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Comment by qwerty456127 | Hacker News Reader

Thanks to existence of the short and long scales I have no idea what people mean when they say "a billion" or something like that today in the globalized Internet-connected world. Please avoid using such ambiguous words at all costs, use scientific notation instead.

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Aside from my mother, who died 18 years ago, I know no-one else who uses billion meaning 10^12 (long scale, as you point out). I grew up, and still live, in the UK.

I'd be very interested to know if anyone here uses long scale, or knows anyone who does. Is it still in common usage anywhere?

Useful to know. Now I will just guess it's the short scale if it's English (I used to think UK uses the long scale as all the other European countries do while the US uses the short scale). Thanks!

PS: As for myself I just don't use the words to name numbers above million as I don't know what exactly do they mean for anything near sure but if I really had to interpret the word "billion" I would undoubtedly answer "a million of millions" (10^12) before today.

We here in Germany - and according to Wikipedia most countries in continental Europe - use the long scale. But when I switch to English I also switch to the short scale, I can not remember to have ever encountered the long scale in English in the wild.

Thanks. Obviously I didn't read the Wikipedia entry properly. I must say I'm surprised. I had no idea that these terms were still equivocal.

They mean 10^9.

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