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Canada ends official time signal
- the_unknown 3y agoNot entirely abruptly. The downfall was seen back in 2018. I, like most listeners, simply didn't believe the transmission would end. Like a warm security blanket the signal has been a presence in my life since my earliest days. "NRC ... spokesperson Orian Labrèche said CBC installed HD radio transmitters in 2018, which caused a delay of up to nine seconds in broadcasting the time signal. The council proposed several solutions and worked with CBC to solve the delay, but "ultimately, CBC/Radio-Canada made the decision to stop broadcasting the NRC's official time signal" I am sad that the actual ending came with a whimper rather than a full-on cross-nation bang. A party to rival that of the final Tragically Hip concert. It certainly should have been handled better. A nation-wide listening party would have been monumental. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/cbc-stops-broadcasting-national-research-council-long-dash-time-signal-1.6988903 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/cbc-stops-broadcasting...
- WWLink 3y agoSigh. But HD radio is crap! That's the worst reason ever to stop doing something lmao.
- Aardwolf 3y agoA 9 second delay for a radio channel? So they can't do some interactive things like phone calls without a 9s delay anymore either? It really seems modern tech doesn't care about delay at all, while personally I do care about it. Modern tech should be better, but on the delay it's getting worse instead. Bluetooth audio is another example, with top tier headphones no longer supporting lower latency bluetooth codecs like aptx, and GPU's being ok adding delay to insert some "AI" frames, and delay between moving a camara and seeing the updated image on screen. Plus this love that designers have for "long-press" on/off buttons rather than immediate clicky ones.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- transcriptase 3y agoI often wonder what chromecast is doing in the 10 seconds it takes to start streaming something. Especially on hardware and software developed by google.
- bluGill 3y agoBuffering and waiting for TCP slow-start to get up to speed. While the amount of buffer time needed can be debated, given that in a long stream it is likely that a packet will be lost and resent via normal TCP (or just sent via a different route and so arrive late), you should have a few seconds buffer, and that means a few seconds at the start before the stream starts. It is a technical thing. You don't have to implement things as above. For live video you probably should use UDP and design your protocol so that you can handle a few missed packets - that is have your video become fuzzy in those cases. This is a lot more complex to design though and so not would you should do first. Even if you have Google's engineers, the first solution is better for not-live video since a few more seconds of delay mean you can keep clear video.
- lozenge 3y agoWhen you phone in, they tell you to turn the radio off and the radio plays through the telephone. Otherwise you would get feedback.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y agoI still have a delay using Bluetooth between phone and car. Video/audio out of sync.
- wincy 3y agoI have a cheap $20 Bluetooth dongle off Amazon that hooks into the audio port and cigarette lighter for power and it isn’t out of sync.
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- xattt 3y agoEven without HD Radio transmitters, the signal to repeaters is sent via geostationary satellite which has an inherent delay. I’ve observed the time signal being off by several seconds even before the 2018 transition.
- bluGill 3y agoThat delay is mostly predictable and so you can account for it. You still will be off by a few (I'm not sure what unit, but fraction of a second) as the speed of light in the atmosphere is not a constant. You can figure out the current speed of light in the atmosphere, as well but that requires a lot of complex hardware.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoIt's worth noting that this is not talking about CHU[1], which is what I would first think of as the "Canada Time Signal". It's talking about the Canadian equivalent of "the pips", the UK version of which is called the Greenwich Time Signal[2], broadcast over normal broadcast radio stations. CHU is still broadcasting. (And the UK still broadcasts "the pips".) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHU_(radio_station) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHU_(radio_station) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Time_Signal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Time_Signal
- Animats 3y agoOh, OK. CHU is the real time station, like WWV/WWVH. Here's a recording of CHU, still on the air.[1] For comparison, WWV [2] and WWVH.[3]. This is what people used for time sync before GPS. Any shortwave radio can receive these, and with enough antenna, they can be received almost anywhere on the planet. They are also frequency standards, with their carrier frequencies regulated by the atomic clocks. Sending time signals over digital audio channels with seconds of buffering is wrong enough that it's probably better to discontinue it. That's less accurate than most modern watches and worse than cell phone time. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVAad9e2v2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVAad9e2v2U [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMCI9I6xn6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMCI9I6xn6A [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW4VazIStq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW4VazIStq4
- bitwize 3y agoTIL about "The Pips". WTIC-AM in Hartford, CT, on 1080 MHz, broadcasts a Morse letter V (dit-dit-dit-dah) every hour, such that the "dah" starts on the hour; the tones occur in two different frequencies that make it sound like the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth.
