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Comment by ajot | Hacker News Reader

Same happened to me. Apparently TB stands for tuberculosis, is that common knowledge?

Yes. Obviously people here see TB in the context of a Terabyte constantly instead but TB is normal nomenclature for Tuberculosis. For example nobody ever says “Tuberculosis skin test” they say “TB skin test”’

It's commonly known, which, at least in the context of Game Theory, is different from "common knowledge". (At least in Game Theory, common knowledge means that everyone knows, and everyone knows that everyone knows, and everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows... until you reach the bottom of infinite recursion... and then the usual infinite stack of turtles.)

For anyone in the healthcare sphere rather than tech, yes

Or anyone who's ever worked in the food (and adjacent) industry and gone to the health department for a TB test. It's pretty commonly referred to as TB across the US.

And for people in tech industries, too. I knew "TB" as tuberculosis, from "TB jabs", long before I had ever heard of a terabyte.

Yesl For literally most people considering its one of the most virulent diseases in human history. To not know would be a indication of incredible lack of knowledge of the history medicine and science.

Oh, I do know what tuberculosis is, just didn't know it is commonly called TB. Maybe that's an anglosphere thing?

I've only heard of it as tuberculosis in the local media, not sure if health practitioners would call it TB though.

Nope. TB is common in non English languages,

Korean https://storage.googleapis.com/healthinfotranslations-pdfdoc...

Chinese https://www.sfcdcp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Active-ch-...

Hindi https://www.mass.gov/doc/tb-medicine-instructions-hindi/down...

Well, add Germany to that anglosphere then.

I'd guess familiarity with that abbreviation depends on age. In the 70s TB (and the abbr.) was still fairly common. I grew up in a town with a press. Apparently the paper dust increases the risk for the workers to catch TB. I remember mobile screening units parked in front of that company periodically.

In the 90s my roommate's girlfriend was thought to have caught it (her roommate had a bad cough, probably TB then, but I don't know the details), which earned us both an "invitation" by the ministry of health for a screening. We were ok, she recovered during a stay in a sanatorium over summer (afair, it turned out not to be TB but some kind of embolism), don't know about her roommate.

Chill, its an incredible accomplishment that for many people their personal experience of TB is watching Satine die in Moulin Rouge and nothing more.

My parents knew it well, I know it from history, my children may only know it from stories. That’s amazing.

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