6 ms·

I'm a big fan of decimal time (or French Revolutionary Time as it's sometimes called). I made my own version a few years back: https://kybernetikos.github.io/UI

I'm a big fan of decimal time (or French Revolutionary Time as it's sometimes called). I made my own version a few years back: https://kybernetikos.github.io/UIT/ https://kybernetikos.github.io/UIT/ My version also removes timezones. The numeric time is the same whereever you are in the world, but the display changes based on your location so that local solar midday is straight up on the clock face and local solar midnight is straight down on the clock face. Day and night hours are drawn on the face. I used to have it attach to your google calendar and draw meetings onto the clock face too, but I think in the last 11 years the google calendar api has changed and I haven't updated it. Obviously once you have metric time, you need a metric week too, so I have new week days: nullday, unday, duoday, triday, quadday, hexday heptday, octday and nonday. There's no need for months anymore, I just number the weeks. Of course 28th Quadday is the 285th day in the year, as the first day is 0th Nullday. Fixing the number of weeks in a year to a round number is left as an exercise for the reader. Time and date maths becomes very simple.

paulryanrogers 3y ago
Is there a quarter day at the end of the year?
- kybernetikos 3y ago
  No because its a humane rather than scientific system. Day lengths in a scientific time vary, but in this system the hours are defined to be 10ths of a solar day so they vary as the day varies. Scientific measurement should be done with a different system. I'd suggest something based on the speed of light.
  - xattt 3y ago
    > … but in this system the hours are defined to be 10ths of a solar day so they vary as the day varies. This is reasonable and not unsafe at all, particularly when it comes to timing things like exposure time with patients receiving radiation therapy. However, we will be left wondering why treatment in the summer is more effective that treatment in the winter. Must be the nice weather.
    - lesuorac 3y ago
      Is that how you program things? I recommend using as little as date/day mechanics as you can get away with. Instead using a monotonic durations as much as you can [1]. If you continue to program with date/day mechanics you'll run into plenty of issues when users cross timezones or just set the time on their phone to a different one. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time
      - worthless-trash 3y ago
        My favorite things is when you connect to cell towers that have DST in one state, and not in another, the cell phone getting the time/date from "the network".
        kybernetikos 3y ago
        Yes, getting rid of the various savings time is important too. All the people pointing out the (genuine) problems with decimal time seem to be weirdly tolerant of the problems with our current system, which has much worse problems. If you imagine the reverse situation, where society uses a decimal time, and some people are arguing we should switch to this system because despite all the things it makes worse and harder, it divides better and the numbers map somewhat (although imperfectly) to the actual time-of-day in various locales and (even less perfectly) to the kinds of things people might be doing at that time, everyone would think they were crazy.
      - xattt 3y ago
        What would the reference time segment/second represent?
    - lokar 3y ago
      Or heating up a frozen burrito
    - kybernetikos 3y ago
      Firstly the time variance we're talking about is small and will only matter when milliseconds matter, secondly I addressed this - for scientific measures and scenarios where milliseconds matter a different time unit should be used. If you want to prioritise ease of moving between the two systems, I'd suggest a normalised version of the new second. If you want to prioritise science, then something that makes a nice round number when giving the speed of light would be nice. If you want to prioritise ease of adoption, just keep the current SI second, just stop using it to measure times of day. Either way the symbol for writing it should be different.
  - demondemidi 3y ago
    intercalation took millennia to get right and was driven largely by starvation due to crop failure.
    - kybernetikos 3y ago
      Which is why my system doesn't address year length. In practice I'd stick with the same leap day concept we currently use, so some years would have 36th quadday as their last day and some would have 36th pentday as their last day.
rimliu 3y ago
Simple and useless. You can have any system you want for your personal use, but clocks and calendars are for colaboration. It's nice that you have day and night hours on the clock where you are. No you will travel a few thousand kilometers. You know your decimal time you get there, do you know whether it will be daytime or nighttime? You get there, and it is winter and the dark time is 3x of the daytime. Have you got any idea when anything opens and closes? And why have weeks if you don't have months. How about just numbered days?
- kybernetikos 3y ago
  In the full version there is an unrolled map of the world down the side with the terminator drawn on which solves all those concerns. Even if those problems were harder to solve its far more valuable to have a single time for your meeting than multiple times (depending on the time zones and savings time of the participants). The pain of organising international meetings was one of the reasons I did this.
  - jermaustin1 3y ago
    UTC?
    - kybernetikos 3y ago
      Yes, my preference is basically UTC, just with some UX improvements.
ChilledTonic 3y ago
I also use Decimal Time and the French Republican Calendar as my default calendar and time method. The mental math to convert back to "standard" time and date is very easy once you get the hang of it, and I think it's good practice to not take for granted systems we consider "standard" such as time. For more on the philosophy of this, I highly recommend Jenny Odell's Book, Saving Time. Note that she doesn't talk about the revolutionary calendar in it (to my memory) but touches on a lot of the realities of time and clocks themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar
- kybernetikos 3y ago
  If only they'd had the sense to zero index their days instead of 1 indexing them!
- quantum5 3y ago
  I am curious which leap day system you use for the French Republican calendar. Most popular versions of the calendar I see floating around just use the Gregorian leap year system, which I don't like because it yields the wrong results in the year the calendar was in use. Yet, I don't see mental math as a viable option when using the original date-of-equinox method used during the revolution.
  - ChilledTonic 3y ago
    It's not an easy thing; frankly, if I have to back convert to prior times when the Calendar was still in use, you have to just swallow the pill However, if using the calendar in day to day life, the Revised System is much easier. To quote Wikipedia: leap years being every year divisible by 4, except years divisible by 100 and not by 400. Years divisible by 4000 would also be ordinary years. This calendar also has the benefit that every year in the third century of the Republican Era (1992–2091) begins on 22 September.
clemiclemen 3y ago
Fairly good article as to why removing time zones is a bad idea: https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish (The article is still relevant with metric time/weeks)
- zanderwohl 3y ago
  The arguments against removing timezones apply to adding timezones - it just depends on what you're used to or which type of conversion you find easier. The arguments in this oft-circulated article really fall flat.
- kybernetikos 3y ago
  What's strange is that he says > Does that mean I can call him? I don't know. About the non timezone version but skates over the fact that he doesn't know the answer in the timezone version either. He says "Google tells me..." well sure, if you're allowed to use Google you could just have easily have asked "what are typical daylight/waking hours in x location?" This is much better anyway since in some countries culturally you siesta in the early afternoon (don't call please) and stay up later. Anyway there is something of a genuine problem here (although I don't consider it serious) and I'd solve it by drawing the world on the side of the clock and allowing you to rotate the face by selecting a place on the map.
kzhe 3y ago
It's been explicitly highlighted to me before that the calendar in the French Revolution is called the French Republican Clendar and not the French Revolutionary Calendar, so I'd assum the same is true and it would be French Republican Time

