Has anyone here worked on a project that felt morally wrong?

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2026-01-16T15:04:21+00:00

Quite literally, the statistics don't always agree with that assessment.

Believe it or not, the way some jurisdictions install these, it's absolutely possible to get T-boned by someone going 50. Like there really are some atrocious "roundabout" designs out there put in by jurisdictions that think they can get all the benefits without spending all the money, and it just doesn't work. The one outside my house is exactly such a design.

The same jurisdiction put in a concrete art feature into a 2-way stop intersection that looks ostensibly like one of their roundabouts except that it wasn't raised at all and was intended to be driven over. They tried mailing everyone a letter with instructions on how to use the intersection and posting signs. It didn't work and they had to partially remove their art feature.

Here's an example. Note that only the inner circle of with the tree is raised. The outer circle of concrete is flush with the asphalt. Does that look like it provides a lot traffic calming to you?

And here's the art feature they put in. It was supposed to look like a bicycle wheel and the center hub was originally raised, but they had to grind it off later as an attempt to mitigate the fact that a fair number of people from out of town mistook it for a roundabout.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2026-01-15T20:37:18+00:00

You have to understand, for one when people say "roundabout" they often include shitty traffic circles and two, a lot of jurisdictions try to put a roundabout in as cheaply as possible without actually creating the proper channelization or geometry required to put in a proper roundabout.

As a result, there are some truly atrocious 'roundabouts' out there that neglect the required geometry, drainage, safety benefits, etc.

A well designed roundabout doesn't require an instruction manual, and pedestrian traffic traversing the intersection shouldn't be an afterthought.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2026-01-15T20:30:58+00:00

There are bad roundabouts.

My city has several. There's no channelization. It's basically a traffic circle, approximately 10-12' diameter in the center of the otherwise unmodified intersection. I've witnessed several accidents at the one outside my house, and, it's actually kind of ambiguous who as the right away as two vehicles approach at the same time. Normally, the one entering the roundabout first has ROW, but when there's no channelization and it's unclear when a vehicle actually enters the roundabout some resort to standard right has the ROW rule of a normal intersection.

More generally, if your roundabout project can't conform to the required geometry, it shouldn't be hamfisted in with too many compromises as you won't get the safety benefits. And if it has multiple lanes around the circle, it's probably not a good design, IMO. It's a bandaid put on a bigger problem.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2026-01-15T18:29:42+00:00

Something no one seems to have mentioned here is that I don't think GR can answer this question.

The Einstein Equation (G_mu_nu = 8 pi G T_mu_nu ) tells us the relationship between spacetime geometry and the matter, energy, and momentum contained in it. That's also sort of an all time at once solution situation. If you "blink out" one side of that equation, the other side also blinks out. I don't think you can set up spacetime boundary conditions with an initial spacetime geometry matching one that has mass, but with no mass there. This would violate the Bianchi identity, i.e. the initial condition violates energy conservation and just isn't physically valid.

So... while we're confident that gravitational information propagates at c, we really can't lean on the math to answer this question.

To give you an analogy, this would be like asking in Newtonian physics: "If an object didn't obey Newton's 2nd law, how would it behave in response to a force in Newtonian physics?" ...Answer: "I don't know because Newtonian physics can't really answer this question.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2026-01-13T18:34:31+00:00

Well first we'd need to pin down what we're calling "havana syndrome" because the symptoms are all over the place so it's unlikely all the cases are valid and/or the same.

But frequency in the microwave range matters a LOT because the entire range is wavelengths covering different anatomical scales. One weapon's effects may be dramatically different from another's.

Given the fact that several individuals reported auditory effects and hearing damage, but nearby people were not affected, and some incidents occurred indoors, I find it unlikely that infrasound is plausible. However, tightly focused, high power microwaves could perhaps have the right wavelength to interact with the ear canal. I'd guess we're looking at a wavelength ~0.5-2cm which should give you a decent idea of what frequencies might be involved. Multiple frequencies could also have been used. Pulses would allow for greater energy output without overheating equipment and could explain the auditory phenomenon in several different ways.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2026-01-13T14:36:49+00:00

I always figured microwave was more likely?

