Humor Random Comments Thread

[Urwumpe]

I'm just confused. Why doesn't he just teleport?
:lol: Sorry. Not that I'm an atheist (nor very religious, not that it matters), but I've had some nasty experiences with evangelical christians, and I love making fun of every religion-related ever since. especially since in some cases, it's quite easy

Well, jokes about religion are a tough topic. They can end up highly insulting. Like all jokes about groups.

I personally like a good joke about Christianity, because seriously: Not even God could make a spliff large enough that this mess called Christian Theology makes sense. Its laughable. But researching what made it so laughable makes you learn a lot about humans.

 

[IronRain]

So I'm trying to lose weight with the help from Weight Watchers. Since I like to be in beta's and help improving apps/services, I signed up for the beta and got it around 2 days later. After 3 days I had found my first bug and reported it through the in app form.

This was their response:

Beste Derk,

Hartelijk dank voor uw e-mail.

Wij zouden graag uw inloggegevens ontvangen zodat wij hierover navraag kunnen doen bij onze technische afdeling.

Translatation:

Hi Derk,

Thank you for your e-mail.

We would like to receive your login details so we can check this with our technical department

Of course, I responded that I find this a very strange response and that I will not provide my login credentials.
Within the hour, I got a reply:

Beste Derk,

Hartelijk dank voor uw e-mail.

Wij moeten u mededelen dat wij zonder uw inloggegevens niet kunnen inloggen in uw account en het ontstaan van dit probleem dan ook niet kunnen achterhalen.

Translation:

Hi Derk,

Thank you for your e-mail.

We have to inform you that without your login credentials, we cannot login to your account and search for the root cause of this problem

I seriously don't know how to react right now..

 

[Urwumpe]

I seriously don't know how to react right now..

"Oh, I see. I need to talk to an adult, can you get me one on the phone, please?"

 

[jedidia]

So I finally decided to give the old Atari ST space trading/exploration RPG Sundog a go, because it's one of the few games in the genre that has an excellent reputation that I've never played.

Turns out decent freeware Atari ST emulators are a bit rare, and the scaling iffy. But hey, Atari ST has the same native resolution as MS-DOS, and sre enough, there are Atari ST emulators for DOS. So now I'm running an Atari ST emulator inside Dosbox, because that seems to yield better results. Software is nothing but an endless stacking of technologies, after all :lol:

In any case, started the game, got out into the city in my space rover, parked it somewhere on the roadside, went into a few buildings to see what's what, found a few replacement parts I needed for my spaceship, went back to rover, got parking ticket. Might be in love... :lol:

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Finally caved and bought a box of Thin Mints from the local Girl Scout troop... Price hadn't changed in a few years, but there are ~20% fewer cookies in the box than I remember.

 

[Andy44]

So I just saw the movie Logan and went to imdb to talk about it only to find that imdb discussion forums have vanished. I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later; they never had enough moderators and every forum was becoming a troll fest.

Logan was good, BTW. Not perfect, but a fun watch.

 

[Fabri91]

Peugeot-Citroen agrees deal with GM to buy Vauxhall-Opel

And so ends the mainstream presence of GM in the European car market, with Opel having been part of GM since the 20s.

 

[Urwumpe]

Peugeot-Citroen agrees deal with GM to buy Vauxhall-Opel

And so ends the mainstream presence of GM in the European car market, with Opel having been part of GM since the 20s.

And Trump has finally a reason to complain that nobody drives a Chevy here. :lol: (But we still have Ford here in Cologne) Good luck to Opel, they will badly need it. For decades, they had been a good car manufacturer controlled by idiotic US managers (Their bad decisions nearly ruined Opel in the 90s, now it was slowly recovering from the madness and finally building good cars again)

The best time of Opel had clearly been the 70s and early 80s in Germany... With famous Rallye cars like the Ascona 400 and the Manta 400.

 

[Fabri91]

Ford is a bit different, though: Ford of Europe has always operated with a large degree of independence, and being headquartered in Cologne in some reviews Ford cars have also been described as "German".

Until a couple of years ago the Europen range was almost completely separate from the one in the US.