paulryanrogers 3y ago

Is there a quarter day at the end of the year?

kybernetikos 3y ago
No because its a humane rather than scientific system. Day lengths in a scientific time vary, but in this system the hours are defined to be 10ths of a solar day so they vary as the day varies. Scientific measurement should be done with a different system. I'd suggest something based on the speed of light.
- xattt 3y ago
  > … but in this system the hours are defined to be 10ths of a solar day so they vary as the day varies. This is reasonable and not unsafe at all, particularly when it comes to timing things like exposure time with patients receiving radiation therapy. However, we will be left wondering why treatment in the summer is more effective that treatment in the winter. Must be the nice weather.
  - lesuorac 3y ago
    Is that how you program things? I recommend using as little as date/day mechanics as you can get away with. Instead using a monotonic durations as much as you can [1]. If you continue to program with date/day mechanics you'll run into plenty of issues when users cross timezones or just set the time on their phone to a different one. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time
    - worthless-trash 3y ago
      My favorite things is when you connect to cell towers that have DST in one state, and not in another, the cell phone getting the time/date from "the network".
      - kybernetikos 3y ago
        Yes, getting rid of the various savings time is important too. All the people pointing out the (genuine) problems with decimal time seem to be weirdly tolerant of the problems with our current system, which has much worse problems. If you imagine the reverse situation, where society uses a decimal time, and some people are arguing we should switch to this system because despite all the things it makes worse and harder, it divides better and the numbers map somewhat (although imperfectly) to the actual time-of-day in various locales and (even less perfectly) to the kinds of things people might be doing at that time, everyone would think they were crazy.
    - xattt 3y ago
      What would the reference time segment/second represent?
  - lokar 3y ago
    Or heating up a frozen burrito
  - kybernetikos 3y ago
    Firstly the time variance we're talking about is small and will only matter when milliseconds matter, secondly I addressed this - for scientific measures and scenarios where milliseconds matter a different time unit should be used. If you want to prioritise ease of moving between the two systems, I'd suggest a normalised version of the new second. If you want to prioritise science, then something that makes a nice round number when giving the speed of light would be nice. If you want to prioritise ease of adoption, just keep the current SI second, just stop using it to measure times of day. Either way the symbol for writing it should be different.
- demondemidi 3y ago
  intercalation took millennia to get right and was driven largely by starvation due to crop failure.
  - kybernetikos 3y ago
    Which is why my system doesn't address year length. In practice I'd stick with the same leap day concept we currently use, so some years would have 36th quadday as their last day and some would have 36th pentday as their last day.

