Google/NASA/Maxar Images Reveal This Decade's Engineering Accomplishments As Seen From Space (freep.com) 18
USA Today wondered how this decade's new construction would look from space. "With the help of Maxar, a provider of advanced, space-based technology solutions, Google and NASA, we've taken many more steps back -- more than 300 miles above Earth to be exact."
As Apple stormed toward becoming one of the most valuable companies on the planet, its campus in Cupertino, California, took the shape of a dial on the original iPods -- the product that marked Apple's reemergence as tech leader at the turn of the century.
Apple's 175-acre, space-age architectural marvel stands out as a monument to tech. The same might be said for tourism, trade and energy about the ostentatious structures and engineering feats that emerged from the sands of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Thirteen of the largest buildings in the world were completed in Dubai -- the most in any city -- during the past decade, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
Their article also includes before-and-after pictures of disaster sites like Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactors and the California regions devasated by 2018's Camp Fire.
Apple's 175-acre, space-age architectural marvel stands out as a monument to tech. The same might be said for tourism, trade and energy about the ostentatious structures and engineering feats that emerged from the sands of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Thirteen of the largest buildings in the world were completed in Dubai -- the most in any city -- during the past decade, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
Their article also includes before-and-after pictures of disaster sites like Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactors and the California regions devasated by 2018's Camp Fire.
Alternative link? (Score:3)
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Repressive to whom? Individuals or privacy invading advertisers?
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So to willful low-rate prostitutes then. (Score:3)
People who are willing to sell away their privacy for peanuts and the smallest convenience possible.
Who hate the ones protecting their rights, even when they themselves are clearly incapable of it. Who don't care if they drag us down into their hellhole with them.
You know what? If you don't like it, you are free to leave, and go to your Mont Pellerin Society friends' libertarian-fascist model utopia, like Pinochet's Chile.
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US sites aren't really oblidged to follow GDPR for EU visitors, just like my web site doesn't need to observe Iranian laws, should someone from Iran visit it.
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Try the archive.org cache: https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.freep.com/in-depth/news/2019/12/27/climate-change-satellite-images-show-decade-changes/2749474001/ [archive.org]
Re:Alternative link? (Score:4, Informative)
First Image Looks Like "Hunger Games" Arena (Score:3)
When I went to TFA and saw the circular project at the top of the page the first thing that came into my mind was that they were showing the progression of building the arena described in "The Hunger Games".
Then I saw that it was the Apple campus and realized that I was right.
Engineering acomplishments (Score:2)
visible from space [forbesimg.com]
Apple is a tech leader? In what universe? (Score:2)
In this universe, they *use* tech. Inside their jewelry. Hiding it and making it hard to access. (Probably better, with its low quality.)
If they lead at anything, then at ripping off people with their glass beads. (Not that vanity people don't want that.)
Otherwise McDonalds is the leading grocer or farmer too.
A lot of this isn't impressive engineering, (Score:4, Insightful)
Mostly we're looking at examples of hubris.
Skyscrapers were a technical solution to an economic problem: some real estate is so expensive you have to put a huge number of people per square foot on them to justify tying up your capital in them. Tall buildings are a practical building form for a place like Manhattan, where building *out* is prohibitively expensive. Instead you build *up*, with all the impracticality and inconveniences that entails. Building a skyscraper city on the edge of a vast desert isn't sound engineering, it's wealth-signalling. They're just aping existing centers of wealth. They could have made their city a recreation of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the place from which we get our word "paradise". Instead they've made a copy of downtown Miami.
As for Apple? Opulent headquarters are a classic symptom of a company that's lost its way.
Building infrastructure on a remote, worthless island so you can stake territorial claims is a 19th Century view of national power and prestige. It's the same outdated colonial thinking that led Japan into WW2. Japan's military government thought they had to *subjugate* and *rule* a colonial empire in order to get resources for their economy and respect for their society. The reality is that people with mineral wealth in the ground really have nothing better to do with it than to dig it up and sell it to you. As for cultural prestige, the Japanese Manga industry has done more spread Japanese power than their military ever did.
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Skyscrapers can serve to improve 'efficiency' of a city by decreasing the average distance from A to B. Imagine a 50-floor skyscraper cut into individual floors, and spread those out as 1-floor buildings with roads, parks or waterways in between. On average, navigating that will take more time (and fuel, or parking space) than say, a 20-floor elevator ride. Same thing for a city centre with lots of skyscrapers close together vs. their contents spread out over a large area. Other possible benefits as well:
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You're ignoring the resources and time needed to move people in the z axis. Very tall buildings start to lose their economic value because they sacrifice floor space for elevators, or just take too long to get around.
Obviously in places they occur *naturally*, they happen because they're a good solution to local needs.