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The Free Universal Construction Kit

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Re: The Free Universal Construction Kit

#71

Post by rmunn »

lucb1e wrote: post #35

In case the authors are here, the first sentence contains the bytes e2 80 94 which would be UTF-8 for an em dash, but it has been reinterpreted as 3 bytes using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1252#Code_page_layout and shown on the page as —. Further down, there's a lot of similar errors such as a single right quote (U+2019) in K'nex. Firefox seems to have first removed their encoding configuration menu in ve…

I was just mentioning the Japanese word mojibake on the plain-text thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47897681), and here you give an example. In fact, UTF-8 misinterpreted as Windows-1252 is the mojibake I personally encounter most often. Curly quotes (most often a right apostrophe inside a word like can't or it's or didn't) are the most common ones, with em dashes being only slightly less common. The other direction (Windows-1252 text being read as UTF-8) produces � (U+FFFD) everywhere instead, but either way, I still see those from time to time today. But far, FAR less frequently than I used to back in the late 2000's or early 2010's. I used to see — and similar sequences all the time 15-20 years ago, and now it's rare enough that I actually notice when it happens.

Re: The Free Universal Construction Kit

#72

Post by srean »

adkaplan wrote: post #68
srean wrote: post #14

Any zometool aficionados here https://www.georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/zometool.html

This kit is how I discovered zometool ten years ago and still find it fascinating. Its amazing! Check out vZome and its associated discord. FOSS virtualzome builder and symmetry study tool.

Thanks a bunch. I did not know about vZome. Thanks for the introduction.

Re: The Free Universal Construction Kit

#76

Post by aleph_minus_one »

genewitch wrote: post #63
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is it really so hard to have a ruler with both measurements? I have a ruler that lets you convert from font point to two other measurement units to inches, for page layout. The problem with the imperial unit system rather is that it does not form something "to build more complicated units out of". For example: if you want inch (in) as a unit, why not have "in^2" as a corresponding small area unit and "in^3" as corr…

we don't use leagues or furlongs. I know what a chain is because i have one, but that's specifically to measure land against a plat map. Every location in this country is based off common reference locations (there's a literal marker on the ground), with only chains and angles to delimit things (generally). Read that last part again, because they use GPS to determine if the marker has moved, and that takes X minutes…

> we don't use leagues or furlongs. I know what a chain is because i have one, but that's specifically to measure land against a plat map. Every location in this country is based off common reference locations (there's a literal marker on the ground)

The same holds for more obscure unit prefixes in the SI system like dam (decameter) or hm (hectometer) in the SI unit system (as far as I am aware, the only common usage of the "deca" prefix is in Austria for "decagram" (dag)).

Nevertheless, even these obscure units fit the regular pattern perfectly:

1 km = 10 hm = 100 dam = 1000 m

- and this was my point.

Re: The Free Universal Construction Kit

#77

Post by eru »

estearum wrote: post #59
eru wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The moat created by seriously delighting your customers at a young age is large. I'm not sure that's enough: most kids wouldn't be able to tell a genuine Lego brick from a knock-off. (Lego famously has insane quality control on their tolerances. But I haven't had any trouble with knock-off bricks so far either.)

I'm sure that Lego still captures virtually all of the revenue in this category, no?

Maybe, I'm not sure. Though Wikipedia demonstrates that you don

Re: The Free Universal Construction Kit

#78

Post by flashdesk »

londons_explore wrote: post #43
lucb1e wrote: post #35

In case the authors are here, the first sentence contains the bytes e2 80 94 which would be UTF-8 for an em dash, but it has been reinterpreted as 3 bytes using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1252#Code_page_layout and shown on the page as —. Further down, there's a lot of similar errors such as a single right quote (U+2019) in K'nex. Firefox seems to have first removed their encoding configuration menu in ve…

This is probably the case of a bodged migration from one CMS to another. My blog suffered the same, and going through loads of old pages to check and fix them just isn't worth the effort.

Yeah this really looks like an encoding issue during migration.

I've run into similar problems when moving old content between systems, especially with MySQL and mixed encodings. It can get messy surprisingly quickly.

Re: The Free Universal Construction Kit

#79

Post by eru »

eru wrote: post #77
estearum wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that Lego still captures virtually all of the revenue in this category, no?

Maybe, I'm not sure. Though Wikipedia demonstrates that you don

that you don't need to make a lot of money to suck the revenue out of a sector.

Re: The Free Universal Construction Kit

#80

Post by shagie »

rapnie wrote: post #42
delichon wrote: post #21

These kits can have extraordinary longevity. I was playing with Lincoln Logs in 1967. Turns out they got started in 1918. Lego bricks have been around since 1945. The moat created by seriously delighting your customers at a young age is large.

It is a really nice concept. I had never heard of it. But then as GenX at young age I played with Fishertechnik [0] more than with Lego. Around since 1966 [1]. [0] https://www.fischertechnik.de/en [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischertechnik

I'd love to play with fischertechnik again...

https://www.fischertechnik.de/en/industry-and-universities -- Factorio on a shelf would be neat (but "request quote" tends to suggest its out of my price range https://www.studica.com/fischertechnik/fischertechnik-factor... )

https://www.fischertechnik.de/en/maker

----

I first saw fischertechnik at an engineering expo at the local university in the 80s. There was a terminal and you'd enter the type of candy you wanted, and it had a robotic system that got it from the shelving... which was neat. The backside of it had another robotic system that got a piece of candy from a conveyer belt (of many different ones), identified it, and put it in the now empty spot.

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