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Comment by riffic | Hacker News Reader

title refers to Louisiana (a little known state in the US), not Los Angeles or any other 'LA'.

Not exactly "little known", but the LA abbreviation is rarely used to refer to a place other than Los Angeles. Definitely a confusing choice.

Will be interesting to see if this policy spreads to other states, and whether these OEMs will do the right thing and issue a recall.

Well, LA is the postal state code for Louisiana. Using LA for Los Angeles is just an initialism.

The confusion stems from both entities having valid reasons for using the abbreviation.

Typically, I will use LA for Los Angeles and La. for Louisiana if I must abbreviate throughout. However, when I can, I spell out the full name the first time, then abbreviate in subsequent mentions.

4.6M people live in Louisiana, and 10m in Los Angeles. I’m cool giving the LA monicker to Los Angeles.

10m in Los Angeles County.

3.9m live in Los Angeles the city.

When people say LA they usually mean anywhere from Santa Barbara to Mission Viejo. I’m not sure most Angelinos even know where the city limits are.

Well, since the administrative district of Louisiana was established in 1682 and el Pueblo de los Angeles was established almost a full century later in 1781, we really should give the moniker to Louisiana.

Or. Just accept that two places can have a similar abbreviation and that this sometimes will lead to a small bit of confusion.

Sorry, Louisiana made the title too long for HN, tried keeping it as close to the source title as possible per HN guidelines.

Los Angeles is always "L.A.", LA is Louisiana.

I guess since Los Angeles the county has about as many people as Louisiana the state, people can quibble about which one is which, but style guides say i am correct, even if the wiki redirects "LA" to Los Angeles, and still manages to say "referred to by its initials, 'L.A.'".

How can i tell if my current vehicle(s) have an immobilizer?

I would not say it’s little known, but I did think the title originally referred to Las Angeles.

I laughed at "a little known state in the US", but yea, I read it as Los Angeles

I would not expect an international audience to know what the heck Louisiana might be, even if they could figure out that LA is the postal abbreviation for it. Would you understand if a title used "MZ" to refer to the Polish province with a comparable population and economic prominence?

Something that still requires a little more knowledge but makes Louisiana slightly more known is that New Orleans, or NOLA like the news source is named, is in Louisiana (it is where the LA from NOLA comes from). New Orleans is slightly more known than random places but still requires a few steps of thought. All this is to say, it is funny to add in the 'little known' part but LA in this context was always going to be a little confusing.

Louisiana? Never heard of it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Ave...

Confused me too

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