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Comment by 1970-01-01 | Hacker News Reader

1970-01-01·

So how exactly is the scan counter going to hit their target of a billion per month? Are they scanning us while we sleep?

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I don't think it says it is a target, just that they will have that capacity.

No, you stand there for 60 seconds.

If every hospital had one, even if they sat idle 90% of the day, thats enough to hit that target.

A billion hours ago, human life appeared on earth. A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged. A billion seconds ago, the Beatles changed music forever. A billion scans ago was last month?

It does not work this way.

Do you need the math typed out?

In order for 50k scanners to perform 1 billion scans in a month, they need to be run nearly 24/7. It will require (in a 30 day month) an average of 129.6 seconds per scan, including both the 60 second scan time and moving people on and off the scanner surface. You get just over a minute to move someone off, clean the system, and get the next person onto the platform. If you neglect cleaning the system, and everyone is ready to go, then this is just barely possible if it's 100% reliable.

If they sat idle for 90% of the time, they wouldn't have enough time for the 60 second scan, let alone moving people on and off the platform. The math for their claimed target does not work.

My comment was "if every hospital had one" rather than "if 50k hospitals had one" but either way, the math gets to the order of magnitude stated. Nitpicking how much buffer they gave themselves for cleaning doesn't disprove the math - the target is years away, and solving a trivial gap is just a matter of speeding up the scan or putting multiple people in.

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