Laundry at the end of the world | Hacker News Reader

Laundry at the end of the world

brr.fyi

106 pointsjaboutboul28 comments

Another fun post from this blog: https://brr.fyi/posts/credit-card-shenanigans

In Antarctica different bases run infrastructure through their own countries, so you can generate credit card charges that look like they're from the US and New Zealand one after the other, which triggers bank companies' fraud systems. Interesting!

This came up on HN a few days ago. IIRC the warning flag for fraud detection is that the card appears to move from (say) the US to NZ in just a few minutes, which is (obviously!) impossible in the real world.

I would have thought the card terminals would have a GPS chip in them just for those cases where terminals from multiple countries are used side-by-side.

thought the two-factor SMS post was interesting as well!

links like these are one of the reasons why I love HN.

I wonder why they went with top loader washers. Front loaders use less water cause less damage to clothing.

Maybe it's a reliability thing? Repairability? Cost?

They look like maytag or speed queen commercial ones. Reliability is probably the biggest priority.

Speed Queen laundry machines are sort of legendary for their reliability. They use standard parts. A 18" box can probably hold spare parts for a dozen speed queens. They are a known quantity which ultimately is what you want in Antarctica, even if the cost is 10% more. You can plan around eventualities with a device like that. vs buying a random machine off the floor at best buy on discount.

Commercial coin laundromat front loading washers also match all those criteria.

I think it's more that this is an American base and people in the United States seem to use antediluvian top loaders a lot, possibly because of a historical surfeit of space, and possibly never prevalence of shared machine rooms in apartment blocks.

Europeans visiting the United States are often bemused by the antiquated looking, advanced electronics-free top loading washing machines everywhere. I'm sure somebody has written a good article on why this remains the case largely in the United States.

If you want a really reliable, modern front loading washing machine, you buy German. Miele, Bosch really are the gold standard and are built to last 20-years rather than the planned obsolescence of most washing machines.

In this video from 5 years ago at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station (at the south pole, not to be confused with the article which is from McMurdo on the coast, next to Scott base on the coast), the narrator specifically said water efficiency is a concern. They have front-loading machines.

But as she says, fuel has to be flown in, presumably it comes by ship to McMurdo.

https://youtu.be/vrPiVT23MhA?t=404

My wife prefers top loading washing machines because you can stop the process to add or remove clothes and also pick something out to give it an extra scrub before continuing the washing.

So there's a non technical reason to use them.

I have one of the newer top-loading machines. It is pretty close to a front-loader turned sideways. Shortly after the cycle starts, the lid locks and does not unlock until after the cycle fully completes.

I did not get a front-loader because I've had too many friends and co-workers have leaks with front loaders. Maybe they're better now, maybe they're not. From my unscientific survey, I'm never going to get a front loader.

FWIW many front loading washers offer a pause option which allows for quick add/removal of items without having to drain the entire tub. Usually it drains the tub to just below the doorline, which for most washers should only result in 30 seconds or so of refilling.

The difference in orientation between a top loader in Antarctica and a front loader pointed southward at the equator is negligible, so I imagine they weren't overly concerned.

Without going into specifics of engineering and material advances, my instinct would be to buy the thing where if something went wrong with a seal or a closure, the water would remain contained. Side loaders assume by nature that nothing will go so wrong that everything fails and water leaks out the front.

If I was purchasing for harsh conditions and intermittent supply with standard Earth gravity, I, too, would choose top loaders.

This post made me curious about which plug type is used in Antarctica. Looks like it's type C (same as most of Europe)

http://www.bergadventures.com/v3_main/trip-preparations/elec...

Started reading about laundry but ended up reading the entire blog… Very interesting stuff!

What's the deal with those lamps that are sitting in the floor on every picture?

With Antarctic light/darkness, the need for lamps would vary considerably throughout the year. Probably these have been moved out of the way for the summer.

Where do the dryer vents lead? Is that heat captured and used?

Unlikely, dryer output is very humid, unless you have a tropical greenhouse next door.

On the other hand, letting all that water condense onto a cold surface should be easy.

I have a dryer in my apt (miele) and it has no externally routed vent. Heat/humidity is ejected to the sewer line. Aside from the lower energy consumption, this seems useful for an Antarctic base for heat re-use.

Antarctic air is very dry, so I doubt the humidity would ever rise to dangerous levels in a well ventilated room, even if the dryers were running 16 hours a day.

I wonder, even with the etymology of antarctica, if there are no bears.

The article points out that they would have to have been brought in by ship.

OTOH there are plenty of penguins and puffins, while the number of penguins in the arctic is vanishingly small.

given that there's tens of thousands of humans traveling to Antarctica every year, you'd expect there to be at least a few ants, as stowaways

The Argentine Ant (1) is quite invasive "ranked among the world's 100 worst invasive animal species", and has firmly established itself in the area of Cape Town, South Africa, where Antarctica-bound supply ships do leave from.

However I see no record of these ants in Antarctica: "They have since spread to all continents except Antarctica"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_ant

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