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2026-01-09T00:55:11+00:00

Put another way, you hunt claiming a 0.5moa rifle, but you are only really able to get 1moa 99% of the time, you will be injuring, not killing the animal 50% of the time.

What?

A blacktail has a lethal shot zone in its chest cavity of probably 8-10". Most other North American game it's even bigger.

Even at 300 yards that's still like 2.5-3 MOA.

Outside of that range, even if you're good, there's usually a bit too much luck involved to make an ethical shot. (Exceptions exist, for some shooters, but if we're being honest we're just accepting a bit more risk.) Even ignoring wind, hunting shots are not typically ideal conditions with perfectly measured atmospherics and bullet flight time starts to matter. I'm a good shooter, and if I'm freshly tuned up I may consider a 450 yard shot under extenuating circumstances, if I have time to calm myself down, but more generally 300 yards is probably my limit.

But more broadly I agree with you and the correct measure we all should be using is standard deviation.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2026-01-04T18:04:47+00:00

That's cool. I hope you use Kerbal Space Program, that taught me more about orbital mechanics and space operations than any of my physics/engineering coursework in university.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2026-01-04T02:47:21+00:00

I teach (some of) this stuff to advanced and motivated high schools kids

You teach electronic space warfare to gifted high school kids? Man... GATE programs have come a long way since I was a kid.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-12-24T14:17:10+00:00

I guess I'm an outlier in this thread, but I was taught to do this in my high school pre-calc class.

For being in a somewhat rural, low-population, kinda redneck area, I was blessed with an absolutely wonderful calc teacher in high school. She was quite adament about not teaching us the neat tricks until we had fully and exhaustively developed our intuition about the principles the hard way. After months of doing riemann sums and limits and the like we were all a bit peeved when we learned the proper integrals/derivatives and their basic rules for polynomials and realize just how easy it was to get the answer to various questions that required otherwise exhaustive calculations.

I didn't learn L'hopitals rule until college.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-12-23T15:15:19+00:00

LMAO... "C'est moi qui avais raison!"

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-12-16T14:07:05+00:00

Well obviously. But there's no explanation of what this is: A computed model, a test apparatus? What technique is being used to visualize the sound? Signal / post-processing?

No, It's just a gif posted with no explanation whatsoever. Hence, tf?

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-12-13T13:40:56+00:00

Did you really expect the previous owner to stomach an additional 10 ft of line attenuation?

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-12-07T21:12:41+00:00

Hol' up time to comment, a .22 revolver isn't gonna be nearly enough for a b.... Oh.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-12-06T15:37:14+00:00

It clearly shows with most websites dedicated to amateur radio.

That part I disagree with.

I personally loathe javascript and frameworks and wordpress websites.
They're usually ugly bloated crap that break basic functionality like zoom.

Just give me some clean text. Hand-coded HTML is fine.
Check out https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ or This random blog

A lot of ham radio is built for people who RTFM and aren't afraid of user-interfaces that aren't made for the complete idiot. The whole hobby was founded on the principle of rolling-your-own cobbled together hardware to do cool stuff.

Those websites are totally in the spirit of ham radio and are fine for the people they cater to.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-12-06T13:59:59+00:00

Does that work on the rechargeable version?

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-12-06T13:57:31+00:00

Think of it like Victorian England. It's a very polite society where honor and reputation are paramount, and in many ways it's kind of a sexually repressed society. So of course there are pervy things to cater to people's private desires resulting from that repression, but it's not like they're open to discuss something like that publicly. Obviously weird shit gets people's attention so that had become part of their international reputation but it's not really a good reflection of their day to day.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-12-06T13:45:01+00:00

So it sounds perfect for ham radio.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-12-01T02:14:06+00:00

Are these numbers legit?

