Talks to Watch

Making an international standard cup of tea

2.7M views · Apr 9, 2018 · 3:34 · 1 HN recommender · 3 mentions · discussed 2018–2023

Tom Scott follows the ISO 3103 / BS 6008 standard to make an international standard cup of tea, using specialist tasting equipment. The video shows how precisely the standard is specified.

Why Hacker News points people here: Used to illustrate that the standard targets consistency rather than taste, and to discuss what standardization is for.

“TL;DR is that the standard is used for the most consistent tea, not most tasty/enjoyable tea”HN comment, 2018

What Hacker News said 3

RecommendscrzymanMay 2023

“standard/pure/repeatable items aren't intrinsically "good" or "enjoyable".”

Standardized items aren't intrinsically enjoyable but still valuable.

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I find this to be a close cousin of Tom Scott's "Making an international standard cup of tea" video ( this video ). And very related to Tom Scott's "The US government will sell you freeze-dried urine" ( link ) and Veritasium's "The world depends on a collection of strange items. They're not cheap" ( link ) They bring forward the idea that standard/pure/repeatable items aren't intrinsically "good" or "enjoyable". But that doesn't make them not useful or valuable in other contexts. It also offers some food for thought when it comes to what metrics we decide to put value in. We may like the idea of a particular metric, or what we think it represents, but that doesn't make it worth optimizing for. A metric without context is useless, and taking a holistic view of what makes something worth doing allows us to make more informed decisions.

Cites itmrguyoramaJul 2018

“TL;DR is that the standard is used for the most consistent tea, not most tasty/enjoyable tea”

Explains the standard targets consistent tea, not tasty tea.

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An elaboration by Tom Scott: this video TL;DR is that the standard is used for the most consistent tea, not most tasty/enjoyable tea

Cites itdharmabMar 2021

Illustrates how ISO standards are funded.

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That's how the ISO standards body works- you pay access for the spec to fund the ISO's development of standards. this video

in “ISO-8601 date format reference not publicly available” · view on HN