HocusLocus a day ago

"Fisher Hallur Antoniussen took a photo of it to show crewmates, but it quickly took off after being posted on social media."

I don't blame it, I would have done the same.

tickerticker 2 days ago

The exposed portion of the berg is roughly spherical. The submerged portion must be enormous and approximately symmetrical to hold that sphere in such an upright position.

  • Frummy 2 days ago

    So the tip of the iceberg is just the tip of the iceberg

    • lucyjojo a day ago

      Indeed, that tautology is a true statement.

  • Retric 2 days ago

    With just one photo we can’t really say if the exposed portion is roughly spherical. However, the guy taking the photo who presumably got a better look seems to think it was “diamond shape.”

tantalor 2 days ago

Check around it for Super Samples!

  • jvanderbot 2 days ago

    I wish I didn't think this immediately as well.

    • creaturemachine a day ago

      Wait until the Democracy Officer hears of this lack of faith!

bee_rider 2 days ago

Do black Labrador icebergs also have webbed feet, to swim better?

  • bregma 2 days ago

    No, but golden Labrador icebergs are the friendliest of all the icebergs and can make a great addition to any family.

    • burnt-resistor a day ago

      The vet bills and cleaning up after them is really ridiculous.

scoot 2 days ago

Is this just of passing interest, or something that "ists" (scientists, geologists, climatologists etc.) would gain potentially valuable data by taking samples from it?

trod1234 14 hours ago

Why would an iceberg be a "he is all black?"

morkalork 2 days ago

Will the icebergs broken off get older and older?

  • cess11 2 days ago

    As long as we keep pushing CO2 into the atmosphere and don't run out of ice, yeah, most likely.

IncreasePosts 2 days ago

Wouldn't this melt "quickly" due to solar radiation based on how dark it is? That is to say, I wouldn't it most likely be closer to 100 years old than 100,000 years old?

  • burnt-resistor a day ago

    That's for new soot depositing on ordinary, existing glaciers with previously high albedo. That causes a spiraling feedback effect of more forest fires and accelerating glacier melt,

    It's probable that these dark glaciers are mostly sludge with only a bit of ice. We won't know until some field researchers go out there and gather data and samples.

  • malfist 2 days ago

    I'm sure you know more about iceburg ages than the professor of oceanography that dated it.

    • dotancohen 2 days ago

      To be fair, the guy who just dated it likey knows the least about it. It's the guy who broke up with it that knows the most.

    • IncreasePosts a day ago

      I was literally asking about the range that the oceanographer provided. I didn't assert anything

  • marcusverus 21 hours ago

    This post--which actually engages with the content of the article--is being downvoted, while "Do black Labrador icebergs also have webbed feet, to swim better?" is being upvoted.

    Where do we run once the redditification of HN is complete?

dylan604 2 days ago

After reading, I'm less interested in a black iceberg as much as now wondering what a fish harvester is as it's not a term I've seen before. Have we changed the term to reflect the vast quantities of fish that fisherman is inadequate?

  • serial_dev 2 days ago

    It could be to make fishermen gender neutral, but I think it is to hide the fact that you are essentially killing the fish by the thousands, letting them suffocate. Fish harvesting sounds innocent and PG 13.

  • ahazred8ta 2 days ago

    There's a union or collective bargaining guild that has trademarked the term Professional Fish Harvester in Canada. #PFHCB

  • tanseydavid 2 days ago

    I am guessing that it is a translation artifact.

    • creaturemachine 2 days ago

      Newfoundland is predominantly English-speaking, so it's unlikely this reporter used anything else when preparing this story.

      • soperj 2 days ago

        >Newfoundland is predominantly English-speaking

        That's quite generous of you to say.

        • margalabargala 2 days ago

          For anyone wondering, over 98% of Newfoundland's population speaks only English.

          https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/society/language.php

          • dylan604 2 days ago

            Yeah, Newfies speak English just like Scottish speak English. Those words might be English, but it's the phrasing that makes no sense.

            • Eavolution a day ago

              Can confirm, I've only ever heard a chain of the word "woof" from a newfie.

            • mc3301 2 days ago

              What're you at 'der b'y?

            • grovesNL 2 days ago

              Yes b'y, Newfoundland English is best kind sure.

            • fooster 2 days ago

              Newfoundlanders you mean.

              • brailsafe 2 days ago

                Fairly sure Newfie is broadly used as a colloquial term of endearment in the rest of Canada, by Newfoundlanders and non-Newfoundlanders. There's just too many syllables

                • creaturemachine 2 days ago

                  How about Newfoundland-and-Labradorean? It's funny that the only ones insulted by Newfie are the non-newfies.

                  • fooster a day ago

                    I am a Newfoundlander and I don’t appreciate that term.

                • fooster a day ago

                  It is not. It is insulting and derogatory. Don’t use it thanks.

                  • brailsafe a day ago

                    While that's not how it's ever been used in my life, I can accept that it's perfectly valid for you and presumably many others to feel differently.

