6 comments

  • mkarrmann 13 hours ago ago

    Referring to "25 centimeters per year" as "so fast it can be seen from space" is so funny to me.

    We have very good satellites! Lots of things can be seen from space. "can be seen from space" is an awful way to provide readers intuition for the scale of something.

    • dlcarrier 11 hours ago ago

      We're at the point that "so slow/little it can only be seen from space" is a better description of our current technology.

      • mkarrmann 2 hours ago ago

        Ya if anything the real take away is that our satellites are very impressive!

    • JohnMakin 9 hours ago ago

      It seems you're implying this isn't very fast - ~10 inches a year is extremely fast for this type of activity.

      • mkarrmann 2 hours ago ago

        It is very fast, Mexico City has serious problems.

        My point is that "can be seen from space" is an awful way to communicate that. It provides no useful intuition for the scale of "10 inches per year".

  • gnabgib 12 hours ago ago

    Discussion (220 points,5 days ago, 73 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974682