6 ms·
Tip: the world uses Metric system. USA is the exception.
by edhelas 5y ago
Tip: the world uses Metric system. USA is the exception.
- FredPret 5y agoWhat a relief that we live in the computer age and you can convert units essentially instantly
- rootusrootus 5y agoUK uses miles for distance, stones for weight, and I'm pretty certain that many things in the US are measured using metric. The real question I have is ... who really cares? I certainly don't complain when someone uses a celsius temperature, I just convert it to terms I'm more comfortable with.
- dimitrios1 5y ago> who really cares Engineers, Scientists, Mechanics, Carpenters, etc.
- rootusrootus 5y agoNo, these people do not care. People on the Internet care. Engineers, scientists, mechanics, and carpenters in the US do just fine with imperial measurements.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoPeople who work in varying units all the time and for whom a conversion is second nature mostly DGAF.
- anyfoo 5y agoCelsius is as arbitrary as Fahrenheit. Really, it's the one unit where it does not matter. Meters, kilogram, seconds, volt, ampere... they all stand in relation to each other. Celsius doesn't, you'd have to go to Kelvin for that (which is derived from Celsius, but Celsius is still useless by itself). I'm European, grew up with Celsius and am therefore more comfortable with it, so hardly any bias there.
- ghaff 5y agoThe size of the degree matters in some contexts. But, yeah, if your focus is on the "right" system from an engineering/science perspective, Kelvin should be being used.
- agilob 5y ago>UK uses miles for distance, meters are used too. On roads you have longer distance in miles, but width, weight and short distance in meters. Many rural areas in Wales have signs "120m to beach".
- rootusrootus 5y ago> meters are used too Sometimes we use those in the US, too. Context dependent.
- youngtaff 5y agoThere are marker posts in meters along the side of our motorways too!
- ojagodzinski 5y ago> UK uses miles for distance, stones for weight, and I'm pretty certain that many things in the US are measured using metric. UK is the same bad example of choosing using units of measure as US is. > I certainly don't complain when someone uses a celsius temperature because you shouldnt? it is a world standard.
- Archelaos 5y ago> UK is the same bad example of choosing using units of measure as US is. The US at least tried to use the metric system.
- merpnderp 5y agoAxios is a US centric media company, so why would you expect them to not use US centric notation? I realize some people have trouble doing the conversion in their head, but most kids in the US learn the formula in grade school, it isn't a big deal. Plus you can just google it.
- JosephRedfern 5y ago> The real question I have is ... who really cares Me, when the term “degrees” is used without further clarification.
- rootusrootus 5y agoI just read the material for context and convert if I need to. This publication is a US publication written for a US audience. In that context their choice makes sense. I can easily convert it to C.
- JosephRedfern 5y agoFair enough. I’m just of the opinion that a single byte of extra data (assuming ASCII) conveys an awful lot of contextual information, and can see few reasons to exclude it.
- falcolas 5y agoRead TFA. The celsius measurement is in the first sentence, listed before the farenheit equivalent. "A weather station in Sicily may have set an all-time high temperature record for all of Europe on Wednesday, when the temperature climbed to a scorching 48.8°C (119.8°F) amid a regional heat wave that has shown few signs of relenting."
- JosephRedfern 5y agoIt’s a single byte of information, maybe 4 at a push. It doesn’t take much to include and avoids a lot of ambiguity.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Nursie 5y agoI think stones for weight is dying out here. Miles per hour, no, that's not going anywhere, nor pints of beer, but it's hard to think of other imperial measurements in day to day use. (and those are real pints, 26% larger than US 'pints'! So it just goes to show the imperial system isn't even consistent across countries. Yet another reason that the ISU/SI is superior...)
- dkdbejwi383 5y agoI’m in my 30s and don’t have a clue what a stone is. Stones is the kind of measurement my parents (who grew up with shillings etc) grew up with, but even my mother uses kilograms these days.
- ortusdux 5y agoFun fact, British gallons are larger than American gallons (160 fl oz vs 128). This makes fuel efficiency comparisons quite confusing. I can't find the article, but one American went as far as suing Volkswagen because he imported a car under the assumption that it would get 80 MPG.
- thebruce87m 5y agoShould have just imported the fuel…
- saeranv 5y agoIt's a complete mess when working on actual engineering tasks, I can't imagine how many hours have been wasted converting/correcting between units used by standards versus projects. There's also abominations like the Energy Efficiency Ratio expressed in Btu/Wh, which yes, you are reading it correctly, is the ratio of energy in IP to energy in SI. I honestly don't understand why something so useless exists. Units actually should mean something. I use them as a quick way of intuiting about physical relationships and something like EER completely removes that intuition and just makes all EER values a stupid number to be memorized.
- davidjgraph 5y agoNot quite true, but mostly. In the UK we're more Imperial than metric, but anyone under the age of 50 will struggle with Fahrenheit. But, our speed limits are miles per hours. More people weigh in stones and pounds than kg. Milk containers are going to litres, but we think in pints.
- bserge 5y agoThe world also uses completely different languages. The 50 states are the exception with English. Just use a fking converter.
- rootusrootus 5y agoIt sometimes seems like we're headed towards standardizing on English, though.
- wil421 5y agoWhy complain? I don't see a lot of comments on HN when the article is from Europe or someone else with the metric system. If you're reading something based in the US expect they will use Imperial measurements.
- dkdbejwi383 5y agoItaly, despite what many “eye-talyan” Americans might believe, is not in the US.
- wil421 5y agoNot sure if you understand that Axios is based in Virginia. HN is based in California Would I except something based in Europe to covert their measurements when talking about an American state or city? No and most would not. Why would a writer convert to something foreign that their audience wouldn’t understand?
- 99_00 5y agoIn Canada, when you go to the grocery store to buy produce they list the price in $/lbs. When you go to the register to pay the price is recorded as $/kg. :(
- dang 5y ago"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html