Re: the power of junk, Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, What Can You Do About It?

On 5/23/2025 12:34 PM, BGB wrote:

On 5/23/2025 12:03 PM, Scott Lurndal wrote:

BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> writes:

On 5/23/2025 9:21 AM, John Levine wrote:

According to Scott Lurndal <slp53@pacbell.net>:

Don’t you have regulations, or at least discouragements, against e-waste
going to landfill?

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Yes, in the last two decades.   A quarter century ago, not so much.

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This is 'Murica, pretty much everything goes in the trash here...

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Nonsense.

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It's sort of true. In my town they pick up paper and containers and yard waste
at the curb but I have to take electronics down to the recycling dump. Most
people don't bother.
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Theoretically, they pick up recycling (paper and plastic), but whether
or not they bother is another matter. Usually the garbage trucks come by
and empty both bins, so it might not make much difference.

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There are trucks that have two holding areas, so they can make
the trip with one truck rather than two.  In my rural neighborhood,
there are three trucks - trash, recycling and greenwaste.  I have
the smallest trash can they offer and it takes me two to three
weeks to fill it.
>

 No greenwaste trucks, one has to take any tree branches or similar down to the greenwaste place themselves, if not burn them.
 The area I am in, isn't really either urban or rural I think.
IIRC, yard here is around 2.5 acre, whereas a neighbor has somewhere around 8 acres (so a much bigger yard).
 Another neighbor (across a different fence), having a much smaller yard (around 1 acre).
 Contrast, say, in suburbs or housing developments where the houses are basically right next to each other with very little yard space.
 

Well, I am now not so sure about my area estimates...
   I think my numbers were a bit off.
But, as I understand it:
   1/4 acre, typical for suburbs;
     Much of the lot is taken up by the house itself.
     Yard is mostly superficial (*1).
   1/2 acre, slightly bigger yard
     Say, neighbor's house is like 20 feet away or something.
   1 acre
     Roughly the size of a typical used car lot or gas station.
   2 acre
     Roughly twice the area of a gas station.
     Could fit multiple houses if each had a smaller yard.
   ...
*1: Say, the setup where you can walk around the house, and a back yard that is maybe big enough to set up an outdoor sitting space, or a small garden shed, but not much else.
Thinking some, not sure the size of the neighbors' yard, but could probably fit maybe 9 to 12 houses at housing-development densities. If one assumes each house is 1/4 acre, it reduces the estimate to 3 acres.
Part of neighbor's yard has a trees (like semi-forested), I think he cuts them down sometimes, and has a big pile of firewood.
But, neighbors yard is bigger than mine, which could maybe only fit 4 houses (if put closer together).
But, this would only be a little under acre by this line of reasoning.
Then again, if my house wasn't here, could probably fit a gas station in the same space, so this much checks out.
The yard also has some trees, I think roughly 9 large ones (and a few smaller trees). The yard is subdivided into several subsections by chainlink fences. There is a smaller inner section that we let the dog run in (the outer sections are not fully enclosed, so if the dog got out of the inner yard, she could run free)
This smaller inner-area has several steel garden sheds and a 2 car garage. In this case, plot shape is shorter and wider rather than long and narrow.
To fit 4 copies of the house in it, would likely put them side by side, and front/back (the house is also wider than it is deep).

 At the relative's house, I think the yard is in the area of 4 acres (so, enough that we could set up a machine shop in the back yard, along with a few storage units, etc).
 

Not sure, could maybe fit 6 copies of his house front-to-back. However, the yard is fairly narrow, say, only around 15 feet or so to the fence.
Crude estimate:
House: ~ 60 feet square, + ~ 15 feet on each size, ~ 30 foot front yard. Unclear back yard size.
Mental estimate based on estimated house size/etc: ~ 400 feet; est ~ 36000 ft^2.
But, this only works out to around 1 acre (way off from my prior estimate).
If I do mental visual estimates with a shipping container (there are a few in said yard), yard is maybe 3 shipping containers wide, and around 7 containers front to back (or, ~ 34000 feet; or still under ~ 1 acre).
The machine shop is roughly square, and roughly the same side on each side as the shipping container (so, ~ 1600 ft^2 ?).
I have a plasma cutter table, this is roughly 6 x 9 feet (though, only 4x4 feet is usable for material, but adds ~ 2 feet on the sides). The width of the shop is roughly 3x the length of the plasma table. But this falls short if the estimate based on the length of the shipping container.

The neighbor with the horses has a much bigger yard, maybe 12 acres, but I think maybe much smaller and horses would be unhappy as they seem to like to run around and would need at least some distance to get up to speed.
 

Well, will probably also need to adjust this down as well, but that yard is still very large.
Maybe 8 x 12 shipping containers (length-wise)?...
There is a house off in a corner, behind a fence, along with some horse stables and similar.
Either way, it is large enough that the horses can run in a big circle and jump over a creek and some logs and similar if they want.

Maybe counts as rural, dunno...
 

