The Tunnel of Samos (2004) | Hacker News Reader

The Tunnel of Samos (2004)

fermatslibrary.com

54 pointsbalele6 comments

”The distance around Mount Castro along this path is less than 2,200 meters (275 bow lengths), so an error of two millimeters per bow length could give a total leveling error ofabout 55 centimeters.”

I don’t see a reason to assume any correlation between errors, so one would expect about sqrt(275) or 17-ish times 2 millimeters of total errors, or a few centimeters.

On the one hand, that makes it easier to use such a construct. On the other hand, I suspect the ‘2 mm’ figure was at least partially made up to fit the data.

Also, I find it weird that the text doesn’t mention any attempts to locate the various stone pillars presumably constructed. Surely, some remains should still be there?

The evidence that they dug from both ends is pretty compelling.

Otherwise I would have assumed they just started digging in the right general direction, used a water channel to keep things level, and sighted along the tunnel to keep it straight.

What a wonderful reading experience, and commenting/exploration process.

If you print it maybe (as it is clearly a layout meant for print reading). In the browser it is clearly not an optimal reading experience. The 2 column layout forces you to scroll up and down to carry on reading, and it has hijacked left mouse click to reveal a sing in side bar.

Really genuinely interested din understanding why you found the reading experience wonderful! (no snark intended =)

> Really genuinely interested in understanding why you found the reading experience wonderful! (no snark intended =)

The print-style layout isn't good. It's the way the comments/links are embedded in the document as I read. Click on something and I can comment/view comments to the left. It's like Medium's comments done better, by taking more space.

I hate the dislocation of traditional comments at the end of a document. Having them inline enriches the reading experience, clarifies matters as I read and gives me room to note thoughts.

So the sidebar which you didn't like is the feature I do :)

As a scientific researcher who reads many 8 1/2 x 11 documents every day, to replace printing every paper one really needs a very large screen. Scrolling is too distracting so the full page needs to be completely seen in its original size or maybe a little bit zoomed in. Then it is really nice to be able to have another window next to it at full size to display the figures. Many times the figure the text is discussing is on the next page. With paper you just have the two pages next to each other, but this does not work on anything less that a huge screen.

I really had a hard time finding screens tall enough to do this, as computer screens are made super wide to view movies. Turning a 27" monitor upright does the trick, but I would rather have a screen in the shape of a square that was about 22" on a side.

This doc would also benefit with much higher resolution scanning, as the map on the first page is looks wonderful at first glance, but its details are not legible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com