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Mistletoetoday at 5:08 AM4 repliesview on HN

I’ve often wondered why every good sidewalk I see has a WPA stamp on it from the 1930s and the modern ones are all crumbled and uneven.

https://share.gemini.google/5g0gxGyOmAPD


Replies

toasty228today at 7:02 AM

Don't you love it when gemini quotes an AI generated video with 83 views as a source of truth

show 1 reply
defrosttoday at 5:16 AM

.. and, also, ...

The folk of the 1930s were entirely capable of making poor quality concrete that barely lasted 30 years (source, my father, born 1935, still alive despite having mixed many a batch of concrete and having laboured).

The reason you don't see that walking about is that poor quality 1930s concrete was replace 50+ years ago.

TylerEtoday at 5:30 AM

Survivorship bias in action.

show 1 reply
Barbingtoday at 5:46 AM

Gemini 3 Flash?

Edit: if you were an expert in this field and that link saved you from typing, and you mentioned you could confirm every word, that’d make sense - I think those Flash models were tested as being as reliable as a coin flip in some hallucination test scenarios, so linking it’s like… eh do I wanna read potentially-only-plausible history?