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San Francisco's 58-Story Millennium Tower Seen Sinking From Space (sfgate.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGate: Engineers in San Francisco have tunneled underground to try and understand the sinking of the 58-story Millennium Tower. Now comes an analysis from space. The European Space Agency has released detailed data from satellite imagery that shows the skyscraper in San Francisco's financial district is continuing to sink at a steady rate -- and perhaps faster than previously known. The luxury high-rise that opened its doors in 2009 has been dubbed the Leaning Tower of San Francisco. It has sunk about 16 inches into landfill and is tilting several inches to the northwest. Engineers have estimated the building is sinking at a rate of about 1-inch per year. The Sentinel-1 twin satellites show almost double that rate based on data collected from April 2015 to September 2016. The satellite data shows the Millennium Tower sunk 40 to 45 millimeters -- or 1.6 to 1.8 inches -- over a recent one-year period and almost double that amount -- 70 to 75 mm (2.6 to 2.9 inches) -- over its 17-month observation period, said Petar Marinkovic, founder and chief scientist of PPO Labs which analyzed the satellite's radar imagery for the ESA along with Norway-based research institute Norut. The Sentinel-1 study is not focused on the Millennium Tower but is part of a larger mission by the European Space Agency tracking urban ground movement around the world, and particularly subsidence "hotspots" in Europe, said Pierre Potin, Sentinel-1 mission manager for the ESA. The ESA decided to conduct regular observations of the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Hayward Fault, since it is prone to tectonic movement and earthquakes, said Potin, who is based in Italy. Data from the satellite, which is orbiting about 400 miles (700 kilometers) from the earth's surface, was recorded every 24 days. The building's developer, Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.
The new Pisa tower.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Happy or sad that is was not a Trump Tower?
Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.
fine prints: "As long as the earthquake tilts it straight and doesn't make it tilt more in the northwest direction"
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Gee, let's build a concrete, 58-story tower on top of landfill. No problem!
It's mortgaged up to the hilt, if Trump Tower did collapse he'd happily take the insurance and run.
Most of his businesses are mortgaged up to the hilt and beyond. It's all dodgy as f*** in there, Bernie Madoff numbers.
http://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/the-8-billion-dollar-man/
Trump tower had another $100 million mortgage taken out in 2012.
40 Wall street has $160 million mortgage against it at 5.71 percent interest, those most recent numbers show it generates $6.49 million in profits, to pay a $9.1 million in mortgage payment. i.e. he's not covering his mortgages.
It's a big mess in there, on the one hand he declared £3.3million from his Scottish golf resort in his election filing papers, but Companies house says he made a £1.1million *loss*.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3832893/Donald-Trump-s-Scottish-golf-courses-lost-9million-year.html
He borrowed $18 million last year against his Miami golf resort "Trump National Doral", bringing the disclosed borrowing (it might be more) to $125 million (to Deutsch Bank), yet his lawyer says its only worth $75.
http://therealdeal.com/miami/2016/08/22/trumps-doral-and-jupiter-resorts-tax-bills-under-scrutiny/
Gotta imagine that at some point regarding prices of litigation after a major catastrophe, prices of trying to come up with a fix, risks of total collapse, among several other things, a construction company might just decide to keep paying specialists, analysts and whatnot to keep denying the whole thing while they prepare to flee the country with as much money as possible.
I mean, a misstep of this level must involve a whole lot of people. Construction company aside, wouldn't governmental regulators and such end up caught in the mess if the worst happened?
They're checking the Hayward Fault? I hope they're also checking the San Andreas Fault, since it's a lot closer to SF. (The San Andreas Fault goes into the Pacific just south of SF. The Hayward Fault is east of the SF Bay.)
Not sure if trolling or not. Any building built on something other than bedrock is going to settle. Even a building build on bedrock could move up or down due to seismic activity. The settling is going to happen whether the soil is warmer or not, and most of the soil under a building isn't going to heat up very quickly because the Earth is like a big heat sink. Temperature changes very slowly under ground, and seasonal variations disappear as you go deeper.
In any event, the lean is a much bigger concern than the sinking. The lean is caused by non-uniform soil, not temperature. Either there's an underground stream they didn't know about, cavities on one side they didn't know about, or other excavations are causing problems as the owners have accused.
AGW? What's the C for?
And there will be much rejoicing.
In honor of the great Bill Hicks, I propose we name the resulting scenic landscape Arizona Bay.
