Why we picture bombs as round black balls with a burning wick (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Why we picture bombs as round black balls with a burning wick (2016)

atlasobscura.com

235 pointsleohonexus185 comments

Hm. I'd suggest a second advantage of the "ball with fuse" or "stick with fuse" - and from there, the "C4 with unrealistic timer LED" makes a lot of sense:

The fuse can act as an agent of suspense, just as Hitchcock described it. It's a very simple indicator - a red dot or a flame, and the length of the fuse is how long to go until an earth-shattering kaboom. And it's obvious what's going to happen to a character if they hold it, so it's easy to create suspense. "Oh no, now the protagonist has the bomb. Oh yes, now the villain has it. Oh no, now the villain tricked the protagonist and put the bomb in their pants!"

That is much more interesting from a story telling point of view than a realistic bomb - a bunch of C4 with a mobile phone strapped to it and zero way to understand when it will ruin your day. Unless you include the trigger for those in the story, but then complexity grows.

Extra points for “earth-shattering kaboom” :)

Marvin is everyone's favourite martian

It was really the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator that was Marvin's draw.

Haven't you seen a modern action movie where there is a block of C4 with a big digital timer counting down to 00:00? Seems to be used to the exact same dramatic effect.

Or a movie where the villian spends half the movie asking "where are my detonators?" If they are using detonators, rarely are there bright red oversized LEDs counters, or the loosely attached, spiraly wound wires just begging someone to ask "blue or red?"

That's exactly what they're saying. Look at the first paragraph.

Act 3 in a traditional three act story structure is sometimes called The Ticking Clock because it's traditional to include a countdown.

Having a literal countdown timer - usually for a bomb - is a standard trope in action thrillers. But any kind of deadline will do.

What are some good search queries to learn more about these types of standard structures, especially as it pertains to film and TV?

https://tvtropes.org/ has a ton of this kind of thing - not sure if that scratches your itch!

Holy shit, just linking to an meme weapon like that, and not warning people? Not cool!

To the uninitiated, do not follow that link unless you don't have anything else you need to do today. It is famous for destroying days of productivity.

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/609:_Tab_Explosio...

Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/609/

But yeah, tvtropes usually leads me down a wiki walk as well whenever posted.

You can browse for all of them on https://tvtropes.org/

Tvtropes as others have said, but for structure what you want is an intro screenwriting book. “Save the Cat” is a good one, and Syd Field is a classic (although dated).

Thank you this is closer to what I was looking for

Ever wonder about the bombs bursting in air from the US national anthem when it was written before bomber planes? Yep it’s the cartoon bomb[1].

[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CartoonBomb

Now, when I see a bomb in movies, I always measure the countdown. The fact that they extend it kills quite a lot of suspense.

Maybe your suspense is killed by focusing on your stopwatch instead of the characters, story, etc.

Instead of being an ass please try to understand that some personality types do things like this because that's how we are wired.

I count...

  ...seconds the hero is underwater
  ...seconds until the bomb is going to explode
  ...number of bullets fired from a 6-round revolver
  ...etc

I don't like it all the time. Hell at times i wish I didn't, but I also cackle with glee when I discover a mistake in the continuity of a film that depends on these plot devices. So it's 50/50 love/hate thing for me.

I already know I'm kind of atypical with most aspects of my life but your advice is as helpful as telling an introvert to just go out and socialize more. Please be aware that words like yours rub salt in an open wound. I'd be fucking normal if I could help it.

It also makes those movies that really try to adhere to not breaking the suspension of disbelief for those things all the greater.

I too often find myself counting time and bullets. Stuff like that doesn't always arise in a vacuum, for me it was being exposed to movies that toed the line enough in most aspect that completely if iring certain things (like time or bullet counts) took me out of the film because it was so egregious, and then once you start seeing those things, it's hard not to be aware of them.

But, like I said above, those directors that go the extra mile to make everything line up provide that little extra bit of joy, just like little plot loose ends being nearly resolved when lesser directors wouldn't care to address them.

Doubtless continuity goofs are a thing. But have you tried considering that a movie is a narrative? Try imagining that there are actual real events that the storyteller is describing, and then imagine that storyteller is only human and considerably less attentive to minutiae than you are. Perhaps the storyteller forgets to tell about the time the cowboy switched revolvers, or spends more time talking about what the hero is doing than the remaining time on the fuse would seem to permit.

