skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Before we start in... let's remember that in most contexts, the units don't matter. What matters is picking a system and sticking to it.

(and that there still is no such thing as a "one size fits all" system of units)
I can't speak for most people, since I'd be happy to change, but my guess is their thinking is along the lines of "it ain't broke, so why should we fix it?". For most 'everyday' use, the defects of the imperial system are most likely not that visible: if I have to guess how far something is in miles, it doesn't matter much if I say 2.5 miles or 4 kilometers, since I'm basically sticking to one unit and fractions thereof. Where the metric system starts getting a lot nicer is if you have to be more precise and mix and match units, or deal with multiples. In other words, estimating my height at 5'10" is fine for most people, but "how many davidw's would it take to cover a football field" is a problem much easier solved with the metric system.

Does that make sense?
Canada also has so-called weak metric measurements: 454g of butter (1 lb), 354 ml of pop (12 oz) and so on.
>>As confirmed by a vast amount of experimental data in real humans under controlled conditions.

Could you please cite an actual studies?
Might as well start now - these things take time.
In Norway, we introduced the metric system in 1889, but there's still a lot of non-metric measurements still around, at least in common speak.

* Length of a boat are measured in feet.

* Lumber is measured in inches, two-by-four and so on.

* Most engines are measured in horsepower(though nowadays the kw/h is usually given as well).

* Firewood have different measures, most of them derived from the pre-metric system.

* distances at sea are measured in nautic miles

* Boat speed is measured in knots. (not sure what the status of these last 2 is regarding SI these days).
"For inspiration to strike, it has to find you working." -- Author?
> In the new year I'm hoping to rewrite from the ground up as a telephone proxy service...

Would you mind elaborating on that a little bit? I'm working on something similar and would love to hear what others are doing.
The Service level agreement is having one spot or one bike at a station 90% of the time, among other metrics they look at. They also have a dashboard [1] that shows aggregate metrics for the DC system monthly.

[1] http://cabidashboard.ddot.dc.gov/CaBiDashboard/
I consider myself libertarian and don't define freedom as "absolute, unbridled exercise of private property titles". I don't believe many libertarians hold that philosophy -- you're painting an extremist.

While I appreciate your contribution of more detailed points of disagreement with some semblances of libertarian philosophy, I will refrain from refuting them because a) I don't have the time to get into it and b) it deviates into too much of a tangent to remain apropos of the original post.
Would love to get one of these babies and install Ubuntu.

Is it possible to install Java+Eclipse+Android SDK on it?
One meter is approximately one large step for a grown man.
I understand and agree that metric is strictly better, how much better is it? Do the benefits outweigh the costs of changing the whole system?
In the year MMXIII is sentiment really a good reason to continue using an inefficient system :)
How many of them even have the same borders over the last 230 years? I'd wager very few.
I'd be surprised if there isn't, somewhere within the vastness of the Pentagon, a team who does exactly this. Probably a few dozen plans on file already.

I mean heck, the Pentagon has plans for invading Canada.
You are absolutely correct. I spend my day solving problems in software and not converting what's in my head to English that a non-software problem solver will understand. So when I have to do the latter, it takes time.

Funny thing is, this goes both ways-- Mr. MBA also doesn't know how to explain a subject with which he is intimately familiar in a manner friendly to people without his knowledge. Yet, anyone who doesn't grasp his latest master plan must be an idiot.

Stereotypically speaking, I find that most techs tend to have a bit more empathy when it comes to explaining things than the business people have.
Nice one!

What would you recommend as default locales settings for the systems?
I guess LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8, right?

And what about server date and time? Using NTP or not?
Yes, though I think this is largely due to trade with the U.S.. It probably helps keep some standard units alive in Canada.
That's because the USA switched from effective execution methods like the firing squad and hanging to a method of dubious efficacy and humanity. Given the option, I think many people would opt for the tried and true methods instead of a pseudo-medical death chamber.
Agreed. It makes sense for admins to be able to build using javascript but would lead to accidental/deliberate griefing if all players on a server had it.
I had the very same problem, only in the opposite direction, living in Poland for the first 27 years of my life and moving to the UK just over a year ago.

