foobar1962

My father was a fitter and turner, diesel mechanic, farmer and self-taught panel beater. When I was a kid he worked on old British cars, Morris Minors in particular (he had a fondness for the early "split screen" flat head) as well as American and Australian made vehicles and machinery (much of which was war surplus from what the US left in Australia from WW2) so I was exposed to the vagaries of Whitworth bolt and nut sizing, compared to the American AF standard. Japanese equipment largely used metric as did Australia from the early 1970s.

Whitworth sizing made no sense. Only decades later did I realise that Whitworth is a measurement of the bolt diameter, while the distance across the flats of the bolt heads and nuts were some standardised mathematical multiple of that; and that AF wasn't an acronym for "American Fine" it was simply "across flats" which made finding the spanner to match the bolt much, much easier.

Cloning is likely. Finding more seeds unlikely. The plant hasn't flowered or grown fruit yet so the story insult over yet...

> Yes, you will “meet” more women by dancing than by playing games on your computer. That doesn’t necessarily mean you will make any meaningful connections.

This. I have been learning Argentine Tango for over 10 years. Going from the "dancing together in close embrace" to "let's meet later for coffee" is still has difficult as ever. More so with tango: the phrase "why buy the cow when you get the milk for free" comes to mind, often. Note that I've made some very good friends through the dance, but it's tough getting out of the friend zone.

Wax on, wax off?

And another box close enough so the CD tray can press them when it opens.

> Milk is preferable, with a splash of water. I use oat milk…

Ah so you are using water with a pinch of salt! /s

> about 10^5 kelvins (don't try to convert this to this strange unit of Fahrenheit)

Challenge accepted... it's about 10^5 Fahrenheit.

Archiving of broadcast material is rather difficult: should it be the final result that was shown over the air with all the overlays and graphics superimposed, or should it be the raw feeds? There is a board of people that make these decisions.

For some program material there were low resolution copies, copies that were shortened for different purposes, copies that were edited for different markets... and so on. There was a decision tree to follow.

There was also a "never to be shown again" list, usually where people that were involved in the program (either on-screen or part of the production team) were later associated with crimes or very unsavoury behaviour, or the material was in some other way extremely controversial.

I was involved with two projects to digitise 20,000 hours each of analog audio and video: I built the database to select the tapes to digitise and manage their destruction. One was in the late 2000s the other 2020s.

One of the challenges for the project was finding working 1-inch analog video machines. The team scoured the world for machines, working or not, and managed to get several running. There is one particular part that fails, Sony only has a handful left and the machinery to make them is no longer available. When they are gone the media will be unplayable.

The data complexity was due in part to there being multiple version of various quality, a program can be split across multiple tapes, and tapes can have multiple programs. So they need to ensure that all tapes of the best versions were selected, and also know what parts of other programs were on the tapes – bonus material. Finally, it was common to re-use video tapes to save money so it was possible that rare fragments of other material could be found at the end of the expected programs.

> You can reasonably easily imagine doing this with film too – just move it past the slit at a steady rate – not dissimilarly from taking an old-school panorama camera and moving the body instead of the lens.

No need to imagine, this is how photo finish cameras at horse and greyhound races have worked for decades.

I read that in Kenneth William's voice.

I assume by "lethal" you mean "highly reactive" as opposed to "poisonous". Something that really wants to give away electrons and something that really wants to gain electrons are going to really get on well, and will be really stable.

> This is discussed in the article. The standard is to use infinity, not zero.

It's wrong.

How is infinity returned as a result anyway? It's not a number, and it's not <the largest number the computer can return> either.

> Division by zero is better approximated by +infinity rather than zero.

No it's not. Division by zero is UNDEFINED. How does a calculation return +infinity anyway?

On the positive side of the graph, 1/x approaches +infinity. However from the negative side of the graph 1/x approaches -infinity. So at zero, 1/x is simultaneously +infinity and -infinity, which is not possible. The answer to 1/0 is "there is no answer" which is UNDEFINED.

A reasonable result for a calculation is to return "?" or possibly NULL or nothing, depending on what other parts of the system are expecting.

Weight. A typical steam train has enough propulsion power to overcome an enormous amount drag, but its power-to-weight ratio is low.

> How on earth is speaking to the media about their own analysis of what happened going to "contaminate the neutrality of the investigation and prosecution"?

Something along the lines of "if the findings are negative then the system is rigged against us."

Avoiding decades of poor health, and the cost (real and lost-opportunity) to society and the individuals.

Exactly what a manufactured comment would say. /s

Thanks for saving me the trouble to post that. Somebody needed to. DA - RIP.

> Wasn't expecting my question to hit top of HN.

Thanks for asking it. Thanks too to the person that provided the thorough answer.

After reading that answer - seeing all the math equations and physics that cover several disciplines - I wonder how some people can just hand-wave "science" away as a conspiracy to fool the masses. They clearly have little idea the amount of knowledge that works together to get answers questions like this.

or, like saying "media ready"

The design drawings did not have the fault, but the engineering drawings used for building may have. They were done by different teams in different organisations at different times.

I picked this up too: a minor error in an excellent article.

> I decided that that life, for me, was not about accomplishment. It was about happiness.

He is in the unusual position to have achieved a great level of accomplishment.

.-. - ..-. --

You reach an age when life becomes a (text) adventure game: you wake up in a field next to a mailbox with a letter in it, and on the ground is a bag with items some of which are useful now, some that may be useful later, and others that are not useful at all.

It may or may not be your beautiful house and your beautiful wife (if I may mix the metaphors a moment) but it's all you have. The challenge is working out what to do with what you have within the limitations of the game, which can involve challenging your idea of what the limitations of the game are...

> pleasure craft... turn anti-clockwise forever if nobody is at the wheel.

That's probably a result of the "paddle wheel" effect of the propellor rotating through the water: a bug not a feature.

Cheese can be a problem for gout; yoghurt not so much because it isn't as protein dense. The "biggies" for gout are seafood, red meat and turkey, red wine and beer (generally best to avoid alcohol) and legumes. I've also found that high sugar diets are bad including fresh fruit and juices.

The carbon isn't captured if it's released somewhere else in the cycle: in this case it will be released after it's eaten.

Nothing in the article mentioned the nutrition of the product. It seems only to have been used in snack bars and chocolate blocks which is "sometimes food".

> Sometimes it pays to risk your life on airplanes other people won't fly on.

We have a winner!