[HN Gopher] What This Country Needs is an 18C/ Piece (2002) [pdf]
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What This Country Needs is an 18C/ Piece (2002) [pdf]
Author : cokernel_hacker
Score : 98 points
Date : 2023-12-16 16:17 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cs.uwaterloo.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (cs.uwaterloo.ca)
| account-5 wrote:
| The UK needs a 99p coin.
| lisper wrote:
| It has one. It's called a 1 pound coin, but wait a few days and
| it will be worth 99p.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Do stores in the UK actually hand back a single penny for a
| PS0.99 purchase? If I buy something for EUR0.99 in the
| Netherlands, I won't get my cent back if I hand over a EUR1
| coin. The 1 and 2 cent coins still exist, but shops all but
| banned them and round to the nearest multiple of 5 cents.
| lisper wrote:
| I have no idea. My comment was intended to be nothing more
| than a joke.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| Sorry what? Are you saying that every shop will short
| change you in the Netherlands? There would be uproar here
| in the UK. That one penny will be handed to you 100% of the
| time in the UK. Surely if such a policy was in force they
| should be forced to round down and so return you 5 cents.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Short or long change you, depending on the amount, so in
| the long run it evens out assuming you buy multiple items
| at a time with a certain variance in cost.
|
| EUR2.97 will net you 2 whole cents if you pay EUR3 in
| cash and get a five cent coin back.
|
| It's legal:
|
| https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/geldzaken/vraag-
| en-...
| jeroenhd wrote:
| There's a lot of rounding in stores. I don't think anyone
| cares for 1 cent coins (most stores don't accept them
| anyway).
|
| With digital payments taking care of transferring the
| exact amount with no additional surcharges for at least
| 20 years, I don't think it's a pressing issue. If I cared
| for my 1 cent, I'd pay through NFC or by card.
|
| Stores are allowed to round to round to 0 or 5 cent if
| they indicate they do. This can also work in your favour;
| EUR1,07 will be rounded down to EUR1,05 if the store
| rounds to fives, and you should be given your 5 cent coin
| if you pay with EUR1,10. I've never checked if stores
| actually do that, though; I think it's been a decade
| since I last paid with cash at the grocery store, so all
| I can tell you is the law and explanation the government
| provides:
| https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/geldzaken/vraag-
| en-...
| Symbiote wrote:
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_rounding
|
| It's been discussed by policitians in Britain, but as far
| as I know there are no plans to introduce it.
| gsej wrote:
| Yes they do, and people would ask for their change if they
| didn't. I don't know why.
| becquerel wrote:
| They will, at least in my experience, but from the glares
| you get you'll wish you'd told them to keep it.
| paleface wrote:
| That would be false advertising, in the UK.
|
| Rather - you should be asking the question, why don't the
| shops in the Netherlands, just mark up the price, to EUR1
| instead?! Seems incredibly stupid, to me.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Shops worldwide do this; whether it is $1.99, EUR1,99,
| PS1.99 or Y=499. It's a psychological trick. The
| exceptions (like the Dutch HEMA for which whole unit
| prices are part of its heritage) use it as a
| distinguishing feature, but most shops don't dare to.
| jws wrote:
| Do people in the UK use cash? I was in London for a week
| before I finally needed to get some cash to pay for a
| contractor for illegal services (a forbidden historical
| tour), later I needed coins to do laundry and the
| convenience store didn't have enough for a load of wash and
| a dry, he changed enough for a wash and the pub across the
| street had enough for a dry.
| account-5 wrote:
| I'm my experience London is not a typical example of the
| UK.
| wackget wrote:
| The font hurts my eyes.
| solardev wrote:
| Serifs were still kinda cool in 2002, I guess
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| It's a font resolution problem, serif fonts from a PDF
| generated by a modern LaTeX compiler like XeLaTeX are still
| more readable. If you zoom in, you'll see the fonts are
| bitmaps so it's low resolution with no anti-aliasing.
| Apparently, the original METAFONT _Computer Modern_ is
| rasterized after rendering, meanwhile today most people have
| switched to its Type-I equivalent, which remains vectorized
| in PDFs.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's computermodern (default LaTeX and not adjusted for
| perfectly thin displays).
|
| https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/48369/are-the-
| origin...
| aquova wrote:
| Every Latex editor I've used uses (I think) that font by
| default
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| It's a paper intended for printing, maybe not that suitable for
| scaling. I like this font.
| dheera wrote:
| It's largely used as a status symbol to show that you know how
| to code in LaTeX.
|
| That said, something is wrong with this PDF, it looks like it
| has been rasterized somewhere in the process, which is not
| normal. LaTeX usually outputs nice clean curves on the text.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Blame Knuth. Afaik the font used simulates closely the
| typesetting of the original art of programming edition that was
| printed using hot metal typesetting on an old monotype machine.
| Later these machines were eliminated for more modern techniques
| but he didn't like the look so developed TeX to achieve a
| fidelity with those machines for art of computer programming
| later editions and new volumes. It has been almost universally
| adopted in academia since.
| epcoa wrote:
| TeX use is minor to unheard of outside of Math, CS, Physics,
| +/- economics and engineering and a few other fields. A
| rarity in most life sciences, medicine, humanities where most
| journals will not even accept a final submission in TeX.
