John Goodenough
Ars TechnicaInventor of NTP protocol that keeps time on billions of devices dies at age 85
Dave Mills created NTP, the protocol that holds the temporal Internet together, in 1985.
deegeese@arstechnica Dave Mills is finally late, at the age of 85.
JJ Celery@deegeese @arstechnica I laughed at this so I guess I'm going to hell
Howard Chu @ Symas@deegeese @arstechnica he's not gone, he's just moved to a higher stratum
Ryan2one3@arstechnica something something time ran out something
Darkoneko
adacosta@arstechnica It feels like so many people in their 80s are passing away rapidly. Always wondered about the folks behind so many of these fundamental technologies look like. We need to ensure we seek them out, have them share life experiences. I’m glad Dave Cutler recently did.
Calum@adacosta @arstechnica The modal age of death in the US these days is about 87, so not surprising really.
@arstechnica Just felt like people were living longer. Although the population is larger. The pandemic in some ways contributed to what feels like a decline in years.
Fubaroque@arstechnica Actually it doesn’t keep time, it synchronizes time. 🤭
Deborah Pickettreach 376
mjgraves@arstechnica The first time lord?
Jukka Niiranen@mjgraves @arstechnica Here's to the Timelords, aka The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, furthermore known as The Jams. #TheKLF #WhatTimeIsLove https://youtu.be/UIbYM1ecT2I?si=X2NwFAFrrioRApww
The KLF - What Time Is Love? (Live at Trancentral) (Official Video)
klausfiend has moved@arstechnica One of the internet's original unsung heroes. RIP.
Light Owl ☸️@arstechnica We've come such a long way. I wrote an article of appreciation of NTP here:
https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/ntp-and-utc-time-has-all-but-dominated-planet-earth-so-why-pretend-we-care-about-lunisolar-other-than-to-know-when-the-uposatha-is-and-moon-gaze/9211
#Buddhism #Theravada
https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/ntp-and-utc-time-has-all-but-dominated-planet-earth-so-why-pretend-we-care-about-lunisolar-other-than-to-know-when-the-uposatha-is-and-moon-gaze/9211
#Buddhism #Theravada
NTP and UTC time has all but dominated planet Earth. So why pretend we care about lunisolar (other than to know when the Uposatha is, and moon-gaze)?
Ancient India (at the time of the Buddha) used a calendaring system called “lunisolar”, which is of course much different than our current way of calculating time and date. The Buddha did not invent his own calendaring system, instead just deferring to the default system that was in use. Ethnic Buddhist countries later adopted a lunisolar calendaring system (in the 16th Century), originating by and large from the Greeks. I talked about that system recently here. Sure, in Buddhist countries, ...
DesRoin 
SpaceLifeFormHe met the infinite skew at the last clock tick.
teto-chan@arstechnica rest in peace man
mirabilos@arstechnica how unfitting to have all those clocks desynchronised
McNulla@arstechnica
It was his time (within a few milliseconds, give or take).
It was his time (within a few milliseconds, give or take).
oldguycrustyI love the fire extinguisher and painted concrete walls in the background. Looks like a basement data center where I can imagine he spent a lot of time. No pun intended. R.I.P.
nicholas
Yaksh Bariya@arstechnica Mad respect for this guy!
Michael Vilain@arstechnica A few years ago, I read about Susan Sons on pre-Melon Husk Twitter after she posted about her taking over ntp development. The codebase was on, I think, Dave's server in his basement. She took over the project to bring it into the 21st century with modern build and verification. I gave her money for this. I hope she lays a flower on Dave's grave to thank him for this project.
troy_friz_zell
Frank Engelhard@arstechnica When you use abbreviations in your announcements, like you and other techies do, you inhibit lay people like me from opening your messages.
Tom Hannen@arstechnica "The 64-bit value for the fraction is enough to resolve the amount of time it takes a photon to pass an electron at the speed of light. The 64-bit second value is enough to provide unambiguous time representation until the universe goes dim.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Time_Protocol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Time_Protocol
nonesuch_user@arstechnica and now his clock is stopped. Requiescat in pace.