• 4 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Iterative development like that isn’t uncommon in engineering as a whole. Simulation can get you a long way but there’s a hard limit to that. You don’t think spacex designed a starship to use without running extensive simulations to try and figure it out before hand right?

    Sometimes you need to test in the field just to find out what bits you missed. Structural engineers will simulate and calculate extensively but they’ll still build scale models and test pieces because it’s the most reliable and effective way to ensure you’re covering as many bases as possible.

    Its not an either/or situation here. They’re doing the testing and simulation and applying it IRL to find out where things break.










  • “Rats is chugging along in second when he should be cruising in fifth”. I’ve had countless reports like that but that one stuck with me, probably for being so much more creative than the others.

    I think it was the year following that report that they stuck me on my own desk facing a corner so that “you won’t keep getting distracted by other students”. I guess that teacher just really liked euphemisms. At least I always had a set of stationary for myself lol.








  • I’m one of those weirdos who actually really likes using a smaller keyboard so I’ll give you a few reasons I like smaller keyboard and a few why I don’t like larger ones.

    First of all, desk space. I have a very small desk so not having the numpad makes for a lot more space for my mouse.

    I also find when gaming that my arms fall at a weird and uncomfortable angle when I have the keyboard and mouse at a comfortable distance apart.

    I don’t tend to use the numpad, or 9 key cluster above the arrow keys very often so the ones I do use (delete, Pg up and Pg down) are just mapped to a new layer. My board is ortholinear so I’ve also got the numpad mapped to a layer if I ever want to use it.

    The function row is also re-mapped over the number row with the - and + acting as 11 and 12 because I very rarely need to use a function key and a number key at the same time or in quick succession so theres no need for the seperate keys.

    I don’t program much but when I do, I’ve got all the relevant symbols labelled with their layers on the front of the cap so they’re not hard to find when I need them.

    I’m also very much not a tidy desk person and I do a lot of my hobby work at my desk so having a nice small keyboard I can cram wherever I can when I need it and just move out of the way when I don’t means I’m not always shuffling stuff around my desk to make space for this huge keyboard.

    Overall however, I just really like the look of a nice, small, compact keyboard with everything I need just there. It’s visually nice to have a uniform block of keys with no gaps, no larger or differently shaped keys, and that’s just not something a larger keyboard offers me.

    I can absolutely see how this sort of thing doesn’t work for most people because there is an element of having to re-learn muscle memory and such, but for most people that have tried it, they seem to find that when it works, it works very well!



  • Many containers will just sink along with the boat, either because of tie downs or they’re just too dense to float.

    Others however can and will float, generally very low in the water which can cause pretty major hazards to navigation. For this reason, many containers will be fitted with salt plugs that will eventually dissolve and allow water to fill the container which will usually be enough to sink it.

    However, if the container was sufficiently full of buoyant material, or the salt plug fails, they can float around for a very long time. Sometimes these containers will be salvaged, left to float, or sometimes militarys will use them as target practice with the stated aim of trying to sink them.

    As for Lifeboats, generally you want an empty lifeboat to go down with the ship as a bunch of empty lifeboats floating around could draw resources away from the ones with people in them. Plus, most survival craft are pretty securely tied down so that they don’t accidentally release during normal passage or storms.

    Most ships are still fitted with self-release life rafts which are fitted with hydrostatic lines that, if the boat was to sink, the raft would be able to break free, inflate, and rocket to the surface if the ship sinks below a certain depth. These are very common on pleasure craft where the boat can sink quickly and may sink before the crew has a change to prepare the raft.