Nah, a minutes scale would require data entry frequently, and HN's volunteer moderators probably don't want to have to click "Reset breach counter" all the time

Nah, a minutes scale would require data entry frequently, and HN's volunteer moderators probably don't want to have to click "Reset breach counter" all the time, plus you'd need to write code for both that button and the minute counter. Let's keep HN Javascript-light: "Days Since" is much easier to implement. Just one line of static HTML will do: <b>Days Since Last Breach: 0</b>