3 ms·

There’s nothing wrong with NTP and anything beyond the accuracy of a normal Casio watch is a fools errand in my mind: unless you get a watch that actually NTP s

by hnarn 5y ago

There’s nothing wrong with NTP and anything beyond the accuracy of a normal Casio watch is a fools errand in my mind: unless you get a watch that actually NTP syncs itself (like a smart watch), but the battle for an “on-wrist” super accurate watch was won by the digital wrist watch decades ago, there are no serious mechanical competitors.

kijin 5y ago
There are differences even among quartz watches, due to the quality of the crystal and the circuitry surrounding it. A normal sub-$50 Casio watch will gain or lose a few seconds every month, accumulating to more than 1 minute of error per year. A particularly bad one I've had gained a minute a month, worse than some of my mechanical watches! Meanwhile, Seiko sells quartz movements that are accurate to within 10 seconds per year. Citizen's top line is accurate to within 1 second per year, uses GPS signals to correct even that little error, and charges itself from any available light source. It's going to be accurate to within a few milliseconds for the next 20 years with no maintenance, all at a price that a typical overpaid programmer can easily afford.
- hnarn 5y ago
  There's two parts to the original question: - What kind of high precision clocks are there - How do I synchronize them (implying NTP is not for serious use) Since any "smart" device including your "simple" smartphone, smart watch or even your laptop will synchronize itself via NTP, their time keeping abilities are likely already better or at least equal than that of any high tech mechanical watch, because the first question ties into the other: there is no point in perfect accuracy if you can have constant error-correction. While my inability to understand why anyone would care about a 10 second per year loss for personal use -- especially since the time and effort required to recalibrate even a manual clock is tiny if it does matter -- is completely subjective, I don't think the comparison between NTP-enabled devices and "ultra-correct" time keeping devices is. I just don't see a convincing argument for buying something like an atomic watch, or a high-end wristwatch, unless in the first case you yourself plan on hosting an NTP service for example (and you would, of course, even then at least verify it via: NTP!) -- or in the second case if you knew you would for an extended time be without access to any other trustworthy time-keeping device, via the Internet or otherwise. Everyone obviously has their own interests and anyone is free to spend any amount they want on expensive time keeping devices, I just think one should be aware of what the level of normality already is these days for many devices we use, which in my mind is pretty high.

by hnarn 5y ago

kijin 5y ago

There are differences even among quartz watches, due to the quality of the crystal and the circuitry surrounding it. A normal sub-$50 Casio watch will gain or lose a few seconds every month, accumulating to more than 1 minute of error per year. A particularly bad one I've had gained a minute a month, worse than some of my mechanical watches! Meanwhile, Seiko sells quartz movements that are accurate to within 10 seconds per year. Citizen's top line is accurate to within 1 second per year, uses GPS signals to correct even that little error, and charges itself from any available light source. It's going to be accurate to within a few milliseconds for the next 20 years with no maintenance, all at a price that a typical overpaid programmer can easily afford.

hnarn 5y ago
There's two parts to the original question: - What kind of high precision clocks are there - How do I synchronize them (implying NTP is not for serious use) Since any "smart" device including your "simple" smartphone, smart watch or even your laptop will synchronize itself via NTP, their time keeping abilities are likely already better or at least equal than that of any high tech mechanical watch, because the first question ties into the other: there is no point in perfect accuracy if you can have constant error-correction. While my inability to understand why anyone would care about a 10 second per year loss for personal use -- especially since the time and effort required to recalibrate even a manual clock is tiny if it does matter -- is completely subjective, I don't think the comparison between NTP-enabled devices and "ultra-correct" time keeping devices is. I just don't see a convincing argument for buying something like an atomic watch, or a high-end wristwatch, unless in the first case you yourself plan on hosting an NTP service for example (and you would, of course, even then at least verify it via: NTP!) -- or in the second case if you knew you would for an extended time be without access to any other trustworthy time-keeping device, via the Internet or otherwise. Everyone obviously has their own interests and anyone is free to spend any amount they want on expensive time keeping devices, I just think one should be aware of what the level of normality already is these days for many devices we use, which in my mind is pretty high.