                    Having grown up with so much predominantly east coast originating comedy, and around so many Newfoundland diaspora, I guess it never occurred to me that there was any real negative connotation whatsoever, beyond poking a bit of fun at some of the presumably antiquated cultural stereotypical differences via self-deprecating jokes that most people from smaller places have their own versions of and don't take too seriously.

          • tejtm a day ago

            Curious that.

            The English did force the French population out of there and down the Mississippi to become Cajuns.

            And the children of the native Abenaki population were sent to English Schools.

               https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians
            
            
               https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system
            • soperj 21 hours ago

              Acadians were in Nova Scotia. There were already a bunch of French in New Orleans/Louisiana. Hence "Louis"iana, new "Orleans", "De-troit" etc. It was all new France.

              And the residential schools happened well after the formation of Canada, and a lot of happened at the behest of the Catholic Church (ie: French Canadians). see Vital Grandin.

            • margalabargala a day ago

              Well sure. Lots of shitty things were done that caused the current state of affairs to come into being.

              I was just describing the present day, not defending whatbwas done to create it.

  • HPsquared 2 days ago

    It makes sense in the context of fish farming. Not sure if that's what this is, though. Harvesting doesn't sound appropriate for catching wild fish.

  • kkylin 2 days ago

    Might one say fish harvesters capture "exponentially more fish"? (Sorry, couldn't resist...)

  • dan-robertson 2 days ago

    I think it might be a gender-neutral version of fisherman. Not something like a factory ship.

    • xeromal 2 days ago

      It's a horrible alternative lol

      • blipvert 2 days ago

        Wait until you have to deal with the horror of gender specific icebergs!

        “It's not only that he is all black. He is almost ... in a diamond shape”

  • IncreasePosts 2 days ago

    Fisherman: catches fish

    Fish harvester: might catch fish, but might also be the one that cleans/processes them and isn't actually involved in pulling the fish out of the water

  • NooneAtAll3 2 days ago

    ohhh, I thought it was the boat

m3kw9 2 days ago

When are these going on sale in drinks?

tromp 2 days ago

> He guesses the ice in the berg is at least 1,000 years old, but could also be exponentially more ancient — even formed as many as 100,000 years ago.

That's not exponentially more (which would be a preposterous 2^1000 or 10^1000 years old). It's just 100 times more. Should I stop being annoyed at how media use the word and just accept their alternative meaning of "a lot" ?

  • Scarblac 2 days ago

    It's two numbers. It's a constant increase, you can fit a line between them, but also a degree 10 polynomial or an exponential curve.

    Yes, it just means "a lot".

    • burnt-resistor a day ago

      High variance/confidence interval. Probably needs some C14 / O18 dating to narrow it down by field researchers gathering samples rather than us speculating from afar.

    • escapecharacter 2 days ago

      I agree, you can also say exponential if there's 4 or more numbers.

  • jhrmnn 2 days ago

    This is how language develops, I’m afraid. But imagine that the age is 10^k where k is something like “age class”. Then indeed the age grows exponentially :)

    • serial_dev 2 days ago

      It still doesn’t grow exponentially, it is just orders of magnitude older.

      Possibly, because if I read between the lines, their answer is “huh I dunno”.

      • parineum 2 days ago

        Orders of magnitude is an exponential measure.

        1*10^n

        • serial_dev a day ago

          Yes, but where is the growth? They just said that the age of iceberg is 1000 years or maybe older 100.000.

          There is no exponential growth there, just someone not having any clue about the iceberg wanting to sound knowledgeable about the subject.

        • WithinReason a day ago

          so then every change can be called exponential

          • serial_dev a day ago

            > This chair is 4 years old. Or, maybe 5 years old.

            Yeah, exponential growth!!!

  • SAI_Peregrinus 2 days ago

    1.0116^10000 ≈ 100000

    Journalists tend to just think of it as "a lot more", but since they didn't specify the base of the exponential we can at least find a way to make the article technically correct. There are fun classes that admit incomparable values, such as the Surreal games. If they'd said "the game {1 | -1} is exponentially more than { | }" then it'd be impossible to find a base to make the statement true. There's lots of fun to be had with this sort of math, as you know.

  • mekoka 2 days ago

    If we want to express ourselves using exponents, consider that 1000 years (1×10^3) and 9000 years (9×10^3) would be of the same "degree" of ancestry, while 100,000 years (1×10^5) would be of completely different (exponential) significance.

  • Frummy 2 days ago

    1000^(5/3)=100 000

  • ghssds 2 days ago

    1.01158^1000 ~= 100000

    Exponentially more!

  • readthenotes1 2 days ago

    10^2 in exponential form...

    At least he didn't say logarithmically more

  • fuzztester 2 days ago

    it's not only the media.

    it's just a figure of speech, (used like some people (ab)use "literally"), which I am sure you know, considering your profile, or even otherwise.

    other people than the media use it too:

    e.g. this Rob Pike post about Go (the programming language, not the game you like):

    Less is exponentially more

    https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponenti...

  • pestatije 2 days ago

    any exponential can reasonably be approximated to a linear in the right range