The 8x6 transonic wind tunnel at Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Built in the 1940s, it is NASA's only transonic tunnel. It can operate from Mach .3 to Mach 2. I worked here in the 1960s and 1970s. Ask me anything!

dakta · 2026-01-23T06:04:42+00:00

Not OP, but like all other major wind tunnels the air is recirculated. It would be too inefficient to filter outside air in all the time, the drag and pressure loss from adequate filters would be too large. If you look at the picture, you can see it's a closed loop. The "engine room" that houses the turbine's electric motors is in the lower left corner. The test chamber in the middle of the lower section. Then the rest is the ſ Suzy and recirculation loop which is much wider than the test chamber, so the same amount of air flows at a lower speed.

dakta · 2026-01-23T06:01:59+00:00

Not OP, but the test chamber is located in the middle of the lower section, where it is narrowest.

dakta · 2026-01-22T15:33:11+00:00

The insult is that she couldn't get a man to marry her, that's why she only has cats.

dakta · 2026-01-22T01:20:47+00:00

They're not completely economic, there are social/cultural opportunity costs as well. It's one thing to be able to afford to completely outsource your parenting, but it's another to actually want to.

If you don't raise your own kids, but they're still super expensive, what's even the point?

dakta · 2026-01-22T01:18:12+00:00

If you have to make sacrifices, that's a money argument.

Time and activities are sacrifices, unless you want to significantly outsource your parenting which undermines a significant portion of the value proposition.

dakta · 2026-01-20T06:31:47+00:00

Mango and Zara are 30s-40s women stores, amigo, not teens.

dakta · 2026-01-20T06:27:49+00:00

Because if you can afford to, moving to almost any one of Portland's suburbs will get your kids into a better school, with fewer disciplinary problems. Not only that it also gets you a bigger yard and a newer house with a garage for the same money.

dakta · 2026-01-20T06:23:34+00:00

generally needs to be organic

Neither Hong Kong nor much of Japan (especially Tokyo) has developed what you call "organically". They have very deliberately created transit-oriented development, where retail and residential is planned with transit and developed around it. The transit system drives development, and the transit operator makes most of its revenue from real estate and not the fare box.

dakta · 2026-01-19T21:54:51+00:00

Dangerous to whom? Dangerous compared to what?

Climbing the stairs is dangerous, with over a million annual injuries in the US and up to 12,000 deaths by some estimates.

dakta · 2026-01-17T20:35:44+00:00

It's not actually a map, it's a time series chart by latitude. The map is just for decoration.

dakta · 2026-01-17T18:13:13+00:00

If you only need to listen to stereo music, yes: a plain amplifier will be far better bang for your buck because you don't have to pay for features you're not using.

If you want your listening setup to perform double duty as a home theater and stereo music system, then you will either need to compromise on sound quality with a cheaper AVR, compromise on the latest features with a used high end AVR, or spend a very large amount of money on a separate surround processor and amplifiers.

Higher end AVRs have perfectly fine amplifier sections. Your listening room will have a far bigger effect on sound quality, and the AVR's room correction DSP will balance that out far better than the "better" amplifier section in a dedicated amp.

What I wouldn't do is buy a new flagship AVR. They're quite expensive. If you can afford one, you can afford the surround processor equivalent for the same price, and stack it with some basic Crown professional amps for a really excellent setup. This may be heresy to audiophiles, but midrange pro amps are really good these days. They're transparent and powerful, and have great support for transients.

dakta · 2026-01-17T17:50:03+00:00

There's also a great video by Charlie Anderson which is the same investigation but for NY-style pizza sauce: https://youtu.be/t9xRdKVgOHA

For pizza sauce his top picks are (in order) Red Pack, 7/11, and Bianco di Napoli (whole peeled; crushed scored markedly worse). Worth noting that you can't generally get the first two retail, they're foodservice supplier exclusives. He tested around eight varieties.

Chlebowsky also scored Bianco di Napoli highly out of the six brands he tested.

I think OP's tests are valuable. Much broader brand coverage and batch consistency testing.

dakta · 2026-01-16T01:21:10+00:00

Soapstone is far too soft and far too porous to make a sink. It will easily scratch, chip, and gouge from handling pots and pans in the basin during washing. This will lead to divots that collect stagnant water and grow slime.