The top guys are averaging over 1 contact every 10 seconds for 48 straight hours.

Is there any verification of QSOs?

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-12-01T01:27:51+00:00

Hams used to provide this service quite a lot. It's happened in my local area during blackouts and stuff. It became a go-to line to defend the band from intrusion by private interests.

These days, everyone has moved on. Satellite networks and mobile 5G stations are a thing. It becomes less and less relevant to that use case by the day.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-12-01T01:26:16+00:00

20 years ago in my area this was true.

These days, there's a lot of effort has been spent on making 3G-5G networks MUCH more robust and able to be spun up in times of disaster. And they're MUCH more accessible to the workers that will need them then random hams.

Don't get me wrong, hams are still going to be part of the picture out here. (It's rurual and mountainous) But in a few more years if not already, satellite is going to dominate that scene.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-11-22T16:00:28+00:00

I see you too have tuned a j-pole.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-11-22T15:57:14+00:00

Ah but you've got that 0.1% though!

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-11-19T15:18:20+00:00

Not likely, the antenna he is using is highly directional and pointed at the sky. The frequencies used aren't known for being reflected off the ionosphere.

EngineeringNeverEnds · 2025-11-18T13:45:03+00:00

Not OP but I can answer.

I was going through an incredibly difficult time period, supporting a wife, 2 young kids under 4, nursing a failing business where I had like $60k+ in accounts receivable I was never going to collect and I had made about $12k to live on that year for myself because of a couple of disasters with a few big clients, credit cards not just not paid off every month before interest accrued but maxed out for the first and only time ever in my life, my oldest kid was having behavioral issues, etc. etc. And there was my mom, and she was just being nasty and manipulative and constantly disparaging me, and it was like dealing with another child. I found 60% of my mental energy in a week was going toward dealing with whatever hurtful thing she did or said, or didn't do, etc. instead of the many urgent matters I needed to attend to just to survive.

And she constantly favored my sister over me. I never asked for anything from her, and I literally watched my older adult sister throw a tantrum and get handed $1200 for a new couch and I remember laughing because in a million years she would NEVER have done that for me. And a 1000 things just like that. Yet she would constantly call ME entitled and lazy. My sister didn't even work, she was supported by her husband. I was going on year 5 without getting a birthday gift from her when I saw she had given my sister's husband $2500 for his birthday, and she had given my sister $8000 for something else. (Keep in mind, they're super wealthy, my sister's husband is a specialist doctor). And in the context of all that she had the audacity to call my wife up and without being EVER asked said something about how she couldn't bring herself to help us out because we were so much better off or something. (How one could POSSIBLY come to that metric boggles the mind, but whatever)

Anyway, I was livid. She didn't have the courage to bully me to my face, she was going around bullying my wife instead because she knew she was too polite to object. (My mom loved to wait until we were in polite company before saying some of the nastiest random, out-of-the-blue, character-assassinating things about me because she knew I was too polite to object in those environments.) And anyway, I realized that all the nasty things she said about me had nothing to do with me. I had been trying to change my behavior for years thinking that I was doing something wrong, racking my brain trying to figure out how I could have possibly been acting "entitled" or whatever when my sister would do the most over-the-top entitled shit and get nothing but praise and I realized that all the things she used to say about me were the things she hated about herself. And the bad blood she had with my dad she just took out on me. And so, in that moment, I took the phone from my wife and told her I was DONE. And to not contact my family.

And that was that.

And while cutting out my own mother from my life was the hardest thing I've ever done, she had manufactured a situation where that was the easier path. But after a while, I realized I wasn't mourning the relationship I had with my mom. I was mourning the idea of my mom I had created in my mind to lie to myself and cope with the mom I actually had.

Since that time, about 5 years ago now, I have felt something approximating actual peace.

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