Indeed. While the Millenium tower has remained stable and upright for thousands of years, proving the soil used to be fine, only as recently as 2009 it started to sink. This is defnitely man-made. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a few triggers to get triggered on.
who modded the troll up?
So if the Millennium Tower tips over in an earthquake, I guess it would fall into the building that's just northwest of it. I wonder if the people in that building know that the Millennium Tower is leaning toward it.
The building's developer, Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.
In this context, I would guess "developer" is used similarly to "business development" which means sales. Personally, I would prefer an engineer to make a safety assessment rather than a developer in the assumed context, but I could be wrong about context. I didn't see Millennium Partners engineering firms on the first page of a Google search, though.
Maybe they mean safe in a context similar to "perfectly safe" from Zaphod Plays It Safe.
Re:Developers say it is safe? What about engineers?
Don't you think that people have had enough of experts?
After the 6.3 earthquake in Christchurch, NZ, 22 February 2011, we can tell you that what you thought was safe, isnt... We had buildings that should have survived the quake, but didnt...
And then we had a 7.8 in Kaikoura, on November 25 2016...I wouldn't want to be within a mile of this building in an earthquake
Wow, mapping a buildings from space with millimeter accuracy. From an orbit 693km high. That's an accuracy of 1:100,000,000 while flying 24,000 km/h.. Crazy. And then imagine the capabilities of really good US satellites aren't even known because classified.
The ESA link to this story: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-1/Satellites_confirm_sinking_of_San_Francisco_tower
Almost as if God is punishing them for something....
just very, very slowly?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Almost as if God is punishing them for something....
Like the rampant drug use, loose morals and homosexuality perhaps?
Nah, the smug.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
The building's developer, Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.
In this context, I would guess "developer" is used similarly to "business development" which means sales. Personally, I would prefer an engineer to make a safety assessment rather than a developer in the assumed context, but I could be wrong about context. I didn't see Millennium Partners engineering firms on the first page of a Google search, though.
Maybe they mean safe in a context similar to "perfectly safe" from Zaphod Plays It Safe.
Look, it's safe until it's not okay, now shut up and get in there.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
I'd be very sad to see the armory go. That building has a tangible, real world value to me personally... very personally :D.
Submit a story and then STFU.
It's actually a self-secluding underground survival community for rich yuppies being deployed incrementally to save excavation cost.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
A more intelligent troll attempt than I would've credited a climate denier with. Well done.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Did you forget the HOSTS file bit? That formatting looks vaguely familiar...
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
God? Who? Which? Zeus? Thor?
Which fictional, made-up-by-humans God are you referring to?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
It makes perfect sense that the ignorant can convince the ignorant to ignore the educated. The race to the bottom is underway.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
The imagery looks like the actual measurements are LiDAR derived.
Similar levels of accuracy are available from the GPS system when differential GPS is used. More information about GPS here:
Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS) http://geodesy.noaa.gov/CORS/
It is rocket science, however today not surprising. The really hard part of this is that the data is available in near real time. See the Sentinel mission website
https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/missions.
Any time a building incurs settlement like this I wounder if the foundation layer - likely some sort of clay - is a thixotropic material potentially subject to liquefaction when shaken. Reference Jan. 17, 1995 Hyogo-Ken Nanbu Earthquake:Technical Paper on Liquifaction and,Earthquake Impact on Kobe
"When I started here, all there was was swamp. All the kings said I was daft to build a castle in a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. An' that's what your gonna get, lad -- the strongest castle in these islands."
Don't summon it from its basement lair, when you are 400lbs and have to waddle everywhere, it's hard work leaving your full time job of creating an ever larger hosts file, I mean really, who would trust a clown like Alex?
Because San Francisco.
You were expecting something intelligent from that city?
It has sunk about 16 inches...
errr, how many billion dollah landers are you going to smash into Mars before you start using the metric system? this is ridiculous.
sag
Has Guam flipped over yet? I'm just curious.
Om, nomnomnom...
So we can read about it next week after more posts about Trump?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Actually that's interesting because that means they can measure the movement of the satellite with such accuracy as well.
> denying, you dumbshits, until all of SF topples into the bay.
Oh that's scary! But what would really, really worry me would be if Austin was at risk, or the Clinton Presidential Library and Adult Book Store.
You guys have got to work on your fear mongering. The "dumbshits" you're screaming at aren't THAT worried about San Hippy Francisco. I suppose if San Francisco headed underwater some of the residents and their assless leather pants might come HERE, so that's a BIT worrying.
I'm sure the experts have thought of this, but don't see an answer: is the 16 inch sinking measured from the top of the tower, or from ground level?
