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"Nothing like this will be built again"

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Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#21

Post by cstross »

jdale27 wrote: post #7
RyanZAG wrote: post #4

Looks like whoever posted this got around the repost limit by appending a '?' to the end of the url. Someone should fix that.

Looks like whoever posted this got around the repost limit by appending a '?' to the end of the url. Someone should fix that. Yeah, because we should never, ever be subjected to the same content twice. After all, this is Hacker News , not Hacker Olds , amirite? (Sorry for the snark. I have been reading Hacker News for several years, and I don't recollect having read this article before. I enjoyed it, I upvoted it, an…

Y'know, if I'd known it was an evergreen I'd have posted it myself, for the link karma.

Humph.

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#22

Post by gjm11 »

sbierwagen wrote: post #11
neur0 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The page content's hash or any other blueprint (an arbitrary regex match) could be checked against for resubmissions. For convenience, if resubmission should be detected, the original post could be topped on the frontpage nevertheless, because old material may as well be worth revisiting for several reasons -- I for one had missed this article before, and enjoyed it reading greatly now.

page content hash Change one byte. regex match Now we get into ship-of-theseus arguments. What counts as the "same" article? 99 percent? 51 percent? What if you resubmit a blog post that's picked up 150 more comments since it was last posted? How would HN tell the comments apart from the article text? What if someone submits a blog post that heavily quotes another article that's been submitted, in the process of rebu…

> Change one byte.

Most resubmissions are submitted by people other than their authors, who are typically not in a position to change any bytes of the content.

In the present case, speaking as the last person to submit this one (more than two years ago), I don't see that there's any harm in it at all. If this is still interesting two years since it was last discussed on HN -- which clearly it is -- then good for the submitter, who has provided the HN audience with something interesting to read.

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#23

Post by porker »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #20
gaius wrote: post #8

Nothing like it will be built again because a) successive British governments over the last 30 years have buried their heads in the sand over energy policy[1] and b) we as a country don't do actual engineering anymore. Both a and b mean that our energy future likes wholly in the hands of France! [1] Say what you like about Thatcher, at least she had a halfway coherent energy story.

"we as a country don't do actual engineering" What do you mean by "actual engineering"? - the UK makes and develops satellites - designs, develops and produces a huge number of jet engines - is home to nearly all the Formula 1 teams - the Nissan car plant in Sunderland produced 500,000 cars last year which is a huge engineering challenge and is now the home to the main production of the LEAF electric car - Teeside is…

And how many of these are UK owned? Which I took to be his point, given the dig that a French company will be building the new Nuclear power plants at Hinkley Point...

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#24

Post by arethuza »

moomin wrote: post #14
objclxt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we as a country don't do actual engineering anymore ...is that really true? The UK is currently home to Europe's largest civil engineering project (Crossrail), my hometown produces Trent jet engines and designs wings for all Airbus aircraft. And there's the cars that are both manufactured (BMW, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, etc) and designed (Jaguar, Aston Martin, Land Rover, McLaren...) here. The engineering we do has ch…

I seem to recall that, measured by value in real terms, the UK does more engineering than ever. Just because it's a smaller part of the economy and doesn't support as many unskilled people doesn't mean it's not happening. On an unrelated note, some of the social issues we complain about these days seem to be a direct consequence of the off-shoring of manual labour.

The UK does (at least before the recent recession) more manufacturing that ever - it's just that the whole process has become super efficient that it doesn't employ very many people:

"A 2009 report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, citing data from the UK Office for National Statistics, stated that manufacturing output (gross value added at 2007 prices) has increased in 35 of the 50 years between 1958 and 2007, and output in 2007 was at record levels, approximately double that in 1958."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_Kin...

Our problem is that we got too good at manufacturing!

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#25

Post by lostlogin »

porker wrote: post #23
simonbarker87 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we as a country don't do actual engineering" What do you mean by "actual engineering"? - the UK makes and develops satellites - designs, develops and produces a huge number of jet engines - is home to nearly all the Formula 1 teams - the Nissan car plant in Sunderland produced 500,000 cars last year which is a huge engineering challenge and is now the home to the main production of the LEAF electric car - Teeside is…

And how many of these are UK owned? Which I took to be his point, given the dig that a French company will be building the new Nuclear power plants at Hinkley Point...

I was wondering how many weren't arms industry related as every engineer I know in the UK is doing arms work. I was pleasantly surprised.

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#26

Post by coob »

porker wrote: post #23
simonbarker87 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we as a country don't do actual engineering" What do you mean by "actual engineering"? - the UK makes and develops satellites - designs, develops and produces a huge number of jet engines - is home to nearly all the Formula 1 teams - the Nissan car plant in Sunderland produced 500,000 cars last year which is a huge engineering challenge and is now the home to the main production of the LEAF electric car - Teeside is…

And how many of these are UK owned? Which I took to be his point, given the dig that a French company will be building the new Nuclear power plants at Hinkley Point...

Does it matter who owns the company if it's British engineers?

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#28

Post by timthorn »

lostlogin wrote: post #25
porker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how many of these are UK owned? Which I took to be his point, given the dig that a French company will be building the new Nuclear power plants at Hinkley Point...

I was wondering how many weren't arms industry related as every engineer I know in the UK is doing arms work. I was pleasantly surprised.

I used to work at ARM and ever since then have been invited to all sorts of weapons and defence conferences.

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#29

Post by simonbarker87 »

porker wrote: post #23
simonbarker87 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we as a country don't do actual engineering" What do you mean by "actual engineering"? - the UK makes and develops satellites - designs, develops and produces a huge number of jet engines - is home to nearly all the Formula 1 teams - the Nissan car plant in Sunderland produced 500,000 cars last year which is a huge engineering challenge and is now the home to the main production of the LEAF electric car - Teeside is…

And how many of these are UK owned? Which I took to be his point, given the dig that a French company will be building the new Nuclear power plants at Hinkley Point...

Doesn't matter who owns the company - the engineers are British and they are solving their engineering problems in the UK. CocaCola is obviously a US company but the production plant in the UK has some very interesting manufacturing/engineering problems (as does Mars, Proctor and Gamble, Fuji (pharma division)) and if you really need examples of British companies then try Dynex, Wolfson Microelectronics, Imagination Technolgies, British Sugar and Dyson.

His dig about a Frech company was just a fashionable quip that is doing the rounds right now - yes they are better at some things than us but likewise we sell them planes etc so each nation plays to it's strengths

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#30

Post by alan_cx »

arethuza wrote: post #16

Worth noting that the visitor centre for Torness recently re-opened, it looks like you need to make an appointment in advance (for security checks) but, having had a detailed tour of another AGR plant years ago, I suspect it may be worth visiting: http://www.edfenergy.com/about-us/energy-generation/nuclear-... Also, if you do visit Torness and you have an interest in science (which seems likely) then you might want t…

Tangent thought....

Might be worth booking an appointment to see what the British government's internet slurp has on one. At least one would know if they thought one were dangerous or not. And if one finds out one is not a terrorist after all, one can celebrate by having a rather cool day out.

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