Hacker News Reader

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