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The question isn't really how many would think it meant nanonmeters, it's how many would recognise it as nautical miles.
by moomin 2y ago
The question isn't really how many would think it meant nanonmeters, it's how many would recognise it as nautical miles.
- briandear 2y agoIn aviation? Literally everyone. Context clues should make it obvious.
- JadeNB 2y ago> In aviation? Literally everyone. Context clues should make it obvious. But this is Hacker News, not Aviation News, and there are plenty of people, like me, who might find this interesting but aren't in aviation. I also thought it meant nanometers.
- ajford 2y agoAnd how many would assume that the incorrect unit abbreviation would mean something else? If I said Kbps and KBps, it's an entirely different unit of measure. NM and nm are VASTLY different, and unless you are already familiar with measurements in Aviation and know it's Nautical Miles, your first instinct is gonna be to read it as the unit it's supposed to be. The article title is talking about location data and computers, I've seen many people forget floating point precision when comparing and getting bit by tiny differences at the 10^-9 or smaller. That seems just as obvious on the outset as non-unique location designations in what the average person would assume to be a dataset that's intentionally unique and unambiguous.
- mulmen 2y agoThe context is a bug. The bug could have been using nanometers when nautical miles were intended.
- RandomThoughts3 2y agoI used to work on military boats combat systems. I scanned the title, read it nanometers, thought it was weird, mentally corrected to nautical miles being familiar with the context and cursed the person who wrote the title for the incorrect capitalisation. So, yes, people who have worked in a related field get it. Still annoying though.