Just bear in mind that 6ft is approximately 180 cm, anything above is above, and anything lower is lower. This gives you a first approximation with only remembering one number. Also, 4in is about 10cm and is easy to add/subtract both ways. This might not be very exact, but it will give you a quick idea.
Well it wouldn't really be about "helping" them in the traditional way, but more of an upaya.
I'd rather be with the metrics! I'm about to graduate with my design engineering degree, I'm so used to SI units that imperial drives me crazy, but I need to live with it.

Regarding the steak point, do you never ask for the 8oz or 10oz steak?

For curiosity, I'm just outside Glasgow, where are you?

Edit: Gordon Ramsay recipes: http://gordonramsaysrecipes.com/

Butter update: Butter is measured in knobs.
We are constantly needlessly introducing math across all of our industries that have international partners by keeping our current system. Your point to which I was responding was that you feel it is more natural to measure in units of feet. I was pointing out to you that you can make the same measurement in a convenient unit in the metric system. We can have ease of use in both cases with the metric system.

But it doesn't matter anyway. You could sit and invent an infinite number of cases when using the imperial system "feels" easier. None of these invalidate the conveniences of the metric system, nor do they remove the compelling motivation to setup our system in line with that of the rest of the world to stop the waste of money, material, and time the is now spent on conversion, dual labeling, and confusion.
Points addressed as edits in my post above. For the fun of it.
> Countries tend to converge on an optimal balance of individual liberties and social protections because it measurably works.

That's just utter nonsense. What measurement are you optimizing for?

What makes you think that moving the US to the left moves it closer to, say, Germany, instead of closer to, say, Brazil, India, and Mexico (which is what I think will happen)?

And even if it did move it closer to Germany, I wouldn't want that, which speaks to the fact that your "measurably works" claim probably refers to some non-objective sense of optimality.

> the continued American insistence on an 18th century approach to governance

That's a straw man. Predominating sentiments in the GOP are strongly contra the Founding Fathers. I mean, George W. Bush greatly expanded the welfare state.
I would hazard a guess that we're roughly the same age because I grew up with the same mixture of units but I think it's less to do with growing up in a rural area than the fact that your parents and grandparents were educated on imperial units and even though metric was standard by the time you were born, the imperial system was still ingrained in your elders and some of that nomenclature was passed on to you. When I talk to anyone over 50 I have to be careful to remember when they say it got to -70 a few years ago they are most likely saying it was -70F and not -70*C.
Wrapping a web application
I am looking to have my web application wrapped as a quick way of having my Beta put onto the App store for continued improvement on the product and for marketing purposes. My question lies in the costs, how much would something like this set me back?

Thanks,
Amit.
This appears to be the situation in the UK, too.
Everytime I try to use data that comes from public US sources, it's a PITA to deal with Imperial Units. It does have an impact on programmers/developers/engineers/etc.

Just reading news about weather or some climatic phenomenon, all in Fahrenheit. Wth, Fahrenheit.
Incidentally, I was raised metric-only in Germany and we would often say "I'm one head shorter/taller than X", which is close enough to a foot.
You understand, though, that the reason laptop screens are measured this way is because of America's continued use of the imperial system.
Here are his own comments on bitcoin: http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-y...

I vaguely remember he also denied being Satoshi Nakamoto somewhere - but I cannot find it now.
I've never understood why gas stations don't have generators. They already meet most of the permitting requirements (having underground tanks is the big thing), are generally staffed, and are fairly well distributed.

Maybe it's not frequent enough (and, with anti-gouging and no consumer loyalty, not a worthwhile investment), but that just means the business model is broken. Either do it as a subscription service (if you have amex platinum, you get access to a network of hardened gas stations; or, if you pay $50/yr), or have government do it.

