- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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Once again, Americans will use anything except the metric system to measure things.
What the fuck is “half a pickup truck” for a measure
About 0.000000281 Saarländer
Two of them is roughly the size of a pickup truck…
Like, it’s volume, they could say X gallons, but it would be hard for people to visualize. So people use an example most readers would be familiar with.
Have you honestly never wondered why journalists use random things? Or has no one taken the time to answer before?
It’s been common literally for centuries before either of us were born, but most likely all of human existence. Just with animals like buffalo instead of pickup trucks.
You know what is roughly half the size of an American pickup truck and very common? A sedan. Like a regular sized car.
The annoying thing isn’t using a common object to show scale. It’s that they are cutting it in half. Like, you have other whole objects to choose from. It kind of ruins the point.
That’s what frustrates me about the title at least.
Why can’t we just go back to reporting volumes in bushels, like God intended?
That half giraffe really killed me.
You know what is roughly half the size of an American pickup truck and very common? A sedan. Like a regular sized car.
Oh ok…
Seems like you have two problems:
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You have no idea how big an American pickup truck is
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Instead of asking questions, you make assumptions and hope someone teaches you
One is a much bigger problem than the other, I wish you best of luck with both tho.
God I hate stupid fucking pretentious responses like this. Especially when you can just use something as simple as a Google Image search.
I live in America mate. I know how large an f150 is. Here. Choose a truck and sedan at your leisure. Heres the top selling truck next to the top selling sedan.
Not quite double the “size” if by that we mean volume. But definitely close. Quick napkin math of about 1.8x the size.
Or you could just pick a smaller car literally everyone knows. Like a Honda Civic and use that to explain the size.
You seem to be the one that doesn’t know how big an American pickup is. Though it is always enjoyable when a pretentious reply like yours is so easily proven wrong.
Mods want to explain why linking carsized.com and telling a commenter they are being pretentious gets a comment removed by mods?
Edit: Maybe it’s my mobile app? When someone blocks you maybe it’s confusing the comment thread? Idk.
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The problem is he’s Unfortunately, short, so he has a hard time on visualizing things like the size of pick up, which are quite large
Americans will use literally anything except the metric system 😔
It’s a Canadian website.
Seems like they’re ‘Murican enough based on this article.
Go to Boston, and you will near the story about how an engineering class from MIT was asked to measure the distance across a bridge without using any established unit of measure. So this picked this guy named Smoot and counted off how many Smoots the bridge were.
For some reason, they tell this story to tourists as proof of ingenuity but it was the most pointless exercise I could imagine in engineering.
So, how would you make that measurement?
The point of the lesson was to teach creative problem-solving. And a by-product of that, all measuring systems are simply arbitrary units made up by some random dude. And that in the end, no one standard is better than another. All that matters is that enough people agree upon a standard that is reproducible to a level of accuracy that is Good Enoughtm and fit for purpose.
I live in Boston; I am familiar with the Smoot unit lol
You posted a minute earlier, but the other guy got the upvotes. Or maybe the timing is based on instance?
I’m unbothered by that - It’s lemmy, them’s the breaks sometimes 🤷♂️
There is a metric. The metric is one truck!
It’s about an average elevator in downtown cleveland
And are we talking a reasonable work truck, or one of those American abominations referred to as ‘pickup trucks.’
Half of the standard passenger vehicle around here.
but how many hamburgers is it?!
American or European pickup trucks?
I don’t mind the “size of common everyday thing” for a news article. It gives an easy to understand measure of the scale.
It’s the “half” part that is infuriating. Like, you couldn’t just pick another common object of the right size? Like, I’m pretty sure you could just say “a sedan” and be pretty close to the size. Is this just AI writing titles?
Just another method of getting clicks. Writing stupid titles like “half a pickup truck sized” so people click it to understand what the fuck they mean.
Are we talking like a 2005 Ford ranger or a 2024? F350? Because there is no standard size for a pickup truck.
Cars have gotten bigger but trucks have too.
A Honda Civic today is like half the “size” of an F150
SUVs are technically more “volume” then a lot of trucks though. Since they don’t lose all the volume having a flat bed. But “volume” is kinda silly. Anyway. None of this is meant to be specific because, I mean, it’s literally just about a title to give a person an idea of the scale of an object they know nothing about.
14 fridges
I don’t know why that’s more frightening
Edit: I realized it’s childhood trauma.
Billy?
because i pulled it out of my ass?
what rural Murica understands.
What does rural canada understand?
Hockey rinks!
Probably 1.25x the size of a washing machine
It’s the perfect fit when something’s too small to compare to whales and too big to compare to bananas.
Front or back half? They are substantially different on volume
I love how this is simultaneously a great and horrible photoshop. Like the splice is obvious in the foreground but I can’t see it in the background at all. Like I have no idea how this was done.
There’s some amount of AI-fuckery going on.
