Rotary Jails • Hacker News Board

Re: Rotary Jails

#21

Post by erichurkman » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:07 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #13

"Why Brown and Haugh went the convoluted route and chose to rotate the cells instead of the circular cage, is a mystery." Any guesses? It does seem like a dumb idea to rotate the massively larger/heavier cells.

In Tom Scott's video, posted in another message in this thread, he notes that the inventor partnered with an iron foundry owner. Each set of cells is notated to be 30 tons of steel: more steel vs. would've been needed for a simple circle of bars that rotated.

Re: Rotary Jails

#22

Post by jrootabega » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:09 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #13

"Why Brown and Haugh went the convoluted route and chose to rotate the cells instead of the circular cage, is a mystery." Any guesses? It does seem like a dumb idea to rotate the massively larger/heavier cells.

Seems simpler to know exactly where the entrance is, relative to the entire building. You could build a hallway off it.

Re: Rotary Jails

#23

Post by rad_gruchalski » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:34 PM UTC

Wanted to block the cookies on this website. After flipping about 20 of the pages off, I’ve noticed that the list contains probably more than a 100 3rd party websites. Nope, bye.

Re: Rotary Jails

#24

Post by jamestimmins » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:37 PM UTC

jrootabega wrote: post #22

tyingq wrote: post #13

"Why Brown and Haugh went the convoluted route and chose to rotate the cells instead of the circular cage, is a mystery." Any guesses? It does seem like a dumb idea to rotate the massively larger/heavier cells.

Seems simpler to know exactly where the entrance is, relative to the entire building. You could build a hallway off it.

This theoretically makes it usable in a smaller space, since you don't need a hallway to run around the entire ring.

Re: Rotary Jails

#25

Post by michaelmrose » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:59 PM UTC

jontro wrote: post #18

ljp_206 wrote: post #4

There's some kind of sickening scroll acceleration applied to this page, making it exceedingly frustrating to use with a magic mouse. Not surprised due to level of shit shoveled onto the site, but I have no idea why anybody would want to subject their users to this.

Also an ad appeared over the "I accept" cookie banner right before I was going to click it.

On my end I saw 40 things blocked which must have included both all ads, that cookie accept garbage, and any other nonsense. Ublock origin + firefox 71. Even scrolling seemed to be pretty normal on the normal page although its even nicer with one click to view in reader mode.

Re: Rotary Jails

#26

Post by withinrafael » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 11:12 PM UTC

ljp_206 wrote: post #4

There's some kind of sickening scroll acceleration applied to this page, making it exceedingly frustrating to use with a magic mouse. Not surprised due to level of shit shoveled onto the site, but I have no idea why anybody would want to subject their users to this.

I visited the site at work and it brought vanilla Chrome to its knees. There is just an obscene amount of garbage that loads (and continues to load) on that page. Phew.

Re: Rotary Jails

#27

Post by dsfyu404ed » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 11:44 PM UTC

jrootabega wrote: post #22

tyingq wrote: post #13

"Why Brown and Haugh went the convoluted route and chose to rotate the cells instead of the circular cage, is a mystery." Any guesses? It does seem like a dumb idea to rotate the massively larger/heavier cells.

Seems simpler to know exactly where the entrance is, relative to the entire building. You could build a hallway off it.

Getting a prisoner in or out would be like the Central Bureaucracy cube in Futurama.

Re: Rotary Jails

#28

Post by r00fus » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 12:02 AM UTC

This sounds inhumane and thus unlikely to happen in modern prison design (which tbh is more of a jobs program these days than actually designing for restitution or rehabilitation)

"The rotary jails had many design problems. For example, in the event of fire, it was not possible to evacuate the inmates fast enough".

Re: Rotary Jails

#29

Post by desertrider12 » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 12:43 AM UTC

If one person could rotate the whole thing with a crank, why couldn't the prisoners do the same by holding the bars and pushing on the walls?

Anyway, this reminded me of the mechanical fortress from Myst.

Re: Rotary Jails

#30

Post by Keverw » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 12:47 AM UTC

anonu wrote: post #12

ljp_206 wrote: post #4

There's some kind of sickening scroll acceleration applied to this page, making it exceedingly frustrating to use with a magic mouse. Not surprised due to level of shit shoveled onto the site, but I have no idea why anybody would want to subject their users to this.

A quick look at the code: it appears that theres javascript keeping the top-bar "sticky" instead of good ol' CSS. So every time you scroll some new computation kicks in. The jerkiness may be the massive amount of computation thats taking over your browser. Im by no means an expert on web stuff - so this is just my guess.

Interesting, I've seen another site a few weeks ago that seemed odd when scrolling too. I think they are a great company with a decent product, but this is a turnoff. I was thinking of contacting them but felt a waste of time since probably whoever I contact would go to someone that isn't a web developer and just feel like it'd go nowhere to improve their site. Especially if it only happens on Mac, and they are using another OS as was wondering if the site did it on other platforms or even browsers too.