| svat wrote:
| The main problem is the rasterization. There's an amazing tool
| to fix this, called pkfix: wget
| "https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/Papers/change2.ps"
| pkfix change2.ps change2-fixed.ps ps2pdf
| change2-fixed.ps
|
| Result:
| https://shreevatsa.net/post/2023-pkfix/change2-fixed.pdf
|
| Side-by-side: https://shreevatsa.net/post/pkfix/ (Barebones
| post with screenshot as I need to go now; will add more details
| later today.)
| LegitShady wrote:
| When you write this country meaning "the united states" but
| you're in canada.
| uw_rob wrote:
| It's a reference to the quote "What this country needs is a
| really good five-cent cigar" by Thomas Marshall
| maweaver wrote:
| One issue they mention is that you lose the simple greedy
| algorithm for making change. For example, for $0.38 it's better
| to give 2x$0.18 plus 2 pennies (4 coins), but many might
| intuitively give back a quarter, a dime, and 3 pennies (5 coins).
| Besides the added complexity, introducing a new coin solely to
| reduce the amount of change given is not effective if it is not
| used optimally.
| popularrecluse wrote:
| 2x$0.10 + 1x$0.18 is the preferred change.
| saulpw wrote:
| And what algorithm did you use to find that? As per the
| comment you replied to, the greedy algorithm no longer works,
| and you have to exhaustively search through all possibilities
| of coins.
| couchand wrote:
| Not the OP, but they appear to use the classic change-
| making algorithm "Dimes are Best".
|
| It works like this: give dimes for change, they're the best
| coin (highest value density).
| stevage wrote:
| Not in the system where the 10c is replaced by the 18c.
| waveBidder wrote:
| 0.38 should actually just be 0.40, possibly 0.35 if the
| seller's generous. in physical transactions nobody pays
| 3.1415926 dollars for anything, even if the pricing algorithm
| says that's what you should charge. you just round to the
| nearest available coinage.
| anticorporate wrote:
| Silliness aside, I love that someone is trying to come up with
| something innovative with cash.
|
| I carry and use cash whenever I can. It might only have a few
| more years of value as more and more places adopt pervasive
| surveillance and facial recognition technology, but I'm going to
| hold out for anonymous purchases as long as I can. The only
| entity that should be able to know my complete purchase history
| is me.
| cfraenkel wrote:
| Pennys - cheapest tiling material you can buy.
| elliotec wrote:
| Having recently done a remodel this sounds weirdly but
| extremely true. What would be the downsides? What would you
| grout with? How durable are they with water and constant
| friction?
| jrmg wrote:
| Are you fishing for this classic reddit thread?
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1c1g96/comment/c9c6l
| l...
|
| If you're actually new to it - it's a fun read!
|
| The full threads:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/17x0d5/friends_of_mi
| n... https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1c1g96/60_some_
| thousa...
| nick222226 wrote:
| I think it's a joke, unless they are referring to setting
| them under a poured layer of epoxy like some bars do (or
| the reddit thread from other commenter). For tiling, it
| would be difficult to set them because they are so thin.
| The thinset would end up being at or above the level of
| your grout. Also cleaning grout from them while float
| grouting would probably not be very fun. Maybe you could
| get away with setting them straight onto a layer of grout
| which would be less durable. Also they are so small and
| they don't come on a mat so you'd pay a lot of labor for
| placing them in any sort of organized manner
| jonhohle wrote:
| Not flooring, but I used pennies for weight on my son's
| pinewood derby car. I couldn't buy weights for cheaper
| and putting some shiny ones under enamel looked pretty
| cool.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've noticed that dollar bills are cheaper than wallpaper.
| Wouldn't it be fun to do a room in dollar bills! My very own
| Scrooge McDuck cash vault!
|
| But there's probably some killjoy law that makes this
| illegal.
| appleskeptic wrote:
| What the US needs is to abolish all coins except the quarter. Due
| to inflation, a penny in 1913 is worth about 30 cents now. And
| somehow they made do with no smaller coins than the penny (the
| half cent having been discontinued in 1857).
|
| Why are we shuffling these worthless bits of metal around? I'm
| sure it's to enrich some medium size companies in a few important
| Congressional districts.
| gkoberger wrote:
| Maybe it's corruption, but my guess is it's just never been
| important enough to push through. Imagine all the work that
| would go into phasing out coins, both politically and
| logistically... all for what?
| appleskeptic wrote:
| I imagine it would cost less than all the money collectively
| spent on minting them and buying and maintaining machinery to
| handle them. Even better if they got rid of the quarter too.
| But yeah, I can see why no politician has decided to make
| this their signature issue.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Dollar coins got phased in and out a couple times with no
| seeming issues.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, I think the issue has been people don't mostly like
| them or use them.
|
| I don't know why the US is uniquely(?) in this stasis
| around the denomination of money in circulation. Of course,
| at this point, it's pretty academic.
|
| Pennies should have been gone decades ago. And it's still
| hit or miss to use anything above a $20 especially in a
| smaller store.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _people don 't mostly like them or use them_
|
| This is also true of pennies.
| ghaff wrote:
| Certainly. Pre-COVID lots of places had little dishes
| near the register where people could toss one or two
| pennies in and take one or two out.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Maybe it 's corruption_
|
| It's not corruption. It's what I'll call the interest-group
| problem.
