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Apple's amusingly round reuse figures

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Re: Apple's amusingly round reuse figures

#91

Post by 13of40 »

CognitiveLens wrote: post #88
13of40 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, I feel it's a little bit condescending for them to assume we can't consume the numbers in metric units. I also kind of wonder how much gold they actually recovered. Marketing logic says they rounded up, but what if they only recovered, say, ten bushels worth, do they still round up to a tonne?

It may be condescending, but I would be astounded if the majority of Americans could estimate the value of 1000kg in lbs within an order of magnitude.

"About the same as a normal ton" is well within an order of magnitude. Besides, we're not talking about average Americans, we're talking about the subset who would bother to read about how much zinc Apple recycled last year.

Re: Apple's amusingly round reuse figures

#92

Post by camhenlin »

milankragujevic wrote: post #69
tathagatadg wrote: post #39

I have a off topic question. How have you reused your old phone? I've seen some typical lists on the web - but nothing impressive given how powerful these small computers are.

I use it as a surveillance camera with a free Android app that streams the picture from the camera as an MJPEG using a built in HTTP server. It's pretty nice, I forwarded the ports on my modem and now I can see what's happening in my home from anywhere in the world :)

I do the same with an old iPhone running AirBeam. Very handy and much easier to deal with than some poorly secured IoT camera or DVR with broken security

Re: Apple's amusingly round reuse figures

#94

Post by King-Aaron »

I don't know if anyone here has ever loaded an articulated semi-trailer with a loader, but something to note is that these figures (by the ton) are generally what a company like Apple would receive from the company doing the logistics here. Having figures by the whole ton means you can easily calculate how many trucks, containers and ships are needed for the process.

Somewhere, there would be precise figures to the kilogram, but the logistics mob wouldn't usually pass that on as when you're dealing with this sort of level of material, it's easier to work in lots of a thousand kilos as opposed to individual kilograms.

Re: Apple's amusingly round reuse figures

#95

Post by King-Aaron »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #79
function_seven wrote: post #68

My rant related to this: How It's Made[1] often has lines like, "The worker places the assembly in a oven that heats the metal to 1,292 degrees Fahrenheit". Which is an oddly-specfic temperature before you realize they just converted it from 700°C. Since it's highly doubtful the oven maintains precisely 700°C—and since it's not important to the viewer what the exact temperature is anyway—it annoys me that they don't…

Fun fact: the reason the human body temperature is said to be 98.6 °F is because of rounding between units. It originally was said to be 100 °F, which when converted to Celsius is 37.77 °C. Round that down to 37 °C and convert back and you get the oddly specific 98.6 °F (despite the fact the human body temperature can fluctuate quite a few degrees [Fahrenheit] throughout the day). I read this somewhere (credible), bu…

When it comes to things like this, I just don't understand how you guys using the imperial system can do your mental arithmetic easily.

Re: Apple's amusingly round reuse figures

#96

Post by p1mrx »

Why bother converting from SI units in the first place? The public will never get comfortable with metric if publishers keep doing extra work to maintain the status quo.

Even scientific educational programming (Nova, NASA TV, etc.) often uses US customary units; metrication is just ridiculously overdue at this point.

Re: Apple's amusingly round reuse figures

#97

Post by greggman »

King-Aaron wrote: post #95
colejohnson66 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: the reason the human body temperature is said to be 98.6 °F is because of rounding between units. It originally was said to be 100 °F, which when converted to Celsius is 37.77 °C. Round that down to 37 °C and convert back and you get the oddly specific 98.6 °F (despite the fact the human body temperature can fluctuate quite a few degrees [Fahrenheit] throughout the day). I read this somewhere (credible), bu…

When it comes to things like this, I just don't understand how you guys using the imperial system can do your mental arithmetic easily.

We can't! (or I can't)

Re: Apple's amusingly round reuse figures

#98

Post by specialist »

rbritton wrote: post #65
specialist wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have Creationists in my family. I don't poke the bear. But I've always wanted to ask how the Earth is perpetually 6,000 years old. Another question, if the assorted Creationists can't agree on the true age, then why do they get huffy about science's varying estimates? Oh well.

I've had sort of a different theory on that. When explaining something from my field to someone without the background and knowledge needed to understand the precise terms, I reduce the explanation to terms and context that they're capable of understanding but still get the general meaning across. I'm not religious by any means, but I've always understood that the Bible is the word of God as interpreted and written b…

About yom...

I recently read a fun article speculating (decoding) the values given for years and ages were Sumerian (or Babylonian) in origin, had different units and symbology, so it's not appropriate to interpret those values as literal base 10 values, which is a much more modern system.

...I've always understood that the Bible is the word of God as interpreted and written by the various disciples.

Ya, I've heard that a lot, when I was in the church, and now from my fundie relatives.

Starts to break down when you start to trace and relate origin myths. Mithras, Horus for the New Testament. Zoroastrian origin of monotheism. A student of religions could likely go on and on. I'm just a casual reader.

Every big chief thru the ages has actively remythed their host culture, claimed divine providence, and presents his/herself as something entirely new.

Re: Apple's amusingly round reuse figures

#99

Post by Symbiote »

function_seven wrote: post #85
Symbiote wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When broadcast in Britain, the voiceover uses metric units. Presumably the Canadian version does too. If I lived there, it would annoy me more that they don't say 700°C in the USA...

I think the same thing with length units. They're always saying, "The operator cuts the widget into four tenths of an inch increments" and I get unreasonably mad at the TV, shouting, "Ya mean a centimeter?!" If they were really using the imperial system, it would be 3/8", not 0.4. But for temperature, I just can't relate to °C. I've been too indoctrinated in °F so long. But with higher values, like 700, it's not hard…

Perhaps 0.4 inches is there intentionally, to annoy Americans. It's a Canadian programme... (although I recently gained a colleague from Quebec, who is far less familiar with metric than I expected, and uses US units for lots of things. Bottles of liqueur, oven temperatures, furniture, body weight and height etc).

Britain switched weather forecast units in the 1960s, so my grandma uses °C, and she's 85. But maybe she had more incentive, since she liked going on holiday elsewhere in Europe.

Re: Apple's amusingly round reuse figures

#100

Post by pjvandehaar »

Natsu wrote: post #80
wlievens wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion of therebeing Creationists around in the twenty-sixth century terrifies me!

What's another few thousand years? People haven't been taking Genesis literally since at least Origen's day (~200 AD). --- For who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars? and that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husba…

I agree with you that nothing will convince creationists. But Origen's Genesis 1 was far from representative of his time. Sure, he's an early example of not taking Genesis 1 literally, but that's only because he was pushing a gnostic "the physical world is evil" agenda. People weren't that interested in his views of creation, and IMO they're only known because his other ideas were popular. In the places where gnosticism did catch on, it mostly dealt with what happened before the 7 days of creation (eg John 1), ignoring Genesis 1. In the next 200 years, the church declared gnosticism to be heretical, making Origen's non-literal Genesis 1 heretical implicitly without any fucks being given.
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