7 ms·
Decimal Time
- TMWNN 3y agoReminds me of Vernor Vinge's future human starfaring civilization using kiloseconds, megaseconds, and gigaseconds to measure time. <https://neurocline.github.io/dev/2015/08/13/telling-time-in-seconds.html https://neurocline.github.io/dev/2015/08/13/telling-time-in-...>
- Klaster_1 3y agoSame in Glasshouse by Charles Stross, and probably in many other sci-fi novels. It even glances over acclimatization to a new time representation.
- mzi 3y agoPrevious (as soon as two days ago): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=decimal%20time&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... and misnamed: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=metric%20time&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- zokier 3y agoWorth emphasizing that decimal time is not just historical curiosity and fringe idea, especially the astronomical community uses decimal time fairly regularly, various "julian date" systems attest that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_day
- jhoechtl 3y agonot to forget that an astronomoical day has no 24 hours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereal_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereal_time
- akira2501 3y agoThe USPS used it when I worked there in the 90s. They used 24 hour days with 100 ticks of 36 seconds per each hour. The time clocks operated in this format. Which was interesting, until you also realized, they expected you to clock in precisely at the start of your shift, giving you a 36 second window to do it in. On the first day I was wondering why there were so many time clocks for the size of the office and then I witnessed the shift change "stampede" that this policy incidentally created.
- niklasrde 3y agoHow does the time system relate to the clock-in expectation? Otherwise you would have 60 seconds to do it in, which feels like not much more time?
- aredox 3y agoOh, interesting! Is there an historical explanation somewhere on how and why they adopted this system?
- crazygringo 3y agoWhat happened if you missed it and clocked in the following "minute"?
- akira2501 3y agoIf I recall correctly, for up to 5 "ticks" you could make it up at the end of your shift, for anything more you got reported. It was a union job and so there were a lot of little "parsimonious" rules like this. To answer the other question at the same time, in the 90s, was most shops that used an analog time clock would only advance the stamped time every 5 minutes. So, if you clocked in at 8:04, it would still punch 8:00 on your card. So, it was notable to me at the time that they had clocks with a finer grain of accuracy that fed into their computers immediately, and they actually cared about the "slop" involved in time keeping.
- crazygringo 3y ago
- tgv 3y agoA decimal fraction is not the same as decimal time. There may be a simple conversion (* 1000), but the conversion to 24hr time is almost as simple. The problem with decimal time is that it is a proposal for people to use, and that it solves no problems at an immense conversion cost.
- gmiller123456 3y agoAs someone who's done quite a bit of astronomy programming, I can say the Julian Date is not really a replacement for decimal time. The Julian Date really isn't much different than a Unix Timestamp (in fact, you can convert between the two quite easily: jd = UnixTimestamp / 86400 + 2440587.5). They are both good for punching in to algorithms, but not good for direct use by people.
- ouked 3y agoRelated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time
- qingcharles 3y agoI prefer this. I'm actually building it into one of my web sites. The only issue is that the thing was a bit of a stunt, and as part of that they centered it on Switzerland, which is GMT+1, instead of aligning it with UTC.
- Eisenstein 3y agoIf we didn't have ten fingers would we care so much about decimals? They aren't particularly well suited to anything more than any other number system. Base 12 actually has a lot more going for it.
- chriswarbo 3y agoThe best thing about SI is that it only has one unit per dimension, and no conversion factors between units (it is "coherent"). Unfortunately, this simplicity and elegance usually goes unappreciated; while people focus on arbitrary powers of ten (e.g. that 100 hundredths is one) http://www.chriswarbo.net/projects/units/metric_red_herring.html http://www.chriswarbo.net/projects/units/metric_red_herring.... PS: The SI unit of time is the "second"; which is actually a sexagesimal fraction (a "pars minuta secunda", AKA a second small part; which is a sixtieth of a "pars minuta", a sixtieth of an hour)
- evanb 3y agoJust appending 0s to change scale is true in any base. If you'd grown up in base 12 you'd write that 100 one-hundred-forty-fourths is one and that there's nothing particularly simple about A As (84 in your natural numerals), where A=9+1.
- zokier 3y agoThat is somewhat idealistic view on SI, and even more so of the metric system. While SI is nominally coherent, it is in practice accomplished by having very awkward values for defining constants, and that factor is excluded from the coherence consideration. E.g. to convert from seconds to meters you need to use conversion factor c, which is very much not 1. I would also be very careful and not conflate metric and SI systems. There are all sorts whacky metric systems (although most of them historical) that are not nearly as clean as SI. And even SI historically has been messier than its today.
- Armisael16 3y agoc is used in the definition of the meter, but you don’t remotely need to know that in day-to-day life. As long as the seven base units (length, time, mass, temperature, electric current, luminosity) end up with reasonable values the system is practically coherent. (are the values reasonable? well, human-scale capacitors and resistors seem pretty heavily skewed away from the center of the scale…)
- janpmz 3y agoA while ago there was a HN post about a metic time website, I still look at it sometimes: https://metric-time.com/ https://metric-time.com/
- macintux 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37853181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37853181 (336 comments)
- seszett 3y agoThis website indexes its decimal time on the "standard" 12-hour timezones though, which is fundamentally broken in my opinion. Decimal time was designed before the introduction of fixed timezones, and was relative to Paris in Revolutionary France, so a "correct" decimal clock should either use local time (using the browser's geolocation API), Paris time, or could devise a timezone system based on decimal time. But using the sexagesimal timezones means there will be 0.83 hour difference between Paris and London for example, which is neither practical or meaningful. I have a strong opinion on this because I have implemented decimal time (and decimal calendar) a few times, but of course it's just my opinion. Nobody uses this for actual, current applications that actually require accuracy.
- bmacho 3y agoMe too, I occasionally go there time to time. Also the more I think about metric time, the more I love it.
- aquova 3y agoThat's a neat website, but it did confuse me for a moment. It's titled itself "metric time", but seems to be the same idea as detailed on the "Decimal time" Wikipedia article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time. However, that article warns to not confuse it with its own "Metric time" article, which isn't the same as that metric time website, it's just the SI units related to time - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_time.
- hgomersall 3y agoA better idea is to go to duodecimal everything else!
- nine_k 3y agoWhile at it, also switch all writing systems to Tengwar (which is a great, highly logical writing system) and maybe study Sindarin at schools. About as realistic.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 11235813213455 3y agoWe also have 12 months, is there a decimal year thing too?
- Lvl999Noob 3y agoIirc, there actually is one. 13 months, all with the same number of days plus one special day that is out of all months plus leap day every four years like usual (again, out of any single month)
- gloria_mundi 3y agoThe International Fixed Calendar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
- hahamaster 3y agoOnly when you explain timekeeping to a small kid you realize how strange the whole system is.