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The difference between 185 million ft^2 and whatever you pick doesn't matter. It may as well be in hectares or "multiples of some lake somewhere", it's a massiv

The difference between 185 million ft^2 and whatever you pick doesn't matter. It may as well be in hectares or "multiples of some lake somewhere", it's a massive number. You have, and are probably using right now, a voice controlled computer that can convert anything to anything else, by just asking. Is it really worth typing this every time an American site uses American language? We all get it, Americans with their imperial units, ha ha.

usui 5y ago
I think you might have missed that I already stated that it's an irrational thing to complain about because units in nature are arbitrary, but given that no one uses these units for the topic at hand, why use them at all? Just for relatability? > It may as well be in hectares or "multiples of some lake somewhere", it's a massive number. We're saying the same thing but arguing for the opposite. Like I said, no one in a technical capacity uses these units seriously. So then if the number is so conceptually massively big and the units don't matter, why go through the extra forced effort of converting to imperial? Just use the units that the specifications come in and the numbers that the factories use? The more you play with vast unit conversions like this, the more you risk losing information across sources/citations. What if I want to do my own research later on? It's more work if I'm searching for specific numbers on Google. We also know just how terrible Google Search results are getting nowadays, so... > We all get it, Americans with their imperial units, ha ha. I think this is an uncharitable interpretation of my comment. I'm not trying to make fun of Americans, I'm trying to understand what the extra efort is worth for?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- cptskippy 5y ago
  > why use them at all? Just for relatability? Yes. Was that hard? The WSJ didn't write this article for you, it isn't an industry rag. This is like complaining that their scientific articles try to dumb it down for a layman's depth. A football field or soccer field is a perfectly reasonable unit of measure when you're simply trying to convey "a lot" to someone.
  - trangus_1985 5y ago
    I don't particularly agree with the parent comment, but you are being oddly aggressive over something that is a real problem - communicating things is hard and it's a useful topic to consider in a world that increasingly runs on text-based communication.
    - cptskippy 5y ago
      Insulting and making fun of people because they have a problem isn't helpful but ok, but responding "aggressively" to insults is bad?
      - scrollaway 5y ago
        I don't see any insults or "making fun of people" in the comments you're responding to. You're choosing to see that. Apply the Principle of good faith and you'll see you're the one getting worked up over nothing...
        cptskippy 5y ago
        I'm sorry you feel like I'm worked up but please don't put that on me. I've linked to the OP's original comment but to paraphrase: "LOL, I can't take anyone seriously when they use Imperial units. It's unprofessional." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28449058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28449058
        dang 5y ago
        Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN, regardless of how badly someone else is behaving or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. They include: "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - OJFord 5y ago
- elefanten 5y ago
  Yes, in short it's for relatability. You're talking about a general circulation newspaper -- and one of the very biggest at that. At the end of the day, their customer is the general American news consumer, and what they read has to make sense to them. A technical or industry-aware American probably won't go to WSJ first for their technical / industry news.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- cptskippy 5y ago
  > I'm not trying to make fun of Americans, I'm trying to understand what the extra efort is worth for? Quit being dishonest. You're not trying to understand because it's really fucking easy to understand. If you really truly want an answer, it's relatablity. If you ask the vast majority of Americans how many centimeters are in a foot, you'll get blank stares. If you ask them how long 30 centimeters are you'll get blank stares. If you ask them how long a foot is they'll hold up their hands about a foot apart. Americans use imperial units because it's what they used daily, what they're familiar with, and what they know. It's really not that hard to understand. Think about if you had to switch from Metric to Imperial. Just think about all the wonky units and how overwhelming it would be. That's how Americans think about the Metric system. But it's easy you say, everything is 100 up or down. So? That doesn't help with the simple fact that it's completely unrelatable.
