RTL invert characters are just for rendering purposes it doesn't help with sorting also in older systems sometimes it was not supported.
Osan
In Arabic we use DD/MM/YYYY but it actually gets written as YYYY/MM/DD since Arabic is written and read from right to left. When the year is dropped the confusing part is not what format is used here but rather does this website/software support RTL or is it just regular unformatted ASCII.
Edit: it's still not ISO 8601 and it doesn't solve the sorting issue
I thinks it's less of the market playing a role and more of being a sign that we are getting even closer.
Entrance exams aren't actually that common here but they do exist admission is mostly based on GPA and final grades in highschool. What amazes me isn't the lack of basic knowledge (in such an education system) or getting accepted, but rather the decision to choose this professional/academic path when you lack the interest in it.
People are actually uninterested and treating college as if they're prisoners here. I know some people are only thinking about the potentially higher income in these fields or the social status (engineers and doctors are thought of highly in some countries). A not insignificant amount of students here are forced to study what their parents have chosen for them. I believe we have a corrupt system in all areas (political, social, educational) and the economical situation isn't helping.
Usually these kids in my opinion don't realise that they need to change something till very late in there lives. This matter isn't a problem but rather a symptom of bigger problems here.
P.S: I'm very sorry for the long rant I got kinda carried away lol.
I mean I live in country with a kinda failed education system.
Sometimes it can even be a college course. I remember my first year in uni our TA had to explain how long division and unit conversion worked and I was like how tf y'all got into engineering school without basic middle school mathematics knowledge.
Boycotting and striking work we should be organising more of them world wide.
Being from the middle east I would say silence is as bad as giving them power. Unless direct action is taken by the people tyranny would just get stronger and stronger while nobody notices till it's too late.
Yeah some time ago I used to respect these companies I remember when Google condemned the Egyptian government's actions in 2011 and one of the very popular activists in the revolution was the head of marketing in Google MENA. But now the truth has never been more obvious to me. Individuals may or may not care but corporations will never care.
We do that in Arabic too. It's called "badal", a figure of speech where you replace "the whole" with "the part" to emphasize that part's importance in the context; in this case that would be either where the government is located in the country or where the report originated from.
For example when Arabic news agencies want to refer to the USA's government they say Washington or the white house. Since that's usually where the news come from.
You want it displayed as "yyyy/mm/dd" so it's actually "[RTL]dd/mm/yyyy"