Egyptian ‘bent’ pyramid dating back 4,600 years opens to public • Hacker News Board

Re: Egyptian ‘bent’ pyramid dating back 4,600 years opens to public

#21

Post by baddox » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 8:12 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #10

MartianSquirrel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is exactly why I'd rather visit Egypt than the US ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... )

Tourists are distinctive enough that you could probably usefully use the rate of intentional homicide of tourists rather than the rate of intentional homicide of anyone, though I doubt those statistics are kept. Egypt sees tourists as vital enough that one of the purposes of the police is to specifically look out for the well-being of nearby tourists, so probably pretty good on that metric.

Yeah, you probably have a lot of information about yourself that can be used to best a much more accurate estimate of being the victim of homicide. For instance, the homicide rates in different US states span an order of magnitude.

Re: Egyptian ‘bent’ pyramid dating back 4,600 years opens to public

#22

Post by hi41 » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 8:22 PM UTC

It is hard to comprehend a large timescale of four thousand six hundred years. I wonder how much of our current software would last that long.

Re: Egyptian ‘bent’ pyramid dating back 4,600 years opens to public

#23

Post by Shendare » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #12

Tourists will be allowed inside the ancient structure after archaeologists found “hidden tombs” containing mummies, masks and tools. Did they miss a NOT? That seems like a strange reason to go from not allowing tourists to allowing them!

> Authorities are looking to promote tourism at Dahshur, located about 17 miles south of central Cairo.

> The site, which lies in the open desert, attracts just a trickle of visitors and is currently free of the touts and bustle of Giza.

> The promotion of Dahshur is part of a wider push to boost tourism, an important source of foreign revenue for Egypt that dipped steeply after the country’s 2011 uprising before gradually recovering.

Re: Egyptian ‘bent’ pyramid dating back 4,600 years opens to public

#24

Post by markdown » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 8:37 PM UTC

hi41 wrote: post #22

It is hard to comprehend a large timescale of four thousand six hundred years. I wonder how much of our current software would last that long.

None.

Re: Egyptian ‘bent’ pyramid dating back 4,600 years opens to public

#25

Post by epiphanitus » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 8:37 PM UTC

hi41 wrote: post #22

It is hard to comprehend a large timescale of four thousand six hundred years. I wonder how much of our current software would last that long.

I bet Pac Man will be preserved for posterity. It has that a simplicity and a timeless quality to it.

Re: Egyptian ‘bent’ pyramid dating back 4,600 years opens to public

#26

Post by walrus01 » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 8:49 PM UTC

hi41 wrote: post #22

It is hard to comprehend a large timescale of four thousand six hundred years. I wonder how much of our current software would last that long.

There's a well known science fiction novel where a "programmer-archaeologist" on an interstellar fleet digs into a bunch of nested hypervisors and software nobody has touched in thousands of years, to find things still running on the unix time epoch.

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

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

Re: Egyptian ‘bent’ pyramid dating back 4,600 years opens to public

#27

Post by arethuza » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 8:53 PM UTC

markdown wrote: post #24

hi41 wrote: post #22

It is hard to comprehend a large timescale of four thousand six hundred years. I wonder how much of our current software would last that long.

None.

I don't know - I have a 'prototype' application that, rather to my horror, I have found recently is still in production about 7 years after it should have been replaced by the 'real' system.

It'll probably outlast me!

Re: Egyptian ‘bent’ pyramid dating back 4,600 years opens to public

#28

Post by mcmoose75 » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 9:10 PM UTC

I was there at the end of June- it's pretty spectacular. We arrived on a Friday morning at 7am to beat the heat, and we were the only tourists on site at all.

Extremely surreal to go down in to the middle of an engineering marvel that large, and I couldn't believe that I was alone inside of it.

Re: Egyptian ‘bent’ pyramid dating back 4,600 years opens to public

#29

Post by epiphanitus » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #12

Tourists will be allowed inside the ancient structure after archaeologists found “hidden tombs” containing mummies, masks and tools. Did they miss a NOT? That seems like a strange reason to go from not allowing tourists to allowing them!

Funny the occupants didn't mind it was bent. I guess those things must have been really expensive to rebuild. :P

Re: Egyptian ‘bent’ pyramid dating back 4,600 years opens to public

#30

Post by jammygit » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

hi41 wrote: post #22

It is hard to comprehend a large timescale of four thousand six hundred years. I wonder how much of our current software would last that long.

Jaron Lanier made an observation in one of his books about how technology concepts tend to get locked in, and predicted that MIDI has shaped digital music so much that in 1000 years we might still be stuck with its conceptual foundations.

(possibly You Are Not a Gadget, but could have been another)