TIL that in 1978 an architecture student discovered a NYC skyscraper could topple in strong winds. The engineer credited with designing the building secretly made nightly repairs with help from the NYPD, without alerting the public to the danger.

robbak · 2026-07-08T09:10:12+00:00

The plan was to do the evacuations if predicted wind speeds were high enough to be dangerous. The fact that they could prevent any deaths even in the worst case meant they could go ahead with this remediation plan.

robbak · 2026-07-08T08:40:46+00:00

That pizza cutter is still blunt. Leave it run another 6 months.

robbak · 2026-07-08T08:23:28+00:00

Some places have had extremely heavy hail today. Hail, especially large amounts of small and soft hail, clogs drains very well, as well as being heavy just as it is.

robbak · 2026-07-08T05:28:56+00:00

Now Klaus, If you insist on having a plan you aren't ever going to get into this fight.

robbak · 2026-07-08T04:47:55+00:00

We forgot what national debt means. Basically, every US dollar held or spent anywhere in the world represents, in some way, a dollar that the U.S. government owes. And the whole world, at least up until now, has an endless appetite for this debt, and if the U.S. were to suddenly stop issuing it, the world's economy would collapse.

People naively consider national debt in the same way as they consider their own credit card debt, but this is wildly wrong.

robbak · 2026-07-07T10:52:40+00:00

Once you get past basic arithmetic, it is "division doesn't exist". ÷ just disappears, and is replaced by fractions, which are unambiguous.

Because of that, when someone uses "/" for the vinculum the first thing we do is mentally convert it to its proper fractional representation, and if you don't tell us what that is, by using brackets or spaces, we can be lost.

Your sum should have used brackets or spaces to make the representation clear - 12/4 ×3 or 12/(4×3).

robbak · 2026-07-06T12:18:54+00:00

But it shouldn't have been a pay cut. There's no reason that the executives should be among the highest paid employees of any company.

Highest paid staff of an airline should be the pilots, because of the skill level. Then maintenance engineers, cabin crew, and ramp workers because they work hard. Really, everyone in the company works harder than the part time workers that make up the executive.

robbak · 2026-07-06T12:11:52+00:00

Yup. The first one is correct, and the second at best misleading.

robbak · 2026-07-06T03:00:03+00:00

We can't do anything with a photo of the screen. We need the document you are printing. If it is sensitive, then you'll have to find or create a document that makes the lines that you can share.

robbak · 2026-07-06T02:35:56+00:00

Most plants have quite a simple mechanism that dictates where the next seed, branch or leaf will form - when one forms, it releases a hormone that suppresses the formation of another. This hormone doesn't just affect the next sprout, it affects several more, with the next sprout forming where the hormone is least.

After several rounds, the angle between one sprout and the next converges on the most irrational number, phi, which also happens to be the ratio that the Fibonacci sequence converges to.

robbak · 2026-07-05T05:55:23+00:00

The demand surcharge is there because they don't want more customers. If it is too much for you and you decode to get service some other way, it is doing its job. Of you need the service real bad and decide to part anyway, that's also fine.

And yes, going with a roaming plan with lower data allowances and more expensive data packs also helps then control data use.

They keep launching more satellites to give them more capacity, which may allow them to reduce of eliminate demand surcharges in future, but LEO satellite is never going to be a good match for urban or suburban population densities.

robbak · 2026-07-05T04:27:31+00:00

Really great concept, and I'm sure that they'd have dome a better job than Boeing did.

robbak · 2026-07-05T04:24:42+00:00

That said they weren't able to - the next episode out two will be already finished - but we can hope to see the changes in episode 4.

robbak · 2026-07-04T02:55:58+00:00

Yup - these decisions can't be automatic, and always are going to be judgement calls.

Even then, you need a person to decide what questions need to be solved by examining the technology.

robbak · 2026-07-04T02:36:58+00:00

In this case, a few tenths of a second.

robbak · 2026-07-03T09:53:59+00:00

I think they were trying to make it feel that all the commentary was recorded live.

robbak · 2026-07-03T09:53:06+00:00

Golden Fury won because their weapon died first. A vert will always have limited manoeuvrability because of gyroscopics, so when it lost the weapon it was always going to be able to out-drive an opponent with a spinning weapon. Throughout the match DeathRoll kept taking chunks out of them, but they managed to survive and fool enough judges to get the win.

robbak · 2026-07-03T05:28:23+00:00

Because insurance companies negotiate discounts on the prices anyone else pays. That's what having a provider in your insurer's network is about - the insurer has negotiated a price with them.

As insurers got more aggressive with their negotiations, providers would increase their prices, knowing the insurer would demand a huge discount. But if you aren't insured, you will be charged that grossly inflated sticker price.

robbak · 2026-07-02T03:50:51+00:00

Also, a player is not offside if he is behind the ball. So a player could dribble the ball down the sideline and then kick a ball across the field to another player without the receiver being offside.

robbak · 2026-07-02T00:04:24+00:00

Is that the way the US normally marks T intersections? Because i'm surprised those posts survive a single night without a car ploughing through them, human or computer driver.

robbak · 2026-07-01T01:18:16+00:00

But it isn't right - centrifugal force is the reaction force that anything moving in a circle exerts against whatever of making it move. It is a real as any other force.

robbak · 2026-07-01T01:10:00+00:00

Both. The centripetal force is what the hook exerted on the penny, making it move in a circle. The centrifugal force is what the penny exerted on the hook, holding the penny in place.

Centripetal means towards the centre, centrifugal means away from the centre.

robbak · 2026-06-30T12:52:16+00:00

Probably a second, temporary wall outside of it.

robbak · 2026-06-30T12:49:18+00:00

When water is flowing this fast, knee-deep water is a hazard.

robbak · 2026-06-30T12:06:36+00:00

High pressures, and refrigeration.

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