  - usui 5y ago
    > Quit being dishonest. You're not trying to understand because it's really fucking easy to understand. Again, being very disingenuous. I'm sorry that it's so offensive to you that I was reading the article in Japanese and found it very strange that imperial units were leaking across not only domain topics (semiconductors), but language itself. If you ask me, it's more obtrusive this way than the other way around. I thought it wouldn't be too much of an ask to use the original units that the entire industry uses This touts a certain kind of agenda that Americans should be pandered to, and I think your aggressive tone reflects that. I hope you're aware that a very well-supported Japanese edition of The Wall Street Journal exists, and its target audience is Japanese readers. It usually handles localization extremely well. I was reading the non-English article and saw it was using imperial units both in the text and graphs and I had to do a double take. This is the entire reason why I found it interesting. https://jp.wsj.com/articles/the-chip-shortage-has-made-a-star-of-this-little-known-component-11630992492 https://jp.wsj.com/articles/the-chip-shortage-has-made-a-sta... As previously mentioned, the scale is massively big. Does the WSJ think its viewers will perceive 17,187,062 square meters as small?
    - cptskippy 5y ago
      > I'm sorry that it's so offensive to you Let's clarify. You're sorry that I find your insults offensive? > Lol every time I see the word "feet" I'm reminded that this article isn't targeted to anyone but Americans > I absolutely have never had to use those units in a serious professional context. > Any time I see a technically-sounding article use units like "feet" and "football fields" I subconsciously find it very difficult to take anything afterward seriously. You basically said "the American units of measure are unprofessional and I can't take anyone seriously when they use them" and you wonder why that might be offensive? You're reading an American newspaper about things topical to Americans. Are you reading it for laughs then? I don't understand. It's ok to not like the Imperial system, most Americans hate it too. And we're stuck with it until momentum can built to change that fact. But what you're exhibiting is elitism and snobbery.
marcosdumay 5y ago
Funny, because it's about 1700Ha, what is a perfectly relatable number, or, if you like your numbers small, 1.7km^2. That's around the size of a district.
amelius 5y ago
> You have, and are probably using right now, a voice controlled computer that can convert anything to anything else, by just asking. There should be a browser plugin that automatically converts units behind the scenes.
mulmen 5y ago
> We all get it, Americans with their imperial units, ha ha. It's really very tired. Americans don't even use Imperial units. We use United States Customary Units [1] which are more like siblings to Imperial units than offspring. United States customary units have been based on familiar Metric units since the Mendenhall Order in 1893. School children in the United States have studied the metric system for generations. The United States was one of the original 17 signatories of the Metre Convention in 1875. As far as I can tell no commonwealth countries were early adopters. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units
- throwaway210222 5y ago
  > We use United States Customary Units Actually no, not for potential difference, current, resistance, impedance, luminosity, amount-ofsubstance … For those you use the SI units. Its just length, mass, (plus force and torque). Not far to go.
  - mulmen 5y ago
    The United States does not use "Imperial" units. We use some Customary Units that are defined in terms of SI units and share names with some Imperial units. The point is that saying "The United States uses Imperial Units" is, generously, ignorant.
    - Taniwha 5y ago
      yes - for example a US fluid Oz is different from everywhere else, as is a cup, a pint, a Venti (twenty what?) and many of the units used in cooking - using American recipes without translation can produce crap - Imperial fluid ounces are totally different largely due tax politics of the 1700/1800s
      - mulmen 5y ago
        Venti is not a US Customary Unit.
sandworm101 5y ago
"185 million ft^2" and "185 million square feet" are two radically different numbers. One is a square 35 thousand miles on each side. The other is a square 2.6 miles each side.
- bruce343434 5y ago
  You're thinking of a "(185 million feet) square"