> Instead of being an ass

No matter what personality type you are, please don't talk to people like this on HN. Thanks. To ask someone to be aware of the effect of their words moments after being gratuitously rude to them, to jump on strangers because they don't already somehow know you and your needs, seems unreasonable. The GP's comment seemed perfectly mild and reasonable to me.

You would enjoy <http://www.nitcentral.com/index_legacy.htm>.

It's good to have a certain amount of suspension of disbelief when consuming media, but when it gets to the point where the laws of physics are just clearly being broken, it also takes me out of the experience.

Yeah I find this to be a cheap trick and it really takes me out of the experience. Another example is when the characters are running away from a threat which should clearly be able to overtake them.

The version that bothers me most is when the threat clearly is catching up to them, but some kind of unexplained time dilation allows them to escape. In one shot the threat is a few metres away and closing fast, then in the next shot the hero spends much more time escaping than was actually available.

Yeah this is exactly what I am talking about - this is where a movie completely loses me. Like there can be a shot of the people running from a wolf or something toward a door, and from the profile shot you can clearly see that the wolf will close the gap before they reach the door, but somehow they just barely make it. I know they are trying to increase the tension, but it's a cheap trick and would work just as well if they obeyed the laws of physics.

> when the characters are running away from a threat which should clearly be able to overtake them

Many films have the heroes outrun an explosion.

Ever attempted to hold your breath for as long as some characters are shown to be submerged doing this or that in a movie? Similarly disappointing. ;P

Disappointing to death.

Its always fun when they honor the countdown, though.

Is this one real time?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_XkWI5gJnY

Red LED countdown is one thing. But don't forget the beeping. Gotta have a little beeper on it or it isn't the real deal.

Sometimes I wonder whether aspects like this were added for accessibility reasons. IE blind people get a beep countdown.

I was quite sure that this depiction of a bomb was based on 18th century grenades, which were spherical and had a string fuse. The word ‘grenade’ even comes from pomegranate, due to the visual similarity. It seems like this depiction may have originated a little further back than the American Civil War.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenade

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomegranate

Wow, somehow never thought that the device is named after the fruit. Their names can be even closer in other languages, f.e. in Russian they are nearly the same word, just different genders.

Then they doubled down with pineapple grenades...

Pomegranates are from Granada. In French, Granada is "Grenade" and pomegranate is "pomme grenade", which directly translates to Granada apple

as a french I absolutely never heard "pomme grenade" for the fruit, just "grenade" directly

may depend where you're from. I'm a French speaker and it's always been "pomme grenade" everywhere I have been.

No. "Pomegranate" comes from the Latin "pomum granatum," the 'fruit having many seeds.' Granum means grain or seed, and granatus is a pseudo-participial form (like "mentulatus") meaning 'endowed with seeds.' Granada, the city, likely derives its name from Arabic.

In Polish it is literally the same word, "granat", which does function as weapon, fruit, and color (oddly enough, dark blue).

Gunpowder-infused fabric or paper was being used for fuses around the 10th century, as well[0]. I always thought this depiction came from fireworks, which had fuses both linking multiple devices and also serving as a (relatively) safer point for ignition around the 10th century, as well[1].

[0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuse_(explosives)

[1] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireworks

The pomegranate <> grenade connection all of a sudden made “grenadine” make sene.

Which is why it's so unfortunate that most cheap grenadines are cherry-flavored instead of pomegranate flavor.

Traditional grenadine is purple, not red.

Back in the 1960's when road construction was underway and diversion of lanes was necessary, at night the spherical black kerosine lamps the size of bowling balls were still everywhere the traffic cones were during the day.

Modern rechargeable electricial markers that could last all night were not common at all.

Rows of bombs with a few inches of raw sooty flame coming from a wick where the fuse would be.

Drive your Model T or Edsel carefully between the lines of flickering fire.

Plus the Pink Panther cartoons had an associated subject line occasionally featuring a mad French terrorist bomber often carrying one of the round black bombs.

This was basically ridiculing the bombers that had been in the news terrorizing them.

Both were enjoyed by American kids as much as domestic cartoons, even though they were basically like silent movies, intentionally featuring no actual dialog, intended for international consumption without need for translation.

