121–130 of 136 posts
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We measure trunk space in terms of bodies it can hold. It's funny and clearly relates the capacity.
We do? Depends on who "we" is, I suppose... I've seen golf bags mentioned quite often. But, come to think of it, that's about equivalent to a body, isn't it?
An example: https://youtu.be/J-falgJE1xg?t=211
Has anybody ever considered that better software may be a part of the solution to the chip shortage? Going back to actually caring about things like efficiency and using the hardware properly instead of living in layers of software abstraction miles high? We put men on the moon with chips that could probably be manufactured in somebody's basement. We easily fulfill society's NEEDs with that level of hardware, we just…
Lol every time I see the word "feet" I'm reminded that this article isn't targeted to anyone but Americans, even when talking about manufacturing lines in Asia. My East Asian bias is showing but in all my experience I absolutely have never had to use those units in a serious professional context. Any time I see a technically-sounding article use units like "feet" and "football fields" I subconsciously find it very di…
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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28448249 and marked it off topic.
Lol every time I see the word "feet" I'm reminded that this article isn't targeted to anyone but Americans, even when talking about manufacturing lines in Asia. My East Asian bias is showing but in all my experience I absolutely have never had to use those units in a serious professional context. Any time I see a technically-sounding article use units like "feet" and "football fields" I subconsciously find it very di…
You sir/madam, have mastered the art of saying a lot and yet saying nothing.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
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Insulting and making fun of people because they have a problem isn't helpful but ok, but responding "aggressively" to insults is bad?
I don't see any insults or "making fun of people" in the comments you're responding to. You're choosing to see that. Apply the Principle of good faith and you'll see you're the one getting worked up over nothing...
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. They include:
"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."
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> Let's clarify. You're sorry that I find your insults offensive? > You basically said "the American units of measure are unprofessional and I can't take anyone seriously when they use them" and you wonder why that might be offensive? > Are you reading it for laughs then? I don't understand. I tried to make it clear that I was describing my own experiences and biases, and I admitted that the units (when taken alone,…
Acknowledging your bigotry doesn't make it ok.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
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> United States customary units have been based on familiar Metric units since the Mendenhall Order in 1893. No. They may be defined in terms of Metric units, but they aren't "based on" them. If they were based on them, they'd be a sensible integer (or decimal-factor) multiple of them, not some weird fractional measure. An inch being 25.4 millimeters may be the current definition of an inch, but that arbitrary length…
Ok, fine, defined in terms of. There’s nothing odd about the fractional scale, nor is it unique to US Customary Units.
And of course "the fractional scale is not unique to US Customary Units", since there is no fractional scale within that measurement system. Nor within any other, AFAIK. Your pound consists of an integer number of ounces (right?) and your foot of twelve-point-zerozerozero... inches. The "fractional scale" exists only between measurement systems. (AFAIK. Except maybe old British currency, that was really weird, I'd trust those crazy Englanders to have about six Pi pennies to the shilling or something.)
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Ok, fine, defined in terms of. There’s nothing odd about the fractional scale, nor is it unique to US Customary Units.
No, there's nothing odd about the fact that units based on one set of measures become fractional when expressed in units of another measurement system. It just shows that neither is based on the other. And of course "the fractional scale is not unique to US Customary Units", since there is no fractional scale within that measurement system. Nor within any other, AFAIK. Your pound consists of an integer number of ounc…
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No, there's nothing odd about the fact that units based on one set of measures become fractional when expressed in units of another measurement system. It just shows that neither is based on the other. And of course "the fractional scale is not unique to US Customary Units", since there is no fractional scale within that measurement system. Nor within any other, AFAIK. Your pound consists of an integer number of ounc…
The meter is based on a fraction of a second.
Frink has phone apps, so you don't need a data connection as you would with wolfram alpha or google.
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A meter seems to me linked to the human body just as much as the foot. "The metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle" That factor of ten is because we have ten fingers. There's no cosmic significance to ten or ten million. Or to the size of a line of longitude on our particular planet. And a meter is almost exactly a yard, or thr…
The use of the decimal system is kind of funny because for the longest time large parts of Europe used a 20 based system for a lot of common math. You can still see this in French, where 99 is spelled out as "four times twenty and nineteen". Even in English you can find the remains of the 20-based system, because of the way numbers are expressed: twenty-one, but not tenny-one or even one-teen; twenty-five but not one…
It was based on both, and both measurements are completely determined by the happenstance of life on earth rather than the laws of nature.
>which caused major issues when bordering jurisdictions used different sizes for a "foot"
The meter has also had varying definitions leading to slightly different values. Obviously if you are going to base it on the size of the earth there is going to be some uncertainty and of course that's not the current definition.
I'm not really trying to convince you or anybody that meters are not superior to yards, just that it's hard to explain why without appealing to prejudice and/or making categorical statements that are false.
>The choice for the decimal system is much more akin to the choice of 3/12/8/10 in the imperial system.
Is it correct to call SI the decimal system? Powers of ten time units never caught on above seconds.