1583
5 tomatoes (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
250 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 157 points 11 months ago (10 children)

I’m always disappointed that megameter isn't a common word. People will say “one thousand kilometers” instead of just “one megameter”.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 20 child comments
    •
  • [–] 45 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I'm a fan of light nanosecond, which works out to roughly 30 cm.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 28 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Is kibimeter a technically allowed measurement? That would be fun!

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    I'm more disappointed the world renamed one thousand million from milliard to billion.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 34 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    "the world"?

    If you came over to the other side of the pond, you'd find that most of Europe is still using milliard, billiard, trilliard etc.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I think that's one thing that's actually fine about the English language though. Constantly switching between something ending with "ion" to "iard" instead of just counting up doesn't make much sense to me personally.

    Million (1A), Milliard (1B), Billion (2A), Billiard (2B) seems odd compared to Million (1), Billion (2), Trillion (3), Quadrillion (4)

    I suppose the upside is that you don't have to learn as many prefixes, but it'll take another few years of inflation and wealth centralization (at least with currencies like the Euro, Dollar, or Pound) until Quadrillion is relevant in the financial sector and Mathematicians generally use letters. I suppose it makes other natural sciences a tiny bit easier, but there it's usually written in scientific notation anyways.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    The million-milliard system means a billion has double the zeroes compared to million, trillion has triple the zeroes, etc. In the English system, a quadrillion has 15 zeroes, so 4 times 3 plus 3? A quadrillion should have 4*6=24 zeroes.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I must admit I still don't see the point. Whether it's double/triple/quadruple of a million or just 3*n+1 doesn't seem to matter much. Of course it'd be better if a "thousand" was just called a "million" then, since that'd remove the +1, but the million milliard system doesn't seem to have any notable advantages otherwise, especially considering every "iard" step is a .5 one, which isn't much cleaner.

    1,000 -> 3x0+1 zeroes

    1,000,000 -> 3x1+1 zeroes

    1,000,000,000 -> 3x2+1 zeroes

    vs

    1,000,000 -> 1x6 zeroes

    (1,000,000,000 -> 1.5x6 zeroes)

    1,000,000,000,000 -> 2x6 zeroes

    (1,000,000,000,000,000 -> 2.5x6 zeroes)

    1,000,000,000,000,000,000 -> 3x6 zeroes

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    In the long system: Million - 1 000 000¹ Billion - 1 000 000² Trillion - 1 000 000³

    Short system: Million - 1 000² Billion - 1 000³ Trillion - 1 000⁴

    It just doesn't follow as smoothly with the increase in power

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    Crazy assumption.

    While the word is still in use in some languages, the short system has mostly replaced the long system for numbering, especially in the English speaking world.

    https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/milliard#Translations

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

    When translating to Finnish it's confusing sometimes:
    Billion = miljardi = 1 000 000 000
    Trillion = biljoona = 1 000 000 000 000
    Quintillion = triljoona = 1 000 000 000 000 000 000
    You can tell how bad a news site is when they translate billion to biljoona and thus making the amount 1000 times higher.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    You probably want double new lines in your posts. Or two spaces at the end of your paragraphs but that's usually a bit annoying to do.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Or just \ at the end, like so

    Texty text text \
Text

    Becomes
    Like this

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    So you escape the newline and you get a newline? That's some black magic voodoo. But hey if it works. Much simpler to handle than double space since you can see them and your phone doesn't try to make them into period space instead of space space.

    Newlines with double space (or space backslash apparently) also let's you have newlines in a quote block without exiting the block. I see a lot of people struggle with that on Lemmy. E.g.

    > A quote with multiple lines
Will eat the the newline 

Or exit if you don't handle the newline

    will render as:

    A quote with multiple lines Will eat the the newline

    Or exit if you don't handle the newline

    So you want to do

    > A quote with multiple lines \
Will eat the the newline \
Or exit if you don't handle the newline

    A quote with multiple lines
    Will eat the the newline
    Or exit if you don't handle the newline

    Or add space space at the end instead of space backslash.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    The inventors of Markdown thought they would do something devastatingly clever and eat newlines if the next line has content. That way, if you're writing Markdown in the Stone Age and your editor doesn't support soft-wrap (it's a stone tablet), you can do your own soft-wrap and Markdown will "helpfully" eat all the newlines (unless there are two or more).

    Of course this has done nothing to help and instead caused chaos and confusion for anyone non-technical. Very clever

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    It would be more useful if there were comments in markdown. Like, it's helpful when organising your writing and thoughts in LaTeX that you can write one line per sentence, double newline for end of paragraph. It becomes immediately clear when a sentence is too long and comments for collaborators (or yourself) are easier to handle than in something like Word or Google Docs. It's also simpler to move sentences around which is important for good writing.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [+] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)
    [deleted]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Megameter gigameter,

    Next thing is one astronomical unit.

    And then we are using light years.

    Not very linear those last two.

    And I am sure that gigameters would still be better than light years.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    In Scandinavia we have "mil" which everyone uses, 1 mil, or Scandinavian mile as it is known in English, is 10km. Cuts down ln zeroes. I love this but no one else(outside of Scandinavia) uses it.I typically get a lot of pushback mentioning it to my international peers.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    but there is already decameter

    edit: nevermind i didnt see the "k" after the 10

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Decameter is 10 meter, not 10 kilometer. 10km would be a myriadmeter. (SI prefix names are based on greek, and myriad is the greek-based name for 10 000).

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    People will say “one thousand kilometers”

    Will they though? I don't talk about distances that large anywhere near often enough to really need a shorthand for it, personally. Had to even look up what things are approximately 1000km apart to even know what to imagine it as (it's about the distance between Paris and Berlin).

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 10 child comments
    •
    • load more comments (4 replies)