|
| Pennies are an issue a few people care deeply about and most
| people don't. It's electorally thrifty to accomodate those
| few, and so electeds do. It's an easy win, particularly in a
| partisan environment that punishes consensus building as
| betrayal of one's base.
|
| Put another way, keeping the penny won't piss anyone off
| enough to get one primaried. Killing the penny might.
| dheera wrote:
| Even the quarter doesn't buy anything worthwhile. 10 minutes of
| parking, maybe? But that's about it.
|
| Keep the 50 cent and $1 pieces though. And $2 bills. I LOVE
| handing those to people who don't realize they are real.
| appleskeptic wrote:
| I've always been fond of the 50 cent piece too. It's too bad
| that the ubiquity of the quarter makes it the only contender
| for a single-coin system.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Some places have free 15 minute parking, which seems like a
| better setup all-around.
| lb1lf wrote:
| First time I went to the states (some 20 years ago), for some
| reason or other my local bank gave me a heap of $2 notes
| (also some $20 and $50 ones!) when I asked them for a few
| hundred dollars, just so I wouldn't have to worry about
| finding an ATM accepting my card at SFO.
|
| Didn't realize quite how uncommon they were until I tipped
| someone a couple of them and they angrily asked me for 'real
| money'!
| ghaff wrote:
| Not that I use much cash but I haven't seen a $2 bill in
| the wild for a great many years. I could see how someone
| might be suspicious of them (even if only because they
| suspected they'd have trouble using them).
| volemo wrote:
| Penny is worth less than the metal it's made out of.
|
| coinnews.net/2022/01/18/penny-costs-2-1-cents-to-make-
| in-2021-nickel-costs-8-52-cents-us-mint-realizes-381-2m-in-
| seigniorage/
| nullhole wrote:
| "How was copper wire invented?"
|
| "Two Scotsmen fighting over a penny."
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| That joke is a little different in every telling of it I've
| heard.
| noqc wrote:
| manufacturing costs are not just input costs. In fact, the
| ideal coinage the values ordered:
|
| cost to manufacture > fiat value of coin > cost of materials
| jonawesomegreen wrote:
| We dropped the penny in Canada in 2012 and I can't say that
| I've missed it at all. Penny are still charged if your paying
| by bank or credit card, otherwise price is rounded to nearest
| 5c.
|
| > If the price ends in a one, two, six, or seven it gets
| rounded down to 0 or 5; and rounded up if it ends in three,
| four, eight or nine.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-s-penny-withdrawal-all...
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Coinstar, specifically.
| ghaff wrote:
| I have a bunch of coins I really need to take there. On the
| rare occasion I get coins these days, they just get tossed in
| a bucket.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _sure it's to enrich some medium size companies in a few
| important Congressional districts_
|
| It's the zinc lobby [1]. Maybe the solution is to mint a zinc
| quarter?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Common_Cents
| midasuni wrote:
| Thank goodness I still live in a world of telephones, car
| batteries, handguns and many things made of zinc.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Aren't car batteries made out of lead, handguns out of
| steel, and phones made out of plastic, fiberglass (PCBs),
| and random other assorted stuff?
|
| (Even gunmetal which used to be used instead of steel is
| listed as only 2-4% zinc)
| khrbrt wrote:
| It's a Simpsons reference :)
|
| https://youtu.be/U1iCZpFMYd0?si=EHnRdnuKjoOvjuCP
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| I don't understand how there's any advocacy behind abolishing
| units of currency. I literally never pay for anything with cash
| and so I never receive any change. I don't see how it's a daily
| nuisance for some people
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Maybe you should start using cash sometimes. Even if you
| don't have a direct need to participate in the economy
| without letting the credit card companies know where you are
| at several points throughout the day, you probably benefit in
| indirect ways from the fact that such a thing is still
| possible.
|
| It's worth keeping cash around.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| One benefit of the banking industry's bias against the poor
| is that cash can never be eliminated in the US.
| appleskeptic wrote:
| Your perspective makes sense if you accept as good that
| massive political effort must be taken to do obviously good
| things against the wishes of special interest groups. But
| most people would think that the US Mint churning out
| worthless coins every year at the expense of citizens is an
| undesirable state of affairs. Wasting other people's money is
| inherently despicable.
|
| Not that worthless coins are anywhere near the top of the
| list of bad and wasteful policies. But if we can't even solve
| the obvious low-hanging fruit, we're not solving those bigger
| problems either.
| jmye wrote:
| That's a interesting opinion.
|
| It seems like saying if you won't bother bending over to
| pick up a penny, how can anyone expect you to bend over and
| pick up a one hundred dollar bill - one is worth the effort
| and one isn't. People regularly make efforts and propose
| laws to solve bigger issues - the issue isn't effort as
| much as adversarial disagreement.
| dgacmu wrote:
| A penny costs 2.7 cents to make. We make almost 8 billion of
| them per year. That's $216 million per year for a money-
| losing nearly-useless coin. so, it costs you about a buck per
| year.
| krapp wrote:
| "I don't understand how other people can possibly care about
| things that don't affect me personally."
| StevePerkins wrote:
| Because the savings would be less than peanuts in the grand
| scheme of things that the government spends money on.
