0b1001011000 years ago? Anybody?
I keep forgetting the New Year and write 0b1001010111 on all of my checks.
Polynesian people used a kind of binary number system 600 years ago (2013)
61–70 of 125 posts
Re: Polynesian people used a kind of binary number system 600 years ago (2013)
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
The origin of Polynesian sweet potatoes being from an old visit to South America is the most plausible origin story, but the lack of anthropological evidence is also a powerful dissuading factor. There's no oral stories of either the Polynesians or the South Americans of such a voyage taking place, like there was for the Viking colonization of Vinland (recalled in the Icelandic sagas).
Note, however, that the Australian aboriginals' oral histories (songlines) lack any reference to coming from elsewhere, although DNA clearly demonstrates otherwise. In such cases, if any given generation omits an element from its oral history (by choice or mistake), it is lost forever.
There are two orders of magnitude difference in time though. Australian Aboriginals have been on the continent for 40-60 thousand years, Polynesians made it to Hawaii 800-2000 years ago.
Re: Polynesian people used a kind of binary number system 600 years ago (2013)
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Proposed solution - a colour picker of Information quality as vote tool? Factual disputed - Factual accurat? (Red - Black) Information Rich - Information Poor? (Black - Faded Text)
That's what Slashdot did. Didn't help very much in the general case.
Maybee analyse the discussion following with a NN for quality indicators?
Long statements, comenting part of the original post and a absence of sarcasm/name calling should allow for a good evaluation of productive posts. Maybee the bot could even Merge uniform opionion posts into a stack, so that ideology biased posts shrink from view and the interesting nuggets show up earlier.
Re: Polynesian people used a kind of binary number system 600 years ago (2013)
#64The article says "Arabic digits", They're not Arabic digits, they're Indian. The arabs just borrowed it when they started trading with us.
Re: Polynesian people used a kind of binary number system 600 years ago (2013)
#65A couple of Native American tribes used octal because base 8 works for the number of things you can carry between the fingers. Would have made computing a bit simpler if that had been adopted instead of base 10.
Gotta say, I'd never have thought about space between fingers as the motivation for a base. We must investigate lobsters.
Re: Polynesian people used a kind of binary number system 600 years ago (2013)
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what Slashdot did. Didn't help very much in the general case.
Maybee analyse the discussion following with a NN for quality indicators? Long statements, comenting part of the original post and a absence of sarcasm/name calling should allow for a good evaluation of productive posts. Maybee the bot could even Merge uniform opionion posts into a stack, so that ideology biased posts shrink from view and the interesting nuggets show up earlier.
I'm more for KISS and YAGNI.
This sounds too convoluted a process.
We have vote up and vote down buttons. If the people like and upvote a funny (but trivial) comment, in the end it's their prerogative.
Re: Polynesian people used a kind of binary number system 600 years ago (2013)
#67"Polynesian people used binary numbers 600 years ago" Disgrace to Nature for click bait. The number system might be clever but as described is not binary numbers. Especially the claim in the introduction "Binary arithmetic, the basis of all virtually digital computation today, is usually said to have been invented at the start of the eighteenth century by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz." implying Leibnitz…
Thank you. This needed to be said.
Re: Polynesian people used a kind of binary number system 600 years ago (2013)
#68A couple of Native American tribes used octal because base 8 works for the number of things you can carry between the fingers. Would have made computing a bit simpler if that had been adopted instead of base 10.
Oh wow, I didn't know that. Reminds me of the Aborigines who looked for shapes and figures in the empty space between the stars as opposed to our own ancients who'd rather 'connect the dots'.
Re: Polynesian people used a kind of binary number system 600 years ago (2013)
#69Oh well, no more computers for us then http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/cultural-appropriation-m...
Re: Polynesian people used a kind of binary number system 600 years ago (2013)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that his comment didn't add all that much, but I think the snark on your end was a bit more distracting and irrelevant than his comment, and honestly his comment was kind of on topic. This site is thankfully strictly moderated and usually the discussion in the comments is very on topic, jumping at the chance to be smug like that degrades the quality of conversation much farther then being semi-relevant with a…
I started making comments like this after the tenth time seeing a green account make a joke, get downvoted to hell and reply "WTF! Why is Hacker News so mean to noobs!" (Peter was green an hour ago)
Wait, green means new?