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Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

reuters.com

341–350 of 593 posts

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#341
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>programmers vs cpu design You went a bit too far. I'd presume a lot of programmers do know CPU architecture well. While not common some of them to work on boring web platforms, some still do. Also most CPU architects would be decent programmers to begin with. Programming has not changed all that much and it was not so long time ago that programmers routinely knew assembly and how many cycles (and bytes) each opcode…

In all of those examples, its possible the person DOES have a good understanding of the adjacent domain. And in all examples, it is possible they will miss some subtleties, but people will give their opinions a lot of weight. Just as an example I see a lot: branch prediction. Some programmers don't know about it at all. Many do know about it, but think that it still works in some form like "assume the branch will go…

>Today there is something like a neural network that learns how the branches will go.

More like history, where the call comes from. Oddly enough the price of branch misdirection has become lower as not the entire pipeline needs to be thrown away but also due to hyper threading taking the slack.

Flip note: with 'recent' developments of Spectre, one'd think branch prediction got into the lime light. Truth be told, though, not many would be able to write constant time 'fizz buzz' (can try it on your own, bonus points to having constant time int->string conversion)

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#342
post #157
post #90

Oh hey, they fixed it, - without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to any of the cargo - without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to the ship - without taking multiple weeks - without needing to ship a trillion dollars'+ worth of equipment halfway around the world It's refreshing to see high-end engineering performed so competently.

There appears to be little "high-end engineering." Just a high tide and a bunch of tug boats.

They built a computer model to try and manage the stress on the ship as they worked to free it. It was not straightforward as the ship could have broken if they weren't extremely careful. They also had divers inspecting the hull for signs of stress. This was a massive, complex operation.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#343

Lots of articles quote a $XXX billion dollars per day figure, but those numbers are normally for "worth of goods delayed" which, while interesting, doesn't tell the story to me. Are there any estimates as to the actual cost of this "mishap", due to e.g. spoilage, financial/contractual repercussions of late deliveries, personnel/fuel costs?

Late delivery penalties aren't really an economic loss, it is a wash mostly. Similarly loss of revenue is mostly a wash

The freight costs are in the range of 0.6%-3% of the cost of the goods transported on average. This is for the amortized cost of purchasing the ships, maintenance, the labor and fuel costs. If you estimate the value of the delayed goods at $10b, and the freight costs at an extra 2% that's $200m in damages.

Most food transported this way wouldn't be spoiled by a delay of a week. If 10% of the goods were food by value, and 15% of them were perishable, and they were worth half as much after being delayed delayed a week that is another $75m lost to spoilage. But it isn't always a one week delay, many ships are delayed less to start, and there will be increased congestion in the ports and ground transport for many of these ships.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#344
post #157
post #90

Oh hey, they fixed it, - without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to any of the cargo - without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to the ship - without taking multiple weeks - without needing to ship a trillion dollars'+ worth of equipment halfway around the world It's refreshing to see high-end engineering performed so competently.

There appears to be little "high-end engineering." Just a high tide and a bunch of tug boats.

This reminds me of a former boss who told me to "just add some if statements, how long can it take?"

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me question that shouldn't we have another canal built? Like if so much of the world's economy depends on this route shouldn't we build an extra canal to speed up the transportation and also act as a redundancy

I think you massively underestimate the cost (land, machinery, labor, upkeep) of undertaking such a project.

We did it with the Panama Canal a century ago. Granted, the Suez Canal is ~190km compared to the Panama Canal at ~80km, but it is possible.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They run the canal at maximum capacity indefinitely. Due to the lack of downtime, any delays are in effect the same thing as a cancel from the perspective of the canal owners.

> They run the canal at maximum capacity indefinitely We have to stop doing this with all of our critical systems, it causes hiccups to be so costly.

Low utilization can be even more costly.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#348
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A high tide and some tug boats becomes 'high-end engineering' if it works

Have you looked at tug boat propulsion units lately? Those things look like black magic.

You are right, these things are nuts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voith_Schneider_Propeller

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#349
post #141

Lots of articles quote a $XXX billion dollars per day figure, but those numbers are normally for "worth of goods delayed" which, while interesting, doesn't tell the story to me. Are there any estimates as to the actual cost of this "mishap", due to e.g. spoilage, financial/contractual repercussions of late deliveries, personnel/fuel costs?

Probably the actual cost will require an army of accountants and lawyers at a dozen major logistics corporations arguing with each other for months to even try to compute. I doubt us regular uninvolved people will ever get a "real" number. How do you even try to calculate and reveal the cost associated with say a manufacturer in the middle of a supply chain deciding to source their parts from a different vendor for t…

For spoilage etc., most of it would be insured, I assume, so insurance claims would likely be a solid proxy for estimating one aspect of impact.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They run the canal at maximum capacity indefinitely. Due to the lack of downtime, any delays are in effect the same thing as a cancel from the perspective of the canal owners.

> They run the canal at maximum capacity indefinitely We have to stop doing this with all of our critical systems, it causes hiccups to be so costly.

But building everything to have a higher capacity also wastes a lot of resources! It is a balancing game.
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