|
| Because the Left would be galvanized by a million blog posts
| and academic papers (basically the same thing these days),
| arguing that it's racist because people of color are more
| likely to be underbanked and use cash. Yes I realize that's
| nonsense, but it wouldn't matter.
|
| Because the Right would probably be galvanized too, by
| complaints that the government was meddling too much in the
| familiar and somehow ripping people off. Yes I realize that's
| nonsense, but it wouldn't matter.
|
| It's so hard to make anything happen in U.S. politics today...
| eliminating pennies, nickels, and dimes wouldn't even make my
| Top-10,000 list of priorities.
| appleskeptic wrote:
| What an indictment of our system.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _by complaints that the government was meddling too much in
| the familiar and somehow ripping people off_
|
| It would be about inflation. Just as only Nixon could go to
| China, it's probably only Republican initiative that can nix
| the penny--they could brand it as thriftiness.
|
| Unfortunately, zinc is mined in red states and districts [1].
| A President would have to lead the charge.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_mining_in_the_United_S
| tat...
| hiddencost wrote:
| You have a really angry model of the politics in this
| country, and seem to lack respect for the political stances.
|
| It's quite easy to pass laws that no one cares about.
| Congress passed a law modernizing duck hunting permits. Maine
| was very happy.
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| > You have a really angry model of the politics in this
| country, and seem to lack respect for the political
| stances.
|
| I'd argue politics in this country is angry and seems to
| lack respect for opposing political stances. I found the
| parent's post perfectly adequate
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _seems to lack respect for opposing political stances_
|
| This is true for issues with national currency. Pennies
| aren't in this category. Instead, it's more subject to
| the interest-group problem [1].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38665895
| schmookeeg wrote:
| Parent's model is very much my own view of our political
| gridlock.
| Guvante wrote:
| IIRC abolishing the penny is relatively popular.
|
| The only reason it wasn't already abolished is lobbying by
| Zinc producers.
| noqc wrote:
| The "left" that you are referring to opposes eliminating
| cash. The reasons often given in hearsay and by journalists
| and blog posts are often exclusively focused on "people of
| color" who are underbanked, but the complaint is much more
| concisely stated as _BEING OPPOSED TO THE PRIVITIZATION OF
| CURRENCY_. Which seems fucking reasonable as shit to me.
| euroderf wrote:
| The way to fix underbanking is to get the USPS to offer low-
| cost/no-cost accounts.
| paleface wrote:
| A better idea, in my opinion, is rebasing the currency, to some
| form of standard like gold - and ceasing to print pretend
| money, that only results in currency deflation, and retail
| inflation.
| damiankennedy wrote:
| A gold standard would lead to deflation. Noone wants to get
| an annual 2 to 5 percent paycut while paying interest on a
| mortgage on a house that goes down in value every year.
| paleface wrote:
| You're going to have to clue me in, to what it would be
| deflating?! The word is like a decibel, in that it needs
| some reference marker...
|
| With the currency pegged to a standard, a penny would
| actually have more value, than it does now.
|
| I disagree on your mortgage point. The whole reason for
| rebasing to a standard, is to avoid those issues. Where I
| think the rub is for most people, is they'd have to disavow
| themselves of the notion, that a property should go up in
| value.
| FredPret wrote:
| We can't mine enough gold every year to keep up with the
| rest of the economy.
|
| To put it another way, if gold was money, there wouldn't
| be enough new money every year to buy all the stuff we
| come up in a year.
|
| By decreeing gold to be money and money to be gold, we
| would be interfering with the market in a major way:
| artificially giving the value of gold a massive boost and
| cutting the value of all other things.
| jetpackjoe wrote:
| > a penny would actually have more value, than it does
| now.
|
| That's literally deflation.
| beefman wrote:
| (2002)
| nullhole wrote:
| Saw the title and immediately though of the Army Man joke (from
| the first page of the first issue!): "What this country needs is
| a good 5C/ sports car."
| alex-mohr wrote:
| Maybe interesting aside: I saw a link to this when it was first
| published at the height of the p2p networks craze and noticed
| some similarities between the two.
|
| One of my students at the time, Mahadev Konar, ended up writing a
| paper "Ring-like DHTs and the Postage Stamp Problem" [1] that
| shows how you can use solutions to the postage stamp problem (aka
| denomination-choosing problem) as a way to structure the finger
| pointers in Chord. And went on to co-found Hortonworks.
|
| Sometimes random things on HN end up having implications in other
| areas!
|
| [1]: https://alexmohr.com/papers/dht-postage-stamp-
| podc2005-exten...
| aurizon wrote:
| Digitally encoded coins - 1 cent to $10 with everyone having
| small readers/value assigners linked to account or other portable
| value store. Made hard to fake, your store = size of a credit
| card - flat near field access.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I was going to suggest that adding a 12 or 24 cent piece would be
| an easier sell since people are already used to dealing with 12's
| due to clocks.
|
| But in my observation, the younger generations are less adept at
| that -- if I tell my nephew it's "quarter 'till 3", he says "I
| don't know what that means", then I explain it and he has to
| really think about it and do the math in his head to figure out
| what time it is. Which makes sense since I grew up reading analog
| clock, and he most often uses his phone or iWatch with a digital
| time display most of the the time -- the habit of breaking time
| into quarters is not as intuitive.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I always thought it was a weird colloquialism. Saying quarter
| to three takes exactly the same number of syllables as two
| forty-five, and the latter is more clear when communicating.