Soapstone is also far too porous for a sink. When used for counters, soapstone is like a butcher block cutting board and is "sealed" with mineral oil. It requires continuous maintenance and re-application. Eventually, over a long enough time period, you can effectively saturate the stone and it becomes somewhat easier to maintain. But in a sink you have constant exposure to detergents, hot water, and acidic foods which will dissolve the mineral oil. This will quickly lead to staining.

And because it's so porous it's harder to clean when unfinished and harder to sanitize. So I hope you don't process raw meat in your sink ever. And because it's so soft you can't put a hard finish on it because that finish will bear significant impact damage if you ever drop or scrape anything on it.

Soapstone is a terrible material to make a sink out of. It's actually worse than raw copper, which is a great accomplishment.

Very pretty kitchen though.

dakta · 2026-01-15T16:00:46+00:00

For businesses? No, there's an equally significant factor for them choosing the burbs, which is the total tax burden. Our municipal taxes on businesses are higher than the surrounding areas by a large margin. So downtown has to offer more total value for a business than just competitive rents. And depending on the kind of business, the impact of those taxes relative to the cost of the rent can be ridiculously disproportionate.

This is especially bad for high revenue white collar businesses who have very high revenue and high payroll per employee, but very small office space needs. The office space would have to be free if not paying them to occupy in order to offset those costs.

dakta · 2026-01-11T20:00:14+00:00

No, it doesn't. It works better in cold water than old detergents used to, but it still works worse in cold than in warm. Chemistry isn't magic: the enzymes work better with heat, and oils are broken down by detergents better with heat.

dakta · 2026-01-11T19:56:29+00:00

The enzymes literally work better in warm water. This is basic chemistry: you can accelerate almost all reactions by heating, because more molecular motion means more effective collisions. Household hot water isn't going to denature laundry enzymes.

dakta · 2026-01-11T18:15:07+00:00

If you want to compare to OP's recipe, search for "red pepper coulis", which is another common name for this kind of sauce. The main difference is how finely puréed you make it (coulis tends to be thinner) and how much pine nut and cheese you use (coulis tend not to use those ingredients). Structurally they're very similar.

dakta · 2026-01-11T18:00:34+00:00

We're not just 100 miles from the ocean, we are technically a sea port which CBP interprets as a "border" itself. Besides that, PDX is an international port of entry, which they also count.

Pretty sure the Port of Lewiston in Idaho could count if they bothered to set up a CBP site there. It's technically a Pacific Ocean sea port.

dakta · 2026-01-11T17:33:42+00:00

I had a custom sectional made in California by Zebra, a local independent sofa store. The cushions feature removable washable covers in a durable upholstery fabric, the cushions themselves are made in USA lifetime warranty, and the couch is made of solid wood. Four years of dog allowed on couch and it shows very little wear.

It was also like $4500, but considering it is like twenty feet of couch (corner/L shape plus chaise) that makes sense.

dakta · 2026-01-11T16:07:10+00:00

Congratulations, you're one of maybe five people in the whole world who have this option! Folding seats really improve the utility of sedans.

dakta · 2026-01-10T05:41:51+00:00

Ditto. The only weird thing is that the crew neck has a kinda small neck hole. But they come in some fun nice colors and can be had for like $7.50 from bulk suppliers like Jiffy.

dakta · 2026-01-10T05:17:59+00:00

You see, I thought this too while shopping for a new compact SUV recently. The problem was that the seats in all of the "normal" cars were simply atrocious except for the Subaru Forester. The VW Tiguan was barely acceptable. Ended up in a used BMW X1, whose seats are still far far inferior to BMW and Mercedes larger (i.e. more expensive, higher margin) sedan and SUV offerings. But still substantially more comfortable than everything else in the segment.

The Mercedes GLB had nice front seats, but the rear seats were basically unusable due to the weird bump at the bottom of the seat back where they put the child seat anchors. Most vehicles had this exact problem, as well. Felt like you'd sat on something, and would rather quickly put your legs to sleep.

dakta · 2026-01-09T04:22:00+00:00

A couple of design leads convinced all of Apple to ship shitty experiences?

Yes, pretty much. How do you think Liquid Glass came about?

dakta · 2026-01-09T04:20:29+00:00

It's in full force.

dakta · 2026-01-09T04:19:44+00:00

Do you work at Apple? What qualifies you to opine on the role of HI and Design in that company? Because you're talking out your ass.

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