7 ms·

Kind of like how Windows' first-time boot-up greets you with a flat (and totally inappropriate) "Hi" Like fucking seriously, not even "Hello"? "Hi" is how I gr

by tomc1985 4y ago

Kind of like how Windows' first-time boot-up greets you with a flat (and totally inappropriate) "Hi" Like fucking seriously, not even "Hello"? "Hi" is how I greet the coworker I don't really even like that much. Whenever I see this I think of the Argonian NPCs from Oblivion, who would also greet you with a very flat "Hi" "Greetings," "Salutations," even "Welcome!" would be a better choice here.

catlifeonmars 4y ago
FWIW I don’t think that hi/hello have different connotations of formality. I use both interchangeably.
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  For me they definitely do. Hi is much more casual.
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    This. Both are informal greetings, but "hi" is more informal. Mostly interchangeable, but I tend not to use "hello" much - usually either "hi" when passing a peer in the hallway or "good morning/afternoon" if I need to be a bit more formal. FWIW, I was raised in the US, but with Scottish parents, so my speech & vocabulary differ a bit from most Americans.
PinkMilkshake 4y ago
That might be specific to where you are from. I can only speak for Australia and New Zealand, but "Hi" is perfectly acceptable. Unnecessarily formal speech can come across as disingenuous, and maybe a little patronizing. Although the same is true for overly familiar speech as well.
- checkyoursudo 4y ago
  I say hi in Germany all the time, which even has a formal form of interpersonal communication, and I never even get a second look from anyone. I say hi or hej on purpose because I am trying to teach Germans to be more efficient (some say moin, which is decent). If hi is fine here, then it is certainly fine in any English-speaking country/company. :)
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  New Zealand doesn't have formality. People don't even wear shoes. I realise I'm supposed to think it's charming but it's always made me cringe.
rodgerd 4y ago
The Hi bugs me not a bit. The "All your things are just where you left them" during a major upgrade? That gives me the shits.
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  That screen was so bad. I loved hearing anecdotes about folk seeing it and then subsequently discovering data loss.
petters 4y ago
> "Hi" is how I greet the coworker I don't really even like that much. Interesting. Sounds like I should stop saying "hi." That is the default in my native language but I work in an American company.
- checkyoursudo 4y ago
  Nah. Hi is fine. So are hey, hullo, hallo, and in some casual companies and especially with friendly co-workers, even "yo" and "\'sup". But seriously, hi is fine. There's nothing wrong with it. I personally think it is friendlier than hello, and it is certainly more efficient, which is why I say hi in Germany when people say "hallo" to me. Like, seriously, 2 syllables to say hi? So inefficient.
sgtnoodle 4y ago
"All your files are exactly where you left them," it would be an awful shame if something happened to them...
npteljes 4y ago
Also, that animation looks 100% like how they portrayed your computer being hacked in movies. You know, when the UI completely disappears and the only thing you see on the screen is the message that the hacker wants you to see.
zerocrates 4y ago
I don't know, is the familiar "Hi" all that different from, say, the "Happy Mac"?
Joker_vD 4y ago
Windows XP used to have "Welcome". It was a better choice... in the English version, that is. Apparently properly translating that word was difficult because e.g. in Russian version it said something that'd be roughly equivalent to "a welcoming" in English: they've used the word that means "greeting" but can not by itself serve as a greeting. The overall effect was that you were left mildly puzzled: "did they just forget to put an actual greeting in there or?.."
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mananaysiempre 4y ago
  What software translators (who are usually outside contractors) get is a list of strings with no context, no opportunity to ask what was really meant (including part of speech—blame English—and the intended meaning of this or that %s), and frozen code even if the programmers screwed up (show of hands—ever built up a sentence out of interpolated parts? there, you screwed up). If you’re lucky, you get English string IDs (and not Chinese or numeric ones). If you’re lucky, the list is complete and in order (and not stripped down to only the untranslated parts so you don’t see how much the agency is avoiding paying you). If you’re lucky, the customer has an localizaton QA department (i.e. a couple of guys per language) which will walk through the UI to try and find the most obvious screwups (and won’t not just merge the Trados back into the source and run the resource compiler). Every professional involved understands it’s impossible to get a good translation that way. None of them can do anything about it, because the agency will just switch to a less picky one. The good ones try to make something of what they’re given; the bad ones just give up. Almost none of them actually use localized software; almost every one of them looks on wistfully when you show them the Gnome sources with the paragraph-long TRANSLATORS: explanations for every other string. (That’s why Crowdin and Transifex drive me into such rage, BTW—they essentially reproduce the commercial broken-by-design process for hobby developers.) You know what the most recent innovation is? Have the translator edit a machine translation. Give your translator something to work with. And for goodness’s sake, if you can afford it, find a couple of freelancers and listen to them—that’s who is going to do the work anyway, might as well give them the whole sum and not the ≤ 30% they will get after the agencies’ cut. (Yes, a small but sizeable portion of candidates will be blatantly incompetent and/or try to screw you over. Duh. It’s a freelancer market.)
