6 ms·

There is literally no aspect of society, science, or culture that I’m willing to buy into changing to make things easier for software developers and tech compan

There is literally no aspect of society, science, or culture that I’m willing to buy into changing to make things easier for software developers and tech companies (or in fact any companies, but only tech companies seem to be arrogant enough to suggest it). What an entirely backwards way of looking at the world. If we can’t deal with IT that improperly models the universe, the right answer is not to change the world to be more like the shitty naive model the software implements, it is to be less dependent on the technology agreeing 100% with reality.

jefftk 4y ago
It sounds like you would have been opposed to the introduction of timezones? They made everyone switch away from local solar time, primarily for the benefit of railway timetables.
- nrvn 4y ago
  This is me. I want everyone to use UTC and align local lunch times to solar noons.
- barnabee 4y ago
  I’m not particularly attached to time zones, so perhaps I would have opposed introducing them. Sticking with local solar time in the age of jet planes would have been at least as much fun as daylight saving time.
Beltalowda 4y ago
But what benefit are leap seconds to "society, science, or culture"? I've never seen one. If the current drift would continue then we're talking about a drift of 9 minutes every millennium; less than an hour for all of recorded history (and it mostly likely won't continue as-is; sooner or later we'll get negative leap seconds).
- barnabee 4y ago
  The current situation doesn’t need to benefit society to oppose changing it for Facebook. Society, science, and culture are not the result of some utilitarian optimisation function, and that is precisely the reason to oppose changing them simply to make some company’s engineering slightly easier (or even a lot easier).
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    So merely because "Facebook said so" it should now be changed? A curious argument, especially considering many people have made similar arguments for years and the ITU has been considering abolishing it for a decade.

jefftk 4y ago

It sounds like you would have been opposed to the introduction of timezones? They made everyone switch away from local solar time, primarily for the benefit of railway timetables.

nrvn 4y ago
This is me. I want everyone to use UTC and align local lunch times to solar noons.
barnabee 4y ago
I’m not particularly attached to time zones, so perhaps I would have opposed introducing them. Sticking with local solar time in the age of jet planes would have been at least as much fun as daylight saving time.

Beltalowda 4y ago

But what benefit are leap seconds to "society, science, or culture"? I've never seen one. If the current drift would continue then we're talking about a drift of 9 minutes every millennium; less than an hour for all of recorded history (and it mostly likely won't continue as-is; sooner or later we'll get negative leap seconds).

barnabee 4y ago
The current situation doesn’t need to benefit society to oppose changing it for Facebook. Society, science, and culture are not the result of some utilitarian optimisation function, and that is precisely the reason to oppose changing them simply to make some company’s engineering slightly easier (or even a lot easier).
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  So merely because "Facebook said so" it should now be changed? A curious argument, especially considering many people have made similar arguments for years and the ITU has been considering abolishing it for a decade.