• hperrin@lemmy.ca
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    7 months 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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      7 months ago

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

    • python@lemmy.world
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      7 months 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).

    • The Ramen Dutchman@ttrpg.network
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      7 months ago

      Especially with several thousand kilometres.

      “Eleven mega metre” rolls off the tongue much better than “eleven thousands kilo metre” IMO.

    • warm@kbin.earth
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      7 months ago

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

      • chellomere@lemmy.world
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        7 months 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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          7 months 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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            7 months 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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              7 months 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

      • TeNppa@sopuli.xyz
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        7 months 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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          7 months 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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              7 months 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.