Hacker News Reader

10e6 microseconds? ;)

The quote came from Dave Limp, Amazon’s senior vice president for devices. I feel that people in senior positions such as the person quoted are far more focused on metrics and tangible results (e.g. "reduced Q4 defect ppm by X%") so it probably becomes second nature to alter the phrases used favorably. To a passive listener or someone skimming the article, milliseconds can seem far better.

Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people need to think for a second before realizing 1000 milliseconds = 1 second.

aka, marketing-speak

I think you're making him look unnecessarily bad by not giving the full quote: "Now it’s often 1,000 milliseconds or 1,200 milliseconds."

It annoys me often in articles that they switch between units in the same sentence. I often read things like "Less than 40% of people did this but an amazing two fifths of participants did that". Most people have no idea how to compare the two. I bet a lot of people don't know whether a 1000 milliseconds is more or less than eight seconds.