Nah, I just wasn’t looking close enough, it’s just a simple paste of one image on top of another from the same angle. If you follow the line where the truck ends upwards, you can see a similar line on the roof of the building and the tree in the background doesn’t quite line up perfectly (but it’s close enough that our brains assume it’s fine).
That might have even been done in paint rather than gimp or ps.
There is some line on the roof, but the roof still strangely lines up. The tree in the background nor the sky have a visible line.
Furthermore the text on the tire is garbled, and the whole image has this “covered in vaseline” feeling to it.
You’re right about the sky, though I think the tree does have a line but the blur hides it (I can see it when I include the line in the roof but not when I block it). I’d say that it is more sophisticated than paint, but that an image editor was used to take the cloud from only one of the images.
I disagree that the tire text is garbled. https://www.bfgoodrich.ca/en/auto/garage/articles/making-of-the-ko3-tire here’s a picture of a similar tire with the same text. AI might have been used for some of the editing of that transition, but I don’t think the source images were genAI.
The A and especially the E on “terrain” look messed up.
Thanks?
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If you split it this way you end up with more than half of the weight, you need to split it down the middle through front and rear bumpers.
naa. your mom is still on the pass side.
r/AnythingButMetric
or whatever the Lemmy Syntax would be
I think it was
!community@instance.tldbut you may need to put it in a a hyperlink markdown.
Users are linked as @Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
I need a banana for size comparison.
Banana is metric, Americans use raccoon penis.
Of course, I totally forgot about the new RFK Jr. measurement system. I think that is about 4 inches give or take.
thats on the large size even for people right 😥
…i’m just thinking how many refrigerators is that, like three?..
Well a refrigeratoe is 0.78 of a television, which is 1.2 of a bed, then 6.7 pillows which is 5 cats, making it 3 chairs and half a book.
…man i want to see your television!..
falling from the the sky and burning is a good thing, bigger concern is them staying up there for too long
falling from the the sky and burning is a good thing
Jury is still out on this one.
“We’re really changing the composition of the stratosphere into a state that we’ve never seen before,” said John Dykema, an applied physicist at SEAS, who warns that scientists today poorly understand many of the impacts.
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Yeah…You can tell that to the tire industry and the microplastics crisis…
falling from the sky onto things is a problem tho
communication satellites are low earth orbit to reduce latency, that means +25000 km/h velocity to sustain orbit, and would also have a very shallow entry angle, that combination means total vaporization
Low earth orbit is most survivable reentry trajectory… coming in at a higher angle significantly increases the heating.
The vaporized materials themselves are a problem. When we’re building these mega-constellations, we’re putting some real mass up there. We’re introducing all sorts of exotic materials into the stratosphere that would not naturally occur there at those concentrations. And remember, this is a very sensitive environment. The actual volume of CFCs we introduced into the stratosphere wasn’t that large. The volume of all our AC refrigerant and hair spray cans was nothing compared to the atmosphere. We may actually not be that far from the sheer volume of satellites affecting the ozone layer as they decay.
The stratosphere is an environment like any other. It has a finite ability to absorb and process any form of pollution without noticeable and significant effects. I’m not qualified enough to estimate the number of satellite reentries to damage the ozone layer or to have other deleterious effects, but at least from that study featured in that video, we may not be far off. The story of civilization has been repeatedly realizing that what we once considered infinite dumping grounds were anything but. And the stratosphere is no different.
Edit: may have misinterpreted parent comment and went off on a wild tangent.
We would be pretty lucky if it impacted something like the ozone layer in a noticeable way as that’s something that can be seen and could be acted on and repaired as we’ve done before.
It’s the effects that we don’t know that are probably going to be the bigger problem.
[Go outside at dawn, breathe deep]
Ah, nothing like the taste of fresh satellite in the morning!
Nothing quite like that aluminum oxide! So refreshing!
What does that have to do with orbits and reentry angle?
That’s a good question!
I think you meant to respond a couple comments up the chain.
i mean, with that many satellites what are the odds (i have the smoked 2 joints stupids) something fucks up and it doesn’t come in at that shallow entry angle?
Due to the physics and orbital mechanics, near impossible thankfully
Falling from the sky a good thing?
Ok well hope neither you nor a loved one is standing under it then. Cuz you sure aren’t hoping so. Go learn some humanity in the meanwhile.
You do know that it’ll just burn up in the atmosphere?
Most of them, there was a link in the article about one starlink satellite that didn’t completely burn up. But their biggest concern atm is what effect it will have on the atmosphere. From the article.
“What that means, though, is that all the mass of the satellites — the solar panels, plastic, metal, batteries — it’s all getting melted and deposited in the upper atmosphere. So, that’s not a good thing”
Starlink satellites are in too low orbit to completely burn up.
How awesome would it be for Donald Trump, Joe Rogan, Dana White, and Elon Musk himself to get smashed by a Musk satellite during a photo op in the octagon at the White House UFC fight.
As an atheist that would legitimately make me turn Christian.
