131–140 of 255 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of curiosity, what kind of weights were they? I was under the impression that it has been phased out of many uses because of high toxicity (including via skin absorption when handling it)
Lead weights continue to be widely used in diving: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_weighting_system (there's a section on materials and toxicity).
What many may not realize is that there's a thriving industry in sending passengers on planes for the sole purpose of them taking things from A to B. Years ago, you could get discounted flights to Europe where you couldn't check in any luggage. Why? That allowance was taken up by documents for various clients. This was usually quicker than any courier services at the time. I've had friends who worked in the oil and g…
What many may not realize is that there's a thriving industry in sending passengers on planes for the sole purpose of them taking things from A to B. Years ago, you could get discounted flights to Europe where you couldn't check in any luggage. Why? That allowance was taken up by documents for various clients. This was usually quicker than any courier services at the time. I've had friends who worked in the oil and g…
Some years back, there was a "can't happen" problem with a telephone switch, such that the problem had "contaminated" the running databases on both processor cards, and the system was no longer capable of recovering itself. It needed a new card, and it needed it yesterday. The manufacturer scrambled it down to the local airport, where they bought it a passenger ticket on the next plane out. While it was in the air, t…
I would’ve been part of the chain that got a semi out to deliver it.
What many may not realize is that there's a thriving industry in sending passengers on planes for the sole purpose of them taking things from A to B. Years ago, you could get discounted flights to Europe where you couldn't check in any luggage. Why? That allowance was taken up by documents for various clients. This was usually quicker than any courier services at the time. I've had friends who worked in the oil and g…
An ex-girlfriend worked for a large yogurt manufacturer. One of their manufacturing plants had an issue with "the culture" (the bacterial culture used for fermenting the yogurt, that is). She said product was exploding out of containers in the incubation rooms.
The operators decided to sterilize the plant and bring a sample of bacterial culture from another of the company's plants. An employee was paid to ride in a first class seat beside a temperature-controlled container of bacterial culture.
These are amazing for shipping bullets. Not loaded, but for reloading. My mailman hates me but they keep the costs down.
It’s always been strange to me that people ship bullets Willy nilly, my dad buys his yearly supply at once and this last year they delivered them to the wrong address. The people brought them to him but it just seems weird to allow shipping weaponry and not even verifying that it’s delivered to the correct person.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> And each day of non-operation cost hundreds of thousands of dollars... My close relative worked off shore for decades. Sometimes a down large production platform is a MILLION dollars an hour. Flying someone anywhere with a $250,000 part in their hands is nothing. There are entire industries built around "getting things to the rig/platform" faster.
I'm surprised that I haven't heard of small jets (fighters/jet trainers) being used for commercial courier services (although there are instances of military jets transporting organs for transplant, https://apnews.com/article/c1309c58720c78347c1ebbbade56d35d ). They can be privately owned and operated, are very fast, and tend to have hundreds of kilos of payload capacity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> And each day of non-operation cost hundreds of thousands of dollars... My close relative worked off shore for decades. Sometimes a down large production platform is a MILLION dollars an hour. Flying someone anywhere with a $250,000 part in their hands is nothing. There are entire industries built around "getting things to the rig/platform" faster.
I'm surprised that I haven't heard of small jets (fighters/jet trainers) being used for commercial courier services (although there are instances of military jets transporting organs for transplant, https://apnews.com/article/c1309c58720c78347c1ebbbade56d35d ). They can be privately owned and operated, are very fast, and tend to have hundreds of kilos of payload capacity.
30 Minutes to travel 27 miles across London in the middle of the day ! Stansted Airport, Essex to Cromwell Hospital, Kensington, London
What many may not realize is that there's a thriving industry in sending passengers on planes for the sole purpose of them taking things from A to B. Years ago, you could get discounted flights to Europe where you couldn't check in any luggage. Why? That allowance was taken up by documents for various clients. This was usually quicker than any courier services at the time. I've had friends who worked in the oil and g…
I'll throw in my "strange things flying on planes" story. An ex-girlfriend worked for a large yogurt manufacturer. One of their manufacturing plants had an issue with "the culture" (the bacterial culture used for fermenting the yogurt, that is). She said product was exploding out of containers in the incubation rooms. The operators decided to sterilize the plant and bring a sample of bacterial culture from another of…
Of course, the team decided not to use those aluminum wheels and instead tried to round off any sharp edges on the remaining magnesium ones. Another wheel broke and the car was damaged too much to continue competing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think "physically" is redundant. It could be legally impossible, or practically impossible. I played around with the title and character limit for a minute, and managed to get: "A small flat-rate USPS box's weight limit is physically impossible to exceed". How's that?
That sounds awkward to me. The best way to shorten titles is to omit words - then you keep the prosody of the original. I've taken another crack at it. Now someone will complain about USPS being missing, but "flat rate" implies someone's rate, and it's not as if USPS is a misleading surprise. (Submitted title was "It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a USPS flat rate box". First edit was "It is…
(fueled by three amazing strong coffees in Ginza and the first idle moments on the interwebs I've enjoyed in a long long time)
HN: one of the last remaining Great Good Places of the Internet, a lone tavern in an iconic gateway town to the now not-so-wild west.
Beyond the western borders of this little town, the tech gold rush has both expanded to epic proportions, affecting all the economies in the world, and also gone through enough booms and busts that the phrase "gold rush" seems somehow off.
As more and more young'uns join and jaded veterans return to throng the tavern alike, it often seems to be on the brink of either exploding with the largest gun fight in history, or jumping the shark [1].
And yet, against all odds, it retains its original magnetism - drawing throngs that grow in number and diversity while seers like https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11 and https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tptacek continue to return - dispensing worldly wisdom worth its weight in gold from corner tables.
The secret is the man at the corner of the bar @dang, always around with a friendly smile and a towel on his shoulder. The only sheriff in the west who still doubles as the friendly bartender: always polite, always willing to break up a fight with kind words and clean up messes himself.
Yes a cold-hard look from him is all it takes to get most outlaws to back down, yes, his Colt-45 "moderator" edition is feared by all men, but the real secret to his success: his earnest passion (some call it an obsession) for the seemingly sisyphean task of sustaining good conflict - letting it simmer but keeping it all times below the boiling point based on "the code":
"Conflict is essential to human life, whether between different aspects of oneself, between oneself and the environment, between different individuals or between different groups. It follows that the aim of healthy living is not the direct elimination of conflict, which is possible only by forcible suppression of one or other of its antagonistic components, but the toleration of it—the capacity to bear the tensions of doubt and of unsatisfied need and the willingness to hold judgement in suspense until finer and finer solutions can be discovered which integrate more and more the claims of both sides. It is the psychologist's job to make possible the acceptance of such an idea so that the richness of the varieties of experience, whether within the unit of the single personality or in the wider unit of the group, can come to expression."
May the last great tavern in the West and it's friendly bartender-sheriff live long and prosper.
---- [1] - I hope I didn't jinx this by writing this "ode" :)