Well, at least the horse yard maybe counts.
Across from this yard, there is a road. Across that road is a large undeveloped area.
At the intersection for this road, one path leads to a Costco and an Amazon warehouse, then intersects with another road with more undeveloped areas beyond.
At another path from this intersection, is mostly a path of mostly sheep and cow farms and similar (seems like more "proper rural"), going down this road a while, and making a turn, the farms give way to densely packed housing developments (houses basically right on top of each other), leading into an area known as "Broken Arrow".
These housing areas are generally what I think counts as "suburbs".
Going the other direction (back towards my house), density increases, where there are gas stations, an Aldi store, and several used car lots. Then one gets to the area I live (roughly several miles away from my relative).
It is an ambiguous area, not really as dense as "suburbs" but not really "rural" either.
Sort of in an ambiguous gray area...
Also sorta mixed residential and commercial, and with random bits of open/undeveloped areas as well.
But, still urban enough to have things like city provided water/sewer, garbage pickup, and city people making a fuss if one parks cars in ones' front lawn or engages in open burns, ... So, possibly, still a little too close to the city (thus, not rural either; where presumably no one would care if one parks cars on their front lawn...).
If one keeps going further in this direction, buildings get closer together, the roads get wider (4 lane vs 2 lane) and traffic denser. Then one is in Tulsa (more or less). Then there is a shopping mall, and I think from there one can also take a path that ends up back in Broken Arrow (I guess, one can take higher traffic roads to get to Broken Arrow rather than go through the area of cow and sheep farms, but there is less traffic out there).
I think, a few paths from here lead to Owasso and Claremore, I don't know the roads that well (and I don't really drive, as I suck at it). Usually one can know what area one is in by signs on buildings.
There is also a "Downtown Tulsa" area (with high-rise buildings, a convention center, etc) but it is much further away and we rarely go there (and full of 1-way streets and other annoyances).
On the far other side of Tulsa, the road leads to Oklahoma City (but is a much longer drive), and then to Dallas. IIRC, this route is mostly through undeveloped areas, and truck stops and similar.

Still not quite the same as the open expanses of land further away from cities though (where the land is either wide open, or the occasional corn fields or similar). Which is like, more rural.
 

I think the sheep and cow farms are intermediate.
Likely rural, but maybe not as much as the corn fields (just an open expanse of corn), maybe one might see the occasional thresher or other large farm equipment. Though, the frequently driven paths don't have much in terms of corn fields.
Like, I am in areas where, besides this stuff, one might encounter things like warehouses and similar. My brother isn't living that far away, but I guess is living next to a cement factory. The road by his house is 2 lane but has a regular stream of semi-trucks going up and down it, mostly going to/from the cement factory.
Well, and between my house and my relative's house, there is also what is (IIRC) a rock quarry.

 Maybe the metric would be whether one could easily walk to the neighbor's house (say, in a few minutes or so), vs probably needing to get in a car or similar and drive there.
 

At one point lived in a part of Nevada, where it was a fairly long drive across open desert to get to a paved road.
There was a neighbor off in the distance (several miles), but never went over there (they had a house with a yard surrounded by a tall fence and razor wire).
The area was mostly flat open desert, but one could see the mountains in the distance. No utilities out there (so, was mostly using a generator for power).
The area was mostly big open areas of flat dirt, broken up by natural barriers of sagebrush.
Land out there was cheap, I think parents owned something like 150 acres or something. I am not entirely sure where the property lines were though (no fences, only desert).
There were horses roaming the area, and technically one could use the horse droppings to make a fire (yeah... that was a common way to cook something out there; the native horses dropping what was effectively free firewood, or potting soil, whichever one prefers).
Later on, parents moved closer to Reno, in a place where there was electricity, but still on dirt roads and similar.
When I was living in Arizona, the setup wasn't quite so sparse, as there were other neighbors not that far away. The setup there was mostly mobile-homes on dirt, with dirt roads (that lead to a highway, that led to Tucson in one direction and Phoenix in the other).
There, people had yard fences, often a combination of chain-link and corrugated sheet steel often woven onto the chain-link with barbwire or similar.
Sometimes we could get deliveries, but the driver would just sorta throw the package in the general direction of the door and make a run for it.
But, yeah, there were plants, mostly scattered grass and Cholla cactus.
The yard was still fairly large, not sure how big exactly. There was a fence all around, but I don't think I ever walked all the way to the back of it (the back of the yard was a treacherous path of rough terrain and cholla cactus). I think, beyond that fence, nothing but open desert (well, possibly for however long until one reached Tucson, but I don't think I could see Tucson from there, just desert).

 

It's pretty easy to reduce the amount of waste you generate
through the choices you make and the goods you purchase.  Don't
by canned sparking water or water in disposable plastic
bottles, for example.  Eschew products packaged in
in excessive plastic packaging.  Don't use one-time plastic
items (straws, eating utensils, plates etc).   Prefer glass containers
over plastic containers.
>

 We don't use that much single use plastics here at least.
Things like plastic bottles and jars tend to get cleaned out and reused.
 

I still live with parents, who are not the types to use a bunch of single-use plastics.
They mostly cook non-processed foods. Some amount of home-grown plants (mostly grown in the back yard). Most meat comes from the store though.
Like, I think there are some people around that raise and process their own animals, but we don't.
Well, and personally I would probably not be up to this.

 

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Though, looking, it might depend on state as well.

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Very definitely.  Unenlightened states (generally red)
don't give a shit.
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 Pretty sure Oklahoma is pretty solidly in the red camp.
 

Parents are also pretty solidly red.
If anything, I am probably more neutral leaning.

  I think there are some blue areas down by Oklahoma City and similar though, but where I am living is pretty far from OKC.
 Here, we are near a city (Tulsa), but not particularly close to the main urban parts of the city (nor in "Broken Arrow" which is mostly the land of suburbs). Partly up near Owasso and similar as well.
 But, yeah, also up near the borders with Kansas, Arkansas, and Missouri.
 Where, Kansas and Missouri are the closest borders, Arkansas a little further.
 

Or, more or less, "Somewhere in Northeastern Oklahoma, around the area just north of Tulsa."