Another huge problem for these assistants is unusual band names. I have yet to successfully convince either Siri or Google Assistant to "play Einstürzende Neubauten".
Siri, What Time Is It in London?
361–370 of 776 posts
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#362I 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…
To be fair, where I'm from, "London" would probably refer to London, ON, but that's just because I live in Southern Ontario. So it's not like no one has heard of it. On the other hand: no one in Southern Ontario will be asking what time it is in London, ON because it's all in the same time zone, so this seems like a problem.
It really highlights how all language is incredibly ambiguous, and depends on all sorts of cultural and semantic contexts to disambiguate, despite the inherent ambiguity not being at all a problem for its users.
There's so much more to language than just a string of sounds or characters.
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#363Earlier 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?
Sort of. Instead of mnemonics, I find it easier to remember when I know how a concept is derived from basic principles. So, first we observe that 1am and 1:00 in 24h format are the same time. Then, we consider the hour before that. That hour is 0 in 24h format. It also belongs to the same day. Since the day is split in two equal halves by AM/PM, then hour 0 in 24h format is hour X am, where X is the hour before 1 am. That is hour 12. Therefore, 12am is 0 o'clock.
The other fact that helps me remember is that 12 hour clocks were invented before the number 0, and afterwards 24h clocks are 0-based, so 12 on an old clock is the start of the am or pm cycle respectively because there is no 0. Really 12 should be 0 and then it all makes sense.
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#364Another huge problem for these assistants is unusual band names. I have yet to successfully convince either Siri or Google Assistant to "play Einstürzende Neubauten".
Even worse when the band name isn't written with latin characters to begin with.
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#365I 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…
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.
And too many app developers assume that all their users have massive/unlimited data plans. This is usually correct for... most developed and developing countries, but:
They forget that in the telecom-backwater of Canada, a 4 or 5gb/month plan is near the high end.
I’m looking at you NPR One app for thinking buffering 300-400mb of content is a good idea.
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, where I'm from, "London" would probably refer to London, ON, but that's just because I live in Southern Ontario. So it's not like no one has heard of it. On the other hand: no one in Southern Ontario will be asking what time it is in London, ON because it's all in the same time zone, so this seems like a problem.
Well, and it's further complicated by the context of what's being asked. Coming from Waterloo Region, if I ask what time it is in London, I almost certainly mean in England. But if I ask for directions to get to London, I probably mean the one that's a few hours away by car. So it's not as simple as just fitting these queries into generic templates and sending all instances of $LOCATION to a common geocoder.
Now if we could just wipe Waterloo IA off the map...
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If the person asking the question lives in Ohio, they may actually be talking about London OH (or Dublin OH). I would seriously doubt this assumption. Why on earth should someone living in a state specifically ask for the local time in a different location within that same state? On the contrary, this context information would make it much more likely that the person actually meant "London, England". Except if ther…
> Why on earth should someone living in a state specifically ask for the local time in a different location within that same state? Who said they were in that state when asking? People travel.
I find it unlikely that someone in that scenario would ask "What time is it in London?" rather than "What time is it in Ohio?"
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#368Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#369Earlier 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.
HN is not an exception. It's the most stark in threads about salaries.
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#370Earlier 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.
Are we talking BCE or CE? :)