Sewage, as we all know, is a pain in the rear when dealing with Cities:Skylines. It clogs up the waterways, floods the shorelines in unpredictable ways, and is an eyesore that simply keeps adding up as the city grows.

I was creating a new township that was more loosely developed and more experimental than ones I've done in the past. So, in that spirit, I decided to try something new:  I'd get rid of the sewage in a more creative manner. We'd keep our waterways and oceans pristine, and there would be no horrible aftereffects of dumping massive amounts of sewage into the ocean.

Now, in real life, the idea of just dumping the sewage and forgetting about it seems laughable. But as it turns out, in the game, there was a little "life hack" that was just waiting to be tried. We decided that we would just toss all of our sewage into the middle of nowhere. To do this, we created our own dedicated lake. It would be completely away from everything else on the entire map, and would be entirely contained to one incredibly disgusting body of water.

The problem here is that Sewage does not soak through the ground in C:S. The lake would overflow quickly, so this would ordinarily never be a viable solution. However, we had a "genius solution" (hehe) to the rescue, suggested by our very latest middle school "most improved award" winner for the science fair. We would simply create an army of water pumps, a connect them to nowhere.

These water pumps do not have pipes (beyond maybe one tile of them just to activate the pump) and do not serve anyone (so they can't pollute the drinking water). What they do, however, is pump the sewage into the ground, into the sky, burn it, I don't know what they do. But whatever these random water pumps do, they do a very good job of getting rid of the sewage. 



It worked for about two in-game years. Worked like a charm. Had four drains and six pumps on the lake, so I had some redundancy in case one of the pumps failed (and they sometimes do). 

However, what happened next was a little more predictable than I would have liked to have admitted. It was VERY predictable (and not in a good way). It was nothing short of totally disasterous.

Every single pump failed at once. And because the city had a lot of sewage, it overflowed. A lot.



(As you can see, our lake was on a hill, and therefore flooded the entire city below. And unfortunately, for us, sewage does not absorb through the ground. It pretty much destroys anything in its path until it reaches the ocean. And then it pollutes the ocean and you can't get rid of it there either.)  

Life went on for months as the city attempted to resolve the issue. New pumps were installed and terraforming was done to reroute overflows. Neither of these two solutions stopped the massive outflow of sewage from the lake, and completely replaced pumps failed to alleviate the issue either. Citizens were spotted driving through the sewage completely submerged on the local highway: 



The horrible destruction continued, ripping apart large swaths of the new town, along with most of its western-side subdivisions. 



Finally, after all attempts to fix the lake had failed, the city gave up and began looking for a new solution. To do so, they quickly began creating a brand new (larger) sewage lake. (Because doing the SAME thing expecting a different result is apparently not insanity. )

And after weeks of construction, the new lake was finally commisioned. This one was on a valley, so any overflows will not flood the city below.  And it was larger, deeper, and more spaced-out, and thereby (presumably) higher capacity (according to our science fair winners again, at least. ).



This one was installed with five sewage drains and six water pumps (in case of any failures). So far, three weeks in, it is maintaining a very low level and is functioning as it should. No indications of any failures so far.  

Unfortunately, cleanup efforts have not been as successful as hoped. Although the overflows stopped and the city itself has drained, the sewage lake has failed to recede, even after multiple new pumps were installed. The city decided to make the most of it. They are now offering premier lakefront dining, with full view of the "sinkhole" lake below. Priced at a slight discount due to possible smell, but the new lakeside resorts have started to improve land value in the nearby areas.

I love using highways in Cities Skylines. I have the network additions mod, which gives extra highways such as 2-lane, and 4+ lane highways (all the way up to 6). It's immensely helpful for building sprawling highway networks for busy cities. 

I enjoy the challenge of funneling as much traffic as possible through an intricate network of interstate routes. I tend to merge several highways into a single superhighway to feed my downtown/CBD areas, and as a result, the majority of the city's traffic tends to depend on one single link. It's absolutely critical, as a result, that it's set up well and is up for the task. 

Luckily, there are a few things that can make a HUGE difference for the highway capacity in the game. (And I should add, make sure you have TPME. )

1. Don't use too many lanes.  - Learned this one the hard way. CIMs LOVE to get confused if you give them super-wide highways, and they tend to do those ridiculous cross-highway lane jumps that grind the entire highway to a halt. So on this one, less is sometimes more. 4 lanes can actually handle a metric f***ton of traffic. In fact, even the standard three lanes can already handle a ton of traffic on its own, and two lanes is still far more robust than any other non-highway road in the game. So don't rush to add too many lanes too quickly, sometimes you don't need them quite yet.

2. Lane management is your best friend. If you're gonna funnel 200,000+ CIMs into one superhighway, lane management is the single most important thing you can do. It is absolutely critical that every single interchange has very tightly defined rules for which lanes CIMS can marge in and off of. Use TPME to set custom paths, and make sure to touch all of the ramps for your highways. 

