Re:FBI couldn't get into WaPo reporter's iPhone because Lock...
by apparent on Wednesday February 04, 2026 @11:14PM
(#46895600)
That would be some aggressive rounding.
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Re:FBI couldn't get into WaPo reporter's iPhone because Lock...
by alpinisme on Thursday February 05, 2026 @08:07AM
(#46899227)
Yes and no. Obviously it’s unusual rounding or I wouldn’t have said “I guess technically,” but rounding is all about domains and relevant precision. To be honest, when someone says “billionaires” I don’t assume that the number 1,000,000 is a meaningful hard cut off. I assume we’re talking about the ones who are three orders of magnitude up from “millionaire” and orders of magnitude work by rounding from .5.
Re:FBI couldn't get into WaPo reporter's iPhone because Lock...
by dragonwriter on Thursday February 05, 2026 @11:36AM
(#46901480)
> orders of magnitude work by rounding from .5.
No, orders of magnitude are exponential, not linear, so conventionally “on the order of 1 billion” would be between 100 million × sqrt(10) and 1 billion × sqrt(10), but “billionaire” isn't “net worth on the order of 1 billion” but “net worth of 1 billion or more”, or, when used heirarchically alongside trillionaire ans millionaire “net worth of at least one billion and less than one trillion”.