I first thought that too, but if you take the time to scroll down a bit, you'll see that the instruments are actually three separate screens, and at least the center one has a mechanical needle. Also, the central control panel has lots of physical switches (Musk would hate it) and even a round instrument in the top right corner with mechanical hands, which can be either a clock, a stopwatch or (for whatever reason) a compass. So definitely not an iPad put in a holder.
It would have been much better imho to for instance have lots of tiny screens embedded in the dashboard/console alongside their respective buttons. Each "app" gets their own toggle and physical dials. That would have been expensive and cool and could have been made not-tacky. (Like some cars are, expensive and cool but also without any class whatsoever, they look like a teenage gaming room.)
I think you've got that quote backwards. In full it reads:
> Unequally or unjustly, perhaps, as these laws sometimes operate, and imperfect as they appear to the Idealist, they are, nevertheless, like the highest type of man, the best and most valuable of all that humanity has yet accomplished.
Or (to shorten it a bit): "These laws (of capitalism) [...] are nevertheless [..] the best and most valuable of all that humanity has yet accomplished". So this is only an unlimited belief in the virtues of capitalism, not in the virtues of rich people.
From the introduction:
> Carnegie believed in giving wealth away during one’s lifetime, and this essay includes one of his most famous quotes, “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” Carnegie’s message continues to resonate with and inspire leaders and philanthropists around the world.
I really wonder what Carnegie would think about his successors dismantling USAID?
I believe the connection he was making was that the laws, results, and people profiting from the system all represent the best of humanity. That said, whether read forwards or backwards, the point still stands. I appreciate your attention to detail.
Great article! I have to admit I had also heard of "Rayleigh scattering", but didn't really know more than that, until today.
Actually, I liked it so much that I went to the homepage of the blog, only to find out that this is the only article. Oh well... I hope there will be more to come!
Cool project! Unfortunately our planet has this pesky (but very useful!) thing called atmosphere, which makes all these extra-long lines of sight only theoretical, I guess? Ok, the longest line of sight is mostly over the Taklamakan desert, so probably very dry air (which might however have some dust/sand in it), but still?
Well the record for the longest photographed line of sight is in the same region as our #3 longest line, at 483km https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/66661-lon... So not far off. And I think that even takes advantage of some favourable refraction. So not only might it be possible to see the longest view. But there may even be longer lines if we were to take into account extreme cases of refraction. Which is certainly something we'd love to try.
Wow, that's an impressive amount of dedication, but I guess you need that if you want to set a world record:
> He monitored weather conditions closely to find the right window and right location. After a lot of travelling he arrived at Aksu village. The village wasn't accessible by car due to snow and ice so he hiked to the summit. After 10 hours of climbing, he stood on the summit with moonlight providing enough light to set up his equipment. At midnight, he recalls that the temperature was around -12°C with winds around 8 m/s. He remained there all night capturing panoramic photos. Before sunrise, the wind picked up to roughly 20-25 m/s and the battle of capturing his world record image began. He planned to capture the image at sunrise to improve contrast and whilst he is pleased with the final result, he is already making plans for his next record-breaking image.
But still, that kinda confirms my observation about the pesky atmosphere: even with optimal weather conditions, he still needed the sun lighting up the sky behind the mountains just before sunrise, otherwise they would have blended in with the sky at the horizon...
This also applies for much shorter distances: despite what the publicity photos suggest, you can't see the Alps from Munich most of the time (or only as slightly darker shapes on the horizon), although they're "only" ~ 75 km away. You need really good weather to see them clearly...
> This also applies for much shorter distances: despite what the publicity photos suggest, you can't see the Alps from Munich most of the time (or only as slightly darker shapes on the horizon)
You won't usually see them from the ground of course but from a couple floors up with a clear line of sight you do see them quite often.
In the northwest of Munich we can see the alps quite often (around 100km from there), and sometimes they appear quite huge. It's due to the Föhn that makes the atmosphere act as a magnifying lens. Interestingly the explanation is not in the English Wikipedia
Putting on my pedantic hat, does this qualify as a picture of the mountains? As in, is there any light hitting the mountains, then hitting the film/sensor?
Is a silhouette not a "picture"? Perhaps "picture" isn't the best term to quibble over, since it is quite broad (arguably its primary use is referring to paintings or drawings).
But if we instead quibble over the term "photograph," I'd argue that a photograph of a silhouette of a mountain is absolutely a photograph of a mountain. Similarly, I'd argue that X-ray photography is indeed photography.
funny to know that the record has just been broken, the latest I knew of was by Roberto Antezana, astrophotographer from Universidad de Chile, capturing the Aconcagua (6950m) peak from Cordoba, Argentina, taking advantage of the peak's altitude and the Argentinian pampa (very flat grasslands), and of course, thorough planning + lucky cooperative weather [1] [2]; he was well known before from his long distance photos of the same peak from Valparaiso bay [3], I'm from Valparaiso and the times it was possible to see that peak with the naked eye given some perfect blue sky was truly overwhelming, since then I've been thinking about how to achieve such excursion planning heuristically from topographical data available. Congratulations on your project, I will look more into the technical details but looks amazing, beautiful art and technique!
