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Large explosion in Beirut... 23

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Yeah, so I click that entry, and a little box pops up, claiming to be Google Translate

tweet_bcukv5.png


TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
Hhuummm - Bags in storage for years. Warehouse adjacent to a grain storage silo. Lots of dirt and dust on the AN bags. Raging fire next door with small 'flashes' (explosions?) seen. Did this stir-up the dust? I wonder if a grain dust explosion worked as a detonator for all the AN.
 
Probably not; the AN requires fairly high and consistent heat to get going. If it were ANFO and appropriately dispersed, it would have been substantially more destructive, since ANFO has been characterized as the "poor man's" atomic bomb.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
Funny enough Sellafield had the EOD in to remove some peroxide which had changed state yesterday.

It was in the magnox processing site. Which is shutdown. They were doing a stock inventory and discovered it.
 
More about storage conditions.
Some explanations related to what is seen in TheBard's twitter tweet.
1 ton Bags, about 1/2 torn. AN was explosive grade (30% N), and was originally intended to be used my a company that does mining work. Once the bags are damaged, handling would be much more difficult.
 
Ironically, it's actually harder for me to do research on foreign sites these days, than say, about 10 years ago. While translation has gotten better, my company blocks certain countries outright, so I can't use the better translation because I can't even get to the webpages in the first place. 10 yr ago, I could search for, say, military decoys on Russian and Chinese websites, but not now. [curse]

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
Just face the fact that USA doesn't want its population to read anything which isn't controlled. Bit like the USSR. Some of us use VPN and dip around the world to dodge local constraints.
 
That's not how I see it by VPN country hopping.

What you see is extremely limited, I see one thing through the home network. I see completely different when logged through DC.

If I use a USA DNS it will kill off a whole range of sites compared to using a different DNS server. Some of them I understand due piracy issues but others it pure political pointing and its been getting worse over the last 6 months.
 
But anyway being an 90's British army royal engineer there is nothing surprising about so much fertiliser going off.

I was actually attached to a EOD regiment serving and we had we had a few incidents to deal with with said fertiliser which were a pain in the bum, It all got dealt with using a control burning. But I wasn't the BDO. But I think it was 8 tons of that stuff was burned using max 100kg triangles in Woolwich arsenal in a line linked. Took about 45 mins to burn the whole lot off. Its horrible stuff from memory

We looked after the hydraulic drill and steam generator. And the rest of the time shovelling and pig stick finder and general lugging gear about. It was good fun.
 
I still want to know. You are a responsible government, not the corrupt, faction ridden Lebanese version. An unseaworthy ship full of ammonium nitrate is parked in your harbour and the owners have fled. Obviously, someone has to feed the crew and send them home.

Can you take the ship 100km out to sea and scuttle it? It would be a fun naval target, as long as you all stand well back.

--
JHG
 
Hah! but, you'd also get an infinite number of close, but not close enough "translations" among a truckload of completely wrong translations.
Click to expand...
I may have been misunderstood.
Google translate is a computer running algorithms and using lookup tables to translate words and phrases.
I was speculating about running those algorithms manually as was done in the early years of NASA and its predecessor
by Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and the human computers that they worked with, calculating rocket trajectories.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
 
That's still partly the case with human operators; there is no "algorithm," per se. It's a machine learning as it goes, and it gets help from people correcting it when it makes idiomatic errors.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
IRstuff said:
...my company blocks certain countries outright...
Click to expand...

Needlessly hyperbolic of me to say this, but: surf the net on your own time!
But there is a pragmatic side to my point, which is, if you are wisely reluctant to explore shady websites from your home computer, why do you expect your employer to tolerate it?


 
I’d expect my employer to have a far better understanding of the threat level, to the corporate interests, then my ISP or malware blocker might have. There’s very little that if the corporate IT security monkeys say I shouldn’t look at that I’ll go around. When I’m in Europe and they think a restaurant with a name that implies alcohol should be blocked I’ll drop off the corporate VPN, otherwise I generally accept their assessment.
 
davidbeach said:
I’d expect my employer to have a far better understanding of the threat level, to the corporate interests, then my ISP or malware blocker might have. There’s very little that if the corporate IT security monkeys say I shouldn’t look at that I’ll go around. When I’m in Europe and they think a restaurant with a name that implies alcohol should be blocked I’ll drop off the corporate VPN, otherwise I generally accept their assessment.
Click to expand...
Wow that is alot of blind trust you seem to be placing in your employer.

Though I don't buy Alistair's arguments. You get different results by VPN hopping because of the advent of location targeting search results that has sprung up over the last decade or two. Twenty years ago if I typed in "pizza" into my search engine of choice I'd probably not get many results relevant to ordering a pizza in my local area. These days it is entirely different. You get results tailored to your location, their popularity, whether they are paid advertisers and possibly your own personal search history.

Alistair_Heaton said:
but others it pure political pointing and its been getting worse over the last 6 months.
Click to expand...
If you are finding results like this then the more likely explanation is given above rather than deliberate or overt political manipulation. Two good reasons for this:
1. It is hard to keep a conspiracy a secret in a relatively free country.
2. It is a simple theory to test and prove if there is overt political pointing or censorship.


But I think we are well off topic here.
 
No. I'd expect that viewing thing through the corporate VPN that they'd be erring on the side of blocking. Lots of examples that I won't list of site I wouldn't suspect that corp blocks. That's to corporate interests, as stated, not to what my own personal ISP might allow through. Not that corporate always gets it right, or that the personal ISP always gets it wrong. But I have certainly found the corporate system to be far more finicky than the personal ISP. I also don't go anywhere I'm unsure of; there's a whole lot of links here in Eng-Tips that I never follow up with; don't want to go there.
 
Can you take the ship 100km out to sea and scuttle it? It would be a fun naval target, as long as you all stand well back.

AN is a fertilizer, expect an algae bloom. Ammonia and nitrite (if there are pathways that degrade AN to these, I don't know) are poisonous to fish.

A responsible government with the confiscated ship in port would build or rent a bulk storage facility that's up the standard, be absolutely diligent with fire protection, auction off the AN and fine the vessels owner throw their nose.

A responsible government where the vessel owner has their residence or any assets, where the ship is registeres etc. would freeze the assets until all the fines and costs are sorted out.

AFAIK the owner had his money in Cyprus, ship sailed under a flag of convenience etc so part two was pretty much impossible.
 
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