Can an email go 500 miles in 2025?

If you’re one of today’s lucky 10,000 and haven’t heard the original 500-mile email story, you can read it at https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles.

(discussed previously on HN 5 years ago – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404 – and 10 years ago – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708)

   > units
   751 units, 62 prefixes
   You have: 10 miles
   You want: meters
    * 16093.44
    / 6.2137119e-05

Huh. Never knew that was a thing!

I always want to reach for `units`, but I'm perennially baffled by the output! What's up with the * and /?

The * value is the result of converting 10 miles to meters, as requested.

The / value is the inverse of that in case you wanted that, ie 0.1 meters in miles.

It's explained in `man 1 units`

Oh, I know it's explained in the man page. I read it every time and promptly forget because I can't internalize the choice of notation.

* multiply

/ divide