wink 4y ago
I'd find "Salutations" much more apt to a fantasy role playing game than an OS, but I'm not a native speaker. I'd still be chuckling all day, I guess.
- acid__ 4y ago
  No need to qualify your statement, as a native speaker myself I can confirm your assessment is 100% on point.
throwamon 4y ago
> "Greetings," "Salutations" And this is why HN shouldn't be taken seriously for user-facing design decisions.
- humantorso 4y ago
  Right? So off the mark, I don't think they were near it to begin with.
  - tomc1985 4y ago
    Maybe it's the prevailing trend among non-HN people that sucks.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
I'm kind of voting for "stop right there, criminal scum!" If the greeting is going to be tonally inappropriate, why not go all in, right?
- nerdawson 4y ago
  Windows used to have an error message that read “This program has performed an illegal operation…”. Your suggestion would have fit in perfectly.
  - datavirtue 4y ago
    My grandma called me in a panic for this one.
- grog454 4y ago
  I kind of like the idea that someone who shouldn't be on my computer would also see that.
Aloha 4y ago
I mean, your work computer is usually a co-worker you don't like that much (because it never quite does the thing I want), isn't it? Heck, I'd say that about my home computers too. The computer for me is like the co-worker that does almost, but not exactly what I'd like it to do except when they do, the guy thats a little awkward when you run into them in unexpected situations, but he works pretty hard and works at least as many hours as you do.. except when they don't.
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  I view my work computer as a manifestation of half a century of highly technical work by millions of brilliant engineers, each and every one of them doing a slightly crappy job.
naikrovek 4y ago
the importance of "hi" vs. "hello" is so low, so far down the list of bad messages that it's on the part of the long strip of paper that it is located about halfway back from its trip to the moon. this is what you choose to complain about? your life must be exceptionally trouble-free.
- _ktx2 4y ago
  Just taking a step back here, I'm willing to bet OP and some of the other folks replying (like here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32338845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32338845) are just fulfilling predictions made here: https://spectrum.ieee.org/study-nobody-wants-social-robots-that-look-like-humans https://spectrum.ieee.org/study-nobody-wants-social-robots-t... This piece focused on a machines appearance, but later they comment that really what's at the root of peoples issues (the people that have them) is that they resent the anthropomophizing of machines in general - which I would take to include speech.
- triyambakam 4y ago
  This is an internet forum (kinda), ya know?
- josefx 4y ago
  It is bad enough that it fucking talks. First time I encountered that it screamed at me from the other side of the building because someone at Microsoft decided greeting new users with speakers turned to eleven is welcoming.
- toyg 4y ago
  Well, you chose to complain about somebody complaining about an item you deem trivial - so, by your own premise, your comment is effectively "$trivial ^ 3".
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tomc1985 4y ago
  They're trying to come off as friendly and inviting, but I read it as half-assed. Perception is a bitch. If I had my way we'd dispense with all these stupid pleasantries. My computer is not my friend, Windows is not my friend, and Microsoft and their awful marketing droids (who almost certainly guided their choice of words here) are most definitely not my friend. Who decided that Windows needs to talk to me like a middle-aged soccer mom (or an argonian shopkeeper)? Nothing wrong with "Welcome", "Error 404: File Not Found", "Bad command or file name", etc etc etc. (Ok, maybe the last one is a bit cryptic, but it is telling me exactly what went wrong without any fluff, which is how all software should be.) Computers are our servants, not our friends. They should act like it, and we should stop trying to humanize them.
JTbane 4y ago
love it when Windows crashes and you get the classic: :( Something went wrong.
- tomc1985 4y ago
  I miss the bluescreens that didn't have emoticons
  - sgtnoodle 4y ago
    I don't mind the sad face in that context. It shows they know they let you down. I maintain a build system at work, and I have it display an ASCII nuclear blast when folk pass in command line arguments that are known to be "dangerous".
- FillardMillmore 4y ago
  When did that sad-face blue screen start? I'm thinking it was Windows 8

catlifeonmars 4y ago

FWIW I don’t think that hi/hello have different connotations of formality. I use both interchangeably.

