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Siri, What Time Is It in London?

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Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#771
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The demographic you're referring to - North Americans within the USA who don't know how 24-hour time works - are < 2% of the world's population.

True but the GP asked about "literally everyone in the world" and the parent is a correct and useful answer to that question.

You're right. I tend to assume people that use the word 'literally' are using it incorrectly - as parent did.

It's sad, but an ineluctable truth, that this word is almost always misunderstood and misused.

In the (again, regrettable) common usage use of the word -- ie. 'almost all' -- the claim is likely valid.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#772
post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that set of criteria to establish a metric is context.

No, it isn't - see > The context-free metric for ranking cities is global relevance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city There is no context whatsoever in global relevance. If you ask someone what time it is, you don't get asked "where?" in return - the current location is implied. Same with cities - if you mention London, it is implied that you mean the most globally relevant London, not the one that was named…

> The context-free metric for ranking cities is global relevance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city

I do not find the word context-free in that page. That's even ignoring that there are different rankings on that page, each with different outcomes, once again showing that without context there is no "best".

> If you ask someone what time it is, you don't get asked "where?" in return - the current location is implied.

Just because it's implied doesn't mean it's not context.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#773

>If you had a human assistant and asked them “What’s the time in London?” and they honestly thought the best way to answer that question was to give you the time for the nearest London, which happened to be in Ontario or Kentucky, you’d fire that assistant. An obvious sign that you would be a shit employer to work for. OP is probably exaggerating here (at least I hope so), but if you were to fire someone over this wi…

We all understand the point being made: this is a ridiculous answer by Siri.

The treatment of a hypothetical human-assistant-that-never-was is really irrelevant.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#774
post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't - see > The context-free metric for ranking cities is global relevance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city There is no context whatsoever in global relevance. If you ask someone what time it is, you don't get asked "where?" in return - the current location is implied. Same with cities - if you mention London, it is implied that you mean the most globally relevant London, not the one that was named…

> The context-free metric for ranking cities is global relevance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city I do not find the word context-free in that page. That's even ignoring that there are different rankings on that page, each with different outcomes, once again showing that without context there is no "best". > If you ask someone what time it is, you don't get asked "where?" in return - the current location is…

> Just because it's implied doesn't mean it's not context.

So you're that guy who people should never ask for directions then, because instead of explaining how to get to a place from where you stand, you'd ask for the exact date and time of travel, and the starting location (including continent, country, city, and street address)?

> I do not find the word context-free in that page.

Of course you don't, why would you even? "Context-free" is specific to the issue at hand, e.g. given no additional information (e.g. where are you right know and in what context do you ask the question) and a list of possible answers, what would be the most likely?

Have you ever watched "Family Feud"? It's an entire show based around that concept. It sounds like you are one of those guys who, when given "We asked 100 people what you would find in a kitchen" would expect the top answer to be "DEA agents", because "kitchen" could refer to a drug lab...

> That's even ignoring that there are different rankings on that page, each with different outcomes, once again showing that without context there is no "best".

Are you shitting me? The point is, that in none of those lists - regardless of relative ordering - other cities besides London, UK, and the rest of the well-known global cities are listed.

It doesn't matter whether London, UK takes the #1 spot based on some set of metrics, or the 3rd based on another - the point is that it's ALWAYS London, UK and NEVER London, Ontario.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can only have your account associated with 1 store. You won't lose the apps you have installed but 1. They won't update until you switch back so you'll likely need to switch 2 to 4 times a year as your bank and/or other services deprecates their old apps. 2. Switching requires manually re-entering your name, address, phone number, and credit card info every time. 3. Any subscriptions you have via Apple Pay w…

That's more of a developer problem than an Apple one. Most of the apps on my phone work in any country around the world. I've used Uber in many countries, Spotify, Netflix... If your bank wants to restrictively localize their app distribution, how is that Apple's fault?

It is reasonable for a company not do want to deal with people outside their country including payment systems they don't support and laws they don't understand, taxes they have no experience with etc...

It is not reasonable for Apple to make using the phone in more than one country so hard. That is something Apple has the easy power to fix.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that DuckDuckGo's behaviour is the correct one, but they should display a warning when the east cost is on EDT and someone requests conversion with EST. Maybe we will stop using daylight savings before the masses learn the difference between ET/EST/EDT.

Edge case: what would you do about Mountain Time? Check out this "fun" time zone map of Arizona where you could fly a straight line through 6 time settings in one hour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Arizona#/media/File:AZ... The ET/EST/EDT question is reasonable because ET is heavily populated and behaves sanely (as far as I know). Other popular US time zones are... different.

Interesting edge case. Perhaps we need something other than MST for Arizona (excluding Navajo Nation) if we want a lack of ambiguity. If only politicians knew how annoying dealing with time is for software developers!
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