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Facebook invented a new time unit called the 'flick' and it's truly amazing
So what is a flick? A flick is one seven hundred and five million six hundred thousandth of a second — 1/705,600,000 if you prefer the digits, or 1.417233560090703e-9 if you prefer decimals. And why is that useful?
As a hint, here's a list of numbers into which 1/706,600,000 divides evenly: 8, 16, 22.05, 24, 25, 30, 32, 44.1, 48, 50, 60, 90, 100, 120. Notice a pattern? Even if you don't work in media production, some of those numbers probably look familiar. That's because they're all framerates or frequencies used in encoding or showing things like films and music. 24 frames per second, 120 hertz TVs, 44.1 KHz sample rate audio.
[...] Even the weird NTSC numbers in use due to certain technical constraints divide nicely. 23.976 (technically 24*(1,000/1,001)=23.976023976230 with the last 6 digits repeating) becomes exactly 29,429,400 flicks. It's the same for 29.97, 59.94, and any others like them. No more fractions or decimals needed whatsoever! How great is that?!
There is more detail and background information on GitHub.
Do you give a flick? How many flicks do you feel you have wasted on this article?
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday January 24 2018, @03:30PM (1 child)
Summary does not say why it is useful.
It seems to be something facebook will use because existing metrics are not convincing enough advertisers to spend even more money endlessly. So they made up a new metric they can slice up however they want as a unit of measuring product engagement with the ads and anything else they want to track; remember they want mostly video because its so much easier to track overall and embed stuff into that is hard to filter out via existing consumer technologies.
It doesn't matter if they get their specific numbers wrong. What matters is that its easy enough for a sales person to explain to a marketing person, neither of who understands any of it and just want to make money off you.
I expect this is entirely for the benefit of spinning advertising services with a metric they control.
Soon they will promise so many flicks per engaged user with video X targeted to similar like minded people makes money. It is not like any of those numbers are useful for most users--only some gamers even care about the 60/120fps numbers and that isn't what this is about anyway. Most movie playback settings don't show the frame rate unless you go out of your way to display it, and most people don't notice unless there is some other problem that causes stutter or unsmooth playback...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Wednesday January 24 2018, @04:00PM
Well, except for conferring the ability to "divide... evenly" commonly used units such as "24 frames per second, 120 hertz... 44.1 KHz sample rate audio" and abstruse-but-common frame rates like "23.976 (technically 24*(1,000/1,001)=23.976023976230 with the last 6 digits repeating)... 29.97, 59.94" without need for pesky, inaccuracy-introducing "fractions or decimals."
I don't do audio/video editing every day, and I am no mathematician, but still, I assure the reader, for people with a toe in either field, the above is not only cool, but an adequate if admittedly slightly technical explanation of why the unit's useful.