- jsjohnst 3y ago> WTIC-AM in Hartford, CT, on 1080 MHz 1080 KHz you mean… 1.080 ghz is in the range used for aeronautical navigation.
- jareklupinski 3y agomaybe they're trying to tell their submarine fleet something https://www.businessinsider.com/bbc-radio-show-may-be-preventing-nuclear-apocalypse-2018-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/bbc-radio-show-may-be-preven... > During their isolated missions, crews watch for signals that the UK still exists — and may launch a counter-attack if they believe their country has been destroyed. One of these signs is whether BBC Radio 4 is still broadcasting the "Today" programme, Britain's flagship news and politics show.
- prewett 3y agoWow, that is eerily reminiscent of the deterrence in Liu Cixin's _Three Body Problem_ novels.
- pjscott 3y agoA lot of the thinking in there is intellectually downstream of ideas invented by Cold War nuclear geostrategists, so that’s not too surprising. The desire to not get blown up drove some people to think deeply about how to deal with foreign civilizations that think differently from you, have conflicting interests, but also don’t want to get blown up.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Scoundreller 3y agoPart of the reasoning for that signal in particular is its low frequency: 198khz, so one of the best commercial signals under their control that might penetrate through a bit of water at least.
- zh3 3y agoNot generally known, but Radio 4 on LW is a highly stable frequency reference and also [0] carries a digital time signal (along with other broadcast data, like signals for electricity meters). It's done by phase-modulating the carrier and is pretty easy to extract using analogue techniques or simple SDR (e.g. downmix to audio and extract the phase using a soundcard). Having said all that, looks like it's being turned off next year [1]. Let's hope someone tells the sub commanders! [0] I presume it still does, been a while since I checked. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/articles/2023/bbc-radio-4-long-wave-transition https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/articles/2023/bbc-radio-4-...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- teeray 3y agoI wonder how far into Canada they can hear WWV / WWVB[0] [0] https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-distribution/radio-station-wwv https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-di...
- discretion22 3y agoVaries, generally difficult for me in SW Ontario though with some occasional impressive 25MHz propagation with RS59 subject to heavy QSB. But I cannot rely on it for setting a clock...
- dbcurtis 3y agoHmmm... I would have thought the WWV 10 MHz signal would be pretty good in Ontario much of the time. It's only 10KW AM, but still, from Colorado to Ontario 10 MHz is a pretty usable frequency. WWVH, now that would be hit-or-miss. What do you have for an antenna?
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoCanadian news article about this shared earlier in the week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37834639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37834639
- cf100clunk 3y agoThat Canadian news article clarifies that only a very specific once-a-day audio announcement on the CBC's main national radio network is being ended while the National Research Council will continue providing several other types of time signal as usual. The Hackaday article's title it very poorly worded.
- lbourdages 3y agoFor what it's worth, there is still an official talking clock phone number one can call to get the time. I don't know how much latency POTS and cell phone service have, but it's something. https://nrc.canada.ca/en/certifications-evaluations-standards/canadas-official-time/telephone-talking-clock https://nrc.canada.ca/en/certifications-evaluations-standard...
- rerdavies 3y agoFine over landline; but inconsistent on cellphones. :-P Before the CBC went digital, they had dedicated landlines to the NRC time signal lab.
- lbourdages 3y agoI just tested it against https://time.is https://time.is on my cell phone (using wifi calling because network strength is abysmal where I live). I don't have a precise measurement but it was imperceptibly close, within 100ms probably. Certainly close enough to set a clock for non critical purposes.
- Nextgrid 3y agoThere is more and more VoIP within the PSTN so landlines aren't "safe" either if you need millisecond accuracy.
- bonestamp2 3y agoIt's sad when any sort of ritual comes to an end, but I mean... with cell phones sync'd to the tower's time, and temp controlled time crystals (like in the apple watch), are we technically missing anything without this?
