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Comment by sdinsn | Hacker News Reader

> the portion of Americans reporting that they currently ever use the service

Am I dumb or does anyone else not understand what "currently ever use" means exactly in this context? How is that different than just saying "currently use"?

"Ever" implies independence of time, but matched with "currently" it means what?

(English is my first and only language; I might just be dumb)

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One interpretation: "ever" as in "anytime in a time interval", "current" as in "the last 60 days".

Eh, it covers “I use it everday” to “I used it a few months ago and I’ll probably use it again in the future.” So it says they’ve probably completely saturated the market for the US, which has implications for things like revenue growth (now any growth has to come getting more money from the same users, rather than, say, doubling your user count again)

If you don't ever use something, you don't use it at all. If I simply said that I don't use it, there would remain some ambiguity as to what that means, i.e. it could mean that I don't use it much. It seems like a natural use of the word to me, but I'm just one person.

It's a dumb way of phrasing it. The author likely tried to reduce ambiguity, but ended up increasing it.

My guess would be that "currently ever use the service" means "currently use the service, even if just sporadically."

As you say, "currently use the service" would have been sufficient.

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