[HN Gopher] IT Without Software
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IT Without Software
Author : hwayne
Score : 118 points
Date : 2021-07-01 16:36 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ndt.instedd.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (ndt.instedd.org)
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| this is awesome!
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| It's interesting that humanity can't settle on a single language,
| but has managed to more or less standardize on the symbols for
| numbers.
| nicetryguy wrote:
| Arabic notation / base ten seems to work really well with our
| brains. Having that many fingers probably helps. I couldn't
| imagine a modern world running on Roman Numerals.
| maliker wrote:
| The real killer application of arabic numerals is arithmetic.
| Doing even multiplication and division in roman numerals is
| very time consuming [1].
|
| [1] https://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/08/16/roman-
| numerals-...
| laurent92 wrote:
| > Having 10 fingers probably helps.
|
| Yes, so we can count to 31 on one hand. Somehow, no
| civilization invented a base-32 notation.
| sipos wrote:
| You might be able to. Personally I can't raise my ring
| finger without my little/pinkie finger also being raised.
|
| Also, some numbers in finger binary are liable to get you
| punched if shown the wrong way round.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| A few civilizations have used base 60
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal
| bee_rider wrote:
| The idea of counting to 12 by pointing to knuckles is
| something I hadn't encountered before, and really neat.
|
| Kinda surprised base-12 didn't end up dominating. Having
| so many factors would have made division so much more
| convenient for mental math, and it is only 2 extra
| characters to remember.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't think the choice of base is really dependent on
| finger encoding efficiency. Going 0-5 on a hand has the
| advantage that we only really care about the "last" finger.
|
| Anyway, if we really want to go crazy, the knuckle and
| first joint on (my, at least) fingers can be controlled
| somewhat independently, so I think we can fit in 4 states
| per finger: | _ | | __ _
| |
| slver wrote:
| Most of us are programmers here, you are just as used to hex.
|
| Also technically we don't have that many fingers. We have one
| more finger. We don't have a number digit for ten right? They
| go zero to nine. But out fingers go zero to ten.
|
| If our numeric base matched our fingers, we should've used
| base eleven. Not many people think this through :)
|
| I think the real breakthrough is having "order of magnitude"
| in numbers. So indeed the Roman Numerals suck and probably
| wouldn't last regardless.
| the_monocle wrote:
| 0 to 9 are exactly 10 digits.
| depaya wrote:
| I think their point is that we use our 10 fingers to
| count to a value of 10. We can use our 10 fingers to
| represent 0 (no fingers) through 10 (all 10 fingers).
| This is essentially base 11 if you try to assign a
| specific digit to each finger.
|
| While I agree with that viewpoint I think it's missing
| the point. As humans with 10 fingers it's easy for us to
| group things into increments of 10, so base 10 comes
| naturally. Think about how you count a quantity over 10:
| once you run out of fingers you mark down (or remember)
| that you've already counted one quantity of 10, now
| you're counting the next quantity of 10, etc...
|
| It's more like a _shifted_ base 10 where we represent
| digits 1-10 instead of 0-9.
| slver wrote:
| Everyone is thinking about a "shifted" base 10, yes.
|
| But every base starts with 0, there's no such thing as
| "shifted base" because then you literally can't represent
| 0.
|
| Also "zero fingers" is still a thing that exists in this
| shifted base 10. So it remains base 11.
|
| This is like the classic "0-based indexing" vs. "1-based
| indexing" dilemma. The "first" thing is represented by 1,
| we think.
|
| But the "first" year of our life, we're zero years old.
| The "first" hour after midnight is 0 o'clock. Building
| your "first" million as a business is the period before
| you have 1 million. And so on.
| can_count wrote:
| 0 fingers to 10 fingers is exactly 11 numbers.
| nicetryguy wrote:
| > you are just as used to hex.
|
| I do 6502 ASM with bit tricks and all and i can tell you
| straight up that hex is never as intuitive as decimal IMO.
|
| Base eleven sounds like the stuff of nightmares =)
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Where the hex is "intuitive" is showing what's "even" to
| the CPU.
|
| For example we think of 10, 100, 50 as nice round
| convenient quantities.
|
| CPUs see 16, 256, 2048 as convenient quantities--in hex
| that's visible: 0x10, 0x100, 0x800.
| nicetryguy wrote:
| Right. It lets you see the bits more easily: 0-F is a
| good representation of 4 bits.
|
| Say i were to name a random hex value like #$9C right now
| it would take me a few seconds to convert that to decimal
| in my head though... 156 took me a few seconds to sort
| out. I don't have to think about what 156 _means_ in
| decimal because i just _know_ what it is.
| vangelis wrote:
| The radix I've used since birth is easier than the one I
| haven't. Wild stuff.
| nicetryguy wrote:
| Yes i do simplify my posts and try to write them in ways
| that normal people can understand. Your snide comment is
| a sign of success =)
| sipos wrote:
| Do you though? Why is 156 anymore familiar than 9C? I
| can't imagine 156 things any more than I can 9C things.
| Orou wrote:
| Isn't it more intuitive for OP codes though?