In fact, I've found that it's actually extremely rare for a highway to actually be running "at capacity." Almost always, a busy highway can technically carry more traffic than it already does, but the traffic management must be absolutely razor sharp. Bad lane management (or the absense of it entirely) is usually the biggest bottleneck-factor here.  

3. Merge lanes are good (Network Additions Mod). - The faster CIMs are traveling, the more effectively they are able to merge. Merge/Auxilliary lanes keep CIMs from being forced to merge into a busy highway from a tight ramp, and these can massively improve traffic flows for interchanges on busy sections. 

To set these up, temporarily widen the highway by an extra lane after the merge. But make sure to use lane management to FORCE CIMS to ONLY merge into your new merge lane. They should not merge into the main lanes until the merge lane ends, which allows them to reach full speed first! Otherwise, they will jump the gun and merge too early, defeating the purpose of the merge lane.

   

It's very hard to tell from the above (toaster-PC) screenshot, but this entire city is split into two halves and is connected primarily by a single interstate highway. This superhighway branches off into three other interstates that serve separate districts of the city (and these highways further split into more highways and major roads of their own). So ultimately, 200K CIMs are connected primarily by this link alone.

This link definitely had congestion problems earlier on in the game, but I was able to resolve a lot of its issues by narrowing the highway from 5 to 4 lanes, and by implementing very detailed lane management and merge lanes. That *seems* counterintuitive (the highway has the highest traffic density out of any route in the entire city), but it has worked well and the traffic flows without a hitch! That being said, the city has grown and it's now starting to reach its limits with 200K CIMs and five interstates being funneled into it. (I think it's about time to bring the 5th lane back? )

What are your thoughts on using highways in Cities Skylines? What is the busiest highway/thoroughfare you've ever designed? Do you have any tips for maintaining massively busy interstate networks in your cities?

The fine of 35 million euros is directed against the company Amazon Europe Core. The fine for Google is 60 million euros for Google LLC and 40 million euros for Google Ireland Ltd in Dublin, where Google has its European headquarters.


https://www.infosat.de/entertainment/mil...frankreich

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020...-facebook/

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/09/tech/face...index.html

Thank god. Break up Google, Amazon, and Apple while you're at it.

Given that millions of web servers depend on CentOS, this one is going to make some fairly deep waves in the industry. CentOS will no longer be a free version on RHEL (sans the enterprise support). The version as we know it is going to be discontinued in 2021. (It will be replaced with CentOS stream, a rolling release model unsuitable for server environments). 

This is hugely disappointing news for some. CPanel and many other options are designed specifically with CentOS in mind, and although they are recently being made compatible with other options, CentOS/RHEL is still the preferred, tested, and uniquely stable option. The natural alternative is Ubuntu Server, and it’s a worthy replacement (and is my server OS of choice, personally). They are roughly equivalent and both have vibrant camps of users. However, CentOS and Ubuntu do a number of things differently. Dev Ops engineers tend to stick with what they are more familiar with, and CentOS has a very good reputation for stability in the industry.  

What are your thoughts? Is this going to push more to use Ubuntu Server, or will people find other alternatives? 

https://www.debugpoint.com/2020/12/cento...ouncement/

Congratulations @Kyng  for your selection as 2020 Newcomer of the Year!

Congratulations @tc4me  on your selection as 2020 Member of the Year!

Project of the year is a two-way tie between the MyBB Status Updates and the Hardware Keylogger.





Congratulations everyone!

• 2020 Member of the Year
  
• 2020 Newcomer of the Year
  
• 2020 Project of the Year
  

• 2020 Thread of the Year
  
• 2020 Post of the Year
  

What was the biggest age difference between you and your partner? How about you now?

With my previous wife the difference was 16 years by which she was younger, with my current wife (Bianca) it is even bigger, she is 31 Y and I am 55 Y

how is or was that with you?

I came across this on YouTube. It’s a worthy watch. They built a flashlight so bright that it broke through glass. We’re not talking sound. We’re talking light. And it’s about the size of a fiat 500. 



What a project. Absolutely amazing.

I have NEVER been a believer. I swore up and down it was snake oil. And most of it probably is, but I was anything but correct about them on a broad scale. 

I found some oil the other day to treat an ongoing sinus infection. Mind you, no other medication has been able to treat it. Not even prescription antibiotics could wipe it out as fast as essential oil based ones did. And one of them cleared up my sinuses within about two minutes of applying. They cleared up so fast that it actually hurt with how fast they drained. 

No medication has ever done that before. It was literally instant. Drained completely within about two minutes. I was completely and totally shocked.

I think I might have gone from a skeptic to a believer. There might actually be something to this stuff. 

Anyone else tried these before? What were your experiences?

Please make your selection or the Member of the Month for December 2020.

This vote is to recognize members for their contributions for the previous month. In this case, a user's contributions for the month of November lead to their nomination for the December Member of the Month.

The poll is anonymous, and no one will see your vote.

Member of the Month candidates:

@tc4me 
@Thomas