Nope, I live in Utah, US, which is mostly coal, natural gas, and solar, in that order, and we’ve been scaling coal back significantly and replacing it with gas and solar (and a little wind). We’re about average for the US:

The average cost per kWh in the U.S. as of January 2024 is 15.45 cents

That said, I heard that our local electricity company wants to hike rates, and that seems to be about $0.03/kWh. So my range would go up to $0.15-0.18/kWh, which still isn’t that crazy.

I’m not saying “game design,” but things like deciding on art style, optimizing balance between fidelity and performance, etc. AFAIK, that’s all “production” stage things. Assuming it’s the same studio as built it the first time, they’ll still have the original artwork, which probably just needs to be touched up and reexported. That’s a lot less work than building something new from scratch.

In fact, you probably need minimal assistance from developers since all the gameplay elements are already there, you’d just need a small group for making some tweaks here and there to keep consistent performance, and maybe add in a little bit of fanciness here and there (e.g. tweak shadows, maybe some RTX if you go crazy). None of that is particularly time-consuming for a developer to throw in, so once the art team is done freshening up the assets, they can prep for release.

I’m thinking a project like that could be completed in 2-3 years, depending on which game they pick and how far they want to take the remaster. That’s definitely in line with the timeline for a TV show.

Really? I’m far too lazy to list things like that. If I was, I’d be buying a lot more than 10 and make a little business out of it.

Here’s my current bill:

• usage - 420 kWh
• total - $58.86 (mix of winter and summer usage)
• stated rate - $0.09-0.10/kWh for “block 1”, 0.10-0.12 for “block 2” (they charge more the more you use)
• calculated average rate (inclusive of all fees and credits) - $0.14/kWh

And here’s my previous bill (all summer usage w/ AC and whatnot):

• usage - 522 kWh
• total - $80.17
• stated rate - $0.09/kWh for “block 1,” $0.117/kWh for “block 2”
• calculated average rate - $0.154/kWh

That’s why I gave the $0.12-0.15/kWh range, because it depends on time of year, total usage, etc. It’ll probably be closer to $0.12/kWh next month since we’d use hardly any electricity (we use natural gas for heat).

Yup. The annual visitors to Yellowstone and Glacier is like 4x higher than the total populations of their respective states. I would be surprised if even 5% of yearly visitors come from the state they’re in, and I bet more than half are from outside the country.

That really depends. If you’ll eventually get a NAS, I recommend a NAS HDD because they do better with 24/7 operation. They also use a bit less power than desktop HDDs (which you shouldn’t get anyway, just get an SSD for your desktop/laptop), if you care about that.

I use two WD Red HDDs in my NAS (just an old desktop PC), and I’ve had Hitachi in the past. I use SSDs exclusively for my gaming desktop and laptop though, because performance is a lot more important than cost.

Power costs would have to be bonkers for it to matter.

8TB NAS HDDs are <$200, so even if it uses 15W vs 3W, that’s 12W difference, or 8-9kWh/month. If you pay a ridiculous $0.40/kWh, that’s $40/year. That means the SSDs would pay for themselves after ~15 years, and I’m guessing you’d replace/upgrade them long before then.

But NAS drives use a lot less than 15W, usually around 4-6W idle. So the payoff period is probably closer to 30 years… My electricity is more like 0.12-15/kWh, so it’s never going to pay back for itself.

I started and ended up bailing. The deciding factor for me was the way data is stored with OCIS (basically hashes), so backup/restore would be a much larger pain. So I’m sticking with Nextcloud as much as I hate PHP and dislike the performance issues.

Well, they do. They leave litter, destroy trails, vandalize formations, etc. Keeping things nice takes a lot of work, especially with how much foot traffic these parks get. Yellowstone gets over 4 million visitors every year, and that’s with the park fees, quotas, etc. Glacier is a bit less popular and still gets around 3 million visitors every year.

National and State parks are funded with both income taxes and park fees. Park fees keep the number of visitors down to a manageable level to preserve the natural beauty.

