Those are tetrapods. In Portugal we only use tetrapods, Antifer blocks and rock slabs if avaiable with the right size and density. The weight of the blocks is a function of the design wave height and period, so we have blocks with different sizes but not shapes. Sometimes we use blocks with high density concrete, cause higher density works both ways, it inscreases weight and reduces volume. You can see this in Sines, the blocks change colour on the tip of the breakwater, because the concrete has a higher iron content. https://www.google.com/maps/place/37%C2%B056'28.2%22N+8%C2%B...
Finnally something I have knowledge of. Dolosse were invent in South Africa many years ago, but they are only one type of concrete block for wave dissipation and protection. Many others exist and some of them are patented and require the payment of royalties to be used. Anyway, in Portugal we do not use dolosse ever. We used it once in Sines deepwater breakwater, which suffered a catastrophic collapse in 1979. The promise of dolosse is that the blocks work together because of their shape and thus the individual block can be lighter and cheaper. This does not work in practice, at least in high energy seas. The ocean is unforgiven. What happens is that if only a few blocks break the whole structure will quickly collapse during a storm. And things can break due to a series of problems and risks. Concrete is only good at resist compression stresses and reinforcement with rebar is almost always a bad idea in ocean conditions, so complex shapes are hard to make and to move without introducing unwanted stresses that reduce the design strength conditions. Other types of blocks rely mostly on their design weight and density, and the shape is just used for increasing energy dissipation and overtopping. For example, tetrapods can be moved with only compression forces on the block.
Great site! nevertheless, I believe your soilurce of news from Portugal is more of tourism promoting website. Forgive me but i need to make just two suggestions: Publish your list of sources for each country; Check Euronews.com, it has news in English for most European countries.
You make it sound like the National Data Protection Commission warnings of it being unconstitutional a minor thing....
If you read the commission comments on the law you will see several examples of how the video surveillance systems in Portugal are miss managed and abused.
This law opens the door to the use of AI in these systems and with all it's ethical issues.
After all, Portugal is not an unsafe country and local politicians are abusing the false sense of security that the video surveillance systems bring to win a few more votes, disregarding all the medium and long term consequences.
I have a couple a friends that own a pine cone processing plant in Portugal. Yes harvesting pine cones is labor intensive and the end product expensive but I think one of the main reasons price became so high was the introduction of plague in Europe causing a shortage of pine trees and increased cost of pine cones.
GPDR is essentially some guidelines published by OCDE in 1980 turned into law. So yes we should already be operating like that from the start.
I get the feeling that to some countries GPDR is not a big deal and to others is a nightmare, depending on the business culture.
Actually timber has a nice property of loosing strength gradually and slowly in case of fire, giving time for people to escape. Steel and concrete reinforced structures tend to collapse when a certain temperature is reached.
This reminds me of a cool thought that I've read some place else: "imagine a technology so advanced that can transmit thoughts wirelessly between humans and even change the actual layout of the neruons in our brains".
We already do that with our voices....
It is reasonable but it's kinda against an EU directive. The problem was that it was shown that the means to unlock drm were not being provided to authorities thus were not available for users upon request. So we took our own mesures.
Well..AWSY started a few years ago and many things happend to firefox since then. I cannot tell you exactly what increase corresponds to a memory measurment improvement but i can point you to the blog of Nicholas Netherote https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/
You are misreading given that there were big improvements in memory measurment and some of the memory use increase you notice are just firefox measuring better it's own memory
This article is full of FUD. What is the alternative? All these reinforced concrete problems are well understood and studied. if proper construction and design codes and maintenance guidelines are followed these structures can last a very long time.
In europe we have EuroCodes that account for this problems and to my knowledge concrete cancer is not related with steel corrosion but with a long term chemical reaction between some aggregates and cement. Remember that concrete is cement with sand and stones and the hardning chemical reactions are complex and can last for decades.
There is one exception. In the Azores, there are core-locs because the breakwater was designed by the US Military. https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'36.6%22N+27%C2%...