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Freedom Clock

domsson.github.io

21–30 of 189 posts

Re: Freedom Clock

#22

Should we list hours, minutes, seconds? or year, month, day? Should we drive on the right side of the road or left? Should we use imperial or metric system? These are all good questions but I think the answer is "it depends." Just like timezones. You can't get rid of timezones: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26416337 https://qntm.org/abolish

> Should we list hours, minutes, seconds?

> Should we use imperial or metric system?

Those two seem very clear-cut. I haven’t ever seen time in any other format (HH:MM does not count as a different format), and there is zero benefit to the imperial system, other than Americans being used to it.

> Should we drive on the right side of the road or left?

I don’t think there’s much benefit in picking one over the other that isn’t related to economic factors (such as being able to import cars from neighbouring countries, but also the cost of redesigning all roads).

Re: Freedom Clock

#23

Europeans have access to multiple countries, cultures, and languages, yet still complain about imperial units, date formats, "soccer," SMS, and all of the many other ways in which the United States differs. It's another country. Stop being so insular.

America’s insistence on weird date and unit formats has a negative effect on software and resources used all around the world.

Re: Freedom Clock

#24

the least ambiguous format i know for human-facing dates: %d %b %Y so today is 25 Mar 2023. not coincidentally, this format is in common use in the american military. Occasionally my use of it has had people ask me where i served, though i never have.

This is a good example of why we have standards for dates. Your example is wrong for multiple reasons: * You don't specify the year and the time zone * ISO 8601 and RFC 3339 are better when it comes to naming files * It's not a valid date in the healthcare industry where the month must be in uppercase letters like "25 MAR 2023"

2023 certainly looks like a year to me.

Re: Freedom Clock

#25

the least ambiguous format i know for human-facing dates: %d %b %Y so today is 25 Mar 2023. not coincidentally, this format is in common use in the american military. Occasionally my use of it has had people ask me where i served, though i never have.

This is a good example of why we have standards for dates. Your example is wrong for multiple reasons: * You don't specify the year and the time zone * ISO 8601 and RFC 3339 are better when it comes to naming files * It's not a valid date in the healthcare industry where the month must be in uppercase letters like "25 MAR 2023"

Is it not the year 2023...?

Re: Freedom Clock

#26
For anybody looking to build a real clock, please don't use `setInterval`. Instead, use `requestAnimationFrame` which will avoid awkward stutters and delays. With a second-by-second timer, `setInterval` routinely results in seconds that appear too short or too long (in this case, up to the interval time of 100ms).

Also, it's nice to see that this simple page isn't using any framework. One quick performance win is to cache the `querySelector` calls. Those will be the slowest part of the computation, and the nodes themselves never change.

Re: Freedom Clock

#27

Europeans have access to multiple countries, cultures, and languages, yet still complain about imperial units, date formats, "soccer," SMS, and all of the many other ways in which the United States differs. It's another country. Stop being so insular.

if you think there aren't Americans that also complain about these, I've got news for you.

Re: Freedom Clock

#28
post #12
post #3

I get it, it's really annoying that there are different formats. In fact I once nerfed a small database by importing a bunch dates from a csv in the wrong format. But honestly both formats (M/D/Y and D/M/Y) are wrong, as clear from the clock example: dates should be big-endian; Y/M/D.

Slash means "of". D/M/Y or Y-M-D. Hell, the weird American "write it like you say it month dayeth of year" would be fine if they didn't use slashes. Sure it doesn't sort well but at least it wouldn't be ambiguous. Nobody would be confused if today was written 03-25/2023.

> Slash means "of".

No, it doesn't. I mean, in certain contexts it can, but it doesn't exclusively in general, any more than it means “and/or” exclusively in general (though, it does mean “and/or” in “and/or” which probably isn’t something you should think about too much.)

It can just be a separator, as it is in American dates.

Re: Freedom Clock

#30
Never mind American date format, visualize how something like the democratic congressional hearings on TikTok would appear to a super intelligent alien who just arrived here and hasn't had a chance to get his bearings on human culture.

Or, replace the alien with the founding fathers of this formerly great nation, or replace these hearings with most anything we do.

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