 

[steph]

It'll be interesting to see how the public perception changes , if it does at all. At least around here, we used to view Opel as a cheaper version of the VW.
WIth the latter, you had quality, but the part prices were insane. Opel was cheaper, but still offered reasonable quality and performance.
Anyway, I'm not even sure such a corporate maneuver influences the production line itself and the people designing the cars ..

 

[Fabri91]

Last time I talked about this with people who don't follow car-related news I found out that many were not aware at all of which brands belong to which one of the major groups, especially General Motors, there not being a "General Motors" automotive brand.

Almost nobody will care.

 

[Urwumpe]

Last time I talked about this with people who don't follow car-related news I found out that many were not aware at all of which brands belong to which one of the major groups, especially General Motors, there not being a "General Motors" automotive brand.

Almost nobody will care.

Its also much harder with the US car brands, since there are so many of them kept alive. Often, you find the same car under different brands. In Europe, people try to keep the brand more distinct, even of they are all the same car under the hood, like you have with Volkswagen-Seat-Skoda.

 

[Fabri91]

Eh, it's much less severe than it was decades ago. Ford-Lincoln is starting to have visibly different cars despite platform sharing going on, such as the Fusion-Continental couple.

Chrysler-Dodge only had the Caravan/Town-and-Country van completely shared, but the new generation appears to be sold only under the Chrysler brand, with the large RWD Dodge cars being quite distinct from the Chrysler 300 platform mate.

GM is probably the one selling the most badge-engineered cars, with many Buicks being Opels (and it'll be interesting to see how that brand's situation will change after the sale) and with GMC trucks being almost identical to their Chevrolet counterparts.

Two to three decades ago there were many more models which differed only by the badge and trim details.

 

[Andy44]

It's ironic that VW has become so expensive. The whole brand was build on being affordable.

As for Opel, I remember them being around the US back in the 70s when I was very little. My dad was a fan of German cars, VW in particular, but he had nothing nice to say about Opel. At some point I guess they stopped marketing them here; haven't seen one in ages.

When I was in the UK in the 90s I did notice Ford cars that had the same model name as their American counterparts but totally different body styles, the Ford Escort was one I seem to remember.

 

[Urwumpe]

It's ironic that VW has become so expensive. The whole brand was build on being affordable.

Well, this stopped somewhere in the 90s. I think the Piech era was mostly guilty of that, he wanted to "upgrade" Volkswagen to get the same status as the German luxury brands.

Now, you can get a VW Golf for the price of a Porsche... Well I'd take the VW Polo anyway (which you can now get for the price of a BMW E36), despite it now lacking the great drift abilities of the old 86C... :facepalm:

 

[Fabri91]

Yes, Opel cars haven't been sold as such in the US for decades, but you might have seen a Saturn Astra:

which was a rebadged Opel/Vauxhall Astra:

Or, for cars being sold now, you might have seen a Buick Regal:

which is a rebadged Opel/Vauxhall Insignia:

Same goes for the Buick Encore/Opel Mokka.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Meh. I prefer late '80s and early '90s Mazda pickup trucks and Honda Civics. Tough, reliable, easy to fix, and good handling. Plus, they're not nannymobiles like so many of today's cars.

 

[Urwumpe]

A 250 kg bomb from WW2 has been discovered in Düsseldorf, with an chemical delay fuze. This makes this bomb dangerous enough, that they are disarming it today, instead of a Sunday. The bomb was discovered by accident on a construction site yesterday. They need to evacuate 8000 people now and have to close two important highways (A44 and A52) and a railroad, which means that a massive traffic jam around Düsseldorf has to be expected, since the evacuation means that the airport can't be reached directly anymore. The bomb lies right between the highway crossing Düsseldorf-Nord and the exit Düsseldorf-Rath". The evacuation radius was extended from 500 meters to 1000 meters this night.

Once the evacuation is done, they will attempt to defuse the bomb this afternoon. The police has already announced that it is likely that they will need to explode the bomb on site, should it be impossible to remove the fuze mechanically. This mechanical removal is usually done with a so called "rocket clamp", the Orbiter way to remove a screw: Install two strong solid rocket motors at the fuze and rotate it so fast, that it is removed by brute force before any anti-taper device or the usual fuze mechanism can react.

