Totally useless information/trivia

[lapal_fan]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

The department store toy shop we had when I was a kid had shelves of kits. Revell and Airfix were at different price points I think I remember, plus each kit would be individually priced, so generally bottom price was a crap plane by Revell and top dollar would be a Lancaster or Superfortress by Airfix.
But this pre dates bar codes. So the trick was to select the model kit you wanted, and the price sticker you wanted, and put them together.
Woman on the till didn’t know her Fokkers from her Hellcats, so she just rung up the number on the sticker.
They went bust eventually.
 

Harsh, but fair. 

Capitalists, be capitalists. 

[Chindie]

The kilogram will be redefined shortly.

How?

All units of measurement boil down to a single set of base units, defined by the Systeme International in France. These are

Ampere, measuring electrical current

Candela, measuring luminosity

Kelvin, measuring temperature

Kilogram, measuring mass

Metre, measuring length

Mol, measuring substance amount

Second, measuring time

These measurements are the base, definitional measurements of everything. There are no official imperial measurements, they are all defined using the above measurements - 1 foot is defined as 0.3048 metres.

Originally these measurements were defined with 'artifacts', which were kept in France. You could (and technically still can) go and see the definitional metre - which was the measurement between 2 lines on a bar of platinum iridium alloy, cast in an X shape to reduce torsion, the lines spaced on the bar to reduce the effect of bend, and measured at the melting point of ice to ensure as much as possible an accurate and consistent measurement. This was true of all of these measurements - the second was originally defined on a fraction of the time it takes the earth to rotate once, for instance.

Unfortunately these definitions aren't constant, and are open to variability, even in the smallest amount, meaning they aren't accurate. This lead to an effort to redefine the measurements using universal constants. A second is now defined as the time required for 9,192,631,770 cycles of radiation of a caesium-133 atom, a metre is length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 seconds. These being constants makes them far more accurate.

However, the kilogram hasn't moved beyond being defined by an artifact. The definitional kilogram is a small cylinder of platinum-iridium alloy, called the International Prototype Kilogram, which sits in France in highly secure and stable conditions, and which has been copied for reference in a few locations around the world. Unfortunately it's been discovered that the mass of the IPK has changed over the years, which has technically meant that a kilogram has changed over the years (and thus every measurement that uses the kilogram has also changed). Therefore the decision has been made to move away from the artefact to a constant, like the other measurements.

Unfortunately defining mass has been more complicated in finding a universal constant and therefore despite knowing the IPK wasn't accurate the International Committee for Weights and Measurements has deferred making a change. However they shortly are to accept a new definition that will use Planck's Constant, meaning the kilogram will then be subject to a natural constant and therefore the kilogram will finally be a kilogram anywhere in the universe for eternity, as far as we are aware, and a small lump of expensive metal in a vault in France can be retired.

[il_serpente]

16 hours ago, Chindie said:

 

However, the kilogram hasn't moved beyond being defined by an artifact. The definitional kilogram is a small cylinder of platinum-iridium alloy, called the International Prototype Kilogram, which sits in France in highly secure and stable conditions, and which has been copied for reference in a few locations around the world. Unfortunately it's been discovered that the mass of the IPK has changed over the years, which has technically meant that a kilogram has changed over the years (and thus every measurement that uses the kilogram has also changed). Therefore the decision has been made to move away from the artefact to a constant, like the other measurements.

 

I just wanna know if I've gained or lost weight.

[chrisp65]

2 hours ago, il_serpente said:

I just wanna know if I've gained or lost weight.

the secret to losing weight is to weigh yourself at increasingly higher altitudes

[bickster]

I'd be happy just not finding more weight

[Chindie]

6 hours ago, il_serpente said:

I just wanna know if I've gained or lost weight.

The number would have gone up, because the IPK has lost mass meaning a kilogram is officially less than it used to be.

[Chindie]

It's impossible to finish the original Pacman arcade cabinet. At level 256 the game will load a broken maze, with the right hand side made of glitched tiles of nonsense. This is because the game was originally developed with its level counter as a single byte, meaning it only has the ability to compute 256 distinct values (0 - 255). When you hit level 256 you exceed this, causing the buffer to overflow and for data to be overwritten, hence the broken map being loaded.

