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The number of US tech businesses that are surprised they need, or think they can ignore the need, to obey employment and data protection laws when working in ot
by GJim 2y ago
The number of US tech businesses that are surprised they need, or think they can ignore the need, to obey employment and data protection laws when working in other jurisdictions is simply bonkers.
- xxs 2y agoWell, it'd be a lot easier if most US entities understood that M/d/yy(yy) format is rare, or that default to Frankenstein degrees is pretty much the same/awkward (even Microsoft reset their weather widget to F on regular basis). The root of issue, not understanding local laws/culture, is very similar - surrounded by a vast market/culture (US +Canada) dulls your senses for the rest of the globe.
- ed_elliott_asc 2y agoI thought Frankenstein degrees was a clever complaint about us companies wanting degrees for tech jobs
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago> surrounded by a vast market/culture (US +Canada) US companies don't think about Canada as anything but an afterthought, and struggle with the same issues here that you just mentioned. Canada is metric, uses different spellings (closer to UK English.. colour, not color [Chrome just marked my spelling as wrong despite me having Canadian English as my setting]) and is officially bilingual with localization laws requiring companies to provide French versions for certain kinds of services. US companies either don't bother, or usually get this entirely wrong. e.g. It's been how many years? And navigation on Android / Google Maps can't pronounce French names for streets/places while driving around in bilingual places in Canada. Just completely butchers them, their system can't "understand" the concept that you could have your language set to English but still need to hear French place names, or vice versa.
- aziaziazi 2y agoGoogle Nest prononciation of EN songs names in middle of sentence in other language was fun to ear. It’s been a wile it does pretty well (way better than at the beginning at least) so they probably have the tech to achieve street names prononciation.
- cmrdporcupine 2y agoAs I said elsewhere, it handles Spanish place names etc perfectly fine while driving around California. So, comes down to motivation / $$ it seems.
- dustincoates 2y ago> And navigation on Android / Google Maps can't pronounce French names for streets/places while driving around in bilingual places in Canada. Honestly, I think this is the right approach, and I'm speaking as a bilingual French/English speaker. Google Maps doesn't know that you are bilingual. So it has two choices: pronounce words the "right" (i.e., native) way, or pronounce them the "English" way. If someone who is unused to hearing the native pronunciation, their understanding is going to be impeded. Google Maps tells you for example to turn onto Passage du Grand Cerf in a French accent, a non-Francophone is going to have a harder time finding that. (Now, okay, maybe you should have a way to say that you're bilingual and want to hear the French pronunciation, but I understand why they don't do it.)
- iforgotpassword 2y agoI agree. I would guess it might not be that difficult for Canadian people as they are all to some degree exposed and as such familiar with both languages' sounds. But I remember the first couple times I was in China a good decade ago, it was much easier for me take the older subway lines than the newer ones in Beijing. On the old lines, they had what sounded like a native English speaker do the announcements of the upcoming station, including the station name. On the newer ones it sounds like they just recorded the "we're arriving at" bit once and then spliced in the read-by-a-Chinese station name, which is much harder to understand as a foreigner. So on the new lines I was constantly staring at the displays.
- cmrdporcupine 2y agoHuh? No, when driving in Quebec or Ottawa etc, there might be an "English" way to pronounce the names (like the kind of thing my anglo self would use, bad pronounciation but making an attempt), but it doesn't do that... it actually just reads out this weird literal phonetic output as if it was an English word and it's unrecognizable to anybody from the area or anybody who grew up in Canada and has a basic idea of how these words are pronounced. Even, like, names ... Duplessis or Cartier or whatever... just completely unrecognizable. Or take the way it reads out the exits off the 401 in Toronto, reading the full bilingual sign (where there is one) with the English first and then the French part as if it was a continuation ... in English ("Sud" read out like you'd say that if it was an English word, hard D and everything.) Clearly, they should just drop the French part, but their system can't comprehend that a sign could be bilingual. Because America. Look, I don't speak French, I'm not bilingual, and it drives me nuts when I'm in QC or even just Ottawa etc. I literally can't tell what street it's talking about, it doesn't correspond with the sign. It's incoherent. What's mind boggling is that Google navigation is completely fine reading out Spanish words when I drive around California. C'mon.
- xxs 2y agoThe spelling of +Canada is very much on purpose (no space). I am very much aware Canada is metric and bilingual. Due to the proximity of US (tooling/documentation), lots of the trades still operate in non-metric (or some unholy combo). Most folks would be a lot more familiar of PSI when it comes to tyre pressure (compared to bars), etc. I don't know if L/100km is the standard unit to measure fuel consumption (efficiency).
- cmrdporcupine 2y agoL/100km is standard, especially because our roads use km measurements. I use both KPa and PSI. Measure my personal weight in pounds, but doctor and etc work in kg. Trades people work in both, by necessity. (My father was a machinist / tool&die maker who trained in Germany... drove him nuts). It's just the reality of "sleeping with the elephant" as the expression goes here. We just have it worse than Europe.
- Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago> default to Frankenstein degrees That's Fronkensteen.
