"Granddad was a philanthropist, always interested in the fate of those to whom fate wasn't so kind. He was a legend at the bank where he would throw handfuls of dimes down to the crowd loitering on the street, and this was in the time when dimes were real money. Sometimes he'd talk about it over coffee; it gave him great pleasure to help his fellow man.
Once he was relating about the scramble when the dimes came down, and he laughed until he cried, telling about the bum he called Fatty who was chasing a rolling dime and ran head first into a dumpster. He didn't really hurt himself. It knocked him out, but he was back on his feet after a few minutes, and his dime was gone.
Grampa said, "Fatty learned a lesson that day: Keep your eye on the dime or another bum will get it."
Check out http://www.driveonwood.com to see plenty of examples of both. A wood car or truck can be amazingly practical for any use involving long steady state (i.e. highway driving), not so much for city use.
You don't run these inside enclosed spaces, because the carbon monoxide would kill you.
It's nowhere near as convenient as gasoline--there's plenty of minding and care required--but during hard times it's much more efficient and convenient than hauling a truck load of stuff by horseback, or walking. A wood gas spark engine runs much more efficiently than an equivalent steam engine, for example.
The difference back then is everything was carbureted and switching over to wood gas was relatively simple. With today's extremely complex fuel injected vehicles it will be a whole different story.
Converting the wood to charcoal before use has been found to be the most reliable method of burning wood by most users, with lowest contamination/fouling risk, although the owner of the http://www.driveonwood.com forum (a guy from Springville, Alabama) runs his truck on straight hardwood and has put many miles on it like that.
When in good tune, a full size pickup truck will go about a mile per pound of wood.
The ancient Sumerians used multiples of 60, as we continue to do for time and angles (which are related) today. It makes perfect sense. 60 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, which makes it easy to use in calculations. Even the metric people are not so crazy as to propose replacing these with powers of 10.
Same with pounds, for example. A pound is 16 ounces, which can be divided 4 times without involving any fractions. Try that with metric.
Then there's temperature. Fahrenheit just works more naturally over the human-scale temperature range without involving fractions. Celsius kind of sucks by comparison.
> Same with pounds, for example. A pound is 16 ounces, which can be divided 4 times without involving any fractions. Try that with metric.
Not sure if you're actually serious... 1 kg is 1000 g, dividing with 4 gets you 250 g, no fractions. And no need to remember arbitrary names or numbers for conversions.
> Then there's temperature. Fahrenheit just works more naturally over the human-scale temperature range without involving fractions. Celsius kind of sucks by comparison.
Again, I'm not sure I get it. With celsius, 0°C is freezing temperature of water and 100°C is boiling point of water. For fahrenheit it was something like 32 and 212? And in every day use, people don't need fractions, only full degrees. Celsius also aligns well with Kelvins without fractions (unlike fahrenheit).
Fahrenheit has finer granularity without fractions.
IOW each Celsius degree is bigger than each Fahrenheit degree.
Even though the F numbers are so much higher and it seems unbearably hot :)
So for a thermostat that only can be set in 1 degree increments (without a decimal point), you have finer control when using F than using C.
Anybody can memorize the conversion more easily by throwing out the math, using table lookup -- made easier by throwing out most of the table too.
Just remember every 5 C equals a non-fractional F.
And every 5 C equals 9 F.
If all you are interested in is comfort level it's like this:
C F
0 32
5 41
10 50
15 59
20 68
25 77
30 86
35 95
40 104
Least significant digit of F drops by 1 every time without fail.
Looks like it increases by 1 each time in the tens column, but it's only 9 so 50 & 59 are the outliers, which most people have memorized already.
If you are a Celsius native and you think in terms of 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 -- you only need to remember 5 different F numbers, 50, 59, 68, 77 & 86 and that will get you far.
Ahhh, I mean that's all very well .. but I'm over 60 and I've literally never used or needed to use Fahrenheit - and I had a long career in geophysical and physical data aquisition, ran several kinds of furnaces and annealing ovens 24/7 for a decade, do a lot of cooking, etc.
So, I appreciate your rendition of things I have tables for already but any actual need is sadly non existant.
Ah, I see. Though, it's still useful that the relevant range isn't 0-100 but can go below zero since it's a significant change in weather conditions when we're below freezing point, but I get your point.
In the end, it's probably what one is used to. Temperatures here are typically between -20'C and +30'C.
> I also don't understand the fear around fractions - we deal with halves, quarters and fifths all the time in the natural world.
Yes, and a certain fast food company found that their 1/3 lb burgers weren't selling well, because their idiot customers can't maff too good and thought 1/4 was bigger than 1/3.
I'm sure that will contribute to the illusion of security, but in reality the system is thoroughly backdoored on every level from the CPU on up, and everyone knows it.
There is no such thing as computer security, in general, at this point in history.
There's a subtlety that's missing here: if your threat model doesn't include the actors who can access those backdoors, then computer security isn't so bad these days.
That subtlety is important because it explains how the backdoors have snuck in — most people feel safe because they are not targeted, so there's no hue and cry.
The backdoors snuck in because literally everyone is being targeted.
Few people ever see the impact of that themselves or understand the chain of events that brought those impacts about.
And yet, many people perceive a difference between “getting hacked” and “not getting hacked” and believe that certain precautions materially affect whether or not they end up having to deal with a hacking event.
Are they wrong? Do gradations of vulnerability exist? Is there only one threat model, “you’re already screwed and nothing matters”?
I'm sure you're right; however, there is still a distinction between the state using my device against me and unaffiliated or foreign states using my device against me or more likely simply to generate cash for themselves.
We generally aren't in the habit of using "random" scripts to do anything. They're usually carefully developed to do exactly what we need them to do, precisely, and nothing more. Not the giant pile of buggy ass code and security nightmare that is systemd.
By the way, you don't seem to be aware that you can use any language you want to create startup "scripts" including compiled binaries, if you hate shell scripting so much.
Do you even know any shell script? Serious question. Many 'bash' haters know nothing about the language--starting with calling it 'bash' instead of 'shell script.' There are several different flavors just of shell scripting languages, and bash is only one.
Once he was relating about the scramble when the dimes came down, and he laughed until he cried, telling about the bum he called Fatty who was chasing a rolling dime and ran head first into a dumpster. He didn't really hurt himself. It knocked him out, but he was back on his feet after a few minutes, and his dime was gone.
Grampa said, "Fatty learned a lesson that day: Keep your eye on the dime or another bum will get it."
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