I don’t think you’re doing atheist correctly.
No evidence that the jesus team dropped the sat though
As awesome as RFK Jr dying of measles.
If that happened, you could not convince me that we aren’t all extras in Idiocracy 2.
I mean I’m drawing on other peoples comedic talent
I mean, if we’re going to go with retribution-by-improbable events, I have to stick with the classics. There’s nothing quite like an evil leader being smote by lightning bolt. It just has that “wrath of an angry God” effect like nothing else.
Watch out, It’s the trickle down economics tm
As was always the plan for these satellites.
The article raises a vague concern about Kessler syndrome. This is exactly why these satellites are designed to deorbit once their useful lifespan is finished. I don’t see what the point of this article is at all.
They probably burn up also
Yeah, they actually design them with reentry in mind to maximize the burn-up and ensure no pieces hit the ground. I recall they had a bit of difficulty when they first introduced laser data links to the design because the lenses the satellites used were large pieces of glass that would make it to the ground on reentry, they had to redesign them to fragment more easily.
Then read the article. They found debris from starlink satellites on the ground, which is horrifying if you consider they want to increase the number of satellites by a factor of 100x and make them much bigger to build datacenters in space.
That plan would lead to one re-entry every three minutes, depositing insane amounts of plastics and metals in the atmosphere even if they would burn up completely.Is anyone really planning on building data centers in space? I assume everyone who knows how physics works is aware that cooling will be nearly impossible with today’s tech.
How big do you think these are going to be? A lot of people seem to have this concept of these massive things in space and that’s not what it’s going to be.
Starlink v3 already need to radiate 20kw of heat away, these are going to be 100kw.
They aren’t huge, they are many.
Well, the heat generating datacenter part isn’t anyway… the solar panels and radiators will be quite large once unfolded.
Edit: Clarity above, but also here’s an image which they say is to scale.
See how small the actually data center portion is? Those solar panels are super thin and will fold up super tiny, and so will the radiator. Even if the radiator size is wrong, the main point is these things are small, and not what you should think of when you think data center. I think someone else likened the size to a server rack or two.
What if they make them a full pickup size
Well damn, those solar panels would probably be at least a dozen Eiffel towers tall then.
It’s not as impossible as you think. Scott Manley did an analysis of the heat budget recently and it’s quite reasonable.
Fear mongering for ad money is the point
Part of the plan, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good plan. They don’t have control of where the debris lands, and Starlink doesn’t take responsibility for cleanup when it lands on others’ property.
The debris will be microscopic. It won’t “land” anywhere noticeable.
The fine particulate matter may not be great for the ozone layer, but it’s actually pretty negligible compared to all of the other pollution that we’re not addressing either. That doesn’t justify the pollution, but hopefully it helps contextualize it.
Per the article, sometimes they burn up, sometimes they don’t.
The big culprit I was remembering isn’t Starlink, but SpaceX, with the debris being potentially lethal (over 6 feet, too heavy for one person to move.)
From the same professor: https://wlos.com/news/local/professor-spacexs-lack-of-accountability-for-space-debris-frustrating-nasa-samantha-lawlwer-university-of-regina-saskatchewan-canada
Musk’s companies are notorious for lack of responsibility. At least Cards Against Humanity held they’re get to the fire for a minute.
SpaceX has made changes in the past so the dishes break up better. That could have been one of the earlier dishes, but maybe it was also one of the ones that failed to properly insert into orbit which changed the re-entry characteristics?
The big things like you mentioned wouldn’t be starlink. That’d be from something larger like a 2nd stage that came back down and didnt fully burn up. Thats a risk with everyone, mega constellation or not.
Luckily, starship will be fully reusable which will prevent that, but the trade off is, if starship is successful, a failure during re entry is going to risk having a vehicle designed not to burn up, land somewhere it shouldn’t.
Similar risks to the shuttle if it blew up, but these will be flying much more frequently
I ran into this dramatization for media hits before, with the complaint about rocket launches and their contribution to pollution. People were all about getting out the pitchforks, especially since it was mainly about Elon Musk, but when the actual numbers were mentioned (very small), suddenly, I was the bad guy. No one likes real facts.
Now, should we be launching so many things that are designed to fall back down so soon? Probably not, that’s the mark of a disposable society in high gear. But how we’re doing things, and why, should be the focus, not a headline that makes it sound like things are falling out of the sky to hit people.
I don’t understand what kind of capitalist pig you need to be to allow private companies access to low orbit.
just some random capitalist hereIs it regulated? What’s stopping me from putting up a satellite?
Gravity
That’s the apple thing right? I’m sure I can figure it out if I put my mind to it.
yo momma would give you such a smacking
That’s a risk I’m willing to take.
and, is that half an F150 or half a Ranger?
Half a cybertruck, duh.
The Atari 800XL was far superior to the C64.
Starlink got no plan about when and where their half pickup trucks are gonna fall.
