As someone whose employer blocks the installation of browser extensions, I am more than excited to hear that!

Using the web sucks since that policy has been implemented a year or so ago.
Integrated adblock engine would rectify that again.

Yes, it’s a meta-joke inspired by the funny unit of size used in that article and on the fact that it is even more opaque to Europeans, which have even less of a feeling what that actually means.

Also, the format is a pretty common standard template (“xxx or something - no idea I’m yyy”), which is very popular in Germany, but I am not quite sure it is also a thing internationally…

And yes, I am also now graving for one of those delicious Pickup choco biscuits! :-)

Actual should have been “or something”.

In the English language, “or so” is used only for numeric uncertainties (like “5 eggs or so” / “5 or so eggs”),but not for general uncertainties, like not knowing what specific type of thing an object is.

That’s different to my 1st language (German) and I didn’t know that before learning it from other comments in this thread.

You would also say it “five or so eggs”. The “or so” gets tied directly to the number, not the eggs.

Interestingly Gemini Pro that I asked to make sense of the topic told me all its examples in the other word order:

„I’ll be there in 10 minutes or so.“
„It costs 50 dollars or so.“
„There were 20 people or so at the party.“

So either there are additional circumstantial or regional differences, or the LLM was sycophantic again and fantasized a form more pleasing to a German chat partner.

This day’s TIL, thanks!

I knew that “or so” is also a common expression in the English language, so assumed it to be used in the same way as in German.

As I just learned, this is only the case when dealing with numeric values (e.g. “five eggs or so” and not with uncertainties regarding more general things or distinctions between things.

So “Looks like a bug or so” apparently would be wrong.
As I now understand it you would say “Looks like a bug or something” instead?

Cochem mentioned! 😍