If the homeland security people lost $1-2b in budget and it got used to put generators and caches of supplies at them (maybe just a cell site with long runtime), we'd be a lot better off.
I like the idea! Sounds like there is an opportunity for a nice community. Are you looking for extra developers to help out with your project? Sounds like an interesting project to work on.
In the words of Max Petitpierre:

"These credits and the deliveries of war material and other products [...] contributed to the war efforts of one of the belligerents. Not only had we abandonded integral neutrality, but - even worse - in so doing, we were as a rule deviating from the very notion of neutrality. "
No no no, 3 is yellow, didn't you get the memo? This is what it was for me when I was about 7 (no mental illness):

1- Red - Sharpness
2- Blue - Blunt/powerful
3- Yellow - Soft
4- Green
6- Orange
7- Purple
9- Black
11-19- Shiny/Metallic colours
we're looking primarily for full-time help but definitely drop me a note anyway :-) joel@bufferapp.com
Because we're exceptional! :-)

No really, the worst thing that ever happened to metric system conversion was getting endorsed by the UN. That was the kiss of death. We created the UN, we host the UN, we fund the UN, and we hate the UN. Anything backed by the UN gets turned into the UN trying to take over the US and creating a new world order.

And after the debacle with the, UN-based, ITU trying to take over internet governance metric will never get a serious political foothold in the US.
Keep, and then post, a log of everything you eat (quantities as well as contents) - dollars to bacon-laden donuts, you're eating at a deficit.
Quora would make a better first impression if they didn't force users to sign up to be able to read more than the first answer.

I also find their real name policy annoying, as they disable your writing privileges if you use a name that doesn't look real enough.
I could care less about using metric, but don't touch Fahrenheit. Celsius (water based) is inferior to Fahrenheit (air based) for those of us whom just so happen to reside in the atmosphere instead of the sea.
That's mostly because they'd hate to be embarrassed again...
There were better artists, and better engineers, but he certainly had a fertile imagination, and who knows, maybe freedom of schedule was part of that.
Yup. That could be your next project :)
Sort of, yes. Except that version will support many languages instead of just JS. In the demo videos you see them using Python commands. The concept is almost exactly the same, though the guys at Mojang are building the interpreter into the game itself instead of it being a mod.

More info here: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Pi_Edition
I was upgrading my home system remotely and it didn't come back up after the second reboot. Unfortunately, it's the only host available remotely, and I won't be able to see why until later tonight when I have physical access.

I'm hoping its just something from ports which isn't happy. I wasn't prompted to rebuild, though (the first time I can remember that happening).
"The truth is that it's a lot easier to fake having the potential to be a CEO than it is to fake having the potential to be a CTO."

That's easy to say when you're a developer and understand what makes a good CTO. There are probably a lot of business guys who don't know how to evaluate tech guys any more than tech guys know how to evaluate business guys. It's probably not that hard to bullshit a business guy if you can talk convincingly about scalability, node.js, Clojure, Big Data, "cloud", etc. A lot of solo business guys looking for technical co-founders will end up with sub-optimal technical co-founders because they don't know how to filter them out.

However, you're also right about the difficulties of identifying potential CEOs. Part of the problem is that, due to the hierarchical nature of firms, there's simply a massive shortage of people with CEO experience - most firms employ just one CEO at a time. This means that if you're looking for a CEO, you're probably going to have to take a chance on someone who hasn't done it before, and there's a much bigger experience gap between "business guy with MBA" and "good CEO" than there is between "senior developer" and "technical co-founder". This shortage is (partly) why experienced CEOs get paid so much, and why the jump in compensation from "business guy with MBA" to "CEO" is much bigger than the jump from "senior developer" to "CTO".