All the American villians had the same kind of bombs anyway.

> Modern rechargeable electricial markers that could last all night were not common at all.

Is this common where you drive? Where I drive in the US, it's all traffic cones with reflective parts, relying on cars to have their headlights on to see the temporary barriers.

Here there are a lot of bright plastic barrels and reflective barricades with flashing yellow lights on top.

And on streets well lit with streetlights drivers are still knocking them down like dominos.

There's a depiction of grenades so common that they're called grenade emblems.[0] It's an emblem of an old style hand grenade with a flame on top of it. It was fairly common - the wiki link has a substantial list of examples, eg the Italian carabineri[1] or the British Grenadier Guards.[2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenade_(insignia)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carabinieri#/media/File%3AFiam...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenadier_Guards#/media/File%3...

Also, Swedish Army insignia for the artillery: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Truppsla...

The elite units Grenadiers is a 16/17th century formalisation of infantry units that threw bombs/grenades.

That was extra dangerous job as early bombs were not reliable, and had a chance to explode too soon.

But throwing a ball of metal with blackpowder is much older.

My first job was in an office which got quite regular bomb threats. We would be cleared out and the police would do a sweep. Some of the guys were inspired to make mock-up spherical black bombs as desk ornaments. Next bomb scare the police were very very unamused!

Also just remembering one day we were told to go home at 4:30. After some digging we found that the bomb was due to go off at 5:00. Showed a lot of faith in the bomb builders!

Why was your office getting so many bomb threats?

Ha. A minor government department. Some folks got the idea we were big brother. This was in the 70s. We had one computer between 50 or so developers. It had less than 100k memory, card input, and all tape to tape. Honestly they were deluded.

I'd love to hear so much more about how it was to work in this kind of environment back then. (Apart from those bomb threats.)

Off topic, but to summarise: it was (by today's standards) so so very slow. One overnight compile per developer per day. Programs were on cards which sometimes got dropped or jammed. And much more time thinking than doing.

I used to hand write Cobol programs on coding pads, send them off to data-entry to be typed up and saved to tape. Then I would take the tape to ops, they would run an upload and compile when things were quiet. Get the listing back with errors, then create patches on punch-cards to apply fixes. Talking circa 1977 here.

Yes, a similar pattern except I started in 71. Coding on sheets but then punched up onto cards. The cards were printed along the top edge so you could riffle through your program in a box. The more senior people were used to punching their own cards on a 12 button hand punch. I never got the hang of that.

[Edit] oh, and chewing some card to push into a hole to make a fix.

Which is what someone working for big brother would say, of course.

Interesting parallel here to the floppy disk icon being used for "save". It's quite possible that icon is ubiquitous enough that, without a push to change it, it sticks around for 100 years as well.

> it sticks around for 100 years as well

Only if the concept of manual save sticks around that long.

Even in systems that continously save your progress there is a close analogue to manual save: Named revisions. Bookmarks of points in history that are better than the surrounding ones - points where some milestone has been reached, and some amount of proofreading done. Where there are no duplicated paragraphs or major rough edges like that.

But the floppy icon would not be a good fit for depicting named revisions

Sure, it’s copying your revision to a disk, writing the date on the label, and sticking it in a box.

The only difference between what is being described here and what we have been working with until today is how far undo/redo go.

For the most part the intent is to memorialize a snapshot of the work, a task the floppy icon has been fulfilling all along.

If the current document is Untitled, New File, No Name, etc and does not actually point to a file, then the ubiquitous Floppy icon should act as Save As. Once the file does exist, a simple Shift-click of the same floppy icon should also act as Save As. Same thing as Cmd-S/Cmd-Shfit-S. However, I'm unfamiliar with this modifier click save as from any app.

What's the alternative? Autosaves? Did it autosave or did it not? Where did it save it to? Locally or to the cloud? Are the servers available? Does it make clear when they are not? Or worse, does it fail silently if they are not?

Call me old-fashioned but please give me a save button and a file picker ;)

Notably none of the Google Docs cloud apps have any save button or option.

Saving drafts on XenForums is a floppy, even though there is no local save involved.

I'm sure I've seen it in other web contexts.

