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

This blog is written in en-GB

shkspr.mobi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 474 posts

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#451

Post by tpoacher »

pseudalopex wrote: post #414
tpoacher wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it bait? I'm pretty sure it's a reasonably factual, albeit general claim. Asking chatGPT for country-specific examples for instance gives this: > Yes—some countries have (at various times, and in some cases still today) adopted policies aimed at making the population more “homogeneous,” through segregation, assimilation pressure, or exclusion/deportation. Concrete examples: - South Africa (apartheid era, 1948–1990…

Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation between humans.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I clearly didn't "post generated text" masquerading as human insight in the manner cautioned in that context.

I, the human, demonstrated that even an LLM, which in this context can be viewed as an impartial source, could easily find legit examples.

I could of course have simply stated that this is the case without pasting the LLM text, but in that case I'm fairly sure OP could have simply replied "Nah-uh".

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#452

Post by My_Name »

card_zero wrote: post #405
jowsie wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's cultural. Stiff upper lip and all that. It would be impolite or even confrontational to complain about something, so you have a little moan instead. A common response to the question "how are you?" is "could be worse". I've always felt this is a good example of British culture, though maybe it's not so simple to understand if you've not lived here. A casual moan about the weather or the fact that the pot…

I believe it was Family Guy season 3 episode 4 in which the Drunken Clam is taken over by the British and turned into a pub, and when Peter and his pals try to storm it and take it back they get defeated by means of biting wit and clever sarcasm. That kind of focused negativity would be an awesome image to live up to, but instead you paint a picture here of habitual incoherent cattiness, it seems like some unfulfille…

We have both. Biting wit and clever sarcasm are one end, but general mild grumbling is the base state

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#453

Post by fatata123 »

My_Name wrote: post #203
TimK65 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Can I just say that, as someone born and bred in the UK, YYYY-MM-DD is the only correct way to display a date wherever you live. Anything else is as bad as using mm:hh...

[dead]

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#454

Post by reirob »

brnt wrote: post #364
bmacho wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The European Commission published its own language guide. In terms of English it's only a small deviation from en-GB, but my first thought was indeed: when can I set en-EU?

Do you have a link to this publication?

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#455

Post by prima-facie »

qweqwe14 wrote: post #383
prima-facie wrote: post #149

If you are from Europe, even if you're not living in the UK, the en-GB locale will feel a lot more familiar to you than the en-US one. It uses the dd-mm-yyyy date format like the rest of Europe, the start of the week is on Monday (vs Sunday in the US), the default paper size is A4 (vs US letter), measurement defaults are metric (indeed UK roads use imperial, but the default is otherwise metric), the time format uses…

Just use the C.UTF-8 locale: SI units everywhere ISO date and time American English 24 hour clock etc I think Windows has "English International" locale or something

>> ISO date and time

Yes, but not always in my experience:

    # Default locale is en_GB.utf8
    
    > date  
    Fri  3 Jul 12:14:20 BST 2026
    
    > date +%x  
    03/07/26
    
    > LC_TIME="C.UTF-8" date   
    Fri Jul  3 12:14:29 BST 2026
    
    > LC_TIME="C.UTF-8" date +%x  
    07/03/26

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#456

Post by hnfong »

biofox wrote: post #28

I am the only Brit in the department I work in. No one gets the cultural references or British idioms I use, and I've found myself significantly changing the language I use to a very utilitarian and direct style to prevent the endless blank stares... reading this blog post just made me realise that this self-editing has made my interactions rather more 'flat' and unnatural, as they now lack spontaneity, with everythi…

You're not alone. That's essentially the experience of most people having English as a second language.

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#457

Post by bmacho »

reirob wrote: post #454
brnt wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The European Commission published its own language guide. In terms of English it's only a small deviation from en-GB, but my first thought was indeed: when can I set en-EU?

Do you have a link to this publication?

https://knowledge-centre-translation-interpretation.ec.europ...

> This style guide is intended primarily for English-language authors and translators, both in-house and freelance, working for the European Commission.

It specifies formats for date, numbers etc.

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#458

Post by haritha-j »

kjellsbells wrote: post #366
haritha-j wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it as cunning as a fox who’s just been appointed professor of cunning at Oxford university?

Oh Baldrick, you must have attended one of the great Universities. Oxford. Cambridge. Hull.

You won't fool me with that. Everyone know's Oxford's a complete dump! (I'm coincidentally at Cambridge currently, which really makes the joke work)

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#459

Post by TimK65 »

anotherevan wrote: post #435
TimK65 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Although my (AU) locale is dd-mm-yyyy, I'll use yyyy-mm-dd anywhere I have to write a date in all numbers to avoid any ambiguity. It also has the advantage of sorting correctly in things like file names. For something more likely to be read by a human and not parsed by a computer (and is not locale or i18n/l10n flexible) I'll use d mmm yyyy, e.g., 3 Jul 2026. To my thinking, for English speaking this is the friendlie…

"Friday 3 July 2026" (yes, I elected to spell out the month) also has the advantage of not requiring commas for legibility ("Friday, July 3, 2026" being common in the US).

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#460

Post by TimK65 »

3836293648 wrote: post #407
TimK65 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Vad himla pratar du om? ALLT använder dd/mm-yy. Jag har aldrig sett något på svenska som använder yyyy-mm-dd, det finns bara inte. Det finns i Sverige, men då är det också på engelska.

"Vad himla pratar du om?"? I in my turn have never heard that expression before, so who's zoomin' who, baby?
Post reply on HN