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Siri, What Time Is It in London?

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Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#81

Post by mrshu »

Hamuko wrote: post #11

Same thing happens with Frankfurt. If I order something from Amazon.de, my package usually goes through Frankfurt. When I checked my package tracker app on my iPhone, I was surprised to find out that Frankfurt is actually on the Germany-Poland border. Turns out that if I enter "Frankfurt, Germany" into Apple Maps (which I assume is what the package tracker app does), it takes me to "Frankfurt (Oder), Germany" instead…

A similar thing happened with some football fans that made it to "Frankfurt (Oder)" instead of "Frankfurt am Main" for the Europa League's semifinals.

Judging from the published pictures [0], it looks like Google Maps may lead to the same result as Apple Maps for "Frankfurt".

[0] https://talksport.com/football/529808/benfica-fan-wrong-fran...

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#82

Post by kjakm »

Just a guess but when the author checks Siri on his phone it has access to GPS so is probably giving him the nearest 'London'. When he checks on HomePod it has no GPS so gives him the most common 'London'.

Although it's infuriating and we want these tools to be much better I'm not sure how Siri can really ever know which London he wants. A human assistant without context is going to need to make a guess too and isn't going to be right with that guess 100% of the time. It would make much more sense to request "London, England".

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#83

Post by chappar »

DangerousPie wrote: post #41

It's ridiculous how Siri is still this shitty. I have an 11 Pro and even on such an expensive phone I can't really trust it to do anything more advanced than set timers. Every few months I try to do something else and just get annoyed at how bad it is. Before lockdown I even had it disabled entirely because it would get activated randomly from time to time, even if nobody in the vicinity said anything remotely close…

I had never used an Apple product before the company which I joined recently gave me a MacBook Pro. I am really surprised how bad the product quality is. The calendar notification is very random. Sometimes it fires, sometimes it does not. I have missed couple of meetings because notification popped after the meeting was over. Similarly the keyboard shortcut is random. Sometimes it opens the app, sometimes it does not. The laptop also gets very hot if you are not sitting in A/C. Not sure if it is this specific laptop or it is a general issue

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#84

Post by erikbye »

ksec wrote: post #14
new2628 wrote: post #6

It is amusing that someone thinking London means London, Canada should be fired for stupidity, but someone who cannot compute what is the time in another place by adding 7 (or 10 or whatever) hours to his current time and needs an elaborate device to do it is seen as smart and insightful. This is some pretentious BS.

> but someone who cannot compute what is the time in another place by adding 7 (or 10 or whatever) The whole point of asking is precisely because I dont know how many hours I have to add. And neither do I know if said country, region or city is having whatever DayLight Saving hours etc.

> The whole point of asking is precisely because I dont know how many hours I have to add

You know, how about you learn it? Once. Instead of asking Siri or Google every time.

In other words, learn to fish.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#85

Post by molteanu »

erikbye wrote: post #84
ksec wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but someone who cannot compute what is the time in another place by adding 7 (or 10 or whatever) The whole point of asking is precisely because I dont know how many hours I have to add. And neither do I know if said country, region or city is having whatever DayLight Saving hours etc.

> The whole point of asking is precisely because I dont know how many hours I have to add You know, how about you learn it? Once. Instead of asking Siri or Google every time. In other words, learn to fish.

Good one!

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#87

Post by buzzkillington »

denster wrote: post #20

I think dates, times, UTC offsets, and locales/cultures is a topic we frequently think of as "that's easy" [1] when in practice it's painstakingly hard to get right. As an example, we've spent the past few days on our eng team refining our spreadsheet functions for date/time handling, and it's like the 5th time we've iterated on this (after supporting everything Excel / Google Sheets do). Funny part is, I'm sure we'l…

>Btw, does anyone have good reading materials on this topic?

I had a slide deck somewhere from when I was at a broker trader and leap seconds mattered (they (can) happen around 10am in East Asian markets on Jun 30).

The moral of the story is: time measurements are fractally wrong, it doesn't matter what format/time system you pick, there will be a use case that breaks it badly. Local time + timezone, epoch, UTC, ATI, doesn't matter it will break somehow.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#88

Post by basisword »

sacado2 wrote: post #29
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because you know that there's only one timezone for the UK, so there's no point asking "What's the time in London" and "What's the time in Preston" because you know the answer is the same, but since America has 3 or 4 timezones (I'm not sure, I know it's at least three), American people intuitively specify the city, since "What's the time in the USA" is not valid

> Maybe because you know that there's only one timezone for the UK And that's where things start to get fun, because there are actually several timezones in the UK if you include its dependencies. I don't really know how it works in the UK because I'm French, so let's take France instead. "What time is it in France?" usually means "in metropolitan France", but now let's say you're in northern Brazil, close to the bor…

>> And that's where things start to get fun, because there are actually several timezones in the UK if you include its dependencies.

I think the UK only consists of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The UK has some control over aspects of the dependencies but they are not actually part of the UK.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#89

Post by andy_ppp »

I just bought a Homepod because the price has been reduced to a more normal amount, I think it started at £319 so it being £200 in the UK seemed quite good. I have to say the sound quality seems average to me - I admit it produces a lot of sound and bass from it's small frame but I like a bit of top end sparkle and it basically seems to have zero top end at all.

As for Siri there is no point in asking it questions or talking to it for anything but changing volume and setting timers. A smart speaker this is not.

I suppose Apple need to stop being afraid and build a damn search engine that actually understands queries from real people. I mean whatever they are trying to turn queries into responses is simply not working.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#90

Post by erikbye »

molteanu wrote: post #40

The fact that this piece of "news" is front page is really stupid. There was a BBC piece yesterday about the condition in the Malakasa camp in Greece.[1] Some of our fellow brothers literally don't have anything to eat. And while it's 2020, we still fret about what browser is better (I bet half the globe doesn't even know what a browser is or doesn't care) or spend excessive amounts of time for yet a new color theme…

> The fact that this piece of "news" is front page is really stupid. There was a BBC piece yesterday about the condition in the Malakasa camp in Greece ...

HN is not a news website in the traditional sense, even though "news" is in the name. How is this not obvious?

For what you are seeking you should go to reuters.com, you'd probably have better luck.

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