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| ▲ | skissane a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| > This HN thing of casually using acronyms without defining them is baffling to me It's called, I forgot. Next time I will try to remember. |
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| ▲ | dang a day ago | parent [-] | | I've taken the liberty of adding a macroexpansion to your post above, and detaching this off topic subthread. I hpoe that's ok! | | |
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| ▲ | fragmede a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's baffling to you that people are comfortable in their niche and use their own jargon? Are you a baby that needs to be spoonfed every little bit of information? |
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| ▲ | quickthrowman 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | To be fair, the use of TFR had approximately zero context to clue that person in to what it could mean. If you go back and read the first paragraph, there is no mention of children, birth, babies, or any other context clues that help the reader understand what the acronym is even relating to. It abstractly compares ‘TFR’ of several religious groups, it could mean anything. If you want to casually drop semi-obscure acronyms it’s good practice to give context clues by using words related to the acronym near the use of the acronym instead of being abstract like the OP. I knew what the acronym was but I’ve spent time reading about religious groups and economic/social classes and fertility rates of those groups depending on the level of whatever you would call devotedness or strict adherence to the most conservative version of that belief system. Which one of these two sentences makes it easier to guess what the acronym means or to google it? I could probably think of a better example using an acronym that has collisions, but this will have to do. 1. “The SOFR has not changed during 2026.” 2. “The Federal Reserve has voted to maintain the SOFR during 2026.” | | |
| ▲ | fragmede 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | I, myself, documented that ACE stands for AI Compute Extensions, on a post on HN that used it without defining it, and got a couple points for it. I'm pushing back against that everything has to be spoonfed to us and that we shouldn't be expected to do any of our own work to understand something here and complaining about it. |
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| ▲ | DemocracyFTW2 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "HN"? |
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| ▲ | krapp a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| >This HN thing of casually using acronyms without defining them is baffling to me You have a whole internet at your fingertips with which to look up terms you don't understand without diluting the thread, but if you need at all to do that you should consider that you might not have anything relevant to add to the conversation to begin with. Hacker News is supposed to be a forum of educated professionals and domain experts, we shouldn't have to dumb things down here. |
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| ▲ | cpburns2009 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | The problem with looking up acronyms is it's usually from a domain you're unfamiliar with, so you don't know which definition to pick from. | |
| ▲ | watwut a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | One must be really deep in some fertility obsessed subculture to think that TFR acronym should be instantly recognized when placed in tech forum discussion about minority language. Otherwise said, using full expression is not "diluting the thread". | | |
| ▲ | krapp a day ago | parent [-] | | Asking pointless questions that can be answered with a simple Google search and complaining about other people's use of language do dilute the thread. It's explicitly in the guidelines that we don't complain about voting because it "makes for boring reading." Complaining about acronyms has the same effect. | | |
| ▲ | watwut a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Having to google obscure acronyms and having to guess which interpretation author meant makes for super boring reading. It is way better when you see a question and answer just below. And bonus point, question and answer teaches others to not use all acronyms they learned in all the random subcultures. | | |
| ▲ | krapp 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | >Having to google obscure acronyms and having to guess which interpretation author meant makes for super boring reading. It doesn't, because we don't have to read that. Also the interpretation can be gleaned from context, as @williamdclt did above. It's unlikely that, reading the thread, the "TFR" being discussed is "temporary flight restriction." |
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| ▲ | LoganDark a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | seeing the definition for TFR in the thread is not boring reading because, as you say, it's something I would be expected to look up anyway. |
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| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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