| emodendroket wrote:
| It isn't that strange. Learning a language natively is an
| innate human trait that isn't regulated. The symbols we choose
| to represent for arithmetic (or to write the language, for that
| matter) must be learned.
| simonw wrote:
| This is a really interesting post, let down by a vague title.
|
| The author describes a system they created to help remote health
| centers in Thailand and Cambodia send disease cases in a
| structured way via SMS, while working around the difficulties of
| teaching people to send text messages in those languages (which
| have a lot of letters, often not made available on handsets).
|
| Their solution was a cardboard disc wheel which could generate
| numeric codes that could be more easily sent.
|
| The post is from 2010 - I'd love to read a follow-up on this
| project.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Did something similar in Africa 10 years ago. We created a
| whole human writable protocol, carboards to help, and you could
| control the systems using nokia 3310 charged on a car battery
| in the middle of the Dogon desert.
|
| Fun times. Also, thanks python for making it way easier than it
| should have been. GPRS modems are not simple beasts.
| simonw wrote:
| I found mentions of this "magic wheel" on their blog at
| https://instedd.org/blog/prince-mahidol-of-songla-magic-whee...
| and on SlideShare at
| https://www.slideshare.net/channesuy/instedd-innovation-lab-...
| but both of those stories were also from 2010.
| handrous wrote:
| Reminds me of various calculation tools used in, for example,
| grading school assignments (like circular EZ Graders). Or
| "feelie" anti-piracy devices from video games, back when they
| still came in boxes.
| rntksi wrote:
| I'm amazed at the creativity and the simple-ness of this
| solution. Working in public health myself, we've often designed
| systems that became un-usable due to requirements in the field
| that cannot be met (people not having laptops/PCs or not knowing
| how to use them or Internet is missing, etc...)
|
| Brilliant write-up, I'd love to know more about how many years
| this work went on for.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| While it's creative it's not novel, these "computers" were very
| common not that long ago and are quite often still used in
| various applications such as engineering and architecture e.g.
| slide rulers..
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule
| mdoms wrote:
| As long as Americans are obsessed with the idea of SMS they will
| never get their ideas into the wider world. No one uses SMS. No
| one.
| JohnL4 wrote:
| Huh. Strong statement. Maybe look into M-Pesa.
|
| <<Customers who sign up for the M-Pesa service can convert
| between e-cash and real cash (these are called cash-in / cash-
| out transactions), and can transfer e-cash from their account
| to that of another account holder via SMS.>>
|
| https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/m-pesa-a-m...
| bondant wrote:
| Plenty of people still use SMS.
|
| Easier than to find if the contact is on
| Signal/Messenger/Whats'app/Whatever and it works even without
| having a data plan.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| SMS works really well in places that have poorer coverage /
| worse networks. That's partially because it doesn't rely on the
| 'data' coverage but fundamental telephony technologies that
| have been around much longer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sho
| rt_Message_Service_technica...). So basically if you have a
| signal of any kind, SMS will probably work reliably. Then
| there's the fact that you don't need any extra app or identity
| to use it. If you have a phone with a plan, you have no
| barriers to using SMS. Both these aspects are not as true for
| the software over Internet messaging solutions, and I think
| that's why SMS is still widely used and will continue to be
| widely used.
| comradesmith wrote:
| SMS is fantastic. In my country there are a few popular
| messaging apps, it seems like to be connected to everyone you
| need to be on all of them; but you don't, everyone already has
| a phone number, and it just works.
|
| You can send hyperlinks if you want, so the medium isn't really
| all that limiting.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| Back in 2003 I was chatting with a Dutch guy who was ragging on
| the US because we hardly used SMS. I guess we will eventually
| catch up to what the rest of the world is using now as they
| move on to something more spectacular.
| davb wrote:
| Ah, the Mix 'n' Mojo [0] lives on!
|
| [0] https://www.oldgames.sk/codewheel/monkey-island-2-mix-n-mojo
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Spoiler: Essentially the author is talking about a custom
| encoding.
|
| This is something I always try to impress to other engineers.
| Everything is just an encoding to binary. How we interpret it is
| entirely up to us. Even the fact that we choose to use 8 bits as
| a grouping.
|
| Often this leads to much more efficient implementations...
|
| Of course only do it where/when it matters.
| s_dev wrote:
| Old school vending machines use 9 bit bytes. In case anyone was
| looking for a example.
| goldenkey wrote:
| Binary is what we use on computers. It can encode anything but
| not always optimally. A quark's color for instance, is ternary.
|
| You'd probably benefit from reading about fractional bit
| encodings:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27698522
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Whoa . That's pretty cool, TIL, thank you!
| thrwaeasddsaf wrote:
| Perhaps one beautiful day in the future: Text and Pictures
| Without Javascript.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| That day already happened, in the past.
|
| I still practice this every day. For example, weather services
| usually have a continually updated image of current radar. I
| just "load" the image directly and refresh the "page" to
| update. No HTML. No Javascript.
|
| However, most weather websites are full scripts, tracking and
| ads.
|
| Javascript is choice, but it is not a requirement.
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(page generated 2021-07-01 23:00 UTC)