In other words, does that measurement include settling within the 58 above-ground stories? I would think that a building that large would have some internal compaction over time, independent of the ground beneath it.
I presume that the ground surrounding the building is deformed downward with the building, otherwise the entrance threshold would have moved markedly compared to the street level. Road crews could probably identify pavement cracks in vaguely concentric rings around the building.
A real estate developer is a company to "develops" raw land into a building. They can perform many different services but always at minimum are the "project manager" for turning raw land or under developed land into the developed land (aka buildings).
Now you don't have to make incoherent guesses while acting like you know what you are talking about.
He wasn't talking about one of the made-up ones, idiot.
President-Elect Trump built his Golden Tower on solid gneiss basement rock, like all of the towers in Midtown. His penthouse will be there for 1000 years.
Of course it's safe, there's no doubt about that -- provided of course people believe in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ujRE2IkEIo
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
Whenever liberals are faced with a problem their solution is to pass a law forbidding that problem. They all then pat themselves on the back and feel good because they accomplished something and eliminated the problem. They have a group-hug, give themselves "Well Done!" trophies and "At least you tried and that's all that matters" awards and then walk away thinking the problem is suddenly gone.
So when the ultra-liberals that run California in general and the super-ultra-liberals of San Francisco are faced with the problem of a building sinking into the ground after being built on a land-fill, the obvious solution will be to outlaw the sinking of structures and then have the general population vote on a referendum to repeal the law of gravity. Yay! No more sinking buildings!
"Well of course the problem is solved - It's against the law now. I feel so good now. Hey, let's make that building into affordable housing and pay the rent for people who can't afford it."
This is false: "That does not make sense. Businesses are kept separate for a whole slew of legal and tax related reasons."
No that's not true. He doesn't have money in any of these organizations to lend.
Berkshire Hathaway is all internal loans. Each company within the group lends spare cash to other companies in the group at market rates, and thus earns the interest charged as profits, instead of that profit going to banks. Warren Buffet buys specifically insurance companies, because they're cash rich and can lend that cash to other companies in the group. Insurance premiums are paid up front, but liabilities on the premiums arrive later. Interest earned is kept within the group, simply returning to the Insurance company as profit. Rather than being paid out to a bank. That's what cash rich companies do.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/03/08/how-warren-buffett-borrows-77-billion-for-free.aspx
Currently Trump's companies shift revenue around. So investment money for one place, travels through the books as revenue in his other companies. Hence the 160% sudden increase in Miami National Doral revenue, without the corresponding increase in room rate or occupancy on that resort. That property is valued at $96 million, his lawyer says its only worth $75 million, yet it's borrowing is $125 million from Deutsch bank alone. A black hole of $50 million just comparing two different Trump company numbers and noticing the mismatch.
Same with the loss making Scottish golf resort, which he claims is profitable in the US figures he gave for that UK business, and yet makes a loss in the UK figures filed at companies house. Again two different numbers for the same thing files in two different places.
All of his businesses are like that. The mature New York buildings which should be debt free by now, are basically bankrupt. e.g. 40 Wall Street has $160 million mortgage, at 5.71 percent, i.e. $9.1 million mortgage and yet makes only $6.49 million profit. It doesn't make enough to service its debt.
So no one reacts when a braindead journalist writes that 40mm = 1 inches?
The building's developer, Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.
In this context, I would guess "developer" is used similarly to "business development" which means sales. Personally, I would prefer an engineer to make a safety assessment rather than a developer in the assumed context, but I could be wrong about context. I didn't see Millennium Partners engineering firms on the first page of a Google search, though.
Maybe they mean safe in a context similar to "perfectly safe" from Zaphod Plays It Safe.
Real estate developers are impeccably trustworthy, that's why we elected one as President. If the developer says it's safe, then it's safe!
Enigma
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APK
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APK
P.S.=> They're in addition to
https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9935673&cid=53393941
vs. LOSERS like you that don't stand behind their words hiding behind unidentifiable ac posts... apk
I just walked by the Tower and expected to see the foundation slab sunk below the level of the sidewalk, but nothing like that is visible, I wonder why?
There is a place I know where all the hipsters go. Its called Bedrock, twitch, twitch.
There's only so much flex the gas and water and all that can have.. isn't that a gas and/or water disaster waiting to happen?
"Hey, Bill, is the roof of this tunnel getting lower?"
learn to swim...
In this context, I would guess "developer" is used similarly to "business development" which means sales.
