
Engineering Pornography (2002) - wallflower
http://www.jwz.org/blog/2002/11/engineering-pornography/
======
chubot
Programmers occasionally have envy that civil engineering is "real
engineering", e.g. civil engineers know how to build a bridge and deliver it
on time. Whereas software engineers will come up with 1000 ways to build the
bridge, 10 of which work, and take 10x longer to build it. This article seems
like a good counterexample.

Like most failures, this is a systems failure. Someone engineered the hell out
of that cable. But they neglected to realize that it would be drawn through a
steel pipe.

"So, what went wrong? Varying load conditions in the three legs of the 3-phase
circuit caused tremendously strong and dynamic magnetic field changes. The
electromagnetic forces between the three conductors and the steel pipe (gack!)
cause the conduit to wiggle around inside the pipe."

The other lesson is that you shouldn't hyper-optimize locally, and instead
design for maintainability. I'm not sure what they were thinking when laying a
cable that requires experts to be flown in from the east coast to repair. The
simplest mechanisms are the ones that are the most easily repaired. The entire
article goes on in great length about how awe-inspiring the engineering of
this cable is, whereas I just see a bunch of complexity that probably didn't
need to be there. The 118 layers of paper tape, and the oil pumps, and so
forth. Surely there was a simpler solution. I'm sure after this failure and
the ones on the east coast, they are not still laying cables like this.

~~~
sbierwagen

      The entire article goes on in great length about how awe-inspiring the 
      engineering of this cable is, whereas I just see a bunch of complexity that 
      probably didn't need to be there. The 118 layers of paper tape, and the oil 
      pumps, and so forth. Surely there was a simpler solution.
    

[http://www.howtospotapsychopath.com/2010/03/10/today-on-
surf...](http://www.howtospotapsychopath.com/2010/03/10/today-on-surf-
celebrity-science-class/)

    
    
      Take care that you don't come down with "Engineers' Disease", though - the 
      tendency for people with a high level of technical knowledge to decide that 
      their knowledge must be applicable to specialised fields that they don't 
      actually know a lot about. 
    

You are a programmer, not an electrical engineer. Wild speculation regarding a
field you know little about is not attractive.

Allow me to reverse your statement.

"I don't see why programming for multicore processors has to be so complex.
Why not just run four copies of the program on all four cores?"

"I don't see why every web site makes you create a new account. Why not log
into everything with my facebook account?"

"I don't see why the legal system has to be so complex. Why not just have the
judge decide everything, and get rid of the lawyers?"

~~~
jrockway
_"I don't see why programming for multicore processors has to be so complex.
Why not just run four copies of the program on all four cores?"_

This is actually a good idea.

~~~
whatshisface
That only works if your program is a one-way pipe for data, like a graphics
card. Most programs need to communicate within themselves.

~~~
zurn
How about:

Message passing is more robust than the currently prevailing shared memory +
thread spaghetti practice. Many/most problems being attacked with the latter
approach can be reformulated to use message passing and looser coupling.

~~~
dsego
Tanenbaum, is that you?

------
ColinWright
Fascinating to look back at the reactions from when I posted this 500 days
ago. One person said:

    
    
        while this is a classic, my snark is thrashing against
        its bonds. I could have sworn it said 'news' up there.
    

And another:

    
    
        SENSATIONAL HEADLINE ALERT!!!
    

And that was it. No further comments to be had. Both those comments were
downvoted, but even so, interesting that no one else commented, and very few
voted for the submission.

For reference, the headline I used was:

    
    
        Engineering pornography - underground
        power cables gone wrong
    

... which I felt was more informative.

So on this submission, now even older, we have 16 comments (and counting) and
60 points (and counting). Has HN changed? I'm off to check some records ...

(pause)

A bit of hunting shows that this got at least one vote while still on the
"newest" page, but it looks like it never hit the front page, which will part
explain why it never got many comments or votes. Still, the tenor of the
comments is interesting. I continue to learn.

~~~
scott_s
As what becomes popular on HN has a large dosage of randomness, I would not
draw conclusions based on this one data point.

There was an interesting study from a few years ago that investigated what
factors make a song a hit. They seeded various songs with various levels of
initial popularity, and their general conclusion was that popularity begets
popularity. Hence, initial conditions matter a lot, and they are largely
random. (And if anyone can find that study, please let me know. I have tried
multiple times to find it, but I can't.)

~~~
hooande
Is this the study you had in mind?
[http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.p...](http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.pdf)

I read about a similar experiment in the book "Automate This" by yc alum
Christopher Steiner. They seeded a music website with unknown songs and it
turned out that whatever was liked first benefited from the Matthew Effect.
ie, people tend to like whatever is already labelled as "popular". Definitely
an interesting study, but I fear we've gone far off topic.

