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Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?

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Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?

#201

Post by basch »

gls2ro wrote: post #191
basch wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Only America uses the (nonsensical) MM-DD-YYYY system. It makes more sense as MMDD-YYYY or (MM-DD)-YYYY. The Month-Day is a single thing, there are 365 of them in a year, in a roughly base 30 counting system. The year can often be left off when colloquially referring to a date (3/14 or 0314 for example.)

Just trying to reason here: I think it makes more sense to have DD/MM as the day is the thing that changes more often and thus DDMM starts with the most important information first. Also if I think I never encountered someone looking at their digital watch to know what Month is. But always people check phones/watches to know what day is. So why would these systems start with the less important information for the use…

Do you put minutes before hours when you tell time?

Day before month creates some ambiguity regarding if you’re talking about the near past or near future.

If you consider MMDD a single unit, it doesn’t make sense to represent it backwards. You need to be able to tell that 0402 is a bigger base iterarion than 0302. If it’s DDMM 0203 and 0204 don’t appear to be an entire base count apart.

Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?

#202

Post by KolenCh »

A classic problem similar to this would be a flight. If you got a flight departing at 12:40am, make sure you really know what it means.

There’s too many people making this mistakes and sometimes the airline might help you out but not always.

Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?

#203

Post by Nadya »

xiwenc wrote: post #114
Quikinterp wrote: post #5

A lot of my exams will use the time 11:59pm instead of 12:00am to avoid confusion like this

Makes a lot of sense. It’s more a workaround. Also, in your case the date would be: March 24 at 11:59pm That would be close to: March 25 at 12:00am A bit less confusing but still: March 25 at 00:00am

And then you have Japan where that could be March 24 at 25:00.

https://kimiwo.aishitei.ru/i/ytPbouZ21iYnNXi7.png

Not all too uncommon to see bars and bookstores open until 27:00 or 28:00 and it's surprisingly intuitive when you consider when the bar is open. ie 19:00 ~ 29:00. (7pm - 5am)

Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?

#205

Post by rexf »

KolenCh wrote: post #202

A classic problem similar to this would be a flight. If you got a flight departing at 12:40am, make sure you really know what it means. There’s too many people making this mistakes and sometimes the airline might help you out but not always.

That's a good point, but 12:40am is a very unusual flight time? That's almost 1am.

I would guess most flights are in the ballpark of 7am - 9pm. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?

#206

Post by anotherevan »

DonaldFisk wrote: post #125

Yes. I wish people would stop using that, as it confuses me, just as it confused you. AM = ante meridiem, before noon. PM = post meridiem, after noon. It makes no sense to say midday (meridies in Latin) is before noon or after noon, it's exactly at noon. If you're going to use a 12 hour clock, to avoid confusion, you should write "12 noon" or "12 midnight". That way the confusion is avoided. Alternatively, switch to…

We did something similar here in Victoria, Australia in the last two years. When there were rule changes around COVID, lock-downs, etc, they would often go into effect at 11:59pm.

We typically use twelve hour with am/pm time representations, but I figure the thinking was it would cause less confusion in those anxious times.

Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?

#207

Post by xiwenc »

sjs382 wrote: post #188
xiwenc wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here. The online exam is run by Pearson Vue. With my brief research I found it’s a British company. That could be the reason they use AM/PM. I think with better UX on their scheduling app this would have been avoided. Imagine how much cost they could save with minor improvement. It wasted the proctors, customer service and my time. Unless they don't acknowledge own fault and require customers to pay for another ex…

I hope this doesn't come off as unnecessarily combative, but the real solution here is to check, verify, double-check and triple-check when presented with notation that's unfamiliar with you. > How do we solve this more universally? It's not a universal problem. While entire cultures and countries /could/ invest resources changing (and more people experience confusion centered around any transition), it really isn't…

Perhaps universal is too broad “scope” here. Companies nowadays offer services on the internet with reach to every corner of the world. Their customers shouldn’t need to adapt any specific cultural or company origin habits to use their services. Companies should adapt instead if they are offering services to other demographics. It should be easily understood without ambiguity. Yes we all learn from mistakes, but what if this doesn’t result in mistakes all.

Thinking of this further, it seems to me this type of issues are related to accessibility.

Regarding double checking unfamiliar notation: it’s my habit to verify when it’s unclear. The problem is that i know what AM/PM mean. This is a special case i misunderstood. One cannot conclude the misunderstanding until pointed out by an external party.

Based on the comments in this post, it’s obvious i’m not the only struggling with this. Imagine what impact this has on general population as the cultural/country borders are pretty much non-existent on the internet.

Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?

#208

Post by xiwenc »

I’m baffled to see those in favor of AM/PM notation fail to acknowledge there is a better, less confusing, alternative. Can we call this “technical” debt?

I really like the idea of saying 11:59PM instead. Despite feeling like a duck tape solution.

What bothers me more is that internet companies offer services to the global consumer. These services should work for the customer. Not force some cultural or demographic habit on global population. Instead, use non-ambiguous notation like 24h or express noon/midnight explicitly.

Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?

#209

Post by _nalply »

dijit wrote: post #10

Ante meridium and post meridium. Ante- meaning “before”, meridium meaning “highest point of the sun” as in when the sun crosses the “meridian” which would be the line in which it is now setting instead of rising. Passing from post-meridian to ante-meridian is exactly 12 hours from when the sun passed the meridian point, to keep it “consistent”. I get though that it’s confusing, I questioned it a lot as a young boy. P…

It's ante meridiem and post meridiem. Let me explain.

"dies" is the Latin word for day. It is in the e-declension. Not many words in Latin have the e-declension. Another one is "res", the Latin word for thing.

I don't know a lot about "meri", but it seems that "meridies" is also in the e-declension.

"ante" and "post" are prepositions which ask for the accusative. The accusative is mostly lost in English, but often when you say "me", it's accusative. If you say "after I" it feels wrong. You say "after me". German has preserved the accusative, so it is natural for me.

Now, in the e-declension the ending for the accusative is "-em". So you say ante meridiem and post meridiem.

Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?

#210

Post by gls2ro »

basch wrote: post #201
gls2ro wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just trying to reason here: I think it makes more sense to have DD/MM as the day is the thing that changes more often and thus DDMM starts with the most important information first. Also if I think I never encountered someone looking at their digital watch to know what Month is. But always people check phones/watches to know what day is. So why would these systems start with the less important information for the use…

Do you put minutes before hours when you tell time? Day before month creates some ambiguity regarding if you’re talking about the near past or near future. If you consider MMDD a single unit, it doesn’t make sense to represent it backwards. You need to be able to tell that 0402 is a bigger base iterarion than 0302. If it’s DDMM 0203 and 0204 don’t appear to be an entire base count apart.

I agree we disagree, here is why:

I am talking about what makes sense for people. And most of the people look at the calendar to know what day is today.

Regarding time, if you are asking me I will put minutes before hours in our era where every minute counts.

But before this speedy times, people where mostly concerned with hours.

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