MongoDB Issue and a Hatful of sand

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Mongo DB or Database, is a very popular database that I’d describe as it’ll accept anything you can throw at it and is’s all good.

They send out an email “Mongo Critical Issue” (I omitted the “Critical” so the SysOps around here - who probably already received the email - knew it was NBD)

…probably

When the useBigInt64 option is enabled (it is disabled by default), this results in negative Int64 values being deserialized as large positive values (greater than 9,223,372,036,854,775,807).

To the average lay-person on the street that is pronounced

Nine quintillion, two hundred twenty-three quadrillion, three hundred seventy-two trillion, thirty-six billion, eight hundred fifty-four million, seven hundred seventy-five thousand, eight hundred seven.

and for fun I asked ChatGPT to convert that into roman numerals, in case a movie should come out in that year. (Note that is qualifies them as theoreticaal)

IX̅CCXXIII̅CCCLXXII̅XXXVI̅DCCCLIV̅DCCLXXV̅DCCCVII

pronounced “Romani ite domum”

For comparison, so-called “Astronomers” round off the number of stars in the known universe to 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

or the convenient “Two hundred sextillion” which is more than Mongo can deal with - unless you’re careful to not end up with negative stars and nobody wants that!

I was reminded of the 1983 movie “Local Hero” which I saw and it was described as a “sleeper”. Okay, Peter Riegert from the sleeper “Animal House”, Burt Lancaster, (a very young) Peter Capaldi and Mark Knopfler doing the soundtrack. Can’t recall which appealed to me, besides maybe “Sleeper” (dunno if still used: meant a movie that word would get around and if it was still in theaters go see it), “Scotland”, “Lancaster”, “Knopfler”.

The “elevator pitch” plot is Mac (MacIntyre) is sent to purchase some land in Scotland, kinda like Disney did - get this bit, get that bit yet they’re smarter in Scotland than Orlando and figure it out. Yet this one guy, Knox, who owns the essential beach front just ain’t sellling it.

So how much sand can you hold in your hand? I was reminded of this scene:

(ETA: There is a short epilogue with Burt Lancaster)

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Well, 263 grains is a lot more than a handful of sand. It’s about 500 million tons of sand.

A handful of sand is probably around a million grains, not 10,000. Depends greatly on how fine, though–half the diameter means 8x the grains. If he grabbed 50 grams of sand, and the grains were 50 micrograms each, then that’s a million. But if he grabbed 100 grams at 10 micrograms each, that’s 10 million. So a big jump in price, though it’s sorta interesting that it’s still in the ballpark of the original offer. A hatful is probably more than he wanted to pay.

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Had Mac taken the first offer, that would have greatly changed the complexion of the film. Yet of course the Director/Writer Bill Forsyth at least knew Mac would turn that offer down. If any of the characters discovered the science & math of sand - particularly Knox the beach owner - we’ll never know. Forex definitely does not have a market for conversion of sand to GBP.

£10,000 would be a little more than £40,000 today inflation adjusted.

So first a few examples comparing various sizes to volume in the real world:

10,000 grains of:

  • Fine Sand (~0.1 mm per grain) ‐ would fit in a tic-tac
  • Medium Sand (~0.3 mm per grain) ‐ inside a teaspoon or thimble
  • Coarse Sand (~0.6 mm per grain) ‐ a shot glass

Notable in the epilogue to that clip, Mac says something like “If he says you can have it for a bucket of sand, sign the documents immediately”. As you said, that would well exceed not only the incentive bonus of £750,000 yet if the purchase of the sandy beaches was to be part of that deal, likely enough for that too. Dunno about what miles of Hawaiian beach or Queensland beach would cost.

I love Lancaster’s reply,

“Sand? Does he want to sell me sand?!”

ETA: Thanks Mein Doctor. (Herr?)

ETA: Found some math for a 5 gallon bucket of sand:
a 5-gallon bucket can hold about 1.3 billion grains of medium-sized sand.