Siri, What Time Is It in London? • Hacker News Board

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#291

Post by Youden » Fri, May 22, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

ojilles wrote: post #226

aib wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please also take a moment to wish tiny inconveniences upon designers of applications which ignore my locale and present me with "11:06 AM" or worse, "04/05/2020"?

The best are that have a settings page where they try to give an example. But use a day-of-month =< 12. Like your example. It couldn't have hurt to use and example of "22/05/2020"; then it is still infuriating, but clear.

> It couldn't have hurt to use and example of "22/05/2020"; then it is still infuriating, but clear.

Assuming you're addressing OP with this part, I think that was their point.

When an application presents you with "04/05/2020", you have no way of knowing whether it means crazy American dates or normal-people dates.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#292

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Fri, May 22, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #223

Kye wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. All the apps that default to 24 hour time when it's not what my device is set to are annoying.

Would I be incorrect to assume that something like 17:00 will be understood by literally everyone in the world(if maybe not the preferred format) though? Using AM/PM is worse in a sense that say someone in Poland will literally have no idea which means which. 24 hour clock has no ambiguity. Unless I'm wrong and there are countries or cultures which literally won't understand what time 17:00 is?

There are huge swaths of Americans who will literally not know what 17:00 translates to in AM/PM. And even for the Americans that do know, virtually all of them (unless they are in the military or another profession that commonly uses 24h time), will have to "translate" by subtracting 12 in their head for PM times.

24h time is extremely rare in everyday use in the US.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#293

Post by kinnth » Fri, May 22, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

Siri on Apple watch is the biggest piece of shit i've ever used. The number of time it chirps up for no apparent reason and answers a irrelevant question happens daily.

Apple make nice stuff. They suck at big data.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#294

Post by Steltek » Fri, May 22, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

fredsted wrote: post #269

zeristor wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to make things a bit more complicated London has two cities. The City of London, and the City of Westminster, which is also a borough of London. Two cities in one City; it shouldn't be allowed.

It's time to refactor London.

Already done. We're talking about "the next gen" and it's still dodgey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daeB46Z4fjs

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#295

Post by tgb » Fri, May 22, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #241

Recursing wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think almost everybody in European countries knows about AM/PM, but I certainly get confused by 11:59 AM vs 12:00 AM

I've never been able to keep 12 AM vs 12 PM straight in my head. If I have to put something on my calendar or set an alarm for that time, I always use 11:59 AM or PM. Is there a mnemonic or trick for remembering?

Yeah, I always think of 12 as really just 0. So 12:00AM = 0:00AM is midnight (precedes 1:00AM by an hour) and 12:00PM is 0:00PM (which precedes 1:00PM).

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#296

Post by JNRowe » Fri, May 22, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

greggyb wrote: post #266

gambiting wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would I be incorrect to assume that something like 17:00 will be understood by literally everyone in the world(if maybe not the preferred format) though? Using AM/PM is worse in a sense that say someone in Poland will literally have no idea which means which. 24 hour clock has no ambiguity. Unless I'm wrong and there are countries or cultures which literally won't understand what time 17:00 is?

In the US, I have definitely met people who will profess not being able to understand military time (this is a common way to refer to 24-hour time). They would recognize it as a time, but not get any other context from it.

In the real London it is not entirely uncommon to find yourself in a conversation with American tourists where they're asking/complaining about "military time" on train timetables. The odd thing about it being most platforms have a countdown-style timer much like you'd find in a US metro system.

I understand that sometimes they're just trying to interact with locals while on vacation, but it always seems like an odd starter. Depending on my mood you'll get a friendly chat about time displays¹, or a curt "it says 2 minutes 'til next train".

1. 24hr analog clocks worth visiting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepherd_Gate_Clock , or metric time, or Swatch time, or ... I'm just as boring with strangers as with friends ;)

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#297

Post by Normille » Fri, May 22, 2020, 1:21 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #219

aib wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please also take a moment to wish tiny inconveniences upon designers of applications which ignore my locale and present me with "11:06 AM" or worse, "04/05/2020"?

Yep, if you're presenting to international audiences then either one of those two is unacceptable. First one because in a lot of countries people genuinely won't know what AM means, the other because there's only one clear way of reading it, but it's not consistent between countries.

>if you're presenting to international audiences then either one of those two is unacceptable...

I used to have all my domain names registered with Namecheap. I'd get emails from them saying things like '.com is due to expire on 3/7/2018' --so, naturally, [being based in UK] I'd note on my calendar to renew the domain at the beginning of July, only to have it almost expire on me at the beginning of March.

I emailed Namecheap several times about this, asking them to use less ambiguous dates in their reminder emails and, each time, got snotty replies saying "We are a US company and we use US date order" [which wouldn't have prevented them using something like "March 7 2018"] to which I pointed out that they had a global customer base, so should avoid expressing important data in formats which their oversees customers would mis-read.

They refused to budge on this so, as each domain expired, I renewed it with another registrar instead and Namecheap lost all my business, my repeat business and my future business for ever.

All because they were too damned stubborn to move away from using an ambiguous date format.

Weird!

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#298

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Fri, May 22, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

TBH I always feel amazed about how worked up people get about stuff like this, especially people familiar with software who should know that there are millions, maybe billions of edge cases like this in a generic knowledge system, and thus at least it's easy to make a mistake like this. I mean, the time it took him to write his blog post is probably more than all the times it would take him to follow up with "What time is it in London, England?" It reminds me of someone who commented that "there must not be any black people who work at Apple" because it pronounced "Malcolm X Blvd" as Malcolm 10 Blvd.

I mean, if anything, just appreciate how amazing humans are at differentiating these ambiguities.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#299

Post by a1a1a1a1a1a1 » Fri, May 22, 2020, 1:23 PM UTC

trombonechamp wrote: post #106

For a related example, type "11:00 EST to UTC" into Google and DuckDuckGo. Google says 15:00 because it interprets "EST" colloquially as "the current time on east coast US". DuckDuckGo says 16:00 because it interprets EST literally as "the time on east coast when it isn't daylight savings time" (compared to ET or EDT). It isn't clear which behavior is more desirable.

I certainly prefer DDG here. There is no ambiguity in "11:00 EST to UTC". EST is always UTC - 5, EDT is always UTC - 4, and ET could mean either depending on the time of the year. Google isn't making an arbitrary decision to deal with ambiguity it's ignoring the specificity in the query and reinterpreting it (as ET rather than EST)

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#300

Post by jtbayly » Fri, May 22, 2020, 1:25 PM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #282

mattlondon wrote: post #76

I get this problem all the time and I live in "the right" London so it is not just a "nearest London" thing. It is not just digital assistants, but so many other things like Google maps, e-commerce sites, address auto-completes etc seem to assume that I want the North American one with a population of 300k that no one knows about, not the one that everyone has heard of with a population of 9 million. I've always just…

Was thinking this exact thing! All these companies are hugely US-centric. It's like this on maps too (apple maps is the worst) you can search for something fairly straight forward that should be local and it'll find you something in California. But I agree with the general theme of Siri being the dunce of the personal assistants. Mostly can't even hear its own wake word. You have to whisper Alexa's name when talking…

It’s not US centric. It’s just that Siri, and the others (to a lesser extent?) are dumb.

Try asking Siri for directions to your next appointment. She will tell you all about it, including where it is supposed to be, but she won’t give you directions. Mind boggling.

And it’s not uncommon for me to search for some place in the Midwest USA, and get a result in Europe.