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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

The same company that was in the news recently for screwing up a livestream of a boxing match.

True, but it's the exception that proves the rule; it's also the same company responsible for delivering a staggeringly high percentage of internet video, typically without a hitch.

Yes, though serving static files is easier than streaming live.

That's not what an exception proving a rule means. It has a technical meaning: a sign that says "free parking on sundays" implies parking is not free as a rule.

When used like this it just confuses a reader with rethoric. In this case netflix is just bad at live streaming, they clearly haven't done the necessary engineering work on it.

> That's not what an exception proving a rule means. It has a technical meaning: a sign that says "free parking on sundays" implies parking is not free as a rule.

So the rule is "Free parking on Sundays", and the exception that proves it is "Free parking on Sundays"? That's a post-hoc (circular) argument that does not convince me at all.

I read a different explanation of this phrase on HN recently: the "prove" in "exception proves the rule" has the same meaning as the "prove" (or "proof") in "50% proof alcohol".

AIUI, in this context "proof" means "tests". The exception that tests the rule simply shows where the limits of the rules actually are.

Well, that's how I understood it, anyway. Made sense to me at the time I read the explanation, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise with sufficiently persuasive logic :-)

50% proof alcohol? That isn’t how that works. It’s 50% ABV aka 100 proof.

> 50% proof alcohol? That isn’t how that works. It’s 50% ABV aka 100 proof.

50% proof wouldn't be 25% ABV?

Since 50% = 0.5, and proof doesn't take a percentage, I believe "50% proof" would be 0.25% ABV.

Good catch :-)

The rule is non-free parking. The exception is Sundays.

The meaning of a word or expression is not a matter of persuasive logic. It just means what people think it means. (Otherwise using it would not work to communicate.) That is why a dictionary is not a collection of theorems. Can you provide a persuasive logic for the meaning of the word "yes"?

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

Seems like both interpretations are used widely.

The origin of the phrase is the aphorism that "all rules have an exception". So, when someone claims something is a rule and you find an exception, that's just the exception that proves it's a real rule. It's a joke, essentially, based on the common-sense meaning of the word "rule" (which is much less strict than the mathematical word "rule").

The fact that Netflix surprised so many people by an exceptional technical issue implies that as a rule Netflix delivers video smoothly and at any scale necessary.

Yes! THIS is precisely what I meant in my comment.

That's also not what "an exception proving the rule" is either. The term comes from a now mostly obsolete* meaning of prove meaning "to test or trial" something. So the idiom properly means "the exception puts the rule to the test." If there is an exception, it means the rule was broken. The idiom has taken on the opposite meaning due to its frequent misuse, which may have started out tongue in cheek but now is used unironically. It's much like using literally to describe something which is figurative.

* This is also where we get terms like bulletproof - in the early days of firearms people wanted armor that would stop bullets from the relatively weak weapons, so armor smiths would shoot their work to prove them against bullets, and those that passed the test were bullet proof. Likewise alcohol proof rating comes from a test used to prove alcohol in the 1500s.

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