Hacker News Reader

Comment by 23kl333 | Hacker News Reader

Sonoma is also setting records for the number of bugs. Now even the buggiest windows version ever feels like an etalon of stability comparing to Sonoma.

View on HN

What is etalon?

Not sure if it’s used a lot in English, but in French a « valeur étalon » is a value of reference. Like you measure something precisely, define it as standard and it becomes your étalon for future measures

I guess it’s used in this sense here

Not heard this used before so nice to learn something, thanks!

Is it said in a neutral sense like yardstick or is it an ideal to aspire to like exemplar or paragon?

It's neutral. For example, it was used with metric system definitions: at some point the "kilogramme-étalon" was literally an object weighing 1kg (by definition, the kg was this object).

You can see here a kilogramme étalon: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Standard...

and a mètre étalon: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Mètre-ét...

Edit: for completeness sake, a litre and décalitre (10L) étalon: https://portail.polytechnique.edu/musx/sites/pf_191/files/ac...

Think of it as a horse. So, it looks like OP is referring to a very stable horse. Although it would probably be a stretch to call it a dependable workhorse..

https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9E2797

https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9E2798

Reply on news.ycombinator.com