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The ESA's web report discusses subsidence and (more rarely?) elevation of the earth's surface. It works especially well in cities, “down to millimetres. The technique works well with buildings because they better reflect the radar beam” They're studying the phenomenon worldwide.
The Sentinel-1 satellites have shown that the Millennium Tower skyscraper in the centre of San Francisco is sinking by a few centimetres a year. [...] Completed in 2009, the 58-storey Millennium Tower has recently been showing signs of sinking and tilting. Although the cause has not been pinpointed, it is believed that the movements are connected to the supporting piles not firmly resting on bedrock.
The Register succinctly summarizes the whole situation in this report:
It was expected to sink less than 10 inches during its lifetime. It's already slumped 16 inches, is listing a few inches to the northwest, and it could sink a further 31 inches. The European Space Agency today said its Sentinel-1 satellites, having scanned the city's surface, have found that the building is disappearing into the ground at a rate of a few centimetres a year.
The problem appears to be that it was not built all the way down to the bedrock, and instead is sitting on a concrete slab with piles that go down just 60 to 80-feet into an underlying layer of landfill. Lawsuits against the developers are, as expected, in flight.
It's alleged that the city's building inspectors knew back in 2009 that the tower was sinking but did nothing about it – not even alerting the public nor the apartments' owners. San Francisco magazine's Lauren Smiley and Joe Eskenazi have detailed this ongoing clusterfsck at length here; it's worth the read.
The Register article also provides a copy of the ESA's displacement map for San Francisco with the tower's location marked and provides a link to a higher-res map.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @09:18PM
Will become? For a range of topics, this site has been an echo chamber for quite a while. I stick around for the technical and science stories, and the fact that this place isn't covered in clickbait links. But woe be to those who question Our Lord and Savior Snowden's motives, or portray him in a less-than-saintful air, or those who comment that 99% of the police force are good, decent people, etc., etc., etc. The venom and scorn and downright nasty comments you'll get from the holier-than-thous who will cast aspersions upon your character and moral fiber all because you won't align yourself within their clearly marked black-and-white morality. If you were gay and on your way to the woman's clinic you'd get a friendlier treatment from the bible-thumpers than you get from the vocal friendlies around here.
For anyone whose knee-jerk reaction to a post is to call them a "shill", to you I say you need to emotionally grow up first before you should be allowed to participate in adult discussions.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Monday November 28 2016, @09:53PM
I've made comments about most police being OK, along with many other liberal-ish users around here and have never been attacked for it. The problem is that we have to address actual problems, not hide or avoid them. When you have a contrary opinion you have to be careful not to ignore valid points. If all you say is Snowden is a traitor that should be in prison then you will get a lot of angry comments. He unveiled serious crimes being committed by the US gov, and you have to address that fact along with any condemnations of the man. If you defend police departments you have to realize that there are many problems that need to be addressed, and glossing over them will get people angry.
For everyone on here: when you get venom and scorn try and take a minute to understand why someone got so mad and think about whether your personal opinion might have some flaws. Are you ignoring legitimate problems? Perhaps the person is only referring to a narrow example and you shouldn't take it as a generalization such as "all police are evil". Make an effort to drop the us vs. them mentality, often the person on the other side of the internet is somewhere in between the polarized sides.
Shills are real and a lot of us worry about such propaganda machines. Sometimes people are shills for free, they've bought some propaganda and they freely defend it. If you're called out as a shill for something, just address it. I was called out as a shill for corporate news media, it made me laugh and I responded appropriately and added that media manipulation/censorship is evil. Apparently my point was similar to your "not all cops are bad" and you just have to realize that people can get worked up on an issue. Don't ramp the argument up with an emotional counter-reaction.
Manage your emotional reactions, otherwise you are easily played and your contributions are easily ignored.
~Tilting at windmills~