3 ms·

Unfortunate title. I thought it was about 3M, the Minnesota materials science company. They're in all kinds of areas, so why not access cards or something simil

by tpmx 6y ago

Unfortunate title. I thought it was about 3M, the Minnesota materials science company. They're in all kinds of areas, so why not access cards or something similar. They're doing NFC tags, at least.

fortran77 6y ago
It should use the accepted abbreviation for million "MM" https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/other/mm-millions/#:~:text=The%20Latin%20numeral%20M%20denotes,equals%201%2C000%2C000%20(one%20million) https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/ot....
- tpmx 6y ago
  That's only accepted (and understood) in finance. Here: better to just spell out "3 million", I reckon.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    k = thousands, m = millions, b = billions, t = trillions, a = quadrillions Is more universally understood I think. Also, seems like more work to write out 4MMM rather than 4b.
    - tpmx 6y ago
      Well, no. That's not the system we pretty much all use in software development. We use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si-prefixes https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si-pref...
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        I’m talking about common parlance, that would make sense to people across all disciplines, finance, software, or otherwise. If you wrote $10B, people will know it’s billion just because you’re talking about currency. If you write $10G, people will not since very few people will connect G to billion. I also meant q for quadrillions, not a.
    - zenexer 6y ago
      Where are you getting these prefixes? It’s M, not m. 3M = 3,000,000. 3MM means the same thing, but it’s usually only seen in finance, and it’s not an SI prefix. 4MMM is meaningless. m (lowercase) means “milli-,” which certainly isn’t what you want.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        m lowercase also means meters, but in the context of a discussion of dollars I figured it’s obvious what m would mean, lower or upper case.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Where are you getting these prefixes? There is a somewhat dated system of abbreviations that used be (and occasionally still is) used in finance-related matters inspired by the use of M in Roman numerals where M or m is thousands and MM or mm is millions; different sources disagree on whether MMM/mmm can also be used for billions in that system. Recently, it's been displaced by a probably-SI-inspired (but not SI-correct, particularly as regards capitalization which remains optional) system of K/k and M/m thousands and millions (but billions are usually not G/g, I've seen B/b more frequently, with T/t for trillions.)
yunruse 6y ago
I thought it was a material measure of some form of cards being literally smoked in some form of industrial factory, and figured this was strange news to appear on HN. IMO the title could be less dense: "Data breach of 3 million cards at Dickey's BBQ"

by tpmx 6y ago

Unfortunate title. I thought it was about 3M, the Minnesota materials science company. They're in all kinds of areas, so why not access cards or something similar. They're doing NFC tags, at least.

fortran77 6y ago

It should use the accepted abbreviation for million "MM" https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/other/mm-millions/#:~:text=The%20Latin%20numeral%20M%20denotes,equals%201%2C000%2C000%20(one%20million) https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/ot....

tpmx 6y ago
That's only accepted (and understood) in finance. Here: better to just spell out "3 million", I reckon.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  k = thousands, m = millions, b = billions, t = trillions, a = quadrillions Is more universally understood I think. Also, seems like more work to write out 4MMM rather than 4b.
  - tpmx 6y ago
    Well, no. That's not the system we pretty much all use in software development. We use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si-prefixes https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si-pref...
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      I’m talking about common parlance, that would make sense to people across all disciplines, finance, software, or otherwise. If you wrote $10B, people will know it’s billion just because you’re talking about currency. If you write $10G, people will not since very few people will connect G to billion. I also meant q for quadrillions, not a.
  - zenexer 6y ago
    Where are you getting these prefixes? It’s M, not m. 3M = 3,000,000. 3MM means the same thing, but it’s usually only seen in finance, and it’s not an SI prefix. 4MMM is meaningless. m (lowercase) means “milli-,” which certainly isn’t what you want.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      m lowercase also means meters, but in the context of a discussion of dollars I figured it’s obvious what m would mean, lower or upper case.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Where are you getting these prefixes? There is a somewhat dated system of abbreviations that used be (and occasionally still is) used in finance-related matters inspired by the use of M in Roman numerals where M or m is thousands and MM or mm is millions; different sources disagree on whether MMM/mmm can also be used for billions in that system. Recently, it's been displaced by a probably-SI-inspired (but not SI-correct, particularly as regards capitalization which remains optional) system of K/k and M/m thousands and millions (but billions are usually not G/g, I've seen B/b more frequently, with T/t for trillions.)

yunruse 6y ago

I thought it was a material measure of some form of cards being literally smoked in some form of industrial factory, and figured this was strange news to appear on HN. IMO the title could be less dense: "Data breach of 3 million cards at Dickey's BBQ"