Do the two points have to be on land? I would think since you can see the ocean from Aconcagua you'd be able to see all the way to the horizon and that would be the longest sightline
Out of the question. The higher up you are the farther the horizon, I wouldn't be surprised if the longest horizon is from Aconcagua. I have been at 18,000' on Kilimanjaro, the view was absolutely stunning. (But we were tourists, not mountaineers, and had no traction gear. At the time that meant progress became impossible very soon after sunrise. Now the ice has retreated so far that you can expect to summit by daylight without traction gear.)
But the longest possible view isn't to the horizon, it is to another point that can see the same spot of horizon on a reciprocal bearing. And ocean has no such points.
ok then, If I read you right, what counts is someone going and doing the actual seeing , VS drawing a line on a topigraphical map.
there are groups on another quest flying gliders into the high stratospher riding atmospheric waves rolling up against mountains who might also qualify for setting records for the longest possible views through the atmosphear, they got started buying surplus soviet space suits as that was what made attempts possible.
> I think roads lie at the heart of every city builder. It’s the fabric on which cities are built.
To paraphrase the article, this is what urban planners have nightmares about. Roads (as in: things made for cars) aren't the fabric of a city, streets (as in: things made not only for cars, but also for pedestrians, cyclists, public transport etc.) are. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad
I had never considered there is a difference between the two words, but Wikipedia backs it up:
> The word street is still sometimes used informally as a synonym for road, but city residents and urban planners draw a significant modern distinction: a road's main function is transportation, while streets facilitate public interaction.
Even with this clarification, though, I think you unfairly characterise the quote from the article. Modern society has an insane demand for transportation. Roads – the medium on which we transport things – are the fabric on which cities are built. Not just inside the cities, but the vast network of roads outside the city, that feed it.
Before the 1900s, we weren't able to build cities far from water because of their demand for transportation. We can today, and it is only because of roads we are able to do that.
I think American society is very much road-focussed, having lived there for a couple of decades. I think UK (and European in general) society is very much street-focussed.
A lot of that comes down to geography - the UK is a high-density population compared to the USA but the impact on our lives is significant. In the US, I would drive everywhere. Literally everywhere - to the shops, to the library, to the beach, everywhere. Yesterday I took my son to his archery practice, we walked along the coast road for about 20 minutes, and picked up a "Mr Whippy" 99er ice-cream (yes, even in the cold weather) along the walk back. It was pleasant, and healthier.
This may be true, but I think the points made in the comment you are responding to are nevertheless true for UK and European cities as well. Roads have been a fundamental part of the development of modern towns and cities throughout the Western world.
The United States emerged during a period of abundant frontier land, which normalized the idea that ordinary people could own large, independent plots. This contrasted sharply with Europe’s older, land-constrained settlement patterns. That early culture of space and ownership later interacted with industrialization, the automobile, and government policy to produce the low-density development that characterizes much of the U.S. today.
Another interesting fact about plot sizes in Europe: You can see within an area which kind of inheritance law was in place: If farming plots are large, usually the oldest son inherited everything. If they are small, they were evenly distributed.
The vast, _vast_ majority of such infrastructure was turn down in the 60s to make way for the almighty automobile.
The number of places in the north american continent that retain their street focused infrastructure is pretty much countable on one hand, and most of that is being terribly managed.
Boston is only horrendous in a car. Walking around and taking public transit in Boston is very nice. OTOH Providence feels like it's designed for cars, much easier to drive there but always need the car around and their highways and roads are terrible. There's a ton of highway to split the city. Worcester is less highway constricted but still definitely need a car to get around and I still can't figure my way around.
Horse-drawn carts are not any narrower than cars are, and many place (e.g., the Marina District of San Francisco) designed in the horse era have very wide streets.
Yeah, maybe I'm overly pedantic, but the author is also overly pedantic about the curvatures of streets/roads in games, so... :)
But, to continue with the pedantry: the Romans already built cities far from (navigable) water. There have been roads since antiquity, then since the mid 19th century it was first the railways that made it easy to transport passengers and goods over large distances. The current version of roads being the main/only form of transportation only came about in the 1950s.
Slight correction: It was the 1830s when the railroad arrived that we started to be able to build cities far from navigable water. (navigable is important - if your water can only support small boats your city will be smaller than if it can support large ships). Trucks in the 1900s allow the same thing, and have enough advantages that we would use them for smaller cities, but large cities are still going to get rail transportation. And water transport is still powerful enough that the largest cities still likely need it even though it isn't a strict requirement.
Not in other languages. In German, for example, it would very weird to think of railroads (Bahn/Eisenbahn/Bahnstrecke) as roads (Straßen). Would you also claim that a hedgehog is a pig?
