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Comment by miiiiiike | Hacker News Reader

I live about two blocks away. The lights dimmed and one of our breakers flipped. Then it got bad. My phone suddenly lit up, brighter than the night's electric blue sky, as everyone I've ever known called and texted to ask about what was going on.

Nothing interesting. Astoria is a pretty great neighborhood tho. We have a 24-hour fruit market next to another 24-hour fruit market.

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What's the difference between the fruit stores? Is one better than the other or are they not directly comparable?

United Brothers and Elliniki are similar, basically identical. I don't actually know the history behind it. Probably something like a CVS setting up shop across the street from a Walgreens.

United Brothers is interesting. It's an institution, but the family's that owns it makes their real money from real estate now. And apples. Good apples. Around October the apple barn next to the main United building is the best smelling place in NYC. $0.89/lb.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling's_law

It's questions like this that keep me coming back to hn :-)

You've also got (at least one) 24 hour diner: Neptune.

After moving to NYC, I was shocked by how few of those there are left and they're only becoming more rare.

Oh wow, there’s a 24 hour diner in my neighborhood called Neptune II; I wonder if it’s related.

Was this at the Big Alice plant off of Vernon boulevard? I spent most of my life living across the river from there and it was such a quiet constant presence.

Not sure about the Big Alice nickname...this was at the ConEd substation that connects into the Astoria plant with the iconic four smokestacks that is across from Randalls Island.

That's interesting. What would make the breaker trip? Was it a regular overcurrent breaker, or some other kind?

A load could draw more current when the voltage sags and therefore trip. Like a fan on a motor that rotates at a fixed speed. Or a pump.

Resettable breakers (partially) work on magnetic fields, so in theory a power surge at a transformer (massive coils) could generate a strong enough field. Just a guess

Magnetic fields fall by distance to the 4th power (more or less) and are effectively zero at distances greater than double the size of the magnet (the pole separation).

I.e. unless that transformer was stupendously large there's no way the magnetic field would reach a home 2 blocks away.

But I appreciate you at least trying to answer, so thanks.

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