News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Giant Ship Is Moved To and Fro to Break Suction: Suez Update by jasode on Monday March 29, 2021 @08:10AM (#26620410)
>I fail to understand why they didn't/don't use the tugboats to wash the water away. Even small boats can cause a lot of scour with their bow thrusters

If the following video explanation is accurate, a tugboat's turbulence can't scour down to ~50 ft depth of sand: https://youtu.be/zBvFuq7Mkzs?t=1m00s

I think the confusion we have with all these news reports is that we really don't have a definitive visualization or geometry of how its actually stuck in the sand that's accurate/authoritative. A bunch of overhead drone shots don't really reveal to us the true extent of the problem that's hidden underneath the waterline.

We just see words about tugboats arriving and water spraying so our instinct is to simplify the problem to "I don't understand why they can't just do <X>?!?"

EDIT to add informative deep link of how the ship got stuck mentioned by another thread: https://youtu.be/5iyn2q6s1Sk?t=4m28s

Re:Giant Ship Is Moved To and Fro to Break Suction: Suez Update by ryanjshaw on Monday March 29, 2021 @08:20AM (#26620485)
Here is an attempt to draw a cross-section of the situation: https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2021/03/26/suez-canal-s...
Re:Giant Ship Is Moved To and Fro to Break Suction: Suez Update by wussboy on Monday March 29, 2021 @10:25AM (#26622084)
Great link. That was the diagram I had been wanting to see.
Re:Giant Ship Is Moved To and Fro to Break Suction: Suez Update by a4isms on Monday March 29, 2021 @08:36AM (#26620614)
Tearing down Chesterton’s Fence:

"Don’t demand that people stop doing a thing until you fully understand why they think it was worth doing.

Only when you fully understand their perspective should you then argue with their specific reasoning."

Closing Chesterton’s Gate:

“Don’t ask rhetorically why people don’t simply do a thing, until you fully understand why they considered but rejected that thing.

Only when you fully understand their perspective should you then argue with their specific reasoning."

Re:Giant Ship Is Moved To and Fro to Break Suction: Suez Update by mncharity on Monday March 29, 2021 @10:25AM (#26622083)
> Don’t ask rhetorically why people don’t simply do a thing [emphasis mine]

Though asking with curiosity, humility and joy, can convert an "argument from failure of imagination" into a "It seems my understanding of the world isn't matching the world! Yay! Learning opportunity! Help me leverage this, let it not slip by unexploited, please?". Those can be wonderfully Aha! fruitful. First step of a bugfix is finding a failure case.

Re:Giant Ship Is Moved To and Fro to Break Suction: Suez Update by mdiesel on Monday March 29, 2021 @02:02PM (#26625764)
"Was it X that meant you couldn't do Y?" is the best way to phrase it if possible. It demonstrates an attempt, even if it's just a simple one, to understand it, and implies you have faith the other party haven't missed something obvious. Thinking of an X often answers the question for you, stops you looking stupid.

Every now and then, the reply is "that would have been a good idea actually" in which case you still get to look smart. So it's a win+win really.