A picture of such a "rocket clamp" can be seen here:

http://www.ruhrnachrichten.de/staed...mben-am-Westfalenpark-gefunden;art930,3170187

---------- Post added at 12:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:22 AM ----------

The defusing will begin on 13:00 local time. Lets hope all goes well, the last such bomb had to be detonated in Viersen, which resulted in severe damage to the buildings around, one building had to be demolished afterwards. In Viersen, the bomb had to be detonated because it had been already moved when it was discovered. Any small movement is enough to trigger the fuze, which means that the bomb can explode anytime in the next 144 hours, like it happened in Göttingen.

---------- Post added at 12:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:13 PM ----------

Not all people are evacuated right now, with 30 minutes left on the clock. But the fire department is optimistic to be done around 12:30.

 

[tl8]

How soon after they attempt a mechanical defusing would they detonate?

 

[Urwumpe]

How soon after they attempt a mechanical defusing would they detonate?

Well, the fuze would detonate pretty much instantly during this treatment.

Here is a simplified drawing of one of such fuzes (Usually you also have a lot of stuff there for making sure it is not that easily defuzed):

The trick is to get as much distance as possible between fuze and bomb in a very short time. That is achieved by those rocket clamps. You have essentially just milliseconds before the bolt inside the fuze triggers it by hitting the detonator. About 20 cm distance is already enough to make sure the detonator charge can't properly trigger the bomb anymore.

With the slightly less risky mechanical impact fuzes, the UXO teams use strong hydraulics for simply pulling the fuze out of its thread, should it be impossible to simply unscrew them.

This PDF file explains it a bit more in detail, the BDFWT is the organization of all UXO disarmers in Germany:

http://bdfwt.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/13_lzzdr_kw.pdf

The important rules for all bomb disposal workers when such a fuze is encountered, from this file:

• The safety of the disposal team is more important than economic interests of the population.
• The bomb disposer should only stay as short as possible and as long as necessary near the bomb
• Only have as much personal near the bomb as necessary
• Treat all bombs with the highest respect, bomb #999 just like bomb #1
• Plan the disposal with the highest care
• Prepare your tools well, so that nothing is missing and has to be reordered during a disposal
• If you are not sure, study the datasheets and disposal manuals or ask more knowledgeable coworkers.
• Never play the hero, you have only one life.
• Don't begin the defusing before all other people have left the danger zone.
• Never let other people (politicians, journalists, property owners) put you under pressure.
• You choose the radius of the evacuation zone and suggest it to the police. Should the police change the radius, let it be documented.
• Remote defusing is always better than manual defusing.
• Never move the bomb before it is defused. If it was already moved, respect the wait phases after each movement.
• Only issue press releases after defusing the bomb.
• Never lead uninvolved people to an armed bomb
• The disposer on site decides about the procedures. He should make use of the technical state of the art.

The aircraft at the nearby Düsseldorf airport are staying on the ground during the bomb disposal. The defusing was delayed to 14:00 because there are still people inside the evacuation zone.



For the statistic: This is the 89th UXO found in Düsseldorf since 1995 and the third one with a chemical delay fuze.

---------- Post added at 02:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:40 PM ----------

The UXO team has started to defuse the bomb.

---------- Post added at 02:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:12 PM ----------

For the record: The leading bomb disposal worker is named Jost Leisten (Nice to see a name there before something bad happens). He estimated the defusing to take about 90 minutes.

Putting a face to the name, the man with the fuze is Jost Leisten. He disarmed quite many bombs already, there are dozens of cases in this state of Germany where he disarmed UXOs since 2010 (That year is the earliest newspaper article with his name I can find, I am sure he started this job already earlier).

---------- Post added at 02:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:33 PM ----------

And: The bomb is disarmed, after just one hour.

---------- Post added at 03:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:54 PM ----------

The evacuation is now over, the people are brought back from the shelters to their homes. Trains are already resuming normal schedules.

Only one plane had to be redirected to Cologne-Bonn while the airport was closed.

---------- Post added at 03:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:20 PM ----------

The disarmed bomb before transporting it away for disposal: