Just how close are we to robots taking over?

[lovingboth]

I got a Google Assistant alert on my phone during BiCon to remind me that some library books were due back on the 6th August.

So today I log in to the online system to renew them and..

.. nothing due for another five days.

Hmm.

Look at the email the alert is based on.

The local library system sends reminders three days before books are due and seven days after they're overdue. (Yes, this is annoying, but they won't change it.)

And in an automatically sent email dated 5th June 2019, the renewal date is shown as 8/6/19..

.. which Google has interpreted as the American way to write 6th August and not bothered to tell me about until now. (I must check to see if I did get a fine for missing the 8th June date!)

It did that despite knowing, in numerous ways, that I am in the UK where we do DD/MM/YY dates.

So is not have everyone adopt ISO/Japanese style YY/MM/DD dates all we need to do to avoid the rule of the robots? (Even though it is the most sensible way to do them!)

Comments

[ludy]

Wouldn't that just mean the DoomRobots would come and execute us for Thought Crime before we've actually got round to thinking it?

[barakta]

That sounds really fucking annoying - you've had a few of those time/date/alert fails recently... I agree big endian dates are much better.

[rhialto]

The library could also be a bit more explicit (they should know that the notation is ambiguous) and write 05-Jun-2019.