The Beer Can (2023)
Mood
thoughtful
Sentiment
positive
Category
science
Key topics
Antarctica
infrastructure
climate change
The post 'The Beer Can' discusses life and infrastructure at an Antarctic research station, sparking interest and fascination among readers about the unique challenges and stories behind living and working in such an extreme environment.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Very active discussionFirst comment
7h
Peak period
51
Day 3
Avg / period
18.3
Based on 55 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
10/1/2025, 7:51:24 AM
49d ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
10/1/2025, 2:33:33 PM
7h after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
51 comments in Day 3
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
10/5/2025, 1:59:19 AM
45d ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
Living in antarctica is one of our closest analogues to long-term space habitation.
He may or may not have been one of the last two people to ever set foot in the original McMurdo Station, before the weight of snow crushed it. Cool stories.
To some extend, I like these feelings also in some games (notably: Half Life, including Alyx and the remake Black Mesa).
Also - given current technology, both with both tech for scanning and creating models, and generative one - I would love to turn some real locations into "walking simulator games". As a side note, "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter" was based on a real location in Poland.
I wonder if growing up with particular kinds of video game experiences produces a particular affinity with certain situations in real life.
Could say that pretty much all of my projects have some kind of beer can or other.
The British and German stations (and perhaps others) use a different approach, standing on mobile legs that can be raised, allowing the snow foundation underneath to be built up:
https://youtu.be/LSCCi9ZhnZs?si=_nsyN5qfFeT-dCUa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6AfUJLtPcA
The British one can also be towed around if it needs to be somewhere else:
Really feels like old internet too.
The NEC allows conductor ampacity to be adjusted 1.2x if the ambient temp is below 50F, but that’s where the table stops, but I’m guessing lower temps would allow for even higher ampacities.
1.2x more ampacity would let you use #12s for a 30A circuit instead of #10s.
I worked in an ice cream factory (palletizer) before I think that was -30F and you had to wear these cooler suits, that was brutal with frozen nostrils
Edit, meant to add this: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01055-6
Browsing the site made me find the "Engineering for slow internet" article too, which appears to have been a big thing here lol. Very interesting! Dunno if Elon's Starlink already one-shotted that whole issue, but I imagined a whole remote access piece of software that could avoid a lot of the related pains ... Something across lines of remote sending low bitdepth very compressed images back, and only on user interaction, clicks / typing in the input fields working in "turns" instead of realtime-by-default. Constraining the bitrate even more, the returned data could be just rects with AI labeling them either "some graphic" or "text" with the text content of the image only being transmitted. The remote could also send basic updates based on reading the screen like "page loaded and visual of it has been static for x seconds" to avoid wasting any data.
Probably a good contender for "coldest stairwell on earth"
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