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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: 3, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Monday November 28 2016, @08:11PM
I guess this site is going downhill, all articles with a decent comment volume seem to devolve into us vs. them bullshit. I've been disengaging more and more as it has become clear that there is a certain segment of the user base that brigades every article. This no doubt causes some glee for the more trollish among us, but if the trend continues then this site will just become another echo chamber.
Perhaps that is the point? Subversion of discussion by making the medium intolerable... It is like a twisted marketing strategy.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @08:34PM
This is offtopic. I was going to mod you as such. However, I am going to agree also. My visits here are shorter and shorter. Today is the first time I have been here in 3 days. Not much had changed either. My visits to the green site are also becoming shorter and shorter. The only reason I do not have a lower id number is because I do not always comment. By the time I wanted to it had been a few weeks.
Right now most discussions devolve into little more than shouting matches between two flavors of ice cream.
To anyone who reads this. Politics is easy to have an opinion on. We all have one. Just because someone does not exactly align to your world view is no reason to deride them or subject them to the mental abuse that is being throw around here and on the rest of the net.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Monday November 28 2016, @08:41PM
I was going to have the subject be "Offtopic" but forgot to change it.
Arguments over politics are fine, hopefully people can avoid the simple ad hominem stuff.
My big gripe is that political opinions are leaking into nearly every story, opinionated garbage (ad hominem type stuff) gets modded insightful or informative, and then a big chunk of the discussion devolves into dealing with such low level stuff.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @09:48PM
This is offtopic. I was going to mod you as such.
You know what? Fuck you.
On the one hand, there is a meta discussion surrounding the topic at hand, but as it is tangential, it is offtopic? Really? I would have thought discussing vitamin C absorption would have been offtopic, but no, apparently how politics shapes views on a story, and why some are disenchanted by it is. I would say piss-poor modding is as much of a problem than any political bent. Have you read the guidelines for modding? What a tenuous claim.
On the other hand, since you agree, it is suddenly on topic, you hypocrite. You're no better than those you criticize really, just you are oblivious to your own political bent.
Fuck you. You are a major reason why discourse has become inflamed, you self-righteous lout. It isn't so much that people argue forcefully, but that they disagree with you.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Monday November 28 2016, @09:05PM
Perhaps your lamentation applies to a lot more than just Soylent news? I myself notice that the divide runs extremely deep, and through families as well. Good luck getting away from it. Up here in Northern California there aren't many Trump supporters brave enough to be one in public, but that doesn't matter. *Everything* now is about us vs. them, everything is colored by the election, and what Trump started (a nasty divide) isn't going to heal itself magically on Jan 20th. Every day goes past up here is one more day of an organizing drive, one more day of protests, one more day with boycotts, etc. Trump was a child that started a fire without even thinking about how to put it out, nor does he give any indication that he cares to unify *anyone* other than his business interests with calls to Argentina and the UK.
I too miss simple discussions about technology and our search for truth, occasionally disrupted by the politics of technology. This site decided to embrace a wider vision of our world, and to our great lamentations, that world is just full of hateful shit that infects everything with its black avaricious touch. If anything we were quite isolated in our tech only world.
Our country has died, and we're now entering the phase where the maggots squirm their way through what is left of the country and its resources. After their king anoints them of course. Nothing in the last 3 weeks has given Democrats and Progressives, and all good people basically, anything but apocalyptic visions of the future administration with a president so immature he needs to still attack people on Twitter. Seriously, he has better things to do and can't put on the big boy pants yet. That's objective, because despite labels, I'm not, nor have ever been, a member of any political party. That fuckwad still can't get off Twitter and he's now the fucking President elect attacking a group of thespians for singling out the VP elect. Unfortunately, we can't call out Trump as the legitimately mentally unbalanced and retarded sociopath that he is, because that can only be political right? None of his stupidity should be reviled on a bipartisan basis even though it in every practical manner destroyed the Republican party? Killing social security and medicare is that side prepping nukes and announcing their gleeful intention to fire them.
I'd say the best we could hope for is a crippling recession while we hang on till the next election. Although considering how corrupt both sides have proved to be, along with Russian involvement in our politics to this extent, fairly proves we have no reason to have hope in the processes that run our society. If anything, Soylent should take a cue from Hell's Kitchen and institute a "no politics unless you want your ass kicked" policy. That would make it easier for me to get along so that I don't have to hear the utterly vile crap spewed out of the mouths of some people here. Even then I doubt it. I'm not going to stay silent when some ignorant fuck attacks the Constitution, and I'm sure that ignorant fuck feels the same about me. How do we discuss things that have left us so profoundly divided as a country? Is everyone here *really* better than that?
