SoylentNews

takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Facebook invented a new time unit called the 'flick' and it's truly amazing [techcrunch.com]

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 [techcrunch.com], 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?!

Do you give a flick? How many flicks do you feel you have wasted on this article?

Original Submission