7 comments

  • mauvehaus 50 minutes ago
    I love that seemingly random trades that we largely take for granted have these case studies that result in awards for things us muggles never think about.

    A garage I went to subscribed to a trade magazine for towing and recovery companies and left the issues in the waiting room. Sure enough, they had a recovery of the year type of award.

    • UltraSane 18 minutes ago
      I worked at a company that got a magazine dedicated to managed printing services.
      • cael450 10 minutes ago
        I used to work at a local paper that also ran a quarterly trade magazine on the chicken processing industry.
  • KingOfCoders 5 minutes ago
    I find things like this interesting, I guess everyone finds this normal but,

    "Power consumption is down 45% - 50% annually."

    Well is it 45 or 50? Is this a measurement or prediction or a random number? From an engineer or marketing? If prediction, why not saying so? Is this a range for several years depending on elevator usage?

    Things like this irk me a lot.

  • bluGill 11 minutes ago
    My first thought was probably overpriced, hard to use, non-standard garbage, but it looks nice so it wins an award.

    Turns out they are replacing the ancient non-standard stuff with modern standard stuff. How the ancients did it before we knew better is interesting - and you can't fault them for not knowing what we know now.

    By contrast, the web design is overpriced, hard to use, non-standard garbage. I'm sure that will win an aware despite being an example of how not to do web pages.

  • Uncle_Brumpus 46 minutes ago
    I guess it makes sense that there's an elevator of the year award, though it's never something I'd have thought of.

    The photo of one of the brake assembly components mounted to a welded tubular skid, bolted to a large structure of I-beams, bolted to another I-beam skid which is bolted to the floor, is tickling me as slightly humorous.

    • mysterydip 22 minutes ago
      “this is just temporary,” said the construction worker in 1907
      • bluGill 9 minutes ago
        I'm sure they thought it was a good idea given the constraints of the time. They also lacked a lot of modern knowledge and so couldn't do it the new way. Likely if someone had tried the new way at the time they would - rightly - criticism how unsafe and unreliable it would be. Modern engineering and electronics have made a lot of improvements in the last 120 years, which in turn makes the modern stuff a good choice now.
  • mysterydip 49 minutes ago
    My first thought was “there’s an elevator of the year award?” but reading it was fascinating. A lot of planning and work went into executing that modernization project from what was originally a fairly unique system. And 45-50% energy savings per year is a great ROI.
  • Simulacra 1 hour ago
    Related, one of the most fascinating articles I've ever read:

    Up and Then Down (2014) By Nick Paumgarten https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/21/up-and-then-do...