| You're also using the word "to" which could be confused with
| "two" if the communication is garbled over the radio or a bad
| connection.
| function_seven wrote:
| Even worse, I don't know what "it's a quarter of three"
| means. I've looked it up, but for some reason I forget it by
| the time it's quarter of four!
| wisemang wrote:
| Took me ages to remember what folks in the UK mean when
| they say "half six" -- it's 6:30, not "half to six" -- even
| just now I had to double check myself.
| Symbiote wrote:
| This is varies by language. In several languages
| including English, "half six" is an abbreviation of "half
| [[an hour] past] six". In others, it's "half [[an hour]
| to] six".
| Zach_the_Lizard wrote:
| To this American, "half six" sounds like a roundabout way
| to describe the number three and not a way to says it's
| 6:30 (or 5:30 for that matter).
|
| I've never heard anyone say that
| 1986 wrote:
| Yeah I find this one exhausting too because meanwhile in
| German "half six" is exactly that, "halfway to six"
| jfk13 wrote:
| But "halfway to six" should be three, surely? (Sorry!)
|
| As a British person who learned Swedish -- which also
| uses that convention -- around the age of 10, I often
| found myself a little uncertain when hearing "half six"
| in English, as I grew up with the more explicit "half
| past six".
| em-bee wrote:
| in austria you can learn about "viertel sechs" (quarter
| six) and "dreiviertel sechs" (three quarter six).
|
| i'll let you work out whether those are "viertel nach
| funf" (quarter past five) or "viertel vor sechs" (quarter
| to six), or "viertel nach sechs" (quarter past six), or
| "viertel vor sieben" (quarter two seven)
| euroderf wrote:
| I confuse Finns by saying (at 2330 / 1130pm) that it's
| "half zero" (puoli nolla). Apparently the consensus
| concept does not include negative times.
| stevage wrote:
| Ha, like in french for some reason you can say "and a
| half" for hours up to 12 but not beyond. Onze heures et
| demi. Treize heures trente.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Typically we say half _past_ six though which is a bit
| clearer. That can sometimes get a little blurred with
| accents particularly some northern ones haf 'pa six.
| sp332 wrote:
| I don't really feel every minute passing. If I want to know
| what time of day it is, putting it in terms of hours is more
| useful. If you're setting a timer or something where the
| minutes matter, then you can say 2:45.
| fnorder wrote:
| If you have a wristwatch with hands you may not want to
| identify the exact minute (this can be a little difficult if
| it has a smaller face), but if it's 5 minutes either way then
| a "quarter-to" is close enough.
| betenoire wrote:
| To me, it's about the significant digits. 2:46 is still a
| quarter to three.
| WalterBright wrote:
| When I was in college, it was a thing for students to
| design and build a digital LED clock out of random logic.
| A friend of mine wanted to make one that would tell time
| only in 15 minute chunks, as nobody needed more precise
| time than that.
|
| Yes, I did a digital clock, too, my first digital
| design/build. It never did work right.
| Affric wrote:
| Hours are older than minutes and it's conceptually more
| simple to only use one unit.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Maybe it's to convey a lack of precision, "quarter till 3" is
| ambiguous and could be anywhere from around 2:41-2:49 (pretty
| much any time the minute hand is past 40 and before 50),
| while if you say 2:45 you generally mean 2:45 (2:40, of
| course is "20 till 3", but is also a bit ambiguous)
|
| It feels easier and more natural to round to the nearest 5 or
| 15 minutes with an analog clock than a digital clock. But I
| grew up in a time when analog clocks were the norm and
| digital clocks and watches were an expensive novelty (or used
| for special purpose clocks) so I became used to analog clocks
| (and use an analog display on my watch, even though I could
| just as easily set it to a digital display).
|
| When I do use a digital clock, I generally read the time
| that's displayed, I don't mentally round to the nearest 5 or
| 15 minutes, only with an analog clock.
| waveBidder wrote:
| the 1913 penny is 30 cents today. bring back the dollar coin
| and drop everything but the quarter.
| ghaff wrote:
| I grew up with analog clocks. How I would answer would probably
| depend on where I got the answer from. If it came from an
| analog clock I'd probably say quarter to. If from a digital
| clock I'd probably give a rounded answer like 2:45.
| stevage wrote:
| Fwiw I'm 43 and much the same. I grew up with a microwave clock
| and a digital watch and never got to the point of being able to
| glance at an analog clock and read the time. I can figure it
| out but it's not intuitive.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I prefer an analog clock because I can read it at a glance
| without even needing my glasses. Without glasses, a 7 segment
| display just looks like a row of 8's.
| wolfgang42 wrote:
| My experience is that I didn't really 'get' analog clocks until
| I was old enough to start managing my own schedule. They're
| useful for quickly visualizing addition/subtraction of
| intervals*, but until I was a grown-up I just didn't need that
| skill, since times were always told to me by adults rather than
| something I regularly needed to calculate for myself.
