pikminguy

In theory you could have some sort of multi head or rasterizing system scan every bit of the tape and construct a 2D map of the magnetization. It would have to be 2D because many tape formats have multiple tracks, not even in parallel. But decoding that data would be a nightmare that made optical character recognition look like child's play.

I've seen the Stalacpipe in person and it's honestly underwhelming. The idea is neat but it doesn't really work in practice. The stalactites are so quiet and the "organ" covers such a large area that it's pretty much impossible to hear the whole thing without amplification.

That depends on your definition of "mastered" we certainly know how to make them but I don't think there's ever been an example that wasn't cumbersome, fragile, or both.

No they didn't. Watch the video.

The article also notes that the similarities surprisingly end at the genome. Unlike twins these folks don't have especially similar microbiomes or lifestyles or other environmental factors. So the similarity is strictly genetic which is actually a little unexpected. With a large enough sample set these folks might actually be a useful population for study. People with the genetic similarity of siblings but not environment.

Oh absolutely. Your experience is in line with what Douglas Adams was originally saying. Plenty of people get a better sense of time from analog displays.

I'm not saying digital works better for everyone. I'm not even saying digital works better for most. It could easily be the case that I'm in the 1% of weirdos who have an easier time with digital. My only point is that it isn't universal either way. Adams said digital watches are silly because everyone gets a better sense of time from analog. It is a funny joke. But he is wrong about the facts.

I don't think you're getting how important the word instant is in this context. An analog clock might be better for decoding an unfamiliar time system. It might be better for teaching children how we count time. It might implicitly contain more information. It might be better in a thousand ways. None of that matters.

For whatever reason I get a faster and more accurate sense of what time it is from a digital watch. I am not alone in this. Therefor the assertion that an analog readout is more instantly meaningful for everyone is wrong.

I didn't pick 15:39 that's the quote from Douglas Adams. He pretty clearly went with a hard to read digital time to emphasize the point that he (and according to him everyone else) can more readily get useful information from an analog readout. My own watch is a digital 12 hour display and that is more useful to me.

Even if you're right that analog watches are better tools that's not what Adams was saying. "We all know, really, that [analog clock face] is a lot more instantly meaningful to us than 15:39" which is just wrong. Plenty of people, myself included, get more instant meaning from a digital readout.

I think this is more of a "different people's minds work differently" thing than an age thing. Some people who grew up in the digital age still find analog clock faces more useful. Here's a short youtube video exploring that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZArBfxaPzD8 . I think Adam's mistake was assuming the preference for analog was universal which was probably wrong even when he first wrote the joke.

I think the argument could be made for a clock face being a pie chart if you think of it the way the host of that video does. The categories are "time left in the hour/day" and "time passed in the hour/day".

All that said I was really happy to finally understand what Adams was trying to say with that joke witch, as a person who finds digital readouts more useful, never landed for me before.