It's unlikely most people would ever hit this level because it would require you to play for literally hours at a high level, but has been achieved by competitive players. It also means there is a maximum high score in Pacman, which was achieved by Billy Mitchell, a renowned/infamous classic retro game player, although his world record was revoked earlier this year when it was discovered he had used an emulator to achieve it, and has subsequently been disqualified from competition.

[Stevo985]

14 minutes ago, Chindie said:

It's impossible to finish the original Pacman arcade cabinet. At level 256 the game will load a broken maze, with the right hand side made of glitched tiles of nonsense. This is because the game was originally developed with its level counter as a single byte, meaning it only has the ability to compute 256 distinct values (0 - 255). When you hit level 256 you exceed this, causing the buffer to overflow and for data to be overwritten, hence the broken map being loaded.

It's unlikely most people would ever hit this level because it would require you to play for literally hours at a high level, but has been achieved by competitive players. It also means there is a maximum high score in Pacman, which was achieved by Billy Mitchell, a renowned/infamous classic retro game player, although his world record was revoked earlier this year when it was discovered he had used an emulator to achieve it, and has subsequently been disqualified from competition.

We got a Pac Man Kill Screen over here!

 

Edit: also being pedantic, Mitchell's record WAS disqualified, but he was only caught using an emulator for Donkey Kong. But they wiped all of his records as a result.

Edited November 5, 2018 by Stevo985

[Chindie]

A similar problem to Pacman happens in the original Donkey Kong arcade cabinet. When reaching level 22, the game loads a level with a 4 second time limit, making the level impossible to complete.

This is caused by the level time limit being calculated by an algorithm, clashing the timer being based on an 8 bit variable. The limit algorithm is calculated as 10 x (level number + 4), meaning at level 22 the calculation is 10x(22+4), or 260. The 8 bit timer however rolls over at 256, meaning you get an impossible 4 second time limit.

[Nigel]

Hugo Boss was born in 1885

[Xela]

29 minutes ago, Nigel said:

Hugo Boss was born in 1885

He was also a nazi.

[bickster]

36 minutes ago, Xela said:

He was also a nazi.

He also died because of a tooth abscess

[bickster]

There are 431 households in the West Midlands that still only use a Black and White Television. 7000 households nationwide (figures for monochrome TV licences issued)

[mjmooney]

26 minutes ago, bickster said:

There are 431 households in the West Midlands that still only use a Black and White Television. 7000 households nationwide (figures for monochrome TV licences issued)

How do they receive a digital signal? I would have thought a b&w set wouldn't even have the right connection sockets for a digital set top box. 

[bickster]

Just now, mjmooney said:

How do they receive a digital signal? I would have thought a b&w set wouldn't even have the right connection sockets for a digital set top box. 

No idea

[chrisp65]

I think there are digi boxes you can plug in to the aerial socket.

[TheAuthority]

On 23/10/2018 at 05:01, chrisp65 said:

The department store toy shop we had when I was a kid had shelves of kits. Revell and Airfix were at different price points I think I remember, plus each kit would be individually priced, so generally bottom price was a crap plane by Revell and top dollar would be a Lancaster or Superfortress by Airfix.
But this pre dates bar codes. So the trick was to select the model kit you wanted, and the price sticker you wanted, and put them together.
Woman on the till didn’t know her Fokkers from her Hellcats, so she just rung up the number on the sticker.
They went bust eventually.
 

My dad used to make the Airfix planes for me when I was a little kid so by the time I was 5 I had tons of WW2 planes hung from my ceiling by sowing thread in various different dog fight positions. It was awesome. I miss my dad  

[bickster]

2 hours ago, TheAuthority said:

My dad used to make the Airfix planes for me when I was a little kid so by the time I was 5 I had tons of WW2 planes hung from my ceiling by sowing thread in various different dog fight positions. It was awesome. I miss my dad  

As a kid I always made the Tamiya models, much better than Airfix or Revell

[mjmooney]

2 hours ago, bickster said:

As a kid I always made the Tamiya models, much better than Airfix or Revell

I made some of the Tamiyas. But they were expensive, and (irrc) a different scale to the British and US kits? I know I made some 1/32 scale tanks, but I preferred the 1/76 Airfix vehicles. Hasegawa did some 1/72 tanks, but even that small difference offended my geeky perfection. 

[Chindie]

Tamiya's standard scale for military land vehicles is 1/35 (and has been for donkeys years. They are famous for continuing to release models for decades, you can still buy kits they first released in the 70s). They also have made some bigger scales, like 1/16 tanks, which are **** enormous.