tal @ tal @kbin.social

Trying a switch to tal@lemmy.today, at least for a while, due to recent kbi

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2 yr. ago

Heh. Well, even if one takes a really hard-cynical position like that, it'd probably be preferable to have it fixed than ignored. I'm saying that the UK isn't unique in using it, but is unusual in the attention being paid to it.

predicted lifetime of 30 years

My understanding is that the reduced 30 year lifetime was something determined in the 1990s after the material had already been used in construction for some decades, that the short estimate was based on the rate of degradation observed. That is, the basic problem wasn't people intentionally choosing a material that they knew to have a short lifetime, but in a new, experimental material having some serious issues that weren't originally recognized when it started being used.

This article is from a few weeks back, but it includes more technical details on the RAAC problems than the other news articles I could find.

One point I'd make from an earlier thread on the topic -- it sounds like RAAC panels were used in a number of countries. It may be that the UK is particularly affected due to having quite a bit of rain -- it's moisture that does the damage.

But it may also be that the UK is being relatively-proactive. Almost all the articles I see talking about this are in the UK. I wasn't able to find articles elsewhere saying "yeah, we looked into this, but it's not an issue in our country because X".

We don't use it much in the US, but it looks like there is at least some out there, and I haven't seen articles here saying "yeah, this is what the Brits are worried about, and we identified the buildings where it was present here and have determined that it's not a problem".

And use of the stuff is apparently common in mainland Europe, and I see no (English-language) news articles on it there.

So it may well be that the British response -- whether it should have been faster or not -- is, in fact, the response that's actually moving the most-quickly.

I'd never heard the term either here in the US.

Apparently a "bully" is a pitbull/bulldog cross, and XL is a larger variety.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bf/92/b1/bf92b1629618d2bb2fe193c46db17478.png

"This guy is definitely AI."

I'm kind of surprised that The Sims doesn't have more competition.

It's been many years that the series has been kind of the only entry in the genre.

Yeah, a lot of the other classic Sim games don't have analogs either (though Sim City does), but The Sims is pretty commercially successful.

Playstation tends to cater to people who like turn based games, aka interactive slideshows.

Huh.

I'm a few generations out of date on consoles, but I was kind of disappointed with console turn-based games.

I normally think of the PC as the place to go, because the mouse and high resolution are often good partners for that.

Turn-based strategy games, stuff like Paradox titles especially seemed to be a PC thing.

Do you mean relative to the other console platforms, or relative to all other platforms in general? If so, what titles?

Maybe turn-based RPGs or something, stuff in the vein of Final Fantasy? Is that what you mean?

Brutalism was also a thing in that period, and that had a lot of externally-visible concrete. But I don't know if that specifically was linked to this particular RAAC stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalistarchitecture

Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era.[1][2][3] Brutalist buildings are characterised by minimalist constructions that showcase the bare building materials and structural elements over decorative design.[4][5] The style commonly makes use of exposed, unpainted concrete or brick, angular geometric shapes and a predominantly monochrome colour palette;[6][5] other materials, such as steel, timber, and glass, are also featured.[7]

In the United Kingdom, brutalism was featured in the design of utilitarian, low-cost social housing influenced by socialist principles and soon spread to other regions around the world.[4][5][14] Brutalist designs became most commonly used in the design of institutional buildings, such as universities, libraries, courts, and city halls. The popularity of the movement began to decline in the late 1970s, with some associating the style with urban decay and totalitarianism.[5]

Looking at the one identified school which has had a collapse so far, Singlewell Primary in Kent, it looks like single-story brick buildings to my quick glance. Not Brutalist.

https://www.ablecanopies.co.uk/installations/singlewell-primary-school-second-installation/

We have definitely built concrete structures that have lasted a lot longer than 30 years. This was a very particular form of concrete construction that was apparently only a few decades old when the issues were discovered.

I mean, building one form of concrete structure doesn't give us a complete understanding of every possible new variant invented and their tradeoffs.

and know the service life.

According to other articles that I linked to in this thread, the problem was only discovered in the 1990s, that the stuff had a relatively short lifetime.

Europe by in large deforested itself into leaving stone as the only affordable solution left and only then switched off timber framed homes.

