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It’s an age of marvels

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Re: It’s an age of marvels

#191

Post by somenameforme »

mhink wrote: post #174
somenameforme wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to always play the cynic in these games. And I think one little way to easily do that is to reverse the roles with an example you are giving. So for your example, imagine somebody from the future came and showed you a pinhead sized device with countless exabytes of computational power projected onto a holographic screen. While I'm sure you'd be impressed and have plenty of questions, I don't think there would…

I would agree if we were talking about, say, a team in 1970, but it's worth pointing out that we're talking about a team working during the very infancy of computer engineering (the late 40s/early 50s). Just off the top of my head, you had solid-state hardware, stored-program machines, and the Von Neumann architecture all just popping on to the scene. This is stuff that would definitely have been on their radar, but…

1950s was the era of Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Heinlein, etc. Give people a spark and we naturally will create a flame, even if only in our minds. Take something current - many people are already envisioning futures where LLMs will not only be running on basically every device, but also integrated into each and every aspect of life. Some even envision them eventually replacing humans in politics, working as caretakers, and more.

It's easy to imagine it - even with absolutely no basis for it whatsoever. Go back millennia to the first men making ships able to embark deep into the oceans, and these people would also have already been envisioning the Titanic. The moment the Wright Bros proved flight viable, many were seeing the Hindenberg. It's just human nature.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#192

Post by genewitch »

mckn1ght wrote: post #175
pushcx wrote: post #77

I think this post is right that Franklin would've been impressed by GPS. The author doesn't call it out, but the Longitude Problem was a significant area of scientific and engineering inquiry in Franklin's lifetime, with special focus on the difficulty of doing so at sea. I haven't looked into it, but given his research mapping the Gulf Stream it seems likely he spent time on the problem himself. https://en.wikipedia…

If only Ben Franklin had access to https://ciechanow.ski/gps/ , he could’ve invented GPS to solve it!

this reminds me of that site linked here last year that explained and diagrammed the inner workings of a wristwatch. I used singlefile to save the page, as i do with any page that impresses me (or is noteworthy or newsworthy or needs to be saved as proof, etc)

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#193

Post by rrr_oh_man »

vsnf wrote: post #142
rrr_oh_man wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick & a tangent, but: Being properly represented in a democratic system is not the same as being able to vote for someone.

Fair enough, the chant as we learned it was “no taxation without representation”, so you win this one. But my point was that it wasn’t just childish tantrums about taxes, it was also about being forced to buy into a monopoly, not getting any say in the matter, having local business blockaded, etc.

For what it’s worth: I wasn’t at all disputing your general argument, just wanted to elaborate on a pet peeve of mine. Cheers!

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#194

Post by genewitch »

nicbou wrote: post #24
tetris11 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this with music, and measure how good a song is by what fraction f of the words I would need to change for me to send it n years back in time to be understood by an older audience. I have a small community (n=1 or 4?) where I write this up: https://lemmy.ml/c/howtimeless

Which one would require the most explaining, according to you?

It's the end of the world - R.E.M.; One Week - Barenaked Ladies. That's just off the top(ical) of my head.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#195

Post by schubart »

dotnet00 wrote: post #63
ertgbnm wrote: post #23

More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. You have blueberries for sale in January??? A variety box of tea from 7 different countries? A wall of spices? Pineapples? Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? The bread isn't full of sand and grit? And it's sliced!!! All relatively affordable and…

It brings to mind the story of how when Boris Yeltsin was visiting the US, he took an impromptu detour to a random American supermarket to try to catch them off guard, only to be blown away that Americans really did have supermarkets everywhere practically overflowing with food. The story goes that the experience played a big role in shaping his vision for Russia when he went on to become its first freely elected lea…

[dead]

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#196

Post by genewitch »

jrgd wrote: post #54

"It's a bit fiddly because time isn't passing at the same rate for the device as it is for the satellites, but we were able to work it out." that just knocked my brain down.

Yeah, the idea that you can triangulate from the delay in receiving timestamps that are synchronized within (40ns? seems high, see below) isn't that mind-blowing. If you have synchronized clocks and a mechanism that records timestamps from various locations with those clocks when you get a voltage spike on an antenna, you can triangulate lightning strikes to within several hundred feet - from practically anywhere in the hemisphere (blitzortung.org).

But i like pointing out that it was the relativistic part that was impressive, for sure.

40ns seems high since you can have an "error" after many hours of receiving of less than 10ns, and on a good, clear day, you can get to within 1ns, on cheap hardware. My GPS drift is 10 feet over a week, gradually getting smaller. If i put my good receiver in the center of my kitchen, the points converge to within the confines of the walls within 48 hours.

However this may just be error correction, and the satellite clocks may be inaccurate to 40ns, i am unsure.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#198

Post by mtalantikite »

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #133
mtalantikite wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with it is that not only are we paying the environmental cost to have berries all year round in the grocery store, it's that they're also just shit quality. Like not just passable, but are bitter and sour and not worth it at all. And it's sort of at the expense of really good, local berries when the real season hits. For example, I live in Brooklyn and the grocery stores last summer barely had any local bl…

This so much. People who live in Western cities have no fucking clue what fruits and vegetables are supposed to taste like. It’s like a running gag that my father complains about supermarket tomatoes, but after travelling through rural places in Eastern and Southern Europe and a little bit in Central America, I totally get it.

Oh, same with my father. He would tell stories about going to the markets in Algeria when he was a kid and how it was totally normal to have fruit sellers cut into a melon right then and there to give you a sample. If it sucked you just wouldn't buy it, so there was always competition for having the best produce in the market. And this was him complaining to me about poor quality produce in the US when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s -- the quality has only gotten worse since then.

Food just tastes better in other countries.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#199

Post by inasio »

Nice article! I used to have a similar "friend" I liked to chat with and impress him with our modern marvels, not quite Benjamin Franklin though, I read a ton of pirate books and this particular Malaysian gentleman was pretty impressed by what modern artillery could do, and lately about those insanely fast hydrofoil sailboats/kitesurfs/windsurfs

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#200

Post by MisterBastahrd »

ramblenode wrote: post #163
orthoxerox wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still a difference between the stores having meat on their shelves and the stores having every kind of meat on their shelves. And every kind of vegetable, every kind of drink, every kind of cheese as well.

If you think the average American supermarket has every kind of meat, cheese, drink, and vegetable, you are in for a big surprise traveling the world. In many ways American markets have fallen behind relatively poorer countries in variety. Most of what is sold are monocultures and packaged foods. The selection of fresh produce (or any produce) is often disappointing.

Yep. For example, one staple dish of Cajuns is called "rice and gravy." Essentially, you sear thinly cut 7-steaks, remove them, cook down some trinity, then add the steaks back with some water or broth and seasonings. That's it. The steaks simmer in the broth for hours and create their own gravy. We serve it over rice, usually accompanied by some roux peas (tres petit pois cooked in a roux with onions and bacon) and cornbread. Simple, easy, flavorful.

But I live in Texas now, home of all the cattle, if you believe the marketing. And I can't find 7-steaks unless I go to a Mexican meat market, because the DFW area is so bourgeois nowadays that the steaks simply don't pass muster for the local market. Hell, I'm more likely than not to end up in a Mexican market simply because the produce is better and cheaper.

Same with beef shank. Osso bucco is traditionally made with veal shank, and oxtails are all the rage, but I can't find beef shank unless I go to an HEB. Most places don't carry the cut. And if I couldn't find beef shank, I could always go with beef neckbones, but uh... HEB is the only place around me that sells that either.

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