rimliu 3y ago

Simple and useless. You can have any system you want for your personal use, but clocks and calendars are for colaboration. It's nice that you have day and night hours on the clock where you are. No you will travel a few thousand kilometers. You know your decimal time you get there, do you know whether it will be daytime or nighttime? You get there, and it is winter and the dark time is 3x of the daytime. Have you got any idea when anything opens and closes? And why have weeks if you don't have months. How about just numbered days?

kybernetikos 3y ago
In the full version there is an unrolled map of the world down the side with the terminator drawn on which solves all those concerns. Even if those problems were harder to solve its far more valuable to have a single time for your meeting than multiple times (depending on the time zones and savings time of the participants). The pain of organising international meetings was one of the reasons I did this.
- jermaustin1 3y ago
  UTC?
  - kybernetikos 3y ago
    Yes, my preference is basically UTC, just with some UX improvements.

ChilledTonic 3y ago

I also use Decimal Time and the French Republican Calendar as my default calendar and time method. The mental math to convert back to "standard" time and date is very easy once you get the hang of it, and I think it's good practice to not take for granted systems we consider "standard" such as time. For more on the philosophy of this, I highly recommend Jenny Odell's Book, Saving Time. Note that she doesn't talk about the revolutionary calendar in it (to my memory) but touches on a lot of the realities of time and clocks themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar

kybernetikos 3y ago
If only they'd had the sense to zero index their days instead of 1 indexing them!
quantum5 3y ago
I am curious which leap day system you use for the French Republican calendar. Most popular versions of the calendar I see floating around just use the Gregorian leap year system, which I don't like because it yields the wrong results in the year the calendar was in use. Yet, I don't see mental math as a viable option when using the original date-of-equinox method used during the revolution.
- ChilledTonic 3y ago
  It's not an easy thing; frankly, if I have to back convert to prior times when the Calendar was still in use, you have to just swallow the pill However, if using the calendar in day to day life, the Revised System is much easier. To quote Wikipedia: leap years being every year divisible by 4, except years divisible by 100 and not by 400. Years divisible by 4000 would also be ordinary years. This calendar also has the benefit that every year in the third century of the Republican Era (1992–2091) begins on 22 September.

clemiclemen 3y ago

Fairly good article as to why removing time zones is a bad idea: https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish (The article is still relevant with metric time/weeks)

zanderwohl 3y ago
The arguments against removing timezones apply to adding timezones - it just depends on what you're used to or which type of conversion you find easier. The arguments in this oft-circulated article really fall flat.
kybernetikos 3y ago
What's strange is that he says > Does that mean I can call him? I don't know. About the non timezone version but skates over the fact that he doesn't know the answer in the timezone version either. He says "Google tells me..." well sure, if you're allowed to use Google you could just have easily have asked "what are typical daylight/waking hours in x location?" This is much better anyway since in some countries culturally you siesta in the early afternoon (don't call please) and stay up later. Anyway there is something of a genuine problem here (although I don't consider it serious) and I'd solve it by drawing the world on the side of the clock and allowing you to rotate the face by selecting a place on the map.

kzhe 3y ago

It's been explicitly highlighted to me before that the calendar in the French Revolution is called the French Republican Clendar and not the French Revolutionary Calendar, so I'd assum the same is true and it would be French Republican Time