usui 5y ago

I think you might have missed that I already stated that it's an irrational thing to complain about because units in nature are arbitrary, but given that no one uses these units for the topic at hand, why use them at all? Just for relatability? > It may as well be in hectares or "multiples of some lake somewhere", it's a massive number. We're saying the same thing but arguing for the opposite. Like I said, no one in a technical capacity uses these units seriously. So then if the number is so conceptually massively big and the units don't matter, why go through the extra forced effort of converting to imperial? Just use the units that the specifications come in and the numbers that the factories use? The more you play with vast unit conversions like this, the more you risk losing information across sources/citations. What if I want to do my own research later on? It's more work if I'm searching for specific numbers on Google. We also know just how terrible Google Search results are getting nowadays, so... > We all get it, Americans with their imperial units, ha ha. I think this is an uncharitable interpretation of my comment. I'm not trying to make fun of Americans, I'm trying to understand what the extra efort is worth for?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cptskippy 5y ago
> why use them at all? Just for relatability? Yes. Was that hard? The WSJ didn't write this article for you, it isn't an industry rag. This is like complaining that their scientific articles try to dumb it down for a layman's depth. A football field or soccer field is a perfectly reasonable unit of measure when you're simply trying to convey "a lot" to someone.
- trangus_1985 5y ago
  I don't particularly agree with the parent comment, but you are being oddly aggressive over something that is a real problem - communicating things is hard and it's a useful topic to consider in a world that increasingly runs on text-based communication.
  - cptskippy 5y ago
    Insulting and making fun of people because they have a problem isn't helpful but ok, but responding "aggressively" to insults is bad?
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      I don't see any insults or "making fun of people" in the comments you're responding to. You're choosing to see that. Apply the Principle of good faith and you'll see you're the one getting worked up over nothing...
      - cptskippy 5y ago
        I'm sorry you feel like I'm worked up but please don't put that on me. I've linked to the OP's original comment but to paraphrase: "LOL, I can't take anyone seriously when they use Imperial units. It's unprofessional." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28449058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28449058
      - dang 5y ago
        Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN, regardless of how badly someone else is behaving or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. They include: "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- OJFord 5y ago
elefanten 5y ago
Yes, in short it's for relatability. You're talking about a general circulation newspaper -- and one of the very biggest at that. At the end of the day, their customer is the general American news consumer, and what they read has to make sense to them. A technical or industry-aware American probably won't go to WSJ first for their technical / industry news.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
cptskippy 5y ago
> I'm not trying to make fun of Americans, I'm trying to understand what the extra efort is worth for? Quit being dishonest. You're not trying to understand because it's really fucking easy to understand. If you really truly want an answer, it's relatablity. If you ask the vast majority of Americans how many centimeters are in a foot, you'll get blank stares. If you ask them how long 30 centimeters are you'll get blank stares. If you ask them how long a foot is they'll hold up their hands about a foot apart. Americans use imperial units because it's what they used daily, what they're familiar with, and what they know. It's really not that hard to understand. Think about if you had to switch from Metric to Imperial. Just think about all the wonky units and how overwhelming it would be. That's how Americans think about the Metric system. But it's easy you say, everything is 100 up or down. So? That doesn't help with the simple fact that it's completely unrelatable.
- usui 5y ago
  > Quit being dishonest. You're not trying to understand because it's really fucking easy to understand. Again, being very disingenuous. I'm sorry that it's so offensive to you that I was reading the article in Japanese and found it very strange that imperial units were leaking across not only domain topics (semiconductors), but language itself. If you ask me, it's more obtrusive this way than the other way around. I thought it wouldn't be too much of an ask to use the original units that the entire industry uses This touts a certain kind of agenda that Americans should be pandered to, and I think your aggressive tone reflects that. I hope you're aware that a very well-supported Japanese edition of The Wall Street Journal exists, and its target audience is Japanese readers. It usually handles localization extremely well. I was reading the non-English article and saw it was using imperial units both in the text and graphs and I had to do a double take. This is the entire reason why I found it interesting. https://jp.wsj.com/articles/the-chip-shortage-has-made-a-star-of-this-little-known-component-11630992492 https://jp.wsj.com/articles/the-chip-shortage-has-made-a-sta... As previously mentioned, the scale is massively big. Does the WSJ think its viewers will perceive 17,187,062 square meters as small?
  - cptskippy 5y ago
    > I'm sorry that it's so offensive to you Let's clarify. You're sorry that I find your insults offensive? > Lol every time I see the word "feet" I'm reminded that this article isn't targeted to anyone but Americans > I absolutely have never had to use those units in a serious professional context. > Any time I see a technically-sounding article use units like "feet" and "football fields" I subconsciously find it very difficult to take anything afterward seriously. You basically said "the American units of measure are unprofessional and I can't take anyone seriously when they use them" and you wonder why that might be offensive? You're reading an American newspaper about things topical to Americans. Are you reading it for laughs then? I don't understand. It's ok to not like the Imperial system, most Americans hate it too. And we're stuck with it until momentum can built to change that fact. But what you're exhibiting is elitism and snobbery.

marcosdumay 5y ago

Funny, because it's about 1700Ha, what is a perfectly relatable number, or, if you like your numbers small, 1.7km^2. That's around the size of a district.

amelius 5y ago

> You have, and are probably using right now, a voice controlled computer that can convert anything to anything else, by just asking. There should be a browser plugin that automatically converts units behind the scenes.

mulmen 5y ago

> We all get it, Americans with their imperial units, ha ha. It's really very tired. Americans don't even use Imperial units. We use United States Customary Units [1] which are more like siblings to Imperial units than offspring. United States customary units have been based on familiar Metric units since the Mendenhall Order in 1893. School children in the United States have studied the metric system for generations. The United States was one of the original 17 signatories of the Metre Convention in 1875. As far as I can tell no commonwealth countries were early adopters. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units

throwaway210222 5y ago
> We use United States Customary Units Actually no, not for potential difference, current, resistance, impedance, luminosity, amount-ofsubstance … For those you use the SI units. Its just length, mass, (plus force and torque). Not far to go.
- mulmen 5y ago
  The United States does not use "Imperial" units. We use some Customary Units that are defined in terms of SI units and share names with some Imperial units. The point is that saying "The United States uses Imperial Units" is, generously, ignorant.
  - Taniwha 5y ago
    yes - for example a US fluid Oz is different from everywhere else, as is a cup, a pint, a Venti (twenty what?) and many of the units used in cooking - using American recipes without translation can produce crap - Imperial fluid ounces are totally different largely due tax politics of the 1700/1800s
    - mulmen 5y ago
      Venti is not a US Customary Unit.

sandworm101 5y ago

"185 million ft^2" and "185 million square feet" are two radically different numbers. One is a square 35 thousand miles on each side. The other is a square 2.6 miles each side.

bruce343434 5y ago
You're thinking of a "(185 million feet) square"