It took me a very long time to learn not to compulsively hit ctrl-s while using Google docs

Interestingly at one point Google Docs did have a save button, which IIRC didn't actually do anything because it would automatically save. The button was there just to make you feel more confident.

You can see it in the top right corner here: https://sm.pcmag.com/t/pcmag_au/photo/g/google-docs-2010-old...

The button was there just to make you feel more confident.

...and when the autosave inevitably fails, deception like that only serves to anger your users more.

I’m both old and old fashioned, but I’ll take auto-save any day over manual save, especially something that required manual save without support of auto-save.

I’ve lost enough work prior to auto-save being common that I never want to deal with an app that doesn’t somehow save my work pretty frequently.

I like autosaves as well, but as a "I didn't save manually but there is always an autosave"-option. Saving is also a file managment choice.

It really depends on what the app is though, yeah? If I'm in document processing or spreadsheet where you might be working for long periods where a 5min auto-save kicks in could be convenient. However, when I'm writing code that then needs to make rapid changes like updating CSS/JS/etc to be refreshed in browser, then I'm not waiting 5 mins for an autosave. Cmd-S, Cmd-tab, Shift-Cmd-R, boom.

However, Cmd-S is so engrained into the muscle memory, that it's almost instinctual to hit it after every press of a semi-colon.

If I type in rm -rf / and pause for a moment trying to remember if I’m trying to delete /var/log/apache2/ or /usr/local/var/log/apache2/ in a dev environment that auto-executes code when I save it I would strongly prefer that it wait until I manually save.

Which is why I like Autosaves that save a copy. Blender for example autosaves project files into it's own location (and keeps that location clean). If you have a crash you can still go for that autosave file and it works in most cases – but it isn't saved in the folder you are working in.

For certain programs this would be overkill of course, but for others it would be quite cool.

It’s interesting. I use vim which has auto-recovery built in. But I also compulsively save. vim is so much faster than most conventional IDEs that it’s just not worth it for me to look for an alternative to that pattern.

> However, when I'm writing code that then needs to make rapid changes like updating CSS/JS/etc to be refreshed in browser, then I'm not waiting 5 mins for an autosave. Cmd-S, Cmd-tab, Shift-Cmd-R, boom.

VSCode has an autosave that's triggered when you change a file.

I would guess that they swiped that idea (among many of the core features of VSCode) from IntelliJ a good 10 years after they implemented it. Too bad they can't steal more sane ideas from JetBrains' IDEs, I might actually consider switching ;)

I doubt IntelliJ invented the "save on change" feature.

> Too bad they can't steal more sane ideas from JetBrains' IDEs, I might actually consider switching ;)

Not being an IDE is what I like about it, my experiences with JetBrain's IDEs weren't good.

> I’ve lost enough work prior to auto-save being common

And you didn’t develop the habit of compulsive Ctrl-S every five seconds? ;)

multiple ctrl-s' per few characters typed/whenever I stop writing something.

There are reasons for manual save to exist, but I think it's unlikely to stick around as a distinct GUI element which requires an icon.

Experienced users will use a keyboard shortcut, others will rely on autosave or find the File > Save menu. Alas, I suspect the floppy disk icon is doomed.

I have been doing Ctrl+s for most of my life. I type a lot and this is like second breathing. I write a sentence, save. Some pause, save. Looking out the window, save. Its as common as pressing space or enter.

Does it matter? The only thing that matters to the end user is that the changes they made to their document persist. And they should persist by default, not only when the user issues a Save command.

I don't know, I sort of enjoy being able to make changes, see they didn't work/not necessary/etc, and then just closing the document hitting "Don't save" vs hitting undo until returning to last saved state (which was when exactly???). Bonus points for apps that have an actual Revert feature.

Maybe file management will map closer to revision control one day. Autosave would be the equivalent of a regular commit, closing the document would be a tagged commit of some sort. Your "hitting undo until returning to last saved state" would then be a single step, reverting to a timed, possibly named point.

For text based files, I think a versioning like system built into the filesystem would be ideal. Each save is just the diff. A nice UI to see/revert changes. Yet the lack of commit type messages would make those changes less friendly. I don't want to be burdened/slowed down with commit messages everytime I hit Cmd-S.

However, this would not work for binary type files like MOV, PSD, etc.

