5 ms·

American date format leads to arrest in Spain

33 points by edent 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kgwgk 6y ago
Actual headline: "The Spanish family wrongly accused of child pornography due to a mistake reading a date" "An alert from a US organization followed American month-day-year usage, but this was misread by investigators in Spain. As a result, four people went through a nightmare situation"
- baby 6y ago
  The amount of mistakes that must have been due to the American date format would probably be a good research topic. I know I’ve myself done countless mistakes due to it. As much as I can, I use the yyyy-mm-dd format which is always unambiguous.
  - Benjamin_Dobell 6y ago
    My accounting firm has two accountants that handle my documents. One of them uses Australian/British date formatting, and the other uses American date formats. Does my head in. Particularly odd seems as these are being sent to Australian Government bodies. To alleviate too many eye-brows being raised at the ATO regarding my time traveling prowess, I've recently started dating everything as "Mon DD, YYYY".
  - __d 6y ago
    I also adopted the yyyy-mm-dd format, some time in the 90's. I later moved from Australia (dd-mm-yyyy) to the US (mm-dd-yyyy) and continued to use yyyy-mm-dd during my time there. I believe yyyy-mm-dd is the usual format in Japan, but I'm amazed that it hasn't seen more popular adoption worldwide, given the difficulties it solves.
amiantos 6y ago
We could all save a lot of time and trouble if we’d just normalize all cultures to a YYYY-MM-DD format. Sorts better as well as just being less ambiguous due to unfamiliarity meaning no assumptions will be applied by anybody. I only date things this way, at least digitally, but I should probably start doing it in writing as well. Also this format prioritizes what is more important to you if you are an amnesiac or someone stuck time traveling at random.
supernova87a 6y ago
I also agree that adopting yyyy-mm-dd just reduces ambiguity. However, it is an interesting linguistic observation that the way people say dates influences how they prefer to write them. And I know it's basically a religious argument, but I prefer the American way. Saying "we'll schedule that for October 10th", or "let's meet on September 18th" you get an idea from the first words when roughly it's going to be (Oct, Sep), and then the specific. The only time we seem to use the day number first is when we celebrate "the 4th of July". The European way -- or at least British way -- they say "we'll schedule that for the 10th of October". If you had to cut that sentence off before you completed it, you would be left asking... which month in general are we talking about? Anyway, the way people are used to saying the words definitely seems to translate into how they express it in writing.
- sabellito 6y ago
  Having a date format that's different from the rest of the whole world to optmise for the case of being cutoff when speaking doesn't sound super reasonable.
  - supernova87a 6y ago
    Well, I don't really mean it's for the protection of the case that your sentence gets cut off -- when is that going to happen in practice. I meant in terms of word order when thinking about the concept of date from general to specific, (I at least) think it's more logical. And in yyyy-mm-dd, it comes first. But, yes it is only a convention. We do lots of other things in society without similar rationale.
    - function_seven 6y ago
      It's like how calculators and telephone keypads are opposite. Each one feels natural in its own domain, but weird if used for the other purpose (i.e. Try dialing a phone number you're used to dialing all the time, but on a calculator. You can do it, but it don't feel right) With identifiers, we sometimes go from specific>general. Street addresses start with the house number first, then street, then city, state, etc. Domain names are the same. Most specific first, general TLD last. But then there are directory paths, (drive > folder > file), phone numbers (country > area > exchange > subscriber), and legal citations (code/title > chapter > section > paragraph > etc.) Which makes the American date format truly an outlier. 2020-09-13 seems right to me, but I think I prefer 13 SEP 2020. It's more aesthetic I think, and it also recognizes that there is no month called "9". Days and years are naturally numbered, but months have names.
dannyw 6y ago
The result of this is a series of mistakes and continued negligence, not simply a date format error.
pella 6y ago
The ideal birthday is > 12
paledot 6y ago
There's an idea. MM/DD/YYYY (or worse, YY) should be an indictable offence.
orev 6y ago
For computer stuff YYYY-MM-DD makes the most sense usually, but for human stuff I prefer DD-MMM-YYYY. That gives you the day first, then the three letter month abbreviation, then the year. It’s still easy enough to understand for people while not being overly technical.
- mro_name 6y ago
  for human reception I always add the day of week. A very strong hint for personal planning (Thu? Never have time on Thus).
mro_name 6y ago
Soon will be the global day celebrating standards. ISO-standardised to Oct, 14th. Except for the US, ANSI set it to Oct, 22nd. https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a1a4e701 https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a1a4e701
mro_name 6y ago
Once there was a nice cartoon at iso.ch: http://web.archive.org/web/20030305043709/http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/popstds/datesandtime.html http://web.archive.org/web/20030305043709/http://www.iso.ch/...

