Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Siri, What Time Is It in London?

daringfireball.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 776 posts

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#421

Post by M2Ys4U »

clan wrote: post #273
AmericanChopper wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re also very weak examples of companies that do this. For starters, Apples localization is quite on point most of the time. Facebook and Google really don’t have many features at all that are territorially exclusive.

Really? Facebook Portal would be the poster example of this for me. I am in the market for a video chat device usable for people in the age of 70+. This device is perfect. There is no real reason to limit it to a region but they do. Plug adapters are easy to come by and one place I saw a spec which said 100-240V 50/60Hz for the power adapter. But marketing/shipping/support/multiple SKUs might want them to limit distr…

>There is no real reason to limit it to a region but they do.

The US has approximately zero laws dealing with privacy. I'd bet a lot of money on that being the real reason.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#422

Post by robotresearcher »

ranieuwe wrote: post #342
ojilles wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I so much just prefer Apr-05 2020. Clear to all.

Until you sort lexically, then madness.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#423

Post by kube-system »

tragomaskhalos wrote: post #207
nicbou wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is rather inconvenient when shopping for niche products. American website assumes that everyone on the internet is American, and you have to go through the shopping cart experience to learn that they don't ship to Canada or Europe.

To be fair, there is a tendency among Americans full stop (with the honourable exception of the good denizens of this and other likeminded sites) to assume that everyone on the internet is American.

I don't think this is an American thing as much as it is a 'country with large population' thing. Internet users all around the world do tend to frequent sites based on regional preferences, and the human brain is exceptionally prone to identifying patterns. I'm sure if I were to hang out on Weibo or VK I'd find a bunch of people assuming everyone was Chinese or Russian.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#424

Post by mzzter »

evanelias wrote: post #408
wcarss wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to report that it isn't necessarily/solely cultural myopia at work here: I live in Ontario and have family in London, Ontario, and while visiting them with location services on have both asked for and googled "what is the temperature in London, Ontario" (notice that I said the region!), and gotten results for London England. I left angry feedback with Google over it once, but it's happened many times.

Sometimes these systems just make baffling decisions. One time years ago, while waiting for my plane to begin deboarding at JFK Airport in NYC, I tried setting my MacBook's timezone to Eastern manually. I started typing "New Y" into the Closest City field. OS X helpfully auto-completed it as "New Yekeba, Liberia": https://evan.tumblr.com/image/65341168142 As best I can tell, New Yekeba is a tiny resettled former mini…

Looks like the autocomplete is going off alphabetical order rather than some other characteristic of the city?

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#425

Post by myopenid »

Hamuko wrote: post #11

Same thing happens with Frankfurt. If I order something from Amazon.de, my package usually goes through Frankfurt. When I checked my package tracker app on my iPhone, I was surprised to find out that Frankfurt is actually on the Germany-Poland border. Turns out that if I enter "Frankfurt, Germany" into Apple Maps (which I assume is what the package tracker app does), it takes me to "Frankfurt (Oder), Germany" instead…

Haha! I actually flew into the wrong airport because of this. The two airports are about two hours apart by car.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#426

Post by mark-r »

ranieuwe wrote: post #342
ojilles wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I so much just prefer Apr-05 2020. Clear to all.

I once had to write software that would create labels with a date, and said software would be used in both the U.S. and Ireland. I tried to push for the ISO standard of 2020-04-05 but couldn't get buy-in. Was finally forced to compromise on 2020-Apr-05.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#427

Post by evanelias »

mzzter wrote: post #424
evanelias wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes these systems just make baffling decisions. One time years ago, while waiting for my plane to begin deboarding at JFK Airport in NYC, I tried setting my MacBook's timezone to Eastern manually. I started typing "New Y" into the Closest City field. OS X helpfully auto-completed it as "New Yekeba, Liberia": https://evan.tumblr.com/image/65341168142 As best I can tell, New Yekeba is a tiny resettled former mini…

Looks like the autocomplete is going off alphabetical order rather than some other characteristic of the city?

I considered that, but in that case it would have suggested New Yarmouth (among other places) first.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#428

Post by netsharc »

evanelias wrote: post #408
wcarss wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to report that it isn't necessarily/solely cultural myopia at work here: I live in Ontario and have family in London, Ontario, and while visiting them with location services on have both asked for and googled "what is the temperature in London, Ontario" (notice that I said the region!), and gotten results for London England. I left angry feedback with Google over it once, but it's happened many times.

Sometimes these systems just make baffling decisions. One time years ago, while waiting for my plane to begin deboarding at JFK Airport in NYC, I tried setting my MacBook's timezone to Eastern manually. I started typing "New Y" into the Closest City field. OS X helpfully auto-completed it as "New Yekeba, Liberia": https://evan.tumblr.com/image/65341168142 As best I can tell, New Yekeba is a tiny resettled former mini…

Hey, it's correct when sorted alphabetically! Good enough, commit and ship it!

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#430

Post by zeku »

abjKT26nO8 wrote: post #369
tragomaskhalos wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, there is a tendency among Americans full stop (with the honourable exception of the good denizens of this and other likeminded sites) to assume that everyone on the internet is American.

HN is not an exception. It's the most stark in threads about salaries.

I'm interested to see this thread but posted 6 hours later. This happens on forums that are very EU/NA heavy--or games.

The thread seems overly negative towards Americans and criticizes them heavily because half of America is still asleep and the other half just started working. If OP posted it later Americans would likely be filling the discussion with the reasons why your complaints are happening.

My personal opinion is that US-centrism is obviously a thing, but EU people are so used to seeing it that they then mistake other things for it.

This same thing happens with Spain and Mexico as well!

Post reply on HN