ivanvector

@ivanvector@piefed.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't urban/suburban streets and roads use a center storm channel?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not a civil engineer but did some civil engineering in university and have a bit of an interest in urban planning. Still, I’m mostly guessing.

  Regardless of where storm drains are placed on a street, they don’t have infinite capacity. In a heavy enough rainfall event, they will flood. The placement or frequency of drains isn’t the limiting factor, it’s the outlet capacity. In nature, rain falls on the ground and is absorbed, and finds its way into the watercourse slowly. In urban areas, storm drains gather up rainfall over a wide area and channel it towards the watercourse much more quickly, and if that outflow isn’t controlled it can lead to catastrophic flooding and erosion downstream. Look up 1952’s Hurricane Hazel and its effects on Toronto for what that looks like. If more rainfall flows into the system than the outlet can handle, there’s nowhere else for the water to go and the drains flood.

  With a crowned profile and drainage at the sides, excess water will pool only up to the height of the gutter before overflowing and finding ground or another low spot away from the road, so the road will only be partially obstructed at least until the flooding is much worse (and by then you’re probably well into an evacuation). If the road were sloping towards drainage at the centre, then floodwater fills the entire road basin before overflowing, and your road is blocked, and stays blocked until the drains can take the water again, long after the rain has stopped. Blocked roads make managing an emergency much more complicated.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My Bluetooth is turned off on my Windows 11 pc but the Bluetooth mouse still works. How is that possible if Bluetooth is turned off?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re using the dongle that came with the mouse, that’s a proprietary wireless connection made between the mouse and the dongle. The device your computer sees is the dongle, which is connected to the computer via physical USB connection. It doesn’t use the computer’s Bluetooth radio, so turning off Bluetooth doesn’t affect it.

  If you want to test if your computer’s Bluetooth is truly off, you can probably find a Bluetooth device sniffing app and see if it detects your computer when you’ve disabled it, but I don’t know of one to suggest. You can pretty well trust that if you’ve turned it off in software, it’s off.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you avoid AI music?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I only sub to Deezer, a French streaming service that actively filters AI music and blocks it from their algorithms and search results.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nvidia Announces DLSS 5, and it adds... An AI slop filter over your game⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ahh, I remember the first time I heard the intro music to Star Control through my Sound Blaster instead of through my motherboard’s piezo speaker. Like the audio version of The Wizard Of Oz switching to colour.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I am only now discovering the sheer addictiveness of Sid Meier's Civilization.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you enjoy the original Civilization, be sure to try out Freeciv. Basically the original game but with expanded gameplay and updated for compatibility. It’s OpenTTD to Transport Tycoon, if you’re familiar with those games. It also has multiplayer features, and there are sites that run turn-per-day MMO events.