foobar1962

I'm old enough to remember when supermarkets only had brown paper bags. They were weak and the handles tear off easily, and anything cold will make the bag wet and it will fall apart usually from the bottom. Supermarkets must have spent a lot of money replacing customer's broken items when bags failed even before leaving the store.

So when doing the calculus for brown paper bags don't forget to include the cost goods wasted when they fail.

Probably a good place to post a 400 year old recipe for pancakes. I've made them, they are very good. Note that what is considered a "pancake" has changed over the years and changes with location.

https://rarecooking.com/2021/12/14/john-lockes-recipe-for-pa...

The "old" internet still exists and is alive and well on what I'll call "single issue" web based forums. Photo.net is still here, as are similar groups for cars, bikes, and rabbit holes I have yet to break my ankle in.

Unlike social media, few of these forums have mechanisms to "like" or upvote posts so there is no reward for posting just to attract attention, whether it be positive or negative. That changes the dynamic IMHO. People post to seek answers to their questions, or to share their knowledge and answer other people's questions. This is the way.

I'd include HN in this group of ye olde internet forums. It does have a mechanism to vote, but it's different and the expectation of the readers are brutal to frivolous posts (of which I have made only couple and paid for dearly).

I picked that up too. Awkward. I think they mean that 80% of all calories are provided by wheat, maize, rice, and potatoes.

Motor powered ships don't zig zag. Sail powered ships need to tack and gybe to go directly upwind and downwind, but TBH in busy harbours with navigation hazards and a lot of commercial traffic most would furl the sails and use the motor for safety.

You might be interested in "lead marks" which are two signs visible from a distance. They "lead" ships by providing a straight path through difficult passages when the two signs line up. Very simple and effective.

Note that modern lighthouse lights either rotate or blink, the flash frequency is unique and marked on charts to further help identify location at night.

To help ships navigate. Being 100 meters tall it would be visible from quite a distance off shore, something like 36km or 22 miles, before land itself could be seen.

> The Lighthouse, or Pharos of Alexandria... stood more than 100 meters tall above the island of Pharos, guiding ships safely through Alexandria’s treacherous coastal waters

Note that making navigation safer would also benefit trade. Given the choice of landing in a port that was difficult to find and one that had such a lighthouse as a guide...

> Despite the fall, the average rice price was still ¥1,772 higher than that of a year earlier.

So this price isn't surprising or unusual at all.

It's been going on forever. "Stop looking at the cave art and take the garbage out."

> In practice, atheists are people who think they know there is no god.

Many atheists find a verdict of "not guilty" on the charge "that god exists". It's the equivalent of saying "I don't believe you." That's about it.

Saying "god does not exist" is a claim that itself has a burden of proof. Most people agree there is no need to provide proof that fairies and unicorns don't exist. If you think they do: show your evidence. The default position is to think they don't exist.

Atheists are people that don't bleieve there is a God. Agnostics are people who don't know they are atheists. -- Aron Ra

That's almost a HHGG reference.

American retailers. The rest of the word is only seeing rushes on popcorn, which we're eating as we wait to see the what happens.

You'll need a case cracker and a tool specifically to de-energise the CRT: that's the killer part.

> If they were traveling uphill to work you’d think they would gain some of that back coming back downhill

It's uphill both ways.

Famously, again in Australia, the ABC lost the rights to broadcast football final games to a commercial station, so two ABC comedians (Roy and HG) did a radio show where they watched the game on tv live and added their own humorous commentary. Viewers would watch the commercial TV channel with the sound down and the ABC radio station sound instead.

Such toxins are added to make the alcohol unsuitable for human consumption, and thus avoid paying government alcohol tax or duty.

Where I am it's called "methylated spirits" and IIRC the boing point of the additive is very close to that of the alcohol so it's not possible to distill it out.

> The gas itself is under $100 per liter depending on purity.

At what temperature and pressure?

It's often what the 0.9% is that makes the difference between grades, other than purity.

Generally and as an illustration, a chemical may have a 99% "reagent" grade that includes industrial solvents or some other chemicals that are toxic to ingest. So its equivalent "food" grade may have the same 99% purity but the other 1% is something that isn't poisonous.

Compilr?

I understand what you’re saying, but minutes, hours, days and weeks are fixed time periods that can be reduced to a number of seconds. Months and years are not which is why I did not include those in my earlier post.

Calculating the calendar date for an event that’s 365 days in the future needs to consider whether leap-time corrections need to be made during the period. We do that already for days with our standard calendar.

Edited.

Saying that something happened x-number of seconds (or minutes, hours, days or weeks) ago (or in the future) is simple: it’s giving that point in time a calendar date that’s tricky.

My first time seeing it. Thanks for posting, and thanks to HN for being the kind of place that stuff like this gets posted.

> True part-time work is hard to find because most companies would rather hire someone to work 4 x 40 hour weeks on a project instead over the part timer who wants to do it in 8 x 20 hour weeks or 16 x 10 hour weeks.

My last two contract jobs have been old customers - more than 5 years ago - with whom I left on good terms and who reached out for more work.

Secondly, I've started "team" working with a colleague so I can apply for 40 hour per week jobs and only have to put in 20 hours per week myself. The clients were unsure about it at first but soon realised they are actually getting two full-timers for the price of one, particularly when something goes wrong or something needs to be delivered asap.

With my colleague, I charge a 10% admin fee because I'm the one invoicing the client and I pay the colleague immediately each week whether or not the client pays me. My colleague has reciprocated and I've done work for them (and paid their 10% admin fee).

> There’s always been an industry of professional gamblers with various successful strategies. Some have become billionaires.

Be the house.

Back in the 1980s I did some work on a computerised tabulation system for a large race course: my part was programming EPROMS for the displays, but I learned a lot about the system from that time.

Basically, the house takes their cut from all the bets. The house cannot lose. Then they share whatever's left amongst the winners.

The returns for a $1 bet on a horse are calculated in real time and displayed on the screens. THESE ARE NOT THE FINAL ODDS, they change as bets are placed right up until the race starts, which is the starting price (and where the term SP bookmakers comes from).

Contrast this with bookmakers at the track who offer fixed odds when the bets are placed. They stand a chance of losing if they get their numbers wrong.

> pre internet, your name, address, and phone number would published in the widely distributed telephone book

This is used as a plot point in Steve Martin's movie "The Jerk". The titular character proudly sees their name and number in a phone book; the scene changes to a crazed gunman randomly choosing their next victim from a phone book and landing on the same name and number. Hilarity ensues.

Maybe the delay has been caused by bugs.

The mechanical driver part of the subwoofer might be able to be made smaller, but the surface that moves the air still needs to be large - there is a relationship to the wavelength of the sound involved that I no longer remember. This is why tweeters are small.

1) take a breath 2) the universe is big, really big...

This annoyed me as well.