This blog is written in en-GB • Hacker News Board

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#391

Post by dhosek » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:02 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #320

dhosek wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In earlier versions of OS X, setting your date format to have the day before the month was sufficient to also alter the default paper size to A4, which was really inconvenient for me since I prefer the day-month ordering (and as a consequence of buying a digital watch in the Netherlands which only had instructions in Dutch which I didn’t understand, I developed the habit of using 24 hour time), but I live in the US a…

Don't you mean paper which isn't 215.9 by 279.4 mm? Go on, switch your thermostat in the US to degrees C. Join us.

I’m likely moving to Mexico next year, so I’ve switched the temperature reading on my watch to Celsius in preparation. The problem is that bands of ten degrees in Fahrenheit translate nicely to comfort levels,¹ which is not really true for Celsius, or at least I’m still adapting to get a sense of what those numbers mean in practice.

⸻

1. For the record:

below 0: Stay inside, drink warm cocoa

0–10: Only go out if you have to

10–20: Cold, but doable

20–30: Nice winter-sports temperature

30–40: Cold, but you could run out to the garage without a coat if you had to

40–50: Cold, but you don’t need a scarf or gloves

50–60: Cool. wear a jacket

60–70: Cool, wear a light jacket

70–80: Perfect

80–90: Warm, but not too bad. Go to the pool.

90–100: Ugh, hot. Tell your parents that you’ll pay their electric bill if necessary but they need to turn on the air conditioning.

100+: Stay inside, eat ice cream.

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#392

Post by SpaceNoodled » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #257

dhosek wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is now.

In a moment of whimsy I briefly considered a date format where digits were sorted alphabetically. 2026-07-02-16-31-52 -> -----00011222235667 Hopefully it will remain a nonsense and never be seen in the wild, unlike the phone number field which I found on a real website which responded to scroll events to increase and decrease the value it contained.

Well it's a NUMBER

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#393

Post by GeoAtreides » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:10 PM UTC

penguin_booze wrote: post #363

blenderob wrote: post #46

I read several blogs that use British English, including this OP's blog. Some of my favourite blogs in my RSS reader are British English blogs, or at least they use British English spellings and grammar. I find their use of the English language very charming and funny in a unique way. It surprises me that anyone would feel entitled to ask a blogger to change the variety of English they use. American English is only o…

[flagged]

>Speaking is even worse: a diarrhea of filler words, like 'like', 'I mean', and 'you know'.

and the british have: obviously, innit, fam, right, know what I mean, etc

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#394

Post by SpaceNoodled » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:10 PM UTC

marcellus23 wrote: post #287

TimK65 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So thankful that we use the correct date format (yyyy-mm-dd) in Sweden.

as an American this is my favorite format. Sortable, and the mm-dd order reflects the standard American way of writing month+day, and yyyy is unambiguously the year since it's 4 letters. Best of both worlds.

This format is an American?

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#395

Post by SpaceNoodled » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:12 PM UTC

dhosek wrote: post #391

sneak wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you mean paper which isn't 215.9 by 279.4 mm? Go on, switch your thermostat in the US to degrees C. Join us.

I’m likely moving to Mexico next year, so I’ve switched the temperature reading on my watch to Celsius in preparation. The problem is that bands of ten degrees in Fahrenheit translate nicely to comfort levels,¹ which is not really true for Celsius, or at least I’m still adapting to get a sense of what those numbers mean in practice. ⸻ 1. For the record: below 0: Stay inside, drink warm cocoa 0–10: Only go out if you…

This scale makes no sense in Fahrenheit or Celsius

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#396

Post by aendruk » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:12 PM UTC

bmacho wrote: post #310

TimK65 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So thankful that we use the correct date format (yyyy-mm-dd) in Sweden.

Wrong decimal tho. Why isn't there an en-EU or en-ISO locale that has: - yyyy-mm-dd - SI units - 1,234.56 number format

It is possible to define a custom locale with these features, e.g. https://andrew.kvalhe.im/2022-09-09

  $ echo "$LANG"; date
  en_US.UTF-8@aspirational
  2026-07-02T11:17:00-07:00

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#397

Post by ben_w » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:15 PM UTC

SpaceNoodled wrote: post #392

ben_w wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a moment of whimsy I briefly considered a date format where digits were sorted alphabetically. 2026-07-02-16-31-52 -> -----00011222235667 Hopefully it will remain a nonsense and never be seen in the wild, unlike the phone number field which I found on a real website which responded to scroll events to increase and decrease the value it contained.

Well it's a NUMBER

https://imgur.com/gallery/phone-numbers-are-not-numbers-defi...

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#398

Post by ben_w » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:16 PM UTC

dhosek wrote: post #388

mkopinsky wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's an unreversible hash function. I use this for passwords - no one will ever be able to figure out what ehntru2 was originally.

I feel confident it would be one of the six permutations of 2, the, run.

hunter2

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#399

Post by gib444 » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #30

CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #18

It should be just "en", since we invented and it's the one true version:-)

Do the needful!

I do the needful after coffee in the morning

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#400

Post by myrmidon » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:22 PM UTC

mghackerlady wrote: post #382

myrmidon wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see how being personally affected would change the outlook on things like this. It just seems to me that often people that are politically still "somewhat close" (Rowling) catch more flak than politicians that associate "transgender" with something inbetween "subhuman" and "delusional", but don't talk about it too much (because their whole electorate coulnd't care less about the topic anyway). I had a similar i…

It comes down to influence. One politician can only do so much damage, whereas Rowling is very wealthy and can b̶r̶i̶b̶e̶ lobby many politicians

Do you think Rowling has more political effect in the UK than UK politicians, or are you talking global influence here?

My own somewhat cynical take is basically the Planck-principle: Actual progress mostly happens one grave at a time...

I still think from a political effectiveness point-of-view, pushing against Rowling is almost completely futile, because she has no electorate to satisfy and her view (from what I understand, her focus is on "protecting" cisgender women/their spaces from maliciously misdeclared transgender women?) is strawmanny, but difficult to just dismiss/pick apart.

But I can see now how perceived "betrayal" and actual public engagement with personal issues would elicit a much stronger response than an ideologically even more distant politician that just hates you quietly. Thanks for the discussion!