News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
I think there's some merit to both sides of this. Using codes to mandate quality construction is a good thing IMHO. Even when it increases building cost.
What I dislike is the fact that every little municipality has their own individual special snowflake set of building codes. Some use one version of the national code, others use another version of the national code, others use the national code with a whole bunch of special stuff added on, etc. Then throw in wildly different enforcement and inspections and a handful of inspectors who just want to see it done their way code be damned and it becomes a confusing morass that needlessly increases cost.
Finally, a nuanced answer to my comment. This is exactly what I'm getting at. By the time you deal with the whole scope of the project, every little thing adds to the cost way out of proportion to just doing it. I can slap a 50A plug in, the code isn't complicated, but if you don't want to have a go around with an inspector, you pay an electrician exorbitantly to get the final result. When you get everyone on a project involved in getting that done, it's several times the hundred dollars of the actual materials. Even if it's just part of an initial project scope.
You start getting region-specific bullshit like EMT conduit for powerlines in the mix, and inspectors that will contradict themselves in the same sentence, and in the end, you're paying $400-500/sf for putting up a house when 20 years ago it was $150-200. It's gotten crazy, and so little of it makes an appreciable safety or efficiency difference anymore. Look at arc-fault breaker code now, these aren't preventing any significant amounts of fires, but every breaker is 10X the cost of a normal breaker. And there are only a couple circuits that don't need them now according to code.
Yeah I'm also not a fan of the arc fault breaker thing. I get the concept, but there should be a calculation of expense caused versus safety increase.
A good example of that in another field is NHTSA is going to start requiring seat belt reminders and nag beeps for every seat in the vehicle. This will increase the cost of every single vehicle, annoy the hell out of drivers who store cargo in the backseat, and the problem it addresses? Yearly 50 deaths and a few hundred injuries caused by unbelted passengers. Most of whom will probably ignore the nag beep anyway- it's 2024, if you don't wear your seatbelt because you want to stay alive you're not going to start wearing it because of a nag beep. Thus you have yet another regulation, yet another little specification box that has to be checked building a new car, and yet another bundle of sensors and wires and harnesses and programming for every single vehicle (which isn't free, those costs will be passed on to the person who buys the car) all for a change that will probably have zero practical benefit whatsoever but will cause a ton of annoyance when drivers throw their groceries in the back seat. And it may even make the problem worse- The driver who puts groceries in the back will probably buy one of those defeat devices that's like a seat belt buckle but with no seatbelt and you put it in the slut so the car thinks you are buckled in. And that might actually reduce the number of people who wear the seatbelt in the back.