3 ms·

Why? How is "6 minutes ago" more useful than "9:27am today" or "2023-06-26 09:23"? For one thing it becomes out of date and inaccurate within 1 minute of the pa

• jcul 3y ago
  It can be useful when frequently working across many timezones, working on remote systems etc. While I generally prefer absolute timestamps, sometimes "1 hour ago" or lets meet in "30 mins" is easier and skips the mental gymnastics of coverting timezones.
• masukomi 3y ago
  9:27 assumes i a) have any clue what time it is now b) assumes that an arbitrary time designation is more important to me than the relative distance. When talking about stuff today, as a general statement "a" is almost always false for me and "b" is false nearly 100% of the time. I don't care that it was at 9:27am I care how long ago it was. "Was this the thing i just attempted or the prior attempt?" "did this happen before or after that conversation we had like 20 minutes ago?" "a" means i have to do an additional lookup. It doesn't matter that it's easy, it's an additional lookup. "b" means that i also have to do math, and i have a really really hard time with mental math (dyscalculia is a real thing). and, as others have pointed out. Time zones suck. I'm constantly coming up against UIs that refuse to tell me the time in my time zone when i need it, or in "their" time zone when I need it. "is that actually their 9:27 am, and thus my 2:27pm or is it _my_ 9:27am?" is the type of question I'm constantly asking. And then it's followed by "oh but [person x] is in a time zone one hour off so really that would be ...8:27 or 1:27?"