Ah, this reminds me of YesterCode, a tool that lets you scrub through code changes like a timeline.

Relevant HN thread: https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/yestercode.html

Storing diffs is not a great idea since then it requires that you apply them all to get the latest version. Notably, git does not store files as diffs [1] which is one of the reasons it’s so much faster than older diff-based VCSes.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/43364484

I was forced to use Microsoft OneNote for a while and it was probably designed by someone with that mentality, and I absolutely HATE it. People manage to put unwanted changes into important pages all the time (the horrible Win10 default of not clearly indicating the focused window is certainly related, but that's another rant...) and the fact that it instantly syncs to the cloud for everyone else to see, made for some major embarrassment and irritation.

Changes should be saved with deliberation, not "whenever".

git commit, I suppose. Maybe something that doesn't have separate save, add, commit, and push steps.

Which itself embodies an archaic remnant: the “floppy” disk icon is most often the 3.5 inch disk (the one with a metal shutter) which was in fact rigid.

Actual “floppy” disks (8” and later 5.25”) were flexible and needed a slightly more rigid sleeve to make them easy to handle. The 3.5” ones needed the sleeve to protect the medium (the actual disk).

The disk itself was floppy, and basically the same as the larger disks. The case around them was rigid.

The 3.5 inch disks took off around the same time as Windows did (the Mac had always used them) so probably no coincidence that's that the save icon represents.

The actual disk portion on the inside was the floppy part, so it's still a "floppy disk". The rigid part on the outside was called the cassette.

and "cassette tapes" (for computer or radio/stereo/receiver) are the same material, but the magnetic media is in a roll of tape instead of a spinning disk shape.

Man, I seriously miss cassettes and cartridges, especially for video games. I recently bought a Nintendo 2DS for my young kids--having missed out on it during its original run myself, and observing that the children grow rather extreme behavioural issues if we let them play on iPads--and even those tiny little cartridges just have something to them. It makes the games feel more real to me, versus downloaded apps just taking up an icon on a screen.

I banned Disney/ABC at my house due to the same observed behavioral issues. YouTube is a mixed bag, I observe what the youngest is watching and he always listens when I tell him to pick something else to watch.

There are some games that for past some radar like the "Buddy" series - it seems innocuous but it's all about dismemberment of the buddy character. It's "funny" in the way "Happy Tree Friends" is funny. Less so to the plastic developing psyche of a toddler.

What are the behavioural issues?

My kids---5 and 3--are normally very well behaved. If I let them watch TV for an hour and then I say "ok, it's time to turn it off", they occasionally grumble a little bit, but they do it and then happily trot off to do something else. When they were playing games on an iPad, even silly little "bubble popping" sort of apps, announcing the end time would immediately launch into screaming, crying, etc.

Cartoons and games like Super Mario are episodic. There is finality to completing the episode/level. Most modern games are explicitly designed to be addictive, so they eschew levels and opt for open-world or continuous play formats.

For passive content, they have a similar response (though not quite as pronounced) to turning off the TV in the middle of a movie. I don't blame them, though. It's really shitty to have to stop a movie in the middle. But continuous-play games have no middle or end, so there is no chance for a graceful exit.

So the Nintendo 2DS was an experiment to test the aformentioned theory of episodic content. It worked. I can let the kids play the games for an hour and at the end of the hour there isn't any wailing or gnashing of teeth.

We're not super-strict about screen time, but we're also not lassaiz-faire about it. We try to model appropriate consumption habits: 1-hour max on a "school night" (and almost never on consequitive nights), frequently a movie on Friday nights, sometimes Saturday morning cartoon binge if we don't already have plans for the day.

We let our kids watch TV to let them enjoy the programs they are watching. I'm not going to deny them a pleasure that I also enjoy. I'm also relatively strict on myself concerning media consumption. We're are just not using TV to park them so we can work.

That's really interesting! Thank you!

Though the tape was probably quite a bit thinner than the disk. You want the tape to be bendy, but the disk not to be.

3.5" floppy disks were made of iron oxide on a flexible plastic disc encased inside a rigid shell. Only the shell was rigid.

Well, the shell and the metal drive ring at the centre of the disc (something 8" and 5¼" floppies didn't have).