Yes, but "Bahn" actually means "track", "path" or "lane". "Bahn" in the sense of "railroad" is an abbreviation of "Eisenbahn" (literal translation: "iron tracks"). So "Autobahn" has nothing to do with railroad, it just means "car track".
I believe they have referred to the transportation possibilities the water allows rather than the possibility to transport water (which was possible at scale way earlier)
> Before the 1900s, we weren't able to build cities far from water because of their demand for transportation.
Incorrect.
In the 1800s the train took off as a primary form of transportation. By 1869, we'd completed the first intercontinental railway in the US which ultimately opened up the economy between the east and west.
Sears flourished as a company because of the train.
It wasn't roads which ultimately opened up mass transport, it was rail. It wasn't until the 1950s that rail was ultimately de-prioritized and roads were prioritized.
Roads are important for a good transportation infrastructure. However, cities in north america are overreliant on them. In European cities public transit is also important and in my opinion even more important than roads. Cars are not useful in cities compared to public transit / bikes / walking if the city is designed for humans and not cars. ( and yes, you still need roads for delivery and people who sometimes have to transport heavy things).
There is a lot more than people to move around a city. Transit is more visible and yes europe does well there - but freight is less visible and europe isn't doing as well there.
> Modern society has an insane demand for transportation. Roads – the medium on which we transport things – are the fabric on which cities are built. Not just inside the cities, but the vast network of roads outside the city, that feed it.
This is a very American point of view IMO.
Cities are built on streets first and foremost. Otherwise you end up with strip malls separated by endless swaths of car parks.
As for transportation, we have to separate cargo from people, and inner city from inter-city.
For people inside the city you have multi-modal transport options. Walking, biking, busses, trams, subways, commuter trains, taxis, individual cars, ferries.
For intercity people you have trains, planes, boats, busses, individual cars.
Most inner city cargo can be handled by smaller trucks going from warehouses to specific places in the city. And for smaller cargo like mail I've even seen small scooters and cargo bikes.
For inter-city you once again have multi-modal transport (depending on the city). Trucks, rail, cargo planes, boats.
Even the US was built on railways, not on roads. Roads are the "backbone of cities" only if you make them one, as the US has done
The same insights still hold true for streets and paths. Of course a single human or even bicycle can move with fewer constraints than a car, but a stream of humans won't. When we design pedestrian infrastructure with sharp corners people either cut through on the inside, creating desire paths on unpaved surface, or the inside section that lies on the paved path but outside the circle-section-path becomes a low-traffic zone, a place where people sit down or put up food carts or whatever
In remembering that cities are not roads alone, but also streets, paths and tracks, there is a lot of potential for this approach to building all of them
Yep, good point. I am myself a huge fan of livable oriented infrastructure (bike lanes, pedestrian paths, public transportation) but the hard truth is that roads were initially designed for carriages and later for cars. A though I recurrently have is how would a city designed from scratch by a civilization that uses only bikes and walking look like?
Why should you use only bikes and walking? Cars/trucks have a role to play, it's just not the most efficient to move the majority of the people from one point to another. Simple examples: ambulances, firefighters, police, cranes.
True. I mostly meant not personal vehicles, so jut buses, trams etc. I supposed emergency services will use those dedicated lanes. or maybe civilization is so advanced those will be served via flying only. Idk just since fiction thinking.
I will just say the Streets of San Francisco were almost all built by civil engineering principles, even those from the 19th century. If you want some sim SF or NYC, this guy is on the right track by not having fakey roads.
Urban planners lose sleep over stroads for very good reasons but from a simulation and tooling perspective, streets still need a shared geometric backbone
I don't think that much is shared between streets and roads. Roads need all the details about curvature in the article so car traffic flows efficiently. Compare that to the beautiful but narrow streets of a Mediterranean town. Buildings are rarely parallel, angles are odd, but everything is on a human scale, and it just feels good to walk around.
Related to "Why So Many Control Rooms Were Seafoam Green" - Soviet designers apparently reached the same conclusion, but they applied it to aircraft cockpits instead of control rooms and used a slightly more blueish color: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/16434/why-are-r...
> I have mass-tested these systems so that you don’t have to, and I have the scars to show for it, and I am here to tell you: GitHub Actions is not good.
> Every CI system eventually becomes “a bunch of YAML.” I’ve been through the five stages of grief about it and emerged on the other side, diminished but functional.
> I understand the appeal. I have felt it myself, late at night, after the fourth failed workflow run in a row. The desire to burn down the YAML temple and return to the simple honest earth of #!/bin/bash and set -euo pipefail. To cast off the chains of marketplace actions and reusable workflows and just write the damn commands. It feels like liberation. It is not.
Ah yes, misery loves company! There's nothing like a good rant (preferably about a technology you have to use too, although you hate its guts) to brighten up your Friday...
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