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Re:Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again by the_af on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @11:53AM (#29568474)
> Then I realized that I don't know how to build the systems that I was relying on for my supposed superiority, or even how some of them work.

I used to have this joke(?) with my friends: remember Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King's Arthur Court"? The titular Yankee basically upends the (faux) medieval society he gets transported to, "inventing" all sorts of technological miracles.

Well, I'm a software developer but don't come from an engineering background (I mean actual engineering, not programming). I don't even understand how electricity or the telephone work (I mean, old fashioned telephones, let alone current mobile networks). If I was transported to 2 or 3 centuries to the past, I wouldn't be able to explain modern technology to other people, let alone actually build it.

I sort of understand how steam machines work, and I could "invent" the printing press. I guess. But anything related to circuitry, electricity, chemistry, engineering of any sort, I wouldn't be able to even begin explaining them to King Arthur.

My introduction to the knights of the round table would go something like this:

"We are questing for the Holy Grail, oh noble stranger from a far away land! How can you help?"

"Depends, which version of Python are you running?"

Re:Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again by kabdib on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @11:58AM (#29568558)
A light, enjoyable read along these lines is Leo Frankowski's "high tech knight" series, starting with The Cross-time Engineer. The main character -- a real engineer -- gets transported back to medieval Poland, and he knows that he's got ten years either to bug out, or help Poland defend itself from the coming Mongol invasion.

[I only liked the first four books, but that's enough to cover the original story arc]

Re:Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again by g051051 on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @12:11PM (#29568743)
"Deathworld 2" by Harry Harrison has a plot along those lines. Apparently the original name was "The Ethical Engineer".
Re:Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again by twic on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @12:09PM (#29568708)
Do i have the T-shirt for you:

https://topatoco.com/products/qw-cheatsheet

And the T-shirt's companion bandana and spin-off book:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/a23286104/how-to-in...

Re:Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again by bee_rider on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @01:01PM (#29569377)
This shirt annoys me. I get that it is a joke, but the explanations are just so woefully over-simplified, and don't get at the main problem -- materials and manufacturing technology in the past was poor enough that even if you knew the basic physics you'd have no chance of getting, like, material to build a wing out of.
Re:Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again by lstodd on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @02:40PM (#29570644)
What, not even pinewood and gelatin for ribs and stringers, and some linen cloth plus pine resin and alcohol for doping? Seriously, that's like 1000BC tech level.

Wing is no problem as long as one can calculate how to make it stiff enough and of a right shape.

Re:Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again by prh21 on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @12:07PM (#29568683)
Inventing the printing press was more difficult than it seems at first. In addition to the idea of unsing movable type significant development of the correct alloys for the types was necessary. The alloy needs to be able to be cast easily and at the same time be durable to be reused for a large enough number of print runs. In addition the proper ink needs to be developed...
Re:Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again by dredmorbius on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @12:47PM (#29569199)
Cheap durable paper also helps.

Fun fact: printing rates increased from about 120 sheets/hour to over 1 million over the course of the 19th century. Those began with wooden screw presses that differed little from Gutenberg's to cast iron, rotary, steam and later electric powered, and web (continuous paper feed) presses, and from matrix plates (with individual type set in blocks) to offset Linotype (in which the entire print block was cast as a single sheet through multiple stages from the original matrix characters).

Thought just occurs: the falling characters of the iconic Matrix screen somewhat resemble the individual type elements flowing and falling through a Linotype machine. I don't know if that is a deliberate or incidental reference, but it's an interesting one.

Re:Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again by the_af on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @12:13PM (#29568773)
Right, let me amend my statement: I understand how the printing press with movable type works and I would be able to explain it to King Arthur, but I probably wouldn't be able to actually craft the types, inks, etc, and so the annoyed King would have me beheaded.
Re:Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again by bee_rider on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @01:21PM (#29569641)
Even if you knew what to do, convincing the naturally suspicious people back then to trust a strange outsider would be tricky. Then you have to get the right materials.

If I were a bit more clever, or maybe if I was 50 years older and had played with this kind of stuff growing up, I'd probably try to make a spark-gap transmitter. That seems to be in a sweet spot of not requiring too many super clever bits, and having obvious applications.

Re:Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again by ff317 on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @12:07PM (#29568682)
Also on a similar theme: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I,_Pencil (it's intended to be about free market economies, but you can also read it as something about knowing how even simple modern marvels work at all).