|
| * ("How long until I need to leave to catch the bus for that
| appointment? Oh, it's twenty to quarter before half past three,
| I still have some time")
| techie128 wrote:
| Interesting read indeed! We need more innovation in this space. I
| am in the camp of cash users for several reasons. Increasingly,
| electronic forms of currency and credit are used as a means to
| exert control over vast majority of the population. The data can
| be misused by government and private entities to profile and
| target certain minorities. Crypto was supposed to solve this but
| that hasn't really panned out as governments do not want
| competition to their fiat currency.
| cbhl wrote:
| Worth noting this piece was written in 2002. Ten years later in
| 2012, Canada finally took the penny ($0.01 coin) out of
| circulation.
|
| Cash transactions were to be rounded to the nearest nickel,
| whereas cashless transactions were still computed in pennies.
|
| (As far as I can tell, the main reason the US hasn't done the
| same is due to the prevalance of souvenir penny press machines.)
| seized wrote:
| Canada still has plenty of those machines, they just have
| copper or brass blanks in them.
| euroderf wrote:
| If the US rounds everything to nickels, then the current system
| of 1-5-10-25-100, which needs an 18-cent piece, becomes (after
| division by 5) a new system of 1-2-5-20, which needs... what
| new denomination ? Maybe none ?
| wiml wrote:
| A $2.50 coin would fill the gap well.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| We could just bump everything to 3,7,11 and ... 29 maybe?
| And keep 100 cents to the dollar.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| I suspect it's even dumber than that and no one wants to remove
| a coin from circulation with Lincoln on it.
| gojomo wrote:
| It's actually less dumb but more corrupt: it's the lobbying
| funded by the company that sells zinc coin blanks to the US
| Treasury:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Common_Cents
| Projectiboga wrote:
| He's on the $5 bill.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The removal of the penny was done in Canada at a time when the
| government needed a distraction from a scandal. It worked
| fabulously, and was way more popular than people expected due
| to the pro-penny faction being way louder than the silent
| majority who were glad to be rid of the things.
| throwup238 wrote:
| It devastated the wishing fountain industry though, it still
| hasn't recovered. Neither has Canadian wish delivery. There's
| only so much the Make a Wish Foundation can compensate.
| wycy wrote:
| I feel like this is a joke but genuinely can't tell for
| sure
| graypegg wrote:
| Was during the Harper government era, like another
| commenter said, there was basically constant on-going
| scandals at the time. Big populist decisions like
| breaking up Make A Wish Canada Ltd (or at least putting
| some pressure on them) was a distraction from a lot of
| shady government dealings happening at the time. I think
| most people assumed we'd see a more bespoke wish market
| arise, but sadly the downgrading of MAW Canada, then it's
| eventual restructuring lead to a buy out by Rogers
| Communications Ltd, who very quickly laid off the Joy and
| Magic department. They're pretty much just a holding
| company for the IP now. Things just aren't like they used
| to be here.
| graypegg wrote:
| Gross Domestic Wish Production down 42% from their 2011
| peak. Many sectors that were ancillary to the wish industry
| (Make A Wish foundation included) had to move onto
| manufacturing Hopes, Dreams, and Aspirations, which sadly
| even as a combined accounting group still don't generate
| the sort of revenue we saw with the WishEx market during
| the predepennification era. I think about my grandfather,
| who worked in wishmithing before it was even regulated,
| selling scrap copper to throw into ponds to the local
| community. Maybe we need to return to that, locally sourced
| wishes would be a smaller industry, but it would open up
| new opportunities for the next generation to get into the
| craft.
| bbarnett wrote:
| From Wikipedia:
|
| " _In 2011 the Royal Canadian Mint had minted 1.1 billion
| pennies, more than doubling the 2010 production number of
| 486.2 million pennies._
|
| ...
|
| _The budget announcement eliminating the penny cited the
| cost of producing it at 1.6 cents._ "
|
| --
|
| The _announcement_ of the penny 's removal _may_ have been
| timed, but its removal was sensible, long coming, discussed
| for more than a decade, and needed.
|
| Minting a billion pennies a year, many of them lost, or
| hoarded, was senseless.
|
| So now we're centless.
| kevindamm wrote:
| Incidentally, pressing those pennies effectively removes them
| from circulation.
| analog31 wrote:
| I suspect it's because nobody wants to admit that a penny has
| become worthless, and probably a nickel too. Also, there may be
| people who are worried that they will start getting ripped off
| by the rounding process.
|
| I read a book about units of measure, and there was often
| strong local resistance to adopting regional or national
| standards because folks thought it would be a chance for
| merchants to surreptitiously raise prices. They were probably
| right.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I think Spain and other countries had this kind of inflation
| when moving to the Euro.
| phyzome wrote:
| If you get rid of the penny _and_ the nickel, then you may
| have trouble making change with just 10 and 25 cent pieces.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| The dime has got to go
| zamadatix wrote:
| I'd almost say if you were going to go down to 2 coins it
| might actually make more sense to have and $0.10 and $0.50
| pieces. I.e. force all prices to a multiple of 0.1 instead
| of 0.01 but leave a larger coin to make larger totals or
| scrounging up more than a dollar when you don't have a bill
| go quicker.
|
| Or even just go straight to quarters being the only change
| at all. A penny CPI adjusted from when they got rid of the
| half penny in the US (1857) is already worth $0.35 today.