This is also a problem for aspiring CEOs, because they can't prove themselves until they get a chance, and chances at CEO level are very rare. The good potential CEOs can't easily differentiate themselves from the bad ones, and this also creates a perverse situation in which simply faking CEO potential doesn't have many disadvantages compared to actually being good. Once you've been hired anywhere as a CEO, so long as you don't calamitously screw up, you're on the right side of the CEO scarcity problem.
Mecanical parts are the most difficult thing to switch because there are many things defined in relation to one another. For example the american UNC threads have different angles than the metric ones do and therefore it is impossible to replace one with another. For this reason alone it will take very long time to do a full switch from one unit system to another. However, many "metric" units are actually slightly adapted imperial ones. For instance you can get a lot of 25 mm stuff in Europe that is almost equivalent to the 1 inch stuff you get in the US (1 inch = 25.4 mm) and similarly there is a lot of 30 cm and 60 cm stuff in stead of 1 foot and 2 feet stuff.
My experience has been that the US and Canada are still "mixed" enough that it's highly noticeable. And I hear it's similar in the UK. The main differences are absence of an official government position (UK and Canada both have that, but with exceptions and/or significant numbers of people just ignoring it), and we still use Fahrenheit for temperature (amusing since the degree Celsius is arguably less "metric" and more just SI).

Otherwise, it seems a largely arbitrary toss-up as to what will be metric in any of the three countries and what won't.
Not mentioned in this post but one of my favourite CPAN modules for extending/fixing Perl is perl5i - https://metacpan.org/module/perl5i
Most of the comments in this thread are talking about the units for personal height, weight, local road signs or for the weather forecast. Those are by far the least important things to be worried about. All of those things are local and there is no carrying cost for them. There would be a cost to change all those signs and forecasts - for no real gain.

However, dimensions of physical goods are a constant recurring cost to the economy. Anything that crosses the borders for trade (all resources mined/farmed, everything manufactured) has to be dealt with in both sets of units. There is massive redundancy in fasteners, components, scales, paperwork, etc. It requires companies to keep two sets of tools (and not just wrenches, also drills, taps, dies, cutters, etc).
Do that by getting businesses to PAY you (even if it's not finished yet). Sometimes people say that they would like a solution for X, but when it comes to paying for it they back out.
This is cool, but for the server it is already possible to use a number of scripting languages.

By using the Bukkit server mod, which provides a stable plugin API, it is relatively easy to add a wrapper around a scripting engine [0].

For example, a plugin providing Rhino support [2] and one providing python support [2].

I would recommend either porting your work to the Bukkit framework, or working with one of the existing plugins to include some of the cool stuff you have made.

I don't currently know what the most popular scripting plugin currently available is, but I'm sure you can find it with a bit more digging than I have done.

[0] http://dev.bukkit.org/search/?scope=projects&search=scri...

[1] http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/redstonetorch/

[2] http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/pydevtools/
One note I like to remember is that a foot is the length of a school ruler, everybody remembers the size of a school ruler.
Ironic that a post designed to attempt to rid the world of obfuscation and confusion has a UI that commits the cardinal sin of auto loading the signature list so that it's virtually impossible to get to the footer without letting all the signatures load. :)

Reminds me of getting classes on water conservation in High School only to walk outside of class and see that they are watering the High School's parking lot.

How very often the government evokes the classic hypocritical parent of the old anti-drug campaign commercial of the 1980's where the son finally breaks and yells at his Father "I learned it by watching you Dad!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Elr5K2Vuo
Communicating the number of steps to, say, position your tractor in the field is a long way from having international partners and dual labelling. It is still not clear to me why one would introduce the metric system into the specific case when the simplest form, the length of your foot, will do perfectly.
I did this:

# freebsd-update fetch
# freebsd-update install
# reboot

# freebsd-update upgrade -r 9.1
# freebsd-update install
# reboot

# freebsd-update install
# reboot

remotely without any problems.
I disagree. A meter is a reasonable approximation of most adults's step length, but a foot is not.
A STEAM Curriculum: What does it look like?
The big kahuna was the Minnesota Starvation Experiment.

