Hacker News Reader

Comment by SkinTaco | Hacker News Reader

Imagine how insane it would sound if I went to a Ukrainian news website and insisted they label their currencies because "some of us are from America (yes we do exist!) so I don't know if this is USD or the hryvnia!"

You'd tell me to pull my head out of my ass, right?

View on HN

The Vietnamese newspapers are actually using dollars for their local audience for this case when written in Vietnamese.

The actual number in VND is hard to reason about, even for the vietnamese locals. When 1 million VND is 40 dollars, that's not helping.

America is not the only country to use the $ symbol and therefore it is necessary for the purpose of clarity to ensure you demoninate which dollar you are referring too.

The location of the news website is irrelevant.

You’re being intentionally obtuse here, we’ve already established that the context is sufficient to make non-USD assumptions absurd and you’re attempting to further the argument by restating points that have already been stated and refuted

Fine, change Ukrainian to Australian and my point still stands.

In my personal experience, Australian journalists are generally pretty careful to distinguish Australian dollars from US dollars from other dollars when reporting on international stories, at least in the article body (headlines less so, but the journalist normally has no say in the headline). Of course, for domestic news, it goes without saying that “dollars” means the local currency

I dunno

I'm Canadian, I live in Canada, I earn CAD, My whole economic life is in a context of non-US dollars

But if I see $value in an unknown context online I assume it's USD

I think it would be really goofy to assume otherwise

USD (and Euro) is widely used in UA. You actually have to specify what currency you will pay with. Foreign currency may get you a better deal on gas station and other shops.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com