the Great Salt Lake and thus increase the rate of water evaporation. The pumps drove some of the water of the Great Salt Lake into the 320,000 acres (1,300 km2) Newfoundland Evaporation Basin in the desert west of the lake. A weir in the dike at the southern end of the Newfoundland Mountains regulated the level of water in the basin and it sometimes returned salty water from the evaporation basin into the main body of the Great Salt Lake.[17]

At the end of their first year of operation, the pumps had removed about 500,000 acre-feet (620,000,000 m3) of water from the Great Salt Lake. The project was shut down in June 1989, as the level of the lake had dropped by nearly six feet (1.8 meters) since reaching its peak levels during June 1986 and March 1987. The Utah Division of Water Resources credits the project with “over one-third of that decline”.[17] In total, the pumps removed 2,730,000 acre-feet (3.37 km3) of water while they operated.[18]

Although the pumps are no longer in use, they have been kept in place in case the level of the Great Salt Lake ever rises that high again.[19]

Victory!

gemma3:27b suggests “Abschreckungsbeispiel”.

** User: What does “Abschreckungsbeispiel” mean in English?

** Ellama: “Abschreckungsbeispiel” translates to deterrent example or cautionary example in English.

It refers to someone or something that serves as a warning to others, discouraging them from following the same path or making the same mistakes. The idea is that seeing the negative consequences experienced by this person will deter (discourage) others from doing the same thing.

Think of it like a “look what happens if…” example.

For instance:

• “Er ist ein abschreckendes Beispiel für Workaholismus.” - “He is a deterrent example of workaholism.” (Seeing his burnout and ruined relationships discourages others from working too much.)

• “Die hohe Kriminalitätsrate in dieser Gegend ist ein abschreckendes Beispiel für soziale Ungleichheit.” - “The high crime rate in this area is a cautionary example of social inequality.”

It’s a strong term, implying a clear and negative consequence that should be avoided.

I don’t see any references online to Vonnegut referencing it, though. Online, it appears to normally be hyphenated as “Abschreckungs-Beispiel” or written with a space between the two components, but I don’t know enough German to know the significance of the hyphen or space or single word. I imagine that a fluent German speaker would know, though. It seems to be translated as “cautionary example”, “warning example”, or “deterrence example” online.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_From_Scratch

Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a type of a Linux installation and the name of a book written by Gerard Beekmans, and as of May 2021, mainly maintained by Bruce Dubbs. The book gives readers instructions on how to build a Linux system from source. The book is available freely from the Linux From Scratch site.

LWN.net reviewed LFS in 2004:[19]

Linux From Scratch is a wonderful project. It should become a compulsory reading material for all Linux training courses, and something that every Linux enthusiast should complete at least once. This would also create another interesting side effect: people who tend to be quick in expressing dissatisfaction on the distributions’ mailing lists and forums would probably show a lot more respect for the developers. Installing a ready-made distribution is a trivial task. Building up a set of 4 CDs containing a stable, secure and reliable operating system, plus thousands of applications, is most definitely not.

60 req/hour for unauthenticated users

That’s low enough that it may cause problems for a lot of infrastructure. Like, I’m pretty sure that the MELPA emacs package repository builds out of git, and a lot of that is on github.

Also, Europe is shifting towards having more cars.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20240117-1

In 2022, the average number of passenger cars per 1 000 inhabitants in the EU was 560. During the decade 2012-2022, the average number increased by 14.3% (from 490 to 560 passenger cars per 1 000 inhabitants).

Italy had the highest number with 684 passenger cars per 1 000 inhabitants and it was followed by Luxembourg (678), Finland (661), and Cyprus (658). Meanwhile, Latvia had the lowest rate with 414 passenger cars per 1 000 inhabitants, followed by Romania (417), and Hungary (424).

Data show that central and eastern EU countries recorded high growth rates between 2012 and 2022. Among the EU countries, Romania registered the highest growth of passenger cars per 1 000 inhabitants (+86.2%; +193), followed by Croatia (+44.8%; +152), Hungary (+40.9%; +123), Slovakia (+40.1%; +135) and Estonia (+39.7%; +181).

Most of Europe’s city road networks were built before the automobile was common. If you look at some of the older cities in the US on the East Coast, you’ll also see narrower streets and less visibility at corners. But most of the roads in US cities are pretty young.

Once you have a layout oriented towards horse and foot traffic, it’s not easy to retrofit it in the way that it is say, with adding electricity to a city when that came along. Can’t just go through and expand the city roads without smacking into buildings.

Using mass transit along a select set of roads and then walking the last mile is less-disruptive to the existing layout, so it’s a reasonable way to deal with older road layouts.

For what it sounded like, a recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5QTI43AgfE

Note that while there’s there is no pure Wayland approach for all environments, compositors that use wlroots have wlr-rander, which is comparable to xrandr.

Sway, which I use, does support this.

Too many don’t get involved with their children’s activities at all these days.

They don’t, but it’s in the context of this text:

The announcement comes just after NASA revealed a 2026 budget proposal that would axe the agency’s plans for an orbital lunar base.

For any change, AI or no, why would you take out part of your existing company before confirming that the new thing works for the new role?

They’re my favorite widespread chain pizzeria.

There are some mom-and-pops or small chains that I’ve found that I like better, but I’m not gonna complain about Papa John’s.

Little Caesar’s…now there’s a chain pizzeria that I’m disappointed with.

Oh…I guess I like Uno’s more — I really like their pizza skins appetizer — and they’re a widespread chain, but they do Chicago-style pizza and are really a different type of establishment.

Undocumented cellular radios also found in Chinese batteries

Ugh. This is going to become an increasing problem with electronic devices. It’s too damn easy to link systems to the Internet now without users knowing about it.

