Comment by venturecruelty

3 days ago

I don't know why people can't take 0.3 seconds to type "what does CTA stand for?" into their favorite search engine/LLM/text-message-to-a-friend. This is "Hacker" News, yes? What do hackers know how to do? Learn things, yes?

Oh, and I also don't know why this needs to come up on approximately every single post that has an abbreviation that someone doesn't know.

9 comments

venturecruelty

Reply
nmz  3 days ago

It stands for "Chicago transit authority". I don't know about you, but search engines have become useless since last year, I'm talking downright unusable.

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

  • stockresearcher  2 days ago

    The Chicago Transit Authority has existed for only about 70 years despite transit in Chicago being around for 125+ years.

    Legislation the governor signed last week all but guarantees that it won’t see its hundredth birthday except possibly as a sticker on the side of the busses and trains. Within 5 years the agency will only have the duty to plan routes within the city limits, and maybe do some of the driver hiring.

ryanjshaw  3 days ago

I googled it and it was defined as a marketing term, so I figured that can’t be the right one in a comment about freedom of speech.

kunley  3 days ago

To be exact, it takes more time than 0.3s to type it, even for a fast typer.

I don't know why people can't not exaggerate things? Doing it is certainly making their message less reliable, not more

sowbug  2 days ago

It's nice for writing to be sufficiently self-contained for the reader to get the basic meaning without research. How does it affect your sense of perspicacity when a sentence forces you to consult a dictionary just to keep up?

  • venturecruelty  2 days ago

    I'm still not sure why this is the author's problem. If a piece of writing is too challenging, you are welcome to disengage from it, and not demand more from the author.

MarkusQ  2 days ago

A search engine can tell you what some people mean by the acronym. It can't tell you what this particular author meant. It's like asking an LLM where you left your car keys, or asking Google what your spouse wants for dinner.