They starved their subjects.

For months.

Spoiler alert: all subjects lost weight.

(bonus lulz, they lost weight on a high-carb diet)

Otherwise, have fun reading up on "metabolic wards" and "supervised fasts" on PubMed.
Sorry, but how is that picture evidence that the US system sucks? I don't disagree that we have a poor system, but "everyone else is doing it" has never been a justification to do anything!
MK808 - A dual core android mini PC
[ Continuing OT onto the Barclays Hire Bikes in London... ]

The Barclays Bike Hire coverage is good in central London but not good for the 'burbs. I'd consider using one every day for my commute however:-

* my commute would be right on the edge of 30 minutes (it's ~8 miles) and those bikes aren't the fastest (but that's good for training!). To be safe I'd have to break it up into two journeys with a 5 minute break in the middle to avoid being charged for £1 a usage on top of access. Or I can split it up into a cycle and then a run (good except that I sometimes I have to lug my work laptop with me which isn't idea for running).

* even with the upcoming (Spring 2014) extension to SW London I'm still going to be a 5 minute run from the nearest bikes. Right now it's a 4 mile run to the nearest docking station.

* no way to mount panniers, limited carrying space in the front 'basket' area, for bigger loads I'd need a rucksack and I much prefer panniers to a rucksack

£90 for annual Barclays Bike access (and no hire fees) is roughly comparable to the wear and tear costs for my current bike (~4000 commuting miles a year, proportional costs for brake blocks, chains, chainrings, sprockets, rims, hubs, bottom bracket, [carbon] forks). It's certainly cheaper than ~£900 for the annual train ticket.

Not having to worry about theft is a major plus, nor is having to carry good locks to lock up the bike should I have a mechanical that I can't fix quickly (I do the nursery run so I can't be home late).

I would also be helping the distribution problem as I'd be dropping off a bike near a major rail terminus in the morning, and using one from there to go home.
Mechanisation seems to be available via the collection of plugins with "Feed the Beast". I don't know much about it but several YouTubers are now using it, alongside vanilla.
"Show up and get to work" is a large part of Steven Pressfield's The War of Art [0] as well.

0. http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the-war-of-art/
Android IPTV Player - the killer of Apple TV
Things you should do to secure Apache
who were better artists, engineers during his time?
New Seattle Accelerator 9Mile Labs Wants To Build On TechStars Model
Psychohistorical Crisis by Donald Kingsbury: imagine a wearable computer, brain interfaced, that you grow up with. Now imagine it being taken away, and destroyed, and relearning to read, with your eyes and animal brain. A non-authorized sequel to Asimov's Foundation series. Better (imho) than the original.
Subjectivity can be a problem, true. Few would deny that depression is a 'real' phenomenon that has a heritable component and can cause severe problems in someone's life. Yet, depression is always diagnosed by subjective questioning of the patient.
The ECB is in Frankfurt, Germany.
The problem with being truly neutral is that while you are a bastion against tyranny, you are also the refuge of scoundrels.
Please do this.

Regards,
The rest of the World.
This sounds like the in-house equivalent of The Oatmeal's "How a Web Design Goes Straight To Hell" (http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell).

Both stories share a similar problem: a designer (or engineer, it doesn't really matter for this story) is brought in because their expertise is needed. Then, rather than trusting that experience, the thing is micro-managed to the point where it is ridiculous (or, as The Oatmeal says, you are just a cursor in a graphics program, controlled via email). I feel that with design this happens more, because it's more tempting to believe that their own user experience is representative of anything more than themselves (the first thing a proper designer knows NOT to do) and it's easier to get into bike shed discussions (http://bikeshed.com).

I'm bookmarking this, because I might need it in the future.
This post provides a workaround to the problem those links describe.