The UK does import timber, though I imagine that greater distance adds cost.

https://www.eastcoastfencing.com/news/where-does-most-timber-in-the-uk-come-from

Says that Sweden is currently the largest single source.

Oops, thanks, yes.

In Fallout 4 and Skyrim, modders did ultimately put out high-poly-count heads, high-detail eyes, etc. I imagine that if tradition holds, there will be modders doing the same in Skyrim.

Right, which is why I favor the 100Wh battery.

I have a Thinkpad that has both the USB C and the traditional Thinkpad charging port.

I normally just use the USB C port, but I do like having both available.

Even if the connector in my laptop broke, there’s second one that I only used few times

Unless your Thinkpad and mine differ -- and maybe they do, given that mine has both the traditional and USB C charging ports, so a total of two -- only one of the USB C ports can charge the laptop. On mine, both USB C ports can do USB PD, but one is in/out and the other is out only.

I want a big, swapable battery that uses 18650 cells,

I mean, me too. I think that having less than a 100 Wh battery is nuts, but it's essentially impossible to find them.

I think that a couple of things have killed this:

• Cost. Cutting battery size is an easy way to cut cost, and it's less-explicit than, say, cutting RAM, as vendors often list a non-standardized "hours of battery life".
• USB PD plus external power stations. I think the expectation is that one will get one and having the user just use external ports makes life easier for the vendor and means that they don't need to deal with counterfeit batteries and such. Also moves heat out of the laptop. I would be more sympathetic to this if there were a standard for a laptop to start automatically drawing from an external USB powerstation when its internal battery gets low, rather than requiring manually-triggering charging.
• Weight. Apparently some people are super-rabid about laptop weight.

Honestly, I think that that has less to do with the connector itself and more because the power cord gets yanked.

I'd assume that you could get a similar effect with any connector, USB included. Well, Apple's MagSafe ones maybe not, as that'll just pull the cord away.

I do kind of wonder whether it would have been cheaper to, back then, go through and seal all of this stuff against moisture, if that is possible. It sounds like what kills it is exposure to moisture.

If they're already starting to collapse and inspections are finding a lot of instances of degraded concrete, though, I assume that it's too late for that.

EDIT: It also sounds like the stuff has been widely used in mainland Europe, not just the UK. I don't know whether the UK being particularly rainy might be a factor, but if the UK is seeing serious problems now, then it might be worth taking a look at usage in mainland Europe as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcedautoclavedaeratedconcrete

RAAC was used in roof, floor and wall construction due to its lighter weight and lower cost compared to regular concrete,[1] and has good fire resistance properties; it does not require plastering to achieve good fire resistance and fire does not cause spalls.[2] RAAC was used predominantly in public-sector construction in Europe, in buildings constructed since the mid-1950s.[3][4] RAAC elements have also been used in Japan as walling units owing to their good behaviour in seismic conditions.[5]

Reading some other articles, it sounds like we in the US and the Canucks do have some as well, but not much, mostly because apparently wood is cheaply available and dominates as a material, and the American construction industry isn't very familiar with use of AAC. There is only one small (13 person) US factory that produces the stuff, in Haines City, Florida.

https://www.resilientdesign.org/aac-an-ideal-material-for-resilient-buildings/

It’s no secret that autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) has struggled to gain a foothold in North America. AAC is in widespread use in Europe, Mexico, and much of the world, but it has had trouble competing against wood-frame building here in the United States and Canada.

I couldn't find reference to specifically the reinforced form (RAAC) in the US, but looking at the factory's webpage, they list reinforced AAC roof panels as one variant that they can provide, so I assume that they must have sold some.

and they wear out faster too

The part that wears out is the thing that maintains tension, and that is on the (cheaper, replaceable) cable for USB.

My understanding that this issue was part of why the move away from mini-USB to micro-USB and later USB-C happened. Mini-USB had the tensioning gizmo on the device, rather than on the cable.

googles

Yeah.

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/18552/why-was-mini-usb-deprecated-in-favor-of-micro-usb

Why Micro types offer better durability?

Accomplished by moving leaf-spring from the PCB receptacle to plug, the most-stressed part is now on the cable side of the connection. Inexpensive cable bears most wear instead of the µUSB device.