I always thought the 3.5" were distinctly referred to as a diskette as opposed to the earlier larger floppy disk , but, apparently, the term "diskette" was introduced by IBM in 1973, and then ultimately became a synonym for any floppy disk, perhaps similarly to Kleenex, Laundromat, Xerox, Taser, Google, et al.

As someone who was around for at least a portion of that time period, nobody ever actually called them diskettes except for the people who designed the packaging and marketing material.

...and Germans.

... and Frenchs.

... and all East Europeans.

... in Spain too, were called disquetes.

It's weird to me seeing "Frenchs", as I always thought the plural is also "French". I guess we could say the s is silent ;)

In any case, Portuguese checking in. We also said "diskette", though some people might spell it "disquete" (ew)

"Frenchs" is impossible in a couple of ways. First, you would have to spell it "Frenches". Second, it is not an English word; your options within the language are "Frenchmen" or "the French".

"Chinaman" is considered racist now, but I suspect "Frenchman" is still good.

...and Scandinavians. Well, at least Swedes, for sure.

Ha, but here in Bulgaria we call them diskettes. We used to put our diskettes in our floppy drives. Not understanding what the words mean sometimes creates funny situations like this

I did, because I learned about them from the packaging.

Yea IDK, back then everyone I knew called all of them disks or 'floppy' (since as pointed out the actual recording tape of the 3.5's was still 'floppy').

Man the good ol days. I remember when the movie Hackers came out we all loved it for its bullshit, the way it made the scene 'cool' and not just for us dweebs. But but we also hated it as hacking could definitely be some of the most boring time until something happens.

The floppy conversations always make me think of Johnny Lee Miller throwing a floppy in the trash yelling 'they're trashing our rights!' or Angelina Jolie pretending to pee in the men's bathroom to get the one hidden there.

It even made floppys seem cool somehow.

When in reality even installing Eye of The Beholder was 20+ disks and several hours. And God help you if you lost/damaged/rewrote one!

> Man the good ol days. I remember when the movie Hackers came out

I had to look it up; I can't believe I have never heard of this movie, I should have been interested back then. Wargames (1983) was the film that my computer friends and I associated with our activities, and I was disappointed for years after that nothing came close to it, maybe Sneakers (1992), and 3 Days of the Condor (1975), though that is more of a spy intrigue genre, but it included a fascinating introduction to phreaking. More recently, I enjoyed Blackhat (2015) and Mr. Robot also scratched that itch. I'm going to look for Hackers (1985). Thanks for mentioning.

Oh man happy to help! I hope you enjoy it, your comment made me list Wargames and Sneakers on my watchlist, haven't seen those in a while.

Condor and Blackhat are actually new to me so watching that first!

Mr Roboto was good to me, I love BD Wong so hard- I don't know if anyone out there has seen Focus (Will Smith movie) but he is Fantastic and steals the movie though he's only in it for 10 minutes.

Replying to myself here to add- I think the movie Takedown is the better 'real' hacking movie as it involves the story of the legendary Kevin Mitnick, and shows real phreaking, hacking, and social engineering. Great movie of you've not seen it!

Fun Foone Fact: the 3.5 inch floppies apparently were 3.54 inch.

https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1439239118991413254

This is not uncommon. The term you are looking for is nominal dimension.

Indeed; in the US anyway the ubiquitous "2x4" lumber is in fact 1 1/2" x 3 1/2".

If you're making 2x4 lumber you cut 2x4, someone else planes it down to the final, finished size.

One can use rough cut lumber for building but it throws off everything a half inch at a time, so your final wall may not fit or be attached.

Usually the same mill will do both jobs. Raw logs in one end, skids of wrapped 2xs out the other end. Some friends of mine work in one such saw mill, and 10+ years ago I did a tour and saw every stage of the operation. It was quite cool.

Depends on how old the lumber is. 100 years ago it would be 1.75x3.75.

I’m told some folks in their early 20s were shown a 3.5 inch floppy disk and asked what it was. They replied «3D printed model of the save icon».

Would depend on the folks probably.

I'm in my early 20s, and know what a 3.5" floppy looks like, but I know others who don't.

Also, of those of us who do there's probably a 50% chance that we'd say "3D printed save icon" as a joke!

Well, anecdata, late '80's office computers were changed and the new ones only had 3.5" floppy drives while older ones all had 5.25" ones.