| cwmoore wrote:
| Worse than worthless--it requires underpaid arithmeticians!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _we assume that every amount of hange b etween 0C/ and 99C/ is
| equally likely_
|
| As the paper admits, this is a bad assumption. Curious to see the
| number given actual price data.
| TriangleEdge wrote:
| This may be controversial, but I liked coins back in the day. It
| feels more "human" to me.
|
| Inflation targets will ensure coins are worthless soon enough
| tho. I'm a fan that governments can't impose these targets on
| crypto.
| jacob019 wrote:
| Dollar coins make sense, moreso as time marches on. They sure
| have tried, but until they stop printing paper dollars no one
| will use them.
| SpaghettiCthulu wrote:
| We have $1 and $2 coins in Canada. I can't imagine dealing
| with $1 bills.
| jwagenet wrote:
| I'd probably rather the opposite, dollar bills and no
| coins. There are very few things I can spend less than $1
| on and coins are much more annoying to carry.
| ghaff wrote:
| I can stuff some bills in the mini-wallet I carry. Coins
| mean they're either rattling around in my pocket or I
| need to carry some sort of coin purse. And, when I
| travel, I end up with this bag of unfamiliar coins that
| I'm trying to figure out at the counter. (Though I use
| cash when traveling at fewer and fewer places these
| days.)
| bentley wrote:
| I typically keep $2 bills as the smallest denomination in
| my wallet, with a couple of half-dollar and dollar coins.
| waveBidder wrote:
| just introduce new coins. if we were keeping up, the modern
| equivalent of a 1913 quarter would be an ~8 dollar piece.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| That's making it too easy. I say we do 3, 17, 23 and 77 cent
| pieces
| euroderf wrote:
| What's the chance that average Americans can do the math in
| their heads ?
| metabagel wrote:
| The reason the penny isn't eliminated in the U.S. is inertia and
| conservatism. Same reason(s) we haven't finished switching to the
| metric system.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Same reason(s) we haven't finished switching to the metric
| system.
|
| You're not totally wrong but like the UK we (US) tend to use
| the metric system where it actually matters and use our variant
| of Imperial for everyday things which makes perfect sense for
| anyone who grew up with it. Aside from not having a well-
| developed intuitive sense for what Celsius means from a comfort
| perspective when traveling, I can pretty much use whatever
| local units are in use. (My only real limitation at home is
| that, aside from my scale, I have very little metric measuring
| gear so I have to convert.)
| couchand wrote:
| Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/526/
| ghaff wrote:
| I have some more complicated conversions in my head but,
| for a lot of purposes, a liter is about a quart, a
| kilometer is about half a mile, and a kilogram is about two
| pounds. Those suffice for a lot of rough conversions I
| encounter when traveling. I suppose I could sit down and
| just memorize some F to C conversions.
| dwcnnnghm wrote:
| Miles and kilometers can be estimated by the Fibonacci
| Sequence. The conversion (mi -> km) is very nearly the
| golden ratio (1.61 and approximately 1.62, respectively,
| IIRC). For any number in the sequence taken as miles, the
| subsequent number is the distance in kilometers. Your way
| is probably quicker, but it's a fun bit of information.
| dwcnnnghm wrote:
| Having lived in the UK, I found the balance between systems
| to be quite nice. I think that the Imperial System is
| actually underrated for daily use: most of the measurements
| are intuitive (based on sensory information and easily
| visualizable objects) and align better with common uses of
| measurements (rough approximations and division into equal
| parts). I think the metric system is beautiful and elegant,
| but for non-scientific tasks I don't think it's as valuable.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| This analysis assumes a uniform distribution of the amounts paid.
| With stores tending to charge $?.99 for their products and many
| people buying only a handful of products in small transactions, I
| suspect the distribution isn't all that balanced.
|
| With the power of the modern internet, we could pool together
| receipts all across the world and design a change system fit for
| real world usage.
| rafram wrote:
| You're forgetting grocery stores, which tend to price
| merchandise according to bulk prices, which aren't often
| pretty, plus a store markup. Items priced by weight are even
| less likely to come out to a $*.99-style price.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Maybe. I have years of payment history with several grocery
| stores stored in my bank's transaction history, could be a
| fun little project to figure out what my optimal coin system
| would look like!
| eschneider wrote:
| This is an awesome example of solving the wrong problem. :>
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| The paper mentions how it's preferred to say "1 cent" rather than
| "penny" about US coinage, which reminds me of how shocked I was
| when I first encountered a bunch of US currency. Depending on the
| year it was made, most of the coins don't say how much they're
| worth on them. e.g. cent, nickle, dime, quarter rather than
| however many cents it is.
| sokoloff wrote:
| From the looks suspecting me of wizardry if I give $20.12 on a
| bill of $17.87, I can't imagine an 18C/ piece working out
| particularly well in practice.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Before COVID forced the near ubiquitous use of debit/credit
| cards, there would be several times a month where I would
| confirm to the person ahead of me in line that the teller was
| correct on the amount of the bill/change or, less often, that
| the teller was wrong.
| gojomo wrote:
| You, sir or madam or mir, are an everyday hero. (nb:
| s/mouth/per month/)
| yetanotherloser wrote:
| Don't be bigoted against many-mouthed Shoggoths. Be
| pseudopod-positive.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I also have a habit of just paying the bill when elderly
| people start counting out pennies and nickles for a $5
| purchase.
