251–260 of 344 posts
We just live with a very loud sound at our house. Run water for any reason. When you stop, some 0-15 seconds later an enormous sound reverberates thru the house. Plumber says its 'water pipes growing or shrinking, rubbing against the straps'. But it goes on for 10-30 seconds. No water pipe in the world moves that long/that much?
Worse mistakes have been made https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940) Pretty sure every bridge engineer knows that one. Amusing that the lesson didn't generalize.
Every engineer, not just the ones building bridges. I was required to take an Engineering Ethics course that covered Tacoma Narrows as well as other incidents, such as the famous Hyatt Regency walkway.
My two favorite examples were:
The Therac-25 — it’s just frontend GUI code. Why test it? What could go wrong?
The Siberian gas pipeline explosion of ‘82 — not technically an accident, but it shows the problem with testing untrustworthy code to correctness. It was also the biggest non-nuclear man-made explosion, at least at the time.
The Russians had stolen some pipeline schematics from US companies. The theft was discovered before they stole the control software. Instead of stopping the software from being stolen, US intelligence modified it so an integer would overflow after a year (or two) of operation. The Russian economy would be ruined if the pipeline wasn’t operational in less time than it would take the bug to trigger, so it wouldn’t show up in testing.
When it triggered, it slammed a bunch of valves shut, causing multiple parts of the network to explode at the same time.
The US military’s seismologists detected it, and thought the Russians had detonated a new type of nuclear weapon. The military was going to escalate until the intelligence service told them they were responsible for the blast.
Here’s a decent list of other incidents:
https://royal.pingdom.com/10-historical-software-bugs-with-e...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two unrelated anecdotes: 1. A few years ago I spent some time in Falmouth, MA and there was an ongoing battle over newly installed wind turbines. The humming sound was getting to people, including to the point where they were getting headaches. Some people heard it and others didn't. The locals were going to war with the initiative. This article reminded me of that and I checked in on the ordeal. Looks like they shut…
When I thru hiked the Appalachian Trail I nearly went mad trying to identify that “drumming” sound. It was so deep that it felt like it was coming from inside my body, and I was concerned that it was some strange condition. Finally, at one point I asked a group of other thru hikers if they had experienced it, and they all excitedly nodded, but none of us knew the source. Finally, some local day hiker said “oh, it’s p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every engineer, not just the ones building bridges. I was required to take an Engineering Ethics course that covered Tacoma Narrows as well as other incidents, such as the famous Hyatt Regency walkway.
We covered software-induced disasters in my CS courses. This isn’t standard, which explains a lot about our profession. My two favorite examples were: The Therac-25 — it’s just frontend GUI code. Why test it? What could go wrong? The Siberian gas pipeline explosion of ‘82 — not technically an accident, but it shows the problem with testing untrustworthy code to correctness. It was also the biggest non-nuclear man-mad…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Very funny to be reading this. I grew up in Falmouth, and lived there until 2014 when I graduated highschool. I obviously wasn't incredibly attuned to this issue, but as I recall, the only people opposed to the installation of the turbines were a very small, very vocal, and very, very, wealthy minority of people who owned mind-bogglingly expensive beach houses and lived there two months out of the year. I'm fairly…
In truth, the real reason for the disparity in perception is... supernatural in origin. You see... it's the Curse of Chappaquidick. The sound isn't just the breeze passing through turbines. It's the wailing of the immortal soul of Mary Jo Kopechne, her soul mercifully freed from the watery depths but bound to the wind. Her soul, unable to find rest so long as the negligent and wealthy haunt her resting place, now ete…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every engineer, not just the ones building bridges. I was required to take an Engineering Ethics course that covered Tacoma Narrows as well as other incidents, such as the famous Hyatt Regency walkway.
We covered software-induced disasters in my CS courses. This isn’t standard, which explains a lot about our profession. My two favorite examples were: The Therac-25 — it’s just frontend GUI code. Why test it? What could go wrong? The Siberian gas pipeline explosion of ‘82 — not technically an accident, but it shows the problem with testing untrustworthy code to correctness. It was also the biggest non-nuclear man-mad…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two unrelated anecdotes: 1. A few years ago I spent some time in Falmouth, MA and there was an ongoing battle over newly installed wind turbines. The humming sound was getting to people, including to the point where they were getting headaches. Some people heard it and others didn't. The locals were going to war with the initiative. This article reminded me of that and I checked in on the ordeal. Looks like they shut…
I think the complaints about Falmouth wind turbine noise are eerily similar to complaints that wifi gives people headaches. I don’t think they are founded in reality.
The second law of thermodynamics says that the energy of reducing the wind's speed has to go somewhere. It's either going to push the bridge around, make noise by generating vibration, generate electricity as in a wind turbine, or some combination of the three.
Well, I guess the goal may have been to let the wind pass through.