• hperrin@lemmy.ca
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    15 hours ago

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

    • Klear@quokk.au
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      12 hours ago

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

    • Johanno@feddit.org
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      11 hours ago

      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.

      • SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml
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        10 hours ago

        well neither astronomical unit nor light years use meters as a reference. and one of those isnt even accurate (AU)

    • boboliosisjones@feddit.nu
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      13 hours ago

      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.

      • ArcaneGadget@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        Sweden and Norway only. Few people in Denmark know what a mil is. And virtually no one here uses it.

        Yeah-yeah; something something Denmark. I know…

        • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          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).

          • SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml
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            8 hours ago

            i did correct myself like 3 minutes after posting

            but according to wikipedia there is no prefix for 10 000 in the SI system. only for 1 000 and 1 000 000

    • python@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      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).

      • guy@piefed.social
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        5 hours ago

        Sweden is quite long, so talking about traveling>1 000 km is not uncommon, but here we have mil, which is equal to 10 km. So on my vacation I traveled 120 mil is more useful and common

      • hperrin@lemmy.ca
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        12 hours ago

        Yes, every time I’ve ever heard someone use metric to describe distances of >999km, they keep using kilometers.

      • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Car mileage (or kilometerage, is that a word?)

        People don’t say the car has 200 megameter on the odometer, but 200 000 km. Or 200k km?..

    • warm@kbin.earth
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      15 hours ago

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

      • chellomere@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        “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.

        • CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          12 hours ago

          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.

          • Hoimo@ani.social
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            11 hours ago

            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.

            • CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              11 hours ago

              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

              • guy@piefed.social
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                5 hours 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

      • TeNppa@sopuli.xyz
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        6 hours ago

        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.

        • ryedaft@sh.itjust.works
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          14 hours ago

          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.

            • ryedaft@sh.itjust.works
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              11 hours ago

              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.

              • lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works
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                8 hours ago

                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

                • ryedaft@sh.itjust.works
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                  6 hours 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.

        • guy@piefed.social
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          11 hours ago

          The long system with milliard and billiard increases with every potens which makes sense. The short system on the other hand 🤷

      • ☂️-@lemmy.ml
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        13 hours ago

        hating on milliardaries doesn’t feel as impactful and cathartic.

        • Rothe@piefed.social
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          13 hours ago

          Again, anglocentrism strikes. Your feeling is strictly based on your personal experience with your own words. It is like when Americans claim fahrenheit is more for humans than celsius, because they are unable to fathom things they have no experience with.

          • ☂️-@lemmy.ml
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            4 hours ago

            i’m not from the us, and the word for billionaire is almost the same in my language.