tal

Not saying getting smaller hardware is the wrong move, but have you tried just reducing power with software on your existing machine?

I mean, if you're happy with it other than on idle power usage, I imagine that one can probably do things like:

• Set a power-down time using hdparm on the rotational drives, so that disks that you aren't using spin down. On my system, I've coupled this with an autofs mount, which means that the mount point doesn't have to be visible and rotational drives don't get spun up by anything just touching the filesystem and looking in /mnt or whatever. Handy if you have a drive that you do want to have a rarely-touched filesystem on.

• Run # powertop --auto-tune.

• Run # powerprofilesctl set power-saver if you're using power-profiles-daemon.

• I dunno if and how Xeon on Linux exposes any ability to force a core to power down, but maybe # cat 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online and so forth.

• I imagine that it's probably possible to lower the minimum fan speed in whatever hardware control Dell provides.

That being said, I haven't used terribly large hardware, so I don't know how far one can go in bringing minimum power usage down.

I believe that you're thinking of the long gallery.

Can a human even make enough energy when cycling to power a PC?

How do you define a "PC"?

A CR2032 button cell will run a wristwatch for maybe two years. It looks like a CR2032 stores maybe 730 mWh.

https://sustainability.stackexchange.com/questions/4391/how-much-power-can-a-bicycle-generator-produce

BBC1's "Bang Goes the Theory" demonstrated a human-powered home in a TK programme. In this segment, 8.5 kW of power required 70 cyclists, of fairly typical fitness, or about 107W per cyclist.

So, if you include a wristwatch, then clearly yes. Someone doing 107W for an hour would produce 107Wh. That'd be about 146 fresh CR2032 button cells, each of which could run that wristwatch for maybe two years.

If you count a wristwatch as a personal computer, then clearly it's possible and even practical.

If you want my Linux laptop at its current power draw...

unplugs laptop

$ cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/voltage_now 
16920000
$ cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/current_now 
-783000
$

That's 16,920,000 µV, or 16.92V and -783000 µA, or 0.783A. 16.92 volts times 0.783 amps gives about ~13.2W.

So a cyclist could power it, at least at its present draw. But that's also at a fairly idle state, and I don't have the screen brightness really ramped up.

An easy way to do the above in short form on a Linux laptop would be this:

$ echo "$(cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/voltage_now) * \
  $(cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/current_now) / 10^12" | bc

Could a single cyclist power my desktop under load? No. The GPU alone has a TDP of 355W.

Good heavens, no. Imagine if one shifted the atelier into the drawing room. It would be sheer bedlam. One can only imagine where every new servant in the house would be putting things.

It's the receiving room more-formal than the parlor and smaller than the salon.

Allow me to be the first to expose my lack of culture and say that I've never, in my personal life, firmly separated the class of music appropriate to the drawing room from that appropriate to the parlor.

However, speaking in more general terms, I do like listening to synthwave.

Maybe. For the three characters I linked to, the characters don't especially have a particularly hourglass body shape (as superheroes go), and one is apparently asexual. shrugs

I will bet that a lot of genetic engineering restrictions in Europe will be more relaxed in 50 years than they are today.

The introduction of the car had people who were worried about it passing a lot of restrictions too; these went away over time.

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

Red flag laws were laws in the United Kingdom and the United States enacted in the late 19th century, requiring drivers of early automobiles to take certain safety precautions, including waving a red flag in front of the vehicle as a warning.

In the United Kingdom, the law required self-propelled vehicles to be led by a pedestrian waving a red flag or carrying a lantern to warn bystanders of the vehicle's approach.

In particular the Locomotives Act 1865, also known as Red Flag Act, stated:

• Firstly, at least three persons shall be employed to drive or conduct such locomotive, and if more than two waggons or carriages he attached thereto, an additional person shall be employed, who shall take charge of such waggons or carriages;
• Secondly, one of such persons, while any locomotive is in motion, shall precede such locomotive on foot by not less than sixty yards, and shall carry a red flag constantly displayed, and shall warn the riders and drivers of horses of the approach of such locomotives, and shall signal the driver thereof when it shall be necessary to stop, and shall assist horses, and carriages drawn by horses, passing the same.

The Red Flag Act was repealed in 1896, by which time the internal combustion engine was well into its infancy.[1]

It's also going to cost more, because you almost certainly are only going to be using your hardware a tiny fraction of the time.

I just read some article about how Germany has supposedly been experiencing a decline in the club scene for some years, and how there's a word for it.

kagi

Not the article I was thinking of, but the word is clubsterben.

https://www.dw.com/en/is-berlin-in-a-club-death-spiral/a-70341859

Is Berlin in a 'club death' spiral?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasp_(character)

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

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

It looks like superhero wasp characters are generally female, I assume because most wasps

at least among social wasps, dunno about others

are female.

It’s rained every evening and we don’t usually get much rain save the beginning of Spring, which we didn’t get this year. Very odd.

https://denverite.com/2025/07/22/denver-monsoon-season/

Colorado’s monsoon season is right on schedule (and, as always, we could use the moisture)

The weather around Denver looks pretty familiar this week: highs in the 80s and thunderstorms in the afternoon, including the possibility of localized flash flooding along the Front Range on Wednesday.

It’s a sign that the summer monsoon is delivering rain to the Rockies on schedule.

“We’re still very much on the front end of it,” said Bruno Rodriguez, a forecaster at the local National Weather Service office. “But we've already seen almost daily showers or some thunderstorms for much of the mountains most afternoons, which is really typical.”

The North American monsoon is a seasonal shift in wind patterns. Instead of blowing from the west, some winds can come from the south or southeast, drawing moisture up from the Gulf of Mexico and sometimes the Pacific. It is most prevalent in late July and August.

In Colorado, this means showers and thunderstorms during the summer months and an increased risk of flash floods. The effect is most pronounced in southwestern Colorado but can reach the Front Range. Denver saw mostly dry weather through the first half of July, followed by a spurt of rain last week and more in the forecast this week, according to WeatherSpark data.

This year’s summer rains have been strictly average in the metro, with Denver International Airport seeing about 8.9 inches of precipitation year-to-date. That’s right in line with the norm, according to data collated by Global Warming Cities.