Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsmthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

No, it doesn’t. In many other locales “mil” means thousand, unlike slang for million. This is why in finance, $5mm means five million dollars. Five mil mil. Five thousand thousand. Five million.

The graph shows a spike to around $5,000 per day ($5 mil por día). The entire dashboard is in USD, presented in a Spanish locale. That is also why the dollar sign is suffixed, the months are not capitalized, and why May has a dot after it, because it is abbreviated there (mayo).

Every programmer should understand locales even if they do not speak the language.

View on HN

No, it shows "$600,043,603". Where do you see "mil"?

But OK, I didn't get that "COP" is Colombian Peso :(

And there's another image that shows total collected as "USD $244,875". The ratio is 2450, which is close enough to the exchange rate.

The Y axis of the graph which actually has relevant information. You are looking at a campaign page, and assuming those Colombian pesos are available to the author’s team.

When you said “the image” I thought you were looking at the right one, and I thought it odd you were off several orders of magnitude from what I assumed to be your misunderstanding. That explains that. I had to go back and find your figure.

Ah, I didn't look closely at the charges graph. So yes, it maxed at ~5000 USD per day.

I gotta say that using "$" for both USD and COP is confusing. So you must say "USD $x" and "COP $x". Then why bother with the "$"?

Context. Canadian dollars use $ too, and you only see CAD near the border or when it isn’t clear. If I’m a Colombian using a Colombian site and pesos use $, I don’t need the context. Also, properly, you’d say 5 USD, not USD $5; the dollar sigil is then redundant.

There’s a bit of americentrism down the confusing line of thought, for what it’s worth.

apparently the $ sign has its origins in the spanish Peso, where the p and s were gradually being merged together in abbreviations.

futhermore the US Dollar itself stems from the Spanish Dollar:

"The U.S. dollar was directly based on the Spanish Milled Dollar when, in the Coinage Act of 1792, the first Mint Act, its value was fixed [..] as being "of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current

Correct. They had it first, which is why I lightly check the “they use $ too? That’s confusing.” sentiment.

The Dutch, ever innovative in trade, can lay claim as a bigger influence on the word “dollar” and the currency form itself, however, and colonial Americans traded regularly in Dutch daalders (we still pronounce it that way, unlike doh-LAHR/doh-LAHR-ehss for the Spanish varieties). Daalders themselves were descendants of Bohemian thalers, as were Spanish dollars. We just borrowed the neighboring dollars when the time came, probably due to our foreign policy environment at the time, trade with Florida, and so on.

True enough.

But it's still potentially confusing, when stuff gets translated with no context for currency values. Especially, I imagine, if you don't know either Spanish or English.

there's over 20 different types of "dollars"

That's really my point. Not Americanism or whatever.

I mean we have kilograms, meters and seconds. And they're the same for every country.

But "$" (dollars and other currency units) means different things, depending on the context. Similarly for ounces, pounds, feet, gallons, etc. So you're left with constructions like "US $" or "USD" or "USD $" vs "Can $" or "CAD" or "CAD $". Just as with "avoirdupois ounce" vs "troy ounce", "US gallon" vs "imperial gallon", and so on.

So anyway, I always write "foo USD", "foo EUR", "foo mBTC" and so on. To avoid ambiguity.

> This is why in finance, $5mm means five million dollars

That's not true. It's from Latin, mille.

That aside, I find it a terrible way of writing things. But then again, Americans hate SI, so I guess have fun. :-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com