What "developer" means in any real estate-related context is the company that bought the land when it had something else (or nothing) on it, figured out a business case for what to build on that land, got the permits, borrowed the money, built the building(s) and assumed the risk/reward of trying to sell the resulting building space to people or companies. It doesn't refer to any specific business function within the company, because any sizeable real estate developer will have on staff (or contracted) any number of people ranging from architects to engineers to project managers to accountants to people who make the glossy "buy an apartment here" brochure.
When a news article says that "[Company] said that..." what they mean is that someone authorized by the company to make statements on the company's behalf. That could be anyone from the CEO or a board member to a lawyer to a PR person.
Long story short, a "developer" incorporates all the functions above, even if the person saying the words is more likely from the sales or marketing side. But there's no way in Hell they are saying things unsupported by their engineers, architects, regulatory staff and lawyers because making willingly false statements about a building's safety can expose you to undreamed-of liability in the case of a failure. Also - this is San Francisco we're talking about. Do you think there's any chance that a building of this size wasn't subject to years upon years of government reviews for safety, stability, environmental impact, community impact, infrastructure impact, etc. etc. etc.?
"95% of all Slashdot
Let's just pause for a moment and reflect that we even have the ability to measure the position of a building within a centimeter or so using satellites orbiting the Earth.
I find it astonishing.
Wouldn't make sense. The geology has been there for ages. People decided to set up a city in a known earthquake zone. Now, if it was lightning strikes or asteroid impacts maybe I could see your point.
They suck at Search Engine Optimization, or as the rest of the world calls it: SPAM!!!
Randomly posting advertisements within Slashdot disucssion threads? TNM Online Solutions thinks SPAMMING Slashdot threads is a valid form of advertising but in reality all they are capable is SPAMMING. Why would a "leading" company need to resort to SPAM????
The race to the bottom is underway.
Goddamn this race is boring. 1.5 inches a year! I think racing lichen would be more entertaining.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
See subject: That wasn't me & plenty of folks write the way I do but not many on /. produce works like mine (including you) APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?...
* Which the likes of Malwarebytes' folks even host & recommend... so, how about YOU?
APK
P.S.=> Answer = Not, lol - that's the price of hiding behind a FAKE NAME ONLINE weakly 'trolling' as you have (since all you are is a FAKE in LIFE (& you KNOW it, loser)... apk
Are American engineers really that stupid? They build a structure on unstable ground (such as a landfill) and now have no idea why the structure is settling. Important safety tip, never hire an American engineer to do anything more complicated than washing dishes or flipping burgers.
A headline on google news earlier said $7M in tax incentives.
Don't forget that they will only be on display for 50 of your Earth years so there's no use crying about it.
You try rereading, here I'll post it for ya:
"You are proving my original point. The ancestor post I replied to originally said that "the name suits the millennial generation quite well: ambition, arrogance, but wilfully ignorant and/or unaccepting of reality/logic/math." Every modern study I have read places alcohol at the top of the list of worst drugs, above cocaine and opiates. Here is a very readable article with the view points of experts collected. Alcohol is above crack and heroin. [vox.com] You are the one ignoring the facts. I am not being "self righteous." I am being regular righteous."
Where in there did he say or even imply you're a millennial? That part in quotes about "unaccepting of reality/logic/math" with his follow up of "You are the one ignoring the facts" is not implying you're a millennial. It's outright saying you're a hypocrite. And I know he's right because you're conservative. Conservatives are an "almost 1 in 1" hypocrite. Furthermore, they reject accepted education practices which in turn force me to spell this shit out to you because you have no reading comprehension skills. You probably didn't have room for those and the list of current football teams or it got written over with John 316.
On topic though, I agree with the AC. We have hard numbers to back up our claims and all you have are "the feels". You had a bad drug experience. I have known many myself, 3 of them are even dead. Wouldn't it have been nice in both our situations if hardcore drug use wasn't so stigmatized that these folks could have gotten effective treatment? The nearest drug rehab where I live is 1.5 hours away and it's just a shitty Bradford (a nationwide chain clinic) that is entirely over priced. The methadone clinic we had in the next county was shut down by the bible thumpers. And even if you DO have a selection of affordable rehab clinics, there is that problem about keeping your job. Your company may have some kind of employee assistance program thing going on, but if you use it, you get put on a shit list of multiple drug screenings per month and other annoying nonsense. I can also tell you, you'll be the first to go come layoff time and you can forget that promotion. I've tested this. I've been on this shit list and it was for nothing more than weed. It all gets treated the same. See if I attempt to get "assistance" again.