~~~
scott_s
I think it is. Thanks!

------
AYBABTME
I think the title doesn't describe properly this great article. I'm afraid it
might be turning away readers who would otherwise really enjoy the coolness of
this read!

The title can be read as "How to engineer pornography", at least that's how I
read it at first. OP might want to edit it to remove any ambiguity.

~~~
mhb
When it was originally submitted
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=193112>), it had the title _How to
repair a 230KV, 10 mile long coaxial power cable_. But I suppose that that
informative title would now be pedantically edited to the one you see here. As
well, without the link-bait version it might only have blinked through the
front page in 30 seconds.

~~~
AYBABTME
The last few hours have proven me wrong, the possibly-misleading title has
kept the article on the front page so far.

Interesting.

------
ajb
"They learned the hard way that you simply don't reverse the pumps lest you
get the Golden Bear [mineral oil] equivalent of water hammer".

Ouch. It must have been 'fun' finding that out. Another example of extreme
water hammer: <http://www.davros.org/misc/ambridge.html>

------
angersock
In case anybody is confused about the "paper tape", transformer paper is
likely what they're referring to (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_insulation_paper> ).

Having played with some back in school, it's this gnarly paper that is super
stiff, near invulnerable (to hand attempts at tearing and cutting), and really
really good at giving paper cuts. It's also somewhat fire retardant, if I
remember correctly.

So, it's not like the cable was wrapped in Christmas paper or something.

------
e40
I know I'll get downvoted for this, but I find jwz's site ridiculously hard to
read because of the color scheme. It really hurts my eyes.

~~~
Dylan16807
You don't need a voting disclaimer to talk about a color scheme, that just
wastes words.

What exactly hurts your eyes? Are you fine with light gray on black? I can
sort of understand disliking the amount of green, but if it's just because of
the black background then you probably having lighting issues in your setup.

~~~
Firehed
It's insanely high-contrast with a relatively light (thin) typeface and light-
on-dark. While I fear the idea of having that neon green as the background
instead as I may start glowing, having a slightly heavier font or a not-so-
extreme green would have been a lot easier to read. Even when I had a green-
on-black terminal it wasn't a problem, I believe because the font weight was a
bit heavier and physically deciphering the characters was less taxing.

------
pavel_lishin
> The thumper sends mondo-amp pulses into one end of the cable. The
> electromotive force tends to cause physical displacement of the conductors
> which you can hear from the street level.

That sounds amazing and terrifying, sort of like the engineering equivalent of
the old soviet dentists' belief that they have to poke cavities and judge
their location and severity by how badly the patient reacts.

~~~
langseth
We had a power short at $work this summer, with MUCH smaller wiring. They
brought in an Astro van filled will equipment to do the same fault finding.
Standing above the fault, as the Xcel lineman told me to, I could feel the
ground move. It was an interesting experience.

------
scheff
Am I the only person who was disappointed that this article was not about
"Taking an engineering approach to pornography"?

Wouldn't it be interesting to hear someone's lessons learned from using Lean
Startup and A/B testing when entering the porn industry to discover best
practices, instead of just using "Tried and True" methods?

Is porn an industry ripe for disruption?

I wonder if anyone has applied to YC with a pornography startup.

------
gvb
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIkNY5xjy5k> Youtube video of a 500KV
substation breaker popping - one of the three legs did not quench properly.
Impressive!

------
shmerl
_> That's where the LN-2 comes in. An elegant solution if you ask me._

It's quite a classic solution for subway construction and restoration in the
deep areas. In certain conditions, when tunnels get flooded with quicksand,
liquid nitrogen can be used to isolate them.

------
kiallmacinnes

        I have to reset my difficulty meter for engineering problems now.
    

I know how that commenter feels!

------
jason_adleberg
spoiler: there is no actual pornography in this link. just sayin

------
rootbear
Wow, I remember reading that back when it happened. Great story of some
amazing engineering.

------
bitdiddle
Love the symbolics.com address

------
bashzor
IT'S GREEN :|

<http://www.readability.com/articles/dcsyvhkh>

~~~
dbbolton
Anything other than #00ff00 on #000000 is apparently just not 1337 enough.
It's more important than people actually being able to read the content on
your site.

