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

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#411

Post by frosted-flakes » Fri, May 22, 2020, 3:22 PM UTC

larrik wrote: post #317

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"?

I actually didn't realize am/pm wasn't something Europeans did...

They still know what it means though. Clocks are still divided into 12 in Europe.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#412

Post by mcjiggerlog » Fri, May 22, 2020, 3:24 PM UTC

larrik wrote: post #317

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"?

I actually didn't realize am/pm wasn't something Europeans did...

For written times, no. If you're arranging to meet a friend you'd write "see you at 2030", but you'd say "eight thirty" out loud.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#413

Post by hi41 » Fri, May 22, 2020, 3:25 PM UTC

I have a Sony UHD TV with Android which comes preloaded with Google Assistant which support voice search. I wanted to watch a movie and I did a voice search for that movie. I expected to get a list of apps where I can watch it - Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+. Instead I was presented with a list of shops few miles away. I found this interface very bad. I search on TV to watch a series/movie. Why would the Google Assistant give a list of shops nearby? That may be useful if I open Google Maps and search for that but on TV most people search to watch something on TV and choose the app that streams it. Why do smart companies like Google create such pathetic interfaces.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#414

Post by inakarmacoma » Fri, May 22, 2020, 3:25 PM UTC

tjpnz wrote: post #341

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.

>I left angry feedback with Google over it once, but it's happened many times. That's not going to get you anywhere - they're not listening.

It's not true. But reports are very valuable when filed with helpful information.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#415

Post by jen20 » Fri, May 22, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #110

gruturo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company (based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany) had an online business travel reservation system which helpfully pre-filled the starting point of all new trips to Frankfurt, Kentucky (which is not even the right spelling of the city). I filed a request to NOT pre-fill the starting city to a place in Kentucky and got a polite but firm reply that this was the default list provided by the 3rd party online booking engin…

You might need to politely but firmly ask them to escalate this with the 3rd party provider, especially depending on your footing and monthly spends According to Wikipedia Frankfort, KY doesn't even have an airport so this is a double whammy of stupid on the part of the 3rd party

I had forgotten about this until just now but it wasn't so long ago that the Virgin Atlantic (a London, England-based airline) would autocomplete "London" (vs LHR) to "East London, South Africa" in the origin field despite them not flying there. That annoyed me around once a week when I used to fly a lot more.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#416

Post by gmac » Fri, May 22, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

hanche wrote: post #384

gmac wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12 AM and 12 PM are only meaningful by some arbitrary convention, and I'm not sure if that's even very consistent. I try always to use 12 noon and 12 midnight instead.

That’s why insurance policies in the US usually comes into effect at 12:01 AM.

Same in the UK, and similarly they often cease at 11:59PM, which has always struck me as pretty unsatisfactory.

What if a plane crashes on my house, between policies, during those two uninsured minutes?

Sure, it's unlikely, but so are all the other things that might cause me to claim on my buildings insurance policy.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#417

Post by jorvi » Fri, May 22, 2020, 3:27 PM UTC

AmericanChopper wrote: post #240

pjc50 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true for either Apple or Google or Facebook, all of which are determinedly global in their sales and marketing.

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.

It took them five iOS versions (8-13), so 5 years, to finally introduce predictive typing in Dutch. I can't wait for swiping finally being introduced with iOS 18. Especially for the amount of cash it has Apple is horrible for introducing features for every localization.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#418

Post by gmtx725 » Fri, May 22, 2020, 3:28 PM UTC

gmac wrote: post #277

criddell wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

12 AM and 12 PM are only meaningful by some arbitrary convention, and I'm not sure if that's even very consistent. I try always to use 12 noon and 12 midnight instead.

even 12 midnight is ambiguous- for example is 12 midnight on January 1st the start of the new year? Or is it at the end of new year's day?

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#419

Post by rmtech » Fri, May 22, 2020, 3:28 PM UTC

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…

"e" is alphabetically before "o" ?

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#420

Post by mark-r » Fri, May 22, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

mokus wrote: post #394

kohtatsu wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is reason enough for me to use 2020-04-05 exclusively. Lexical order is a bonus.

Just wait, someone will implement that as May 4, 2020.

It's possible, but very unlikely. The year-day-month convention has never been used anywhere that I'm aware of. YYYY-MM-DD is such a good idea it was turned into an ISO standard.