Kudos to whatusername for the link.
For the record, I think it is Hacker News. I'm a hacker, I find it interesting, I think other hackers will find it interesting. Hacker News.
I saw a very similar thread that was linked to me about 18 months ago, where the man in it was doing it to the nth degree - which I found very fascinating. One of the differences between the two was in this one he was taking measurements of the car and mapping it out on a laptop to work out the thickness of the paint.
Quote from thread
This showed that the roof panel was 155 microns at the thickest point compared to 120 at the lowest.....
I asked Paul why this was so important and he explained that for maximum reflection you needed to take away the peaks in the clearcoat to a maximum point of the lowest trough microscopically which should flatten the clearcoat to a reading of + or - 2 microns across the board and take no more than 8 microns from the clearcoat for fear of clearcoat failure in the future....
from http://www.corsasport.co.uk/board/viewthread.php?tid=347865&...
Perhaps the Lamborghini guy did the same thing aswell which could be how he was talking about how many micrometers he was taking off. Maybe his measurements were based off experience. Hard to know really.
For the record, I think this kind of variety can definitely be interesting every now and then. There's only so many Google Chrome threads one can take.
It's not very often you see something like this that is so focused upon acheiving perfection (or as close as possible). And I gained a bunch of respect for top flight car detailers.
Never underestimate niches.
You can have it if you want it, you just have to work for it.
I can see that my mundane comment of polite disagreement above is taking quite the karma hit. I guess the crowd prefers a wider topic scope.
That, and pretty much everyone is tired of "this does not belong on HN" comments.
If he did the exact same thing to a 1997 Ford Escort instead of a new Lambo he'd be mercilessly mocked.
If he did the exact same thing to an ugly chick he'd be mercilessly mocked.