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I find it interesting that you write years using 5 digits with leading zeroes. Can you tell me more about that choice?
by alexvoda 5y ago
I find it interesting that you write years using 5 digits with leading zeroes. Can you tell me more about that choice?
- tenebrisalietum 5y agoY10K problem: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_10,000_problem#:~:text=The%20Year%2010%2C000%20problem%20(also,five%20digits%20for%20a%20year https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_10,000_problem#:~:tex....
- drewzero1 5y agoSee also, the Long Now Foundation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation
- YATA0 5y agoDo you blame him? He can probably make more than $400k a year grifting with NFTs, doing an order of magnitude less work.
- drewzero1 5y agoI don't blame anyone for fooling around with alternative date formats but I do find it a bit silly, and distracting from whatever serious point they were trying to make. I can't imagine the hubris of believing anything we say or do now will matter (or even exist) 7900 years from now, and it's not going to be a problem before then-- if our date system is somehow still in use by that point! ...I think this might have been meant for another comment/thread anyway.
- YATA0 5y agoWhoops, yes my comment was meant for a totally different thread.
- kragen 5y agoYeah, I wish I made US$400k a year. Shit, I'd be satisfied with AR$400k a year, at least until inflation gets a bit worse.
- kragen 5y agoPretty sure the distraction of people complaining about people fooling around with alternative date formats is at least 100 times greater than the distraction of people using them. I think it's plausible that things we say or do now will matter 7900 years from now. The languages we speak today, and the beef, pork, and wheat we eat, are to a significant extent the result of the Bug-Dniester culture 7900 years ago; and Voyager 2 will very likely still exist 7900 years from now unless we catch up with it. And the advent of writing has made it much easier for direct cultural influence to span vast gaps of time. I think it's very likely that the human species will become extinct within a century, but quite possible that something will survive because of what we say and do today.
- unixbane 5y agoAlmost all software that stores numbers in fixed precision is just because they copy int semantics from C and its derivatives as opposed to any real resource constraint problem. This is braindamage.
- School-Cotton 5y agoWriting with four digits doesn't induce any Y10k problem. We write dates with as many digits as they need; for example, we write the year 327 with three digits.
- rbanffy 5y agoIn the best interest of future generations, we should specify that this count is in the Christian Era. Our descendants may want to reset the count (and change the duration of a standard year) at some point.
- SahAssar 5y agoYou should probably include when you count the Julian-Gregorian calendar switch too. Especially today and if you are from Sweden and perhaps using relative dates, since 310 years ago that was february 30th.
- kragen 5y agoJust for redundancy, we should include the Hebrew calendar year (5782), the Mayan Long Count date (13.0.9.5.16—sorry, I don't have my keybindings set up to type Maya numerals), and the Hindu calendar (Kali Yuga year 5123). You can't be too careful!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sgt 5y agoOn HN you find all kinds, that's why.
- gumby 5y ago01961 is not a valid year as '9' is not a valid octal digit.
- kragen 5y agoIt is in K&R!
- gumby 5y agoCurses, you're right!
- eru 5y agoMarginally related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijective_numeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijective_numeration Basically, Excel has a numbering system that uses A-Z for 1 to 26, but no 0. But the system still works just fine.
- kragen 5y agoThanks, I'd never made that connection! I see it's mentioned in the Wikipedia article now.
- eru 5y agoThere's lots of other fun numbering systems. The book 'Purely Functional Data Structures' has lots more obscure numbering systems, and uses them to construct data structures. To give a trivial example: unary numbers are basically equivalent to linked lists. Skew binary number are equivalent to something more interesting!
- WorldMaker 5y agoIt's often used to encourage long-term thinking. I most directly associate it with the Long Now Foundation [1], which encourages that format for dates as many of their initiatives strive to consider the Y10K view and beyond. [1] https://longnow.org/ https://longnow.org/
- imoverclocked 5y agoSince we are adding insignificant digits, I think there aren't enough zeros after the most significant digits; We need to focus on solving todays problems too. For an extreme version of this, 1961 might be written in scientific notation: 0.196100e4 This is also future-proof as we will always have a built-in 0 at the beginning of the number implying that we never get to "1" and there will always be more time to solve the problems we can't even begin to understand that may exist 10k years from now. Sorry for the sarcasm, it was the easiest way to make my point.
- kragen 5y agoThis is a great idea! I'll try it next week if I remember.
- mattkrause 5y agoNext 0.1923e-1, you mean?
- kragen 5y agoNext 0.1917e-1!
- runlevel1 5y agoIf we're going decimal I'd prefer it be the percent of time elapsed between the Big Bang and heat death of the universe.
- imoverclocked 5y ago
- compressedgas 5y agohttps://longnow.org/ideas/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-and-10k-compliance-at-home/ https://longnow.org/ideas/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-di...
- hayleox 5y agoLol, that's completely silly. Who even knows if we'll still be using the same calendar in 8,000 years? Y10K is not worth dealing with until the 100th century.
- kragen 5y agoYes, it is!
- _jal 5y agoSo then why not Y100K? Does preparation become pointless sometime after 8,000 years from now, but before 92,000 have elapsed?
- kragen 5y agoGo wild!
- qot 5y agoI'm genuinely curious and haven't found an answer online so I'll ask you: why stop at 10K and not 100K? Also we represent 3-digit years like 770 without problems, so what does this solve? Is the hypothetical problem so bad that solving it is worth the ambiguity between octal numbers and the extra effort for readers to parse 02022 as year?
- kragen 5y agoStop at 100K if you like! Or 1000K! You're a free being!
- matthoiland 5y agoProbably a time traveling technology historian?
- oh_sigh 5y agoI thought it was interesting that I've noticed someone doing that twice today, and never before in my life, but it turns out it was just another one of kragen's comments from earlier today on a different thread.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]