Sadly, I don't think there is any way to put us back together again. We're "30 seconds from midnight" on that clock, the one that represents the final shattering of America. It's both sides too. I start things to be sure, but a lot of times I get there "after the party started" with vile comments about liberals tears coming from people too stupid to realize they're in the same boat with those liberals, and the reasons for the tears are shared. It's brigades from both sides. Vile monkeys on one side celebrating a hollow Pyrrhic victory, and a pissed-off demoralized and now militant other side determined to hold the line at all costs.
Our country has gone downhill, and you're noticing the fetid squalor that is our lives now
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Monday November 28 2016, @09:35PM
I agree with your post, and the divide sneaks up on us:
Nothing in the last 3 weeks has given Democrats and Progressives, and all good people basically
I guess its human nature, as you say both sides are worked up and we'll just have to see if it passes. It is up to each person to try and contain their inner troll and it would help if people ask more questions when their post is attacked. I had a heated argument going on and finally just asked the other person what the various points of disagreement are from their perspective. Turned out we didn't disagree as much as we thought.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29 2016, @04:10AM
Imagine that all this comes from Trump trying to get a better deal for his TV reality, and never accepting to retreat once "running for president" started to roll. That is what Micheal Moore claims http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/trump-self-sabotage_b_11545026.html [huffingtonpost.com] and even with selfsabotaging, he got the job.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29 2016, @04:23AM
I know it's hard for you to imagine, but there are people from other countries reading this site. I am one of those. Pardon my french, but I will shit over your sacred Constitution any day I please, at least as long as the politicians of your country assert that its protections only apply to your own people and everyone else is fair game to be shit all over anytime. While in extension of the former, asserting that the projection of force into all the rest of the world by means of diplomatic and economic pressure, military intervention, global surveillance and cloak-and-dagger operations including and up to ousting democratically elected leaders of sovereign foreign nations is not only justified, but the moral imperative of the exceptional people of the US of A.
But niceties aside: From where I am standing, Trump winning the US election is the best possible outcome. Why? Hillary's record from her time as a secretary of state shows quite clearly what direction the world would have taken with her in the oval office. Hint: it involves more bombs, drones, cloak and dagger and more surveillance. It involves more playing High Noon with Russia (which in itself convinces me that the lady is a psychopath).
Trump on the other hand, will keep your country busy. Maybe he will be the catalyst that forges a real, believable opposition, outside of your ridiculous fig-leaf two-party system. Regardless, he will keep your country too busy to go start fires everywhere else in the world for your own benefit.
I genuinely wish you all the best for the upcoming four years. If you are upset with Trump so much, go support a party that has neither a Donkey or an Elephant as a mascot. Maybe, finally, we in the rest of the world will see the promised CHANGE, HOPE, etc. Maybe Trump will even be a Nobel Peace Prize laureate (tee hee hee). How do you say? Good luck and godsppeed!
(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~
(Score: 1) by jasperhw on Monday November 28 2016, @09:51PM
This * 1,000,000. If it's not overly politicized comments that have little or nothing to do with the story, it's dumb millennial bashing (I'm not one) that seemingly derails the discussion on every story.
I had massive hopes for this site when it launched, and IMO, the community has become more repetitive and less insightful than the green site.
The interesting thing with both is most of the garbage is being spewed out by extremely low UIDs.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Monday November 28 2016, @10:11PM
I think that is an effect from how the site was founded. People were search of a place where they could talk freely, and the most unhappy users were the ones with unpopular opinions. The independent do-it-yourself attitude is often accompanied by a lack of compassion and understanding for folks who are not so easily able to bootstrap themselves.
It is a great example of how an echo chamber gets formed, gather a small group of very vocal like minded people and just spew the same viewpoints 24/7. Turn everything into an ad-hominem attack and generally make people you don't like as uncomfortable as possible. This would be fixed pretty quick if the lurkers would log in and add their support when the garbage is being dumped. I've hopped in to defend statements by some of the worst trolls on this site when they actually made a good point, but I'm having regrets since I have yet to see any of the more conservative base do the same.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Monday November 28 2016, @10:35PM
I suspect much of the problem is down to a single poster, who spews vile vitriol. I suspect that this poster is destroying Soylent News through his frequent rants, which can only serve to put off other posters.
I think that this poster's moderation history should be investigated, since his posts are frequently up-modded. I find it hard to believe that these up-mods are given by real readers of Soylent News. Perhaps he has some other accounts that are used only for the purpose of up-modding his rants?
You all know who I am discussing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @10:57PM
Yup! I've wondered about that myself, the trend has been pretty visible recently. It could also simply be a brigade effect from the conservative base. The irony in using such tricks is pretty thick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29 2016, @02:01AM
1. Get rid of anonymous posting.
2. Allow only positive moderation.
3. Moderation is not anonymous.
(Score: 3, Touché) by martyb on Tuesday November 29 2016, @02:31AM
Irony: an anonymous comment suggesting the banning of anonymous comments.
Wit is intellect, dancing.