Mastodawn

Matthew Miller Mar 11, 2024

I say we go back to local solar time for everyone. And I mean _everyone_. Your phone knows where you are, and sets your clock so 12:00 happens when the sun is at the highest point in the sky for your location.

Matthew Miller Mar 11, 2024

This will work perfectly for things like "meet me for coffee" because people in the same place will have the same time within any meaningful precision.

It isn't good for scheduling online meetings, but this is a feature.

There is no way to have a meeting where it is not the middle of the night somewhere in the world. We need better ways to collaborate globally anyway.

Matthew Miller Mar 11, 2024

What about things like server log timestamps?

Swatch Internet Time.

Matthew Miller Mar 11, 2024

OMG Swatch still has a page about this

https://www.swatch.com/en-us/internet-time.html

I change my mind. SWATCH INTERNET TIME FOR ALL!

INTERNET TIME

What is a Swatch .beat? We have divided up the day into 1000 ".beats". So, one Swatch ".Beat" is equivalent to 1 Minute 26.4 Seconds.

Ben Slusky Mar 11, 2024

@mattdm Ah, that takes me back to when I had an internet time plugin for gkrellm

Farce Majeure Mar 11, 2024

@mattdm aka French Revolutionary Metric time. That's right, you've found the metric unit that was so painful even France stopped using it.

Farce Majeure Mar 11, 2024

@mattdm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time

Decimal time - Wikipedia

Matthew Miller Mar 11, 2024

Or we could go the other way and convert all of our systems to base 12 or base 24. Much better for cutting things into thirds.

Scott Williams 🐧Mar 12, 2024

@mattdm @vathpela I did just format several FAT12 disks a few days ago.

I also often estimate things in dozens (eg, about 4 dozen people were in the audience).

Matthew Miller Mar 11, 2024

Apparently also ancient China. There go the Jesuits, ruining things again.

Bob McWhirter Mar 11, 2024

@mattdm http://www.yak.net/rickdate/

RickDate

Qwijib0 Mar 12, 2024

@mattdm .beats might have actually had a fighting chance if they had used GMT as 0 rather than swatch HQ