LAC-Tech 4y ago
For me they definitely do. Hi is much more casual.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  This. Both are informal greetings, but "hi" is more informal. Mostly interchangeable, but I tend not to use "hello" much - usually either "hi" when passing a peer in the hallway or "good morning/afternoon" if I need to be a bit more formal. FWIW, I was raised in the US, but with Scottish parents, so my speech & vocabulary differ a bit from most Americans.

PinkMilkshake 4y ago

That might be specific to where you are from. I can only speak for Australia and New Zealand, but "Hi" is perfectly acceptable. Unnecessarily formal speech can come across as disingenuous, and maybe a little patronizing. Although the same is true for overly familiar speech as well.

checkyoursudo 4y ago
I say hi in Germany all the time, which even has a formal form of interpersonal communication, and I never even get a second look from anyone. I say hi or hej on purpose because I am trying to teach Germans to be more efficient (some say moin, which is decent). If hi is fine here, then it is certainly fine in any English-speaking country/company. :)
LAC-Tech 4y ago
New Zealand doesn't have formality. People don't even wear shoes. I realise I'm supposed to think it's charming but it's always made me cringe.

rodgerd 4y ago

The Hi bugs me not a bit. The "All your things are just where you left them" during a major upgrade? That gives me the shits.

sgtnoodle 4y ago
That screen was so bad. I loved hearing anecdotes about folk seeing it and then subsequently discovering data loss.

petters 4y ago

> "Hi" is how I greet the coworker I don't really even like that much. Interesting. Sounds like I should stop saying "hi." That is the default in my native language but I work in an American company.

checkyoursudo 4y ago
Nah. Hi is fine. So are hey, hullo, hallo, and in some casual companies and especially with friendly co-workers, even "yo" and "\'sup". But seriously, hi is fine. There's nothing wrong with it. I personally think it is friendlier than hello, and it is certainly more efficient, which is why I say hi in Germany when people say "hallo" to me. Like, seriously, 2 syllables to say hi? So inefficient.

sgtnoodle 4y ago

"All your files are exactly where you left them," it would be an awful shame if something happened to them...

npteljes 4y ago

Also, that animation looks 100% like how they portrayed your computer being hacked in movies. You know, when the UI completely disappears and the only thing you see on the screen is the message that the hacker wants you to see.

zerocrates 4y ago

I don't know, is the familiar "Hi" all that different from, say, the "Happy Mac"?

Joker_vD 4y ago

Windows XP used to have "Welcome". It was a better choice... in the English version, that is. Apparently properly translating that word was difficult because e.g. in Russian version it said something that'd be roughly equivalent to "a welcoming" in English: they've used the word that means "greeting" but can not by itself serve as a greeting. The overall effect was that you were left mildly puzzled: "did they just forget to put an actual greeting in there or?.."

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mananaysiempre 4y ago
What software translators (who are usually outside contractors) get is a list of strings with no context, no opportunity to ask what was really meant (including part of speech—blame English—and the intended meaning of this or that %s), and frozen code even if the programmers screwed up (show of hands—ever built up a sentence out of interpolated parts? there, you screwed up). If you’re lucky, you get English string IDs (and not Chinese or numeric ones). If you’re lucky, the list is complete and in order (and not stripped down to only the untranslated parts so you don’t see how much the agency is avoiding paying you). If you’re lucky, the customer has an localizaton QA department (i.e. a couple of guys per language) which will walk through the UI to try and find the most obvious screwups (and won’t not just merge the Trados back into the source and run the resource compiler). Every professional involved understands it’s impossible to get a good translation that way. None of them can do anything about it, because the agency will just switch to a less picky one. The good ones try to make something of what they’re given; the bad ones just give up. Almost none of them actually use localized software; almost every one of them looks on wistfully when you show them the Gnome sources with the paragraph-long TRANSLATORS: explanations for every other string. (That’s why Crowdin and Transifex drive me into such rage, BTW—they essentially reproduce the commercial broken-by-design process for hobby developers.) You know what the most recent innovation is? Have the translator edit a machine translation. Give your translator something to work with. And for goodness’s sake, if you can afford it, find a couple of freelancers and listen to them—that’s who is going to do the work anyway, might as well give them the whole sum and not the ≤ 30% they will get after the agencies’ cut. (Yes, a small but sizeable portion of candidates will be blatantly incompetent and/or try to screw you over. Duh. It’s a freelancer market.)

