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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: 4, Informative) by requerdanos on Wednesday January 24 2018, @07:53PM
The Declaration of Independence [ushistory.org] expends voluminous and repetitious words on insulting the King (who it says is responsible for "a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny") and portraying the new world colonies as poor, helpless victims of his evil oppression.
Though we mostly quote and pay attention to the freedom-and-brotherhood parts now, the document frankly omits any talk about high concepts like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, except in passing.
Here's a nice PDF [saisd.net] that breaks down by color code how much space the Declaration devotes to each topic.