- rerdavies 3y agocontinuity. It's an utterly futile anachronism. But it will still be dearly missed. Given that the CBC had dedicated landlines to the NRC time labs, the obviously solution would have been to get the NRC to send a pips signal for 12:59:51 (9 seconds earlier).
- kalleboo 3y agoThe article says the delay is "up to" nine seconds, a wording which sounds to me like it's not a fixed delay.
- maratc 3y agoThe delay is probably between 0 and 9 seconds, and probably differs between people who are listening at the same time. It does not seem like there is an obvious solution to this.
- Vogtinator 3y ago> with cell phones sync'd to the tower's time, and temp controlled time crystals (like in the apple watch) The best we have is actually GPS time, accurate to ~100ns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Accuracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Accu...).
- Abekkus 3y agoI'm wondering if weather patterns can drop that accuracy back to mere microseconds. Just in case, you can rely on wired terrestrial signals for similar precision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_Time_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_Time_Protocol
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- keepamovin 3y agoEnd of Watch
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nubinetwork 3y ago> Although perhaps obsolete by today’s standards, this 15 to 60 second long broadcast at 13:00 Eastern Time every single day has been a constant in the life of Canadians I have never once heard this.
- __s 3y agoYes, there are many Canadians who will never listen to CBC radio, nevermind at 1300 EDT. There are also many Canadians who listen to CBC radio while working or driving
- jagrsw 3y agoPolish radio (Program 1) brodacasted (and maybe still does) a time signal at 12:00 every day. It's a series of beeps and the end of the last and the longest beep marks 12:00. Here's how it sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p34LVMQI19M&t=129s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p34LVMQI19M&t=129s Fun fact, in the past (I suppose it's obsolete by now, since time and distance are defined in terms of the speed of light now) the carrier of the Program 1 (225kHz - as visible on the video) was an official standard of frequency in Poland.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoI don't know if or when it stopped, but here, every hourly radio news bulletin would start with a distinct two short, one long beep pattern, the short ones being a countdown, the long one being "it is now exactly the whole hour". I'm sure some radios could listen to that signal too, so not just for manual adjustment.
- swader999 3y agoNice to hear about something done by the government that isn't controversial. Just plain old boring decisions and doing stuff.
- lopis 3y agoI just realized that the main state radio station in Portugal also has a series of beeps a couple times a day. It never occurred to me that this could have a practical function.
- tgtweak 3y agoWorth noting that every satellite and almost every cell tower broadcasts time at a much faster interval, not to mention NTP as the article states.
- NeoTar 3y agoThis remind me of when the BBC had to remove the clock from their Internet homepage. This was because it just used the local time on the user's machine, and so was considered to be inaccurate (and people would assume the BBC were authoritative!) What surprised me looking up the story is that it happened surprisingly recently in 2013. I would have assumed that by that time the average person were sufficiently internet savvy to recognize that the clock was not remotely generated somehow. I wonder if the same conclusion would be reached today, or if BBC developers would instead sync the time between the server and website. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/bbc-forced-to-remove-misleading-clock-from-its-homepage-8644046.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/bbc-forced-t...
- eloisant 3y agoI don't see how the average person could know it didn't came from the servers. Even for a developer it would require looking at the JS code or the network calls. Anyway, what's the point of embedding a clock in a website? Everyone has a clock on their desktop computer to start with.
- Merad 3y ago> I would have assumed that by that time the average person were sufficiently internet savvy to recognize that the clock was not remotely generated somehow. IME the average person really has no intuition for how the internet and websites work. I don't think the thought process goes much beyond "BBC is showing me the time" -> "obviously they are showing me the correct time according to the BBC."
- FiddlerClamp 3y agoI have happy memories of Dad driving me home from Hebrew school Sundays and hearing those beeps on CBC radio...then the pregnant pause, then the longer beep and the news. Definitely a weekly ritual.
- 1-6 3y agoThe question now becomes, how much will they be auctioning off that licensed frequency spectrum for and who will it benefit?
- wlonkly 3y agoThe radio station is still broadcasting, but no longer signals the top of the hour once per day.
- faeriechangling 3y agoCanada maintains public NTP time servers. time.nrc.ca time.chu.nrc.ca There’s just no reason for this tone anymore when you literally trip over more accurately NTP synced devices in Canada which you can sync against at any time of day, or use devices which sync against an NTP server directly.