And walk-ins generally don’t need to pay, though some of the larger parks also have walk-in rates.

The fridge is the important factor here because cold makes it separate slower. But then it’s hard to spread, especially for almond butter.

We end up taking it out of the fridge a bit before needing it, which helps, but it’s still a nuisance, and if I forget to put it back for whatever reason, I have to go re-mix it, which takes a few minutes.

There’s no profit here, it’s just a different form of taxation where the users of a service pay more for its upkeep than those who don’t use it. The only time a private org gets involved is if you make a reservation (and even then, many sites use a government agency) or arrange for a guided tour or something.

Everything here is publicly owned, except maybe the handful of hotels that are operated inside Yellowstone (not sure how those work). So whether you’re paying with income tax or park fees isn’t particularly relevant since it’s all federal or state land.

Eh, a lot of it also has to do with designing things, not the producing assets. If you’re just doing a remaster and upgrading assets that already exist, it should take a lot less time than building something from scratch.

Depends on how well you grind it.

Yup, we like it, but you either need to store it in the refrigerator or stir it every time, which really sucks, especially if you only eat it occasionally.

When I lived closer to a WinCo (across the street), I would just go get fresh made peanut butter every so often when we ran out, and it wasn’t an issue. Now we get bigger portions, and it’s a pain having to stir it since we only eat it a couple times/month.

I’m honestly happy about this because I think car manufacturers are inflating prices and pocketing the difference. I feel like subsidies in general are pretty inefficient uses of taxpayer dollars.

I think we should pair this with a carbon tax so gas cars are less desirable, as well as reducing tariffs on EVs to keep the market competitive. However, we all know that’s not happening.

But on net, I think pre-credit EV prices will come down a bit to stay competitive with gas cars. It won’t be quite as attractive as with the credit, but estimates show a 7% difference by 2030 (35% w/ credit vs 28% w/o credit), so the difference isn’t huge. I think we’ve already crossed the tipping point where adoption will be pretty quick, so this just puts a small damper on that adoption.

Does this really need to be weekly? Surely a monthly or even quarterly update would make far more sense.

Options:

• high quality remaster of older game (FO4, FONV, etc)
• reuse FO76 engine to make a new game, with a few graphical upgrades
• story DLC releases for older games

Any of those could’ve been done in the time they’d know about the FO show release target.

There are areas like that here too. I live next to a few mountains where there see dozens of interconnected trails all largely accessible from an intercity arterial bike path, with free parking near the more popular entrances to the trail network. Much of it is federal land (part of a national forest), but none of it is designated as a national park.

Maybe there’s a two terminology difference here. Here’s the terms we use:

• national park - has ranger stations and infrastructure, and usually an entrance fee
• state park - same as national park, but at the state level, and lower fees (often free)
• regional park - owned either by the state, county, or city, but isn’t designated as a “state park”; may or may not have parking fees, depending on popularity and how developed it is (esp near urban areas)
• national forest - designated area, but generally little infrastructure outside of some campgrounds (paid) and semi-curated trails; no entrance/parking fees
• BLM land - federally owned, but virtually no infrastructure and no fees; avoid hiking during hunting season so you don’t get mistaken for game
• undeveloped state land - like BLM land, but owned by the state

Most of the trails I’m talking about are in the last 3 groups, and they’re all free. Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, and Glacier are all in the first group and all have entrance fees. If you’re “going hiking,” you’ll go on the last four, and the first two are for vacations unless you happen to live right next to one.

I highly recommend BTRFS as your root filesystem, and then configure snapshots. This way if an update goes sideways (pretty rare), you can roll back and wait for fixes.

I haven’t used Arch for a few years, but my openSUSE Tumbleweed install came with it by default, and it has saved me a few times in the 7 or so years I’ve used it. Maybe the new instructions include that, idk, but you’ll be glad you have it.

Installing Arch is a lot easier than fixing a bad Manjaro update. I get that it’s intimidating, but it’s really quite easy if you can follow instructions, but budget a couple hours your first time because you’ll probably second-guess everything. The second time should be more like 30 min.