33 points by edent 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Actual headline: "The Spanish family wrongly accused of child pornography due to a mistake reading a date" "An alert from a US organization followed American month-day-year usage, but this was misread by investigators in Spain. As a result, four people went through a nightmare situation"

baby 6y ago
The amount of mistakes that must have been due to the American date format would probably be a good research topic. I know I’ve myself done countless mistakes due to it. As much as I can, I use the yyyy-mm-dd format which is always unambiguous.
- Benjamin_Dobell 6y ago
  My accounting firm has two accountants that handle my documents. One of them uses Australian/British date formatting, and the other uses American date formats. Does my head in. Particularly odd seems as these are being sent to Australian Government bodies. To alleviate too many eye-brows being raised at the ATO regarding my time traveling prowess, I've recently started dating everything as "Mon DD, YYYY".
- __d 6y ago
  I also adopted the yyyy-mm-dd format, some time in the 90's. I later moved from Australia (dd-mm-yyyy) to the US (mm-dd-yyyy) and continued to use yyyy-mm-dd during my time there. I believe yyyy-mm-dd is the usual format in Japan, but I'm amazed that it hasn't seen more popular adoption worldwide, given the difficulties it solves.

amiantos 6y ago

We could all save a lot of time and trouble if we’d just normalize all cultures to a YYYY-MM-DD format. Sorts better as well as just being less ambiguous due to unfamiliarity meaning no assumptions will be applied by anybody. I only date things this way, at least digitally, but I should probably start doing it in writing as well. Also this format prioritizes what is more important to you if you are an amnesiac or someone stuck time traveling at random.

supernova87a 6y ago

I also agree that adopting yyyy-mm-dd just reduces ambiguity. However, it is an interesting linguistic observation that the way people say dates influences how they prefer to write them. And I know it's basically a religious argument, but I prefer the American way. Saying "we'll schedule that for October 10th", or "let's meet on September 18th" you get an idea from the first words when roughly it's going to be (Oct, Sep), and then the specific. The only time we seem to use the day number first is when we celebrate "the 4th of July". The European way -- or at least British way -- they say "we'll schedule that for the 10th of October". If you had to cut that sentence off before you completed it, you would be left asking... which month in general are we talking about? Anyway, the way people are used to saying the words definitely seems to translate into how they express it in writing.

sabellito 6y ago
Having a date format that's different from the rest of the whole world to optmise for the case of being cutoff when speaking doesn't sound super reasonable.
- supernova87a 6y ago
  Well, I don't really mean it's for the protection of the case that your sentence gets cut off -- when is that going to happen in practice. I meant in terms of word order when thinking about the concept of date from general to specific, (I at least) think it's more logical. And in yyyy-mm-dd, it comes first. But, yes it is only a convention. We do lots of other things in society without similar rationale.
  - function_seven 6y ago
    It's like how calculators and telephone keypads are opposite. Each one feels natural in its own domain, but weird if used for the other purpose (i.e. Try dialing a phone number you're used to dialing all the time, but on a calculator. You can do it, but it don't feel right) With identifiers, we sometimes go from specific>general. Street addresses start with the house number first, then street, then city, state, etc. Domain names are the same. Most specific first, general TLD last. But then there are directory paths, (drive > folder > file), phone numbers (country > area > exchange > subscriber), and legal citations (code/title > chapter > section > paragraph > etc.) Which makes the American date format truly an outlier. 2020-09-13 seems right to me, but I think I prefer 13 SEP 2020. It's more aesthetic I think, and it also recognizes that there is no month called "9". Days and years are naturally numbered, but months have names.

dannyw 6y ago

The result of this is a series of mistakes and continued negligence, not simply a date format error.

pella 6y ago

The ideal birthday is > 12

paledot 6y ago

There's an idea. MM/DD/YYYY (or worse, YY) should be an indictable offence.

orev 6y ago

For computer stuff YYYY-MM-DD makes the most sense usually, but for human stuff I prefer DD-MMM-YYYY. That gives you the day first, then the three letter month abbreviation, then the year. It’s still easy enough to understand for people while not being overly technical.

mro_name 6y ago
for human reception I always add the day of week. A very strong hint for personal planning (Thu? Never have time on Thus).

mro_name 6y ago

Soon will be the global day celebrating standards. ISO-standardised to Oct, 14th. Except for the US, ANSI set it to Oct, 22nd. https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a1a4e701 https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a1a4e701

mro_name 6y ago

Once there was a nice cartoon at iso.ch: http://web.archive.org/web/20030305043709/http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/popstds/datesandtime.html http://web.archive.org/web/20030305043709/http://www.iso.ch/...