- ivlad 2y agoI acquainted with a guy at a conference in US and he was genuinely surprised I had no idea, how long US mile is. I explained him, we use metric system and his response was “but don’t you learn *the standard* system in ache school?” I did not know, how to respond.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> we use metric system and his response was “but don’t you learn *the standard* system in ache school?” I did not know, how to respond It’s just a difference in travel and seniority. If you aren’t talking across continents there is no need to speak two languages.
- simiones 2y ago> If you aren’t talking across continents there is no need to speak two languages Continents have nothing to do with this. If you live in the UK and need to talk to people in the USA and Australia, you can be monolingual and still speak with people in three continents. If you live in Switzerland, you may need to speak 3 languages just to be able to talk with all your neighbors.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoLanguages as in knowing two systems. Sort of like how most people don’t need to know international date or thousands/decimal separator conventions, but those functioning internationally—whether due to being well travelled or senior enough to conduct international trade and/or relations—do. My going to a conference in India and arguing over the lakh/crore system isn’t useful to anyone [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system
- simiones 2y agoEven then, continents have little to do with it. The Indian numbering system is indeed used in much of Asia - but it's not used in Russia for example. If you live in Vladivostok, you might need to learn these two systems even if you never do business with anyone farther than 300km from you. And in Europe there are numerous differences between countries of this kind - Germans and a few others use different number separators (1,000 is 1000 in France or the UK or Spain, but 1 in Germany or Romania). Several places drive on opposite sides of the road. The UK uses many imperial units. I'm sure there are others I haven't even come across yet.
- jpambrun 2y agoI am not sure it's fair to include Canada in the same basket. We don't use freedom degrees, we know that numbers should start with the most significant digits and I believe liability waivers have no value here as well.
- ano-ther 2y ago> numbers should start with the most significant digits Am curious: where does that not happen in the US? (And in parts of Canada they say 4-20-10 to mean 90 :-)
- jpambrun 2y agoI know I am in Quebec and speak French. I would prefer the Belgian way of octante/nonante. L. It happens with dates and makes them unsortable.
- BrandoElFollito 2y ago4-20-10 (quatre vingt dix) is weird for non-French speakers, as "siedemdziesiat" is weird to non-Polish speakers, or any other word in a foreign language. To us French this is a word like others, it's not like we are calculating in our heads. Belgians have "septante" which is more logical but they do not calculate either.
- xxs 2y agoI did respond to another comment. The punctuation was very much on purpose, "+Canada", w/o the leading space to denote that there is a separation.
- raverbashing 2y ago> f most US entities understood that M/d/yy(yy) format is rare The worse offender on this I suspect it's Apple. Where half of their localization stuff doesn't work or works in a weird way
- account42 2y agoIt even affects open source projects like KDE: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=340982 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=340982
- tracker1 2y agoI always prefer, default to, and advocate for yyyy-MM-dd format for dates to avoid confusion. Once you're used to them, no other format will do. Also, files with such names (backups, etc) will also be in a natural order.
- account42 2y agoRFC 3339 / ISO 8601 FTW!
- BrandoElFollito 2y agoI started to refuse to accept any document that does not have the YYYY-MM-DD format, and time as HH:MM. I also encourage people to use UTC because we work in 130 countries so 15:27 does not make much sense. I have to work with logs from computers and applications and this is driving me nuts. "What is the timezone ?" is the question everyone fears.
- classified 2y agoIt's not unusual in the US to assume the US are the only planet in the universe.
- ed_elliott_asc 2y agoYou mean self declared (rightfully or wrongfully) leaders of the free world? :)
- justinclift 2y agoThere's a documentary about exactly that: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372588/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372588/ :)
- jpgvm 2y agoIs it bad that I knew exactly what this was before I clicked on it?
- justinclift 2y agoNope, it just shows you're aware. :)
- RandomThoughts3 2y agoSpecial mention of the expression “the west” which Americans like to use to mean the USA and some amorphous blob I don’t really want to think about but I’m going to pretend is exactly the same as the USA.
- KingOfCoders 2y agoWhen working for a large US company they insisted we do not accept returns, they always were astonished that in Germany there is a law for 14 day returns, no questions asked. They could not understand that this is a law in Germany.
- aziaziazi 2y agoIsn’t it 60 days in the whole EU for physical objects bought via internet?
- number6 2y ago14 days - 1 year of repairs if you didn't break it https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guarantees-returns/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...
- KingOfCoders 2y agoYes, IMHO the German law was earlier.
- aziaziazi 2y agoThanks for the link!
- dathinab 2y ago2 years in most places -- But after 1 year you have to show that it's the vendors fault instead of the vendor having to show it was your fault so often "de-facto" 1 year. Various exceptions include for stuff like food, underware etc.
- gruez 2y agoWhat were they astonished at? The existence of such a law, or that they were subject to it?
- mtkd 2y agoIt appears to be an increasingly clear risk to LLM model vendors that EU cares about where personal data came from, how it is stored, where it is stored, how accurate it is and whether there is a mechanism for it to be removed
- 1970-01-01 2y agoYes however it goes both ways. TPB was excellent in telling the US lawyers to f-off: https://web.archive.org/web/20110623123349/http://thepiratebay.org/legal https://web.archive.org/web/20110623123349/http://thepirateb...