wink 4y ago

I'd find "Salutations" much more apt to a fantasy role playing game than an OS, but I'm not a native speaker. I'd still be chuckling all day, I guess.

acid__ 4y ago
No need to qualify your statement, as a native speaker myself I can confirm your assessment is 100% on point.

throwamon 4y ago

> "Greetings," "Salutations" And this is why HN shouldn't be taken seriously for user-facing design decisions.

humantorso 4y ago
Right? So off the mark, I don't think they were near it to begin with.
- tomc1985 4y ago
  Maybe it's the prevailing trend among non-HN people that sucks.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

I'm kind of voting for "stop right there, criminal scum!" If the greeting is going to be tonally inappropriate, why not go all in, right?

nerdawson 4y ago
Windows used to have an error message that read “This program has performed an illegal operation…”. Your suggestion would have fit in perfectly.
- datavirtue 4y ago
  My grandma called me in a panic for this one.
grog454 4y ago
I kind of like the idea that someone who shouldn't be on my computer would also see that.

Aloha 4y ago

I mean, your work computer is usually a co-worker you don't like that much (because it never quite does the thing I want), isn't it? Heck, I'd say that about my home computers too. The computer for me is like the co-worker that does almost, but not exactly what I'd like it to do except when they do, the guy thats a little awkward when you run into them in unexpected situations, but he works pretty hard and works at least as many hours as you do.. except when they don't.

sgtnoodle 4y ago
I view my work computer as a manifestation of half a century of highly technical work by millions of brilliant engineers, each and every one of them doing a slightly crappy job.

naikrovek 4y ago

the importance of "hi" vs. "hello" is so low, so far down the list of bad messages that it's on the part of the long strip of paper that it is located about halfway back from its trip to the moon. this is what you choose to complain about? your life must be exceptionally trouble-free.

_ktx2 4y ago
Just taking a step back here, I'm willing to bet OP and some of the other folks replying (like here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32338845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32338845) are just fulfilling predictions made here: https://spectrum.ieee.org/study-nobody-wants-social-robots-that-look-like-humans https://spectrum.ieee.org/study-nobody-wants-social-robots-t... This piece focused on a machines appearance, but later they comment that really what's at the root of peoples issues (the people that have them) is that they resent the anthropomophizing of machines in general - which I would take to include speech.
triyambakam 4y ago
This is an internet forum (kinda), ya know?
josefx 4y ago
It is bad enough that it fucking talks. First time I encountered that it screamed at me from the other side of the building because someone at Microsoft decided greeting new users with speakers turned to eleven is welcoming.
toyg 4y ago
Well, you chose to complain about somebody complaining about an item you deem trivial - so, by your own premise, your comment is effectively "$trivial ^ 3".
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tomc1985 4y ago
They're trying to come off as friendly and inviting, but I read it as half-assed. Perception is a bitch. If I had my way we'd dispense with all these stupid pleasantries. My computer is not my friend, Windows is not my friend, and Microsoft and their awful marketing droids (who almost certainly guided their choice of words here) are most definitely not my friend. Who decided that Windows needs to talk to me like a middle-aged soccer mom (or an argonian shopkeeper)? Nothing wrong with "Welcome", "Error 404: File Not Found", "Bad command or file name", etc etc etc. (Ok, maybe the last one is a bit cryptic, but it is telling me exactly what went wrong without any fluff, which is how all software should be.) Computers are our servants, not our friends. They should act like it, and we should stop trying to humanize them.

JTbane 4y ago

love it when Windows crashes and you get the classic: :( Something went wrong.

tomc1985 4y ago
I miss the bluescreens that didn't have emoticons
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  I don't mind the sad face in that context. It shows they know they let you down. I maintain a build system at work, and I have it display an ASCII nuclear blast when folk pass in command line arguments that are known to be "dangerous".
FillardMillmore 4y ago
When did that sad-face blue screen start? I'm thinking it was Windows 8