3 ms·

I'm not sure if you meant to do this on purpose but... Factoid actually means something that sounds true but isn't, which is exactly the case with the post you

I'm not sure if you meant to do this on purpose but... Factoid actually means something that sounds true but isn't, which is exactly the case with the post you're referring to because they didn't account for the extra losses on top of the base thermodynamics.

bmacho 3y ago
The word 'factoid' means what the communicating parties agree it means. As per my observation, on HN it currently means something like "a small probably unimportant but interesting fact" (wiki definition for factlet[0]). I don't like it, but HN is not the place to cultivate our own language, dang will shadowban and eventually ban us :\ Best we can do is using the word factlet, and hope people will switch to it. [0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoid#Versus_factlet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoid#Versus_factlet