|
| Thanks for the correction :-P
| em-bee wrote:
| you have to do it occasionally to avoid the change
| accumulating. got rid of a pile of change myself just
| today.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I used to do that. Almost no cashier could do the math in their
| head, they needed to type it into the register, and then they
| go "oh".
| dang wrote:
| Related. Ohers?
|
| _What This Country Needs Is an 18C/ Piece [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14579635 - June 2017 (45
| comments)
|
| _What the U.S. needs is an 18-cent coin_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985299 - May 2012 (28
| comments)
| eesmith wrote:
| _What the U.S. needs is an 18-cent coin_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985299 - May 17, 2012 (28
| comments) linking to a blog post at http://radio-
| weblogs.com/0105910/2003/05/16.html linking to a Science News
| article now at https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coins-
| making-change-effi... discussing the publication at
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02984830 which we
| are now linked to on the author's web site.
| dang wrote:
| Great catch. Added to list above. Thanks!
| gojomo wrote:
| Great 2002 logic - but that's practically the archaic 20th
| century. People, it's 2023!
|
| There should be a wildcard coin with an NFC chip & e-paper
| display. Vendors & consumers should be able to load/drain it of
| any sub-$1 (or local smallest bill) amount needed - via proven-
| untraceable methods, like zk-proof-based e-cash.
|
| So let's call it an 'Aenny', pronounced 'enny', as portmanteau
| from 'any [amount]' and 'penny'.
|
| Anyone carrying physical cash would also typically carry a single
| Aenny - maybe as part of a physical wallet or bill-clip or even
| jewelry. Any 'change' made to them would simply adjust their
| Aenny balance as needed to keep physical transfers nice round
| full-bill amounts.
|
| But mass-produced, they'd be so cheap you could have 'take an
| Aenny, leave an Aenny' plates with free blanks at every register.
|
| All legacy fiat coins can then become collectors' items - or
| exchangeable, by law, to banks for one Aenny per cent. (Your
| quarter gets you 25 Aennies.)
|
| Progressive jurisdictions that become comfortable with the system
| could potentially increase the maximum value held on an Aenny -
| which is always a cash-like anonymous bearer instrument, with all
| the benefits & risks that implies - to be far more than the
| smallest cash bill size.
|
| Eventually, most routine daily purchases could be completed by
| direct Aenny-to-Aenny rebalances - occasionally handing over the
| unit itself, as if were physical cash, as necessary.
| jtriangle wrote:
| Ok well you've got my vote.
| D13Fd wrote:
| Blockchain and crypto have made any discussion of digital
| currency sound toxic. I almost downvoted reflexively. But to
| the extent it can be implemented without blockchain it sounds
| like a good idea.
| FpUser wrote:
| Makes much sense
| Dove wrote:
| Technology, as modern sorcery, is neither inherently good nor
| evil, but is infused with its maker's spirit and intent. What a
| refreshing spirit is displayed in this idea!
| stevage wrote:
| I find it astonishing that the optimal 4 coin distribution shares
| 3 coins with the actual current 4 coin distribution.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I wouldn't mind if we just eliminated nickels and pennies
| altogether. And maybe everything but quarters.
| tempestn wrote:
| Better to keep 5c and 25c rather than 10c and 25c imo, if
| you're keeping two. 10 is fairly redundant when you have 5 and
| 25. (Even more so with 5 and 20, as with bills.)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Maybe the Brits had it right?
|
| 2 farthings = 1 halfpenny
|
| 2 halfpence = 1 penny (1d)
|
| 3 pence = 1 thruppence (3d)
|
| 6 pence = 1 sixpence (a 'tanner') (6d)
|
| 12 pence = 1 shilling (a bob) (1s) 2 shillings = 1 florin ( a
| 'two bob bit') (2s)
|
| 2 farthings = 1 halfpenny
|
| 2 halfpence = 1 penny (1d)
|
| 3 pence = 1 thruppence (3d)
|
| 6 pence = 1 sixpence (a 'tanner') (6d)
|
| 12 pence = 1 shilling (a bob) (1s)
|
| 2 shillings = 1 florin ( a 'two bob bit') (2s)
|
| 2 shillings and 6 pence = 1 half crown (2s 6d)
|
| 5 shillings = 1 Crown (5s) 2 shillings and 6 pence = 1 half crown
| (2s 6d)
|
| 5 shillings = 1 Crown (5s)
| mcny wrote:
| It may make sense but I cannot support this lunacy in the
| United States no matter how much formal proof you throw at me
| until we outlaw all standardized testing in education.
|
| This will just give ETS / the college board / whoever fodder to
| ask even more stupid multiple choice questions. (No, I am not
| mathematically inclined and have won no Fields medals or even
| ever competed in one. I am just an ordinary person so this is
| just a personal opinion.)
| dave4420 wrote:
| You jest, but given America's preference for traditional units
| of measure, I'm amazed they adopted a decimal currency to begin
| with.
|
| Pretty sure they'd still be on the Julian calendar if Britain
| hadn't switched over before American independence, too. Think
| about the bullet we dodged there, programmers who hate time
| zones.
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