Someone managed to insert a 5.25" floppy in the gap between the covers for the (empty) 5.25" bays just over the 3.5" drive slot.

It makes some strange impression to me to talk of floppies in the past and to think that many people never actually saw one (let alone use it).

A:las poor floppy, I knew you well. [0]

[0] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2905953.stm

I've had many a 3 1/2" disk apart, and the "spinning bit" was in fact not rigid.

Perhaps this was during my early college days and I could only afford the cheap ones.

The floppy disk icon never took off in the Apple ecosystem, so every time I see it in Windows world it seems like a bizarre anachronism. Which it is. Emblematic really of Apple’s ethos of plunging forward and Wintel’s backwards compatibility at all costs approach.

Not really. Apple taught the world the word "skeuomorphic", making fake paper and leather and metal for their apps.

Also, Apple famously used the OP's bomb icon whenever Mac OS plunged forward into a crash.

However, floppy disk icons also survive in Linux, android and web apps, at least in those which save is an explicit GUI action, so it's really only Apple thats the outlier here

you are making an interesting point that is shadowed by the extra comment. the floppy disk image as "save" icon is rare in most native mac apps.

GP's point is quite interesting because there is a generation or two that hasn't seen a real floppy disk beside on those icons. they probably have no clue what it is.

i wonder what other icon images are like that.

the rounded symbols for 'database' icons are based on some ancient storage medium used in early mainframes - magnetic drum memory I think

I've always thought of those as more like barrels of data (as opposed to oil).

Stack of hard disk platters (what's inside a disk drive), I've always thought. Bit more modern than drum (where AIUI the storage surface is the outer circumference, like a phonograph roll); bit less abstract than "a barrel of data".

Oracle used to have logos for some products that looked like that (or, come to think of it, like a stack of button-cell batteries):

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fvtcholdin...

And I've always wondered if they based their HQ building on those logos, or if it was the other way around:

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Flive.stat...

It's been a long time since I used classic Mac OS seriously, but I don't think Mac apps really even used toolbars for actions like save, undo, paste, etc. Usually toolbars were for selecting tools (e.g. pencil, eraser, etc in paint) or tuning settings (e.g. font and color), with actions stowed away in menus and lacking iconographic representation.

Thinking about it further, this is true of OS X too. Even though it made toolbars more ubiquitous, it was still unusual for "standard" actions to be placed there.

I would think that a longtime Mac user probably associates "save" with the key shortcut ⌘-S more strongly than any kind of icon.

The floppy disk icon was introduced by the Macintosh in 01984.

And it only ever meant "floppy disk."

there does seem to be some kind of push against it, as if it's either triggering to anyone who hasn't seen one in real life, or maybe the ui designer is afraid someone will think they're old and out-of-touch?

the alternative seems to be pictures of folders and clouds with arrows going in and out of them, when the extremely distinctive floppy disk icon unambiguously means whatever form of 'save' is most intuitive and useful

Are you referring to the vending machine icon?

> Interesting parallel here to the floppy disk icon being used for "save". It's quite possible that icon is ubiquitous enough that, without a push to change it, it sticks around for 100 years as well.

What icon would you use? it's not an easy question.

Friefox seems to be using an arrow (itself an anachronism in the age of the AK-47, but perhaps the most common ideogram in modern written English) that goes into a tabbed file folder.

The article dismisses the stringy fuse because spherical mortar bombs had a hollow wooden fuse, but 18th and early 19th century hand grenades were also spherical and had a stringy fuse.

There are still products using that form factor and same basic mechanism (burning fuse, initiated by a spring-loaded striker).

https://www.defense-technology.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/0...

It's for the same reason that we "fire" guns or that a motion picture is called a "film": technology changes but the symbols we use to refer to it stay the same.

I want to know where the whole "do I cut the red wire or the blue wire?" trope comes from ..... surely you just pull the detonator out then cut its wires

Maybe the movie Juggernaut (1974), but where its writers got the idea, who knows.

https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/3957/what-was-the...

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WireDilemma

That's somewhat ignoring bombs designed to be difficult to defuse. See the Harvey's resort hotel bombing[0] for an example of where "just removing the detonator" is easier said than done.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey%27s_Resort_Hotel_bombin...

