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Comment by echoangle | Hacker News Reader

Maybe my non-native English is showing but I’m having difficulty reading the article. First, it describes how the satellite can’t be used over the US and Europe and then says:

> Still, this isn't the worst setback. [… stuff how the satellite will be used over southern America …]

I was waiting for the description of an even worse setback, which makes the satellite even more limited, but it seems like „this isn’t the worst setback“ was supposed to mean „it’s not too bad, we can still do other useful stuff“. Was that understandable for native speakers?

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It can be read in two ways.

The most natural way is as you have read it.

However, it is also valid in the sense of "this is a setback, but it's not all that bad". (You might write, "Still, this isn't the worst setback ever.")

You would need to read enough to realize by later lack of a description of the worst setback to realize the former, most natural way, is not in use.

You wrote:

> I was waiting …

I think your instinct and expectation were correct. The article reads:

> The info provided by Biomass will be a critical step forward.

I think it should read "The info provided by Biomass would be a critical step forward." ("Would" should be used because it's discussing a hypothetical situation contrary to fact — contrary to fact because the restrictions impede the collection of the desired data.)

My guess is that it's either sloppy editing or LLM-generated text.

This is one of the annoying constructions in English that has two common meanings which are the opposite of each other. It can either be referring to the worst possible/conceivable setback (as here) or to the worst encountered setback-- you have to use other clues like overall tone and the surrounding context to figure out which was meant.

Yeah, yeah.

It's not just you. It feels like there's a missing sentence or paragraph somewhere connecting the two. Maybe there's a compounding effect making the impact of turning the satellite off worse?

Yes it's a little awkward. I think they mean South America is still ok -- so they can collect data there -- but not North America.

Interesting, I never noticed the ambiguity until you pointed it out.

It's like the awful phrase 'I could care less' I suppose.

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