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Can someone shorten the dollar amount in the title to be less distracting/markety? $155K would be better. "$154,999.89" is as long as "$15,499,989" so it's tr
by fouc 5y ago
Can someone shorten the dollar amount in the title to be less distracting/markety? $155K would be better.
"$154,999.89" is as long as "$15,499,989" so it's tricking the brain into temporarily thinking it might be millions of dollars at first.
- ehPReth 5y agoI didn’t read it that way? Unsure about others though
- nateferrero 5y agoI did... one data point!
- maximedupre 5y agoI guess my subconscious did. It's easy to say that I didn't read it that way after the fact lol But after reading this comment and the title again, I see how that could be a possibility.
- fouc 5y agoIt's a VERY temporary effect, until I see the commas & period. The point is the overall length of the number looks to be in the millions.
- ljm 5y agoI thought I was going to pay almost three thousand dollars a month for a subscription until I saw the punctuation. The point is the overall length of the number looks to be in the thousands. HN, a pretty high quality crowd at the best of times, is confused about numbers now? Fixed point decimals at that! And reacting to that temporary double-take?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dustymcp 5y agoWoulndnt be hackernews if someone didnt complain about a format.
- mikevin 5y agoIts one of my favorite things about HN, changing titles that are confusing or misleading is a small but significant way to keep it clean.
- neom 5y agoIf I see a dollar sign I automatically go to the back and work my way forward, not sure if others who work with finance often do that but I'm pretty sure it's common.
- joecool1029 5y agoCorrected title: "Sentry: We Just Gave ~$155k to Open Source Maintainers" The We Company only takes.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoActually the sum is only 0.00007% away from $155k. (Before parent poster edited their post they had "$~154k").
- joecool1029 5y agoMuphry's law strikes again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law
- ehsankia 5y agoAnd for those curious, the TL;DR of the 11c: > As to the 11¢ offset, we have currency conversion to thank.
- dane-pgp 5y agoCouldn't they have found a nearby open source maintainer and handed them 11 cents? Maybe they don't run a petty cash system.
- asddubs 5y agotypical, you donate 154.99 grand, and people want an additional 11 cents. where does it stop?
- dane-pgp 5y ago> where does it stop? Perhaps after giving each open source project 11 cents? That made me curious about the numbers, and I found a paper which says "Daffara estimates that there were 18,000 active open source projects in September 2007 worldwide"[0] which would mean donating about $2000. Another analysis from 2013 calculated that "87% of projects have 5 or fewer committers per year"[1] so if we unreasonably assume that each developer only works on one project, that might mean 5 times as many developers as projects, so $10,000 to donate 11 cents to every open source developer. [0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1408.4978.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1408.4978.pdf [1] https://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/04/22/the-size-of-open-source-communities-and-its-impact-upon-activity-licensing-and-hosting/ https://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/04/22/the-size-of-open-so...
- ljm 5y agoSentry: We just gave $154,999.89 to Open Source Maintainers HN Cynicism: No, you're donating it wrong
- martimarkov 5y agoSentry: include the cents so if ppl glimpse at it - it looks like way more HN: notices
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- martimarkov 5y agoActually I was wrong. Sentry mentioned the reason: “ As to the 11¢ offset, we have currency conversion to thank.”
- folkrav 5y ago$154999.89 looks like about $154999.89 to me. What is there to notice?
- cercatrova 5y agoTitle has been changed now unfortunately
- ljm 5y agoI'm just a bit disappointed that HN had to simplify the title to satisfy the audience. I'm more disappointed that the suggestion was upvoted enough to distract from any substantial discussion. The title change can bring the discussion back on-topic but this really does feel like a massive brainfart. HN literally decided that a factual number was not appropriate and a sensational milestone is. If you want to argue, "well, they put the .99 cents on the end to confuse people and make it look like they donated 1.5 million instead" then that really only speaks to your own desperation to twist facts and make them sound favourable to your agenda. You're literally admitting to jumping to a conclusion before even processing the information. Sorry, I'm just sad that HN decided that they needed to editorialise this specific title.
- bentlegen 5y agoFWIW, Sentry employee here, I promise nobody here ever planned to present this figure as a means of manipulating readers into thinking we donated millions. The original blog post draft originally had $150,000 in the title, but when the receipts came back and we realized that we "saved" 11 cents, someone jokingly updated the title and we thought it was a cutesy change. That's it.
- whit537 5y agoNext time let's go with "We Just Gave 11¢ Less Than $155,000 to Open Source Maintainers." :smirk:
- fouc 5y agoHonestly, I wasn't expecting the comment to get upvoted to the very top and take away attention from the more deserved discussion. Fortunately it seems like things have gotten corrected now and it's many other comments have risen above it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]