Bugs bunny is why. Seriously. Most popular cartoon of its time, every kid of the era (40s to 70s) watched it...

Perhaps an insidious follow on to the cartoon bomb is the unrealistic and desensitizing depiction of it's aftermath: In the cartoons it's just a frowning or dumbfounded character covered in soot instead of the reality of being dismembered.

When I read recently about the 15-year-old girl who deliberately targeted and killed a runner on the road, who laughed as he flew over her car, I wondered whether kids have gotten used to seeing people survive collisions like that in the movies.

I suspect that person had deeper issues than desensitization. I liken it more to our ability to tune out the effects of drone strikes.

But by the time it was made, bombs hadn’t looked like that for a century; it doesn’t in itself explain the persistence.

Hmm, I bet newspapers. That seems something which would carry through all that time. The comics in papers, that sort of thing?

Then Bugs picked it up...

What I would like to know is why vibrating devices like razors or dildos are regularly being considered as indicating a bomb. Why would a bomb vibrate prior to exploding?

Cell phone trigger?

Doesn’t make much sense that way either, unless the bomb has malfunctioned. If it’s vibrating, surely the bombs going off?

Well you have to turn it on before it explodes…

Explain - how does igniting a bomb require vibration?

Maybe if it used a clockwork timer? But a vibrating dildo doesn't sound very much like a ticking escapement!

I picture them that way mostly because of all the games of Stratego I played as a kid. I was surprised not to see it mentioned in the article!

Sorta related to round black bombs: I recently watched The Spy Who Loved Me, and realized that this is where I got the idea that grenades aren’t thrown like baseballs; instead, you gotta do a kinda straight-armed huck over your shoulder. Not sure if that grenade throw is grounded in reality, or just a thing that war movies made up.

I don't think it matters very much how you throw a grenade as long as you're out of the way of the shrapnel before it goes off. They're set off by timers, not impact.

It matters that you throw it far enough away at least ;-)

I think the overhand throw may be a leftover from trench warfare, where you'd need to throw the grenade from high enough to clear the trench you're standing in. Though obviously the same sort of tactic would work from behind various sorts of cover.

I could be wrong about this, but I think as little as 100 mm of granite between you and a modern hand grenade would probably keep you from serious injury. I'm pretty sure that with 100 mm of steel in the way, the worst you'd suffer would be ringing in your ears. So "far enough away" doesn't have to be very far.

hand grenades tend to be anti-personel, so I can see them being ineffective against structures.

Still, with the amount of videos on youtube with people fumbling training grenades "far enough away" doesn't seem to be a given.

Yeah, it's not. Air has some properties in which it differs substantially from granite.

I once read in a book (no idea how accurate it was) that a baseball like throw could jar the WWII era detonators in such a way as to cause a premature detonation so such a throwing motion was....cautioned against.

Interesting read.

I always think of Batman https://youtu.be/9pSD26bGy3I

It was Spy vs Spy for me

Too bad a lot of the links does not work anymore.

Cartoons are one hell of a drug especially for kids. I miss them so much.

> However, the black, spherical bomb, wick slowly burning away to a boom, has remained the understood image for an explosive.

According to who? Citation needed.

I think kids today think of bombs like cubes of tnt like Minecraft.

And while a few images have rivaled its ubiquity (a bundle of red dynamite tied to a ticking clock, a box labeled TNT) none of those have been visually compelling enough to replace the black sphere.

Or wrapped blocks of C4 like in most shooters. Or the tin-can like shape of Russian TM-46 mines that have featured in several viral images

Or red barrels, like in every video game ever.

Haha, red = explosive, green = toxic, blue = inert/empty.

I doubt it. Even if a kid loves playing Minecraft and doesn't like watching cartoons, the round black ball symbol is much more ubiquitous, they will often be exposed to it.

Bomb emoji

This Atlas Obscura website seems interesting. As a long time volunteer for Wikipedia, I try to avoid it as much as possible. A hundred people editing one article, with zero editorial oversight, leads to dogshit articles that are not enjoyable to read.

I would say, rather, that a hundred people editing one article amounts to so much editorial oversight that it makes articles not enjoyable to read. You can't put anything someone might disagree with in a Wikipedia article; it puts your edit at risk of being reverted. Still, I enjoy the facts!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com