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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Good point.

    I heard a podcast recently (99% invisible) that talked about how the “60 degree” screw became standard in the world. Before that, there were many competing types of screw, which meant that there were all kinds of incompatibilities.

    What they mentioned only in passing was that the British Empire already had a standard at 55 degrees. At that point, the British empire was huge. The smart thing to do would have been to simply adopt the British standard and make it the worldwide standard. Instead, the US forced the rest of the world, including the whole British Empire to adopt the new standard.

    I imagine if the US hadn’t entered WWII the world might be using German standards, or it might be using British Empire standards, or maybe even Soviet standards, but it definitely wouldn’t be using American standards.





  • Robertson wanted to be paid for his good design. Henry Ford didn’t want to pay, even if it was a tiny amount.

    Ford was willing to use an inferior screw design that could cause production issues rather than pay a license to use the superior design. And, even though the patent expired a long time ago, these decisions have momentum.

    I would bet that Torx is more popular than Robertson even though it’s a much newer design. Is it a better design? To me, Robertson seems to have the edge when it comes to simplicity, but Torx could be better for industrial applications because multiple lobes that have a surface perpendicular to the direction of torque probably gives it more control. Also, thanks to Ikea, I’d bet that hex-head bolts are incredibly common. They share most of the benefits of Robertson. I suspect they’re a little less efficient though because the closer you are to a circle shape, the less the faces of the screwdriver tip align with the direction of torque. I wonder if there are advantages of hex over square, since you see hex so much more often.


  • It wasn’t an intentional feature. But, when they realized it happened it became a feature that they thought was useful.

    There are a lot of things like that, where something has a design quirk that people come to rely on. The quirk is so useful that people assume it was designed to work that way intentionally, but sometimes it was just coincidence.






  • the acceptable amount for one to pee on their own floor willfully is none

    Nobody’s talking about willfully peeing on the floor, we’re only talking about microscopic amounts of pee mist that could drift away from the stream when you’re peeing from 50 cm from the bowl instead of 10 cm from the bowl.






  • You’re weird because apparently you don’t clean your bathroom floors.

    Sure, microscopic amounts of pee gets on the floor. Then, every couple of weeks you clean your bathroom.

    You know that when you flush a toilet you aerosolize a bit of the contents and they drift out and land around the room too. Does that bother you?