You can. You can get evaporative coolers (in the US, sometimes called swamp coolers). I have one. They use much less power per unit of cooling than air conditioners, but come with some drawbacks:

• You can only cool so far (well, you can build multi-stage systems to cool further, but then power efficiency drops off). Air conditioners don’t have such a limitation — throw more power at them, and they’ll make air colder.

• You must have low humidity, so that the water can evaporate. At 100% relative humidity, they’re totally inoperative. Air conditioners don’t have this requirement.

• If using them indoors, you have to ventilate to the outside, usually by keeping some windows open, or you’ll just drive humidity up to the Max and then they’ll stop functioning. This does have the benefit of keeping air fresh, having a high turnover, but caps how cool they can make a structure. Air conditions don’t require this.

• More maintenance. You occasionally need to replace the membrane and put something in the water to kill algae, same as a swimming pool. Don’t do that, and algae will build up and it’ll get a dank smell. Air conditioners just require cleaning or replacing an air filter occasionally, and if you don’t do that, just become less efficient.

• An evaporative cooler requires a water feed and for forced air, power. Air conditioners only require power.

• They will exacerbate any humidity problems, like mold.

There are also some benefits:

• For direct systems (the simplest and cheapest), where the humidified air blows at you, you get the benefits of a humidifier, like not getting chapped lips or becoming dehydrated easily. In arid and semi-arid environments where evaporative coolers work well, this is pleasant.

• You can reasonably use them outdoors and in non-sealed environments like a garage. Air conditioners would be really inefficient for this.

• You can easily throw essential oils in the water to get a scent diffuser.

• They actually cool the air, rather then just dumping the heat somewhere else, as air conditioners do (which in cities, heats up the area around buildings).

I understand that there are also some hybrid “evaporative-assisted” air conditioners that have the air conditioner dumping heat into what amounts to an evaporative cooler. That’d get some of the efficiency benefits of an evaporative cooler without the humidity constraints.

You can find them in the hot, arid American West, where the conditions work well for them.

https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/evaporative-coolers-work-best-dry-areas-us-area-a

I dunno, but it looks like they’ve been selling it on Steam for years, so I assume that Valve is fine with them.

EDIT:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_(video_game)

Black Mesa is a 2020 first-person shooter video game developed and published by Crowbar Collective. It is a fan-made remake of Half-Life (1998) made in the Source game engine. Originally published as a free mod in September 2012, Black Mesa was approved for commercial release by Valve, the developers of Half-Life. The first commercial version was published as an early-access release in May 2015, followed by a full release in March 2020, for Windows and Linux.

Yeah, came to some sort of arrangement.

Oh, cute.

I commented before that one can get 5 gallon bottled fluoridated water, and would like to again point that out. The fluoride may not be as concentrated as in these prescription-level things, but it’s available. Can throw it on a water cooler.

Brick-and-mortar pickup:

https://www.arrowheadwater.com/products/where-to-buy

Delivery:

https://www.readyrefresh.com/en/products/arrowhead-spring-water-delivery/arrowhead-5-gallon-water-with-fluoride/p/1311

It looks like there are also some other brands, like Ozarka, but Arrowhead’s what I’ve used.

but as I said it’s all browser 2D animations

Right, but there are different ways that it could display it.

I don’t do much Web dev, but looking at that page in Firefox’s Inspector, it looks like a canvas element is covering the whole thing, so I expect that it’s using HTML5 Canvas.

Just visually, without benchmarking, it seems smooth to me on Firefox 128.10.0esr at 2560x1440 at 165 Hz (AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, 7950X3D CPU).

considers

When I go to about:support in Firefox, “ACCELERATED_CANVAS2D” is listed as" default" and “available”, which from some skimming online, seems to indicate whether hardware acceleration is available for HTML Canvas. Do you see the same?

EDIT: Based on:

https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/dlknks/why_is_firefoxs_gpuhardware_acceleration_still/

It sounds like WebRender is disabled by default on Firefox on Linux. Some user there is saying that it works fine for him if he switches it on. It sounds like it relates to some sort of 2D hardware acceleration, though I’ve no prior experience with it.

For me, if I go to about:config in Firefox, gfx.webrender.all is false. It’s smooth here with it false, but maybe I’m just throwing a lot of hardware at the thing. I haven’t read deeply into it, but it might be worth toggling it and reopening Firefox and seeing if the problem disappears for you, as I doubt that it’d cause much harm if it doesn’t work (well, I guess it might crash Firefox or something…) Might also do nothing, as it sounds like all platforms have been using it for some time, and so maybe it’s active regardless of whether this setting is on. <shrugs>

Do you have a test case game and resolution that you’re running it at? I mean, it’s kind of hard to say much or do comparisons without any idea of what the thing is using. HTML5 Canvas?

The extraordinary intervention, outlined Tuesday by Swain in a 77-page order, comes nearly a decade after the city’s jail system was placed under federal oversight as part of a class-action lawsuit brought by detainees.

This predates even Trump’s first term, so I doubt that he has much to do with it.

Sounds like, at least with the prior rate hike, it’s not a flat increase, but reflects risk in a given area: higher risk areas are seeing larger hikes.

https://uphelp.org/state-farm-raising-insurance-rates-20-for-california-customers-in-new-year/

Joel Laucher from United Policyholders, a consumer advocacy group, says folks should shop around for coverage amid the changes.

“Really the way that plays out, it may be a 3% or 4% rate increase for someone in a more urban and less wildfire exposed area. And it could be a 40% or a 50% rate increase for the population that owns homes in [wildfire impacted areas],” he said.

That variability is probably what you’d expect if the increase is economically-efficient, but just saying that someone may be more-impacted or less-impacted than the given percent increase.

You could definitely sell those for more than $0. The batteries alone aren’t cheap.