Freedom Clock • Hacker News Board

Re: Freedom Clock

#61

Post by harel » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

warent wrote: post #42

One thing I've come to learn is that American formats are human-friendly rather than machine-friendly. Our date system is like the Fahrenheit system; it works well when thinking like a human. in Fahrenheit, you just think of it in terms of 50 being the middle, "not cold and not hot". Then you understand 80 is high warm, closing in on hot, etc. Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important informatio…

I think you are just used to the format. I don't see how it's any more human friendly than metric/celsius/normal time. All perspective

Re: Freedom Clock

#62

Post by graypegg » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

warent wrote: post #42

One thing I've come to learn is that American formats are human-friendly rather than machine-friendly. Our date system is like the Fahrenheit system; it works well when thinking like a human. in Fahrenheit, you just think of it in terms of 50 being the middle, "not cold and not hot". Then you understand 80 is high warm, closing in on hot, etc. Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important informatio…

I’ve heard that a few times, but personally as someone that is a human as far as I know, I've never been able to grok Fahrenheit like I can Celsius! Celsius slots into nice groups of 10 where 0ish is very cold, 10ish is cold, 20ish room temp, 30ish is summer heat.

It’s less of an inherent part of the system, and more of a fact I just grew up with it and it’s what I’m used to.

Re: Freedom Clock

#63

Post by tomgp » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

downvotetruth wrote: post #47

jstanley wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that big-endian dates are the best solution (if nothing else, because lexical sort puts it in the right order), I think little-endian at least makes sense. The middle-endian format is just absurd.

AD > BC(E) & 2 BC(E) is before 1 BC(E)

But BCE comes before CE

Re: Freedom Clock

#64

Post by nerdponx » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:29 PM UTC

warent wrote: post #42

One thing I've come to learn is that American formats are human-friendly rather than machine-friendly. Our date system is like the Fahrenheit system; it works well when thinking like a human. in Fahrenheit, you just think of it in terms of 50 being the middle, "not cold and not hot". Then you understand 80 is high warm, closing in on hot, etc. Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important informatio…

But usually I know what the month is. Pre-qualifying a unit number with the "type" makes sense because I don't necessarily know what the number refers to advance. And sure, just for grammatical consistency and flow it's fine to say the month before the day. But it's another story in writing, especially on forms, or even worse, in data sets.

Re: Freedom Clock

#65

Post by ocimbote » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:29 PM UTC

warent wrote: post #42

One thing I've come to learn is that American formats are human-friendly rather than machine-friendly. Our date system is like the Fahrenheit system; it works well when thinking like a human. in Fahrenheit, you just think of it in terms of 50 being the middle, "not cold and not hot". Then you understand 80 is high warm, closing in on hot, etc. Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important informatio…

Tjis comment illustrates the Stockholm syndrome in a nutshell.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

Re: Freedom Clock

#66

Post by neevans » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:29 PM UTC

warent wrote: post #42

One thing I've come to learn is that American formats are human-friendly rather than machine-friendly. Our date system is like the Fahrenheit system; it works well when thinking like a human. in Fahrenheit, you just think of it in terms of 50 being the middle, "not cold and not hot". Then you understand 80 is high warm, closing in on hot, etc. Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important informatio…

50 being the middle is region specific it doesn't work the same way in all countries.

Also isn't it better to just say 25th March rather than March 25? Because most people will be aware of the month we're talking abt and date is the most important thing there which should come first.

Re: Freedom Clock

#67

Post by rocketbop » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:29 PM UTC

warent wrote: post #42

One thing I've come to learn is that American formats are human-friendly rather than machine-friendly. Our date system is like the Fahrenheit system; it works well when thinking like a human. in Fahrenheit, you just think of it in terms of 50 being the middle, "not cold and not hot". Then you understand 80 is high warm, closing in on hot, etc. Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important informatio…

Well March 25 is not ambiguous. 25/03 is also not really ambiguous. 04/03 is ambiguous.

I don’t think there’s a strong preference for 25 March over March 25 in Europe or elsewhere. I think I might write either one of those.

Re: Freedom Clock

#68

Post by DougMerritt » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:29 PM UTC

For many years I've used e.g. 2023 Mar 25, in the spirit of ISO 8601, to avoid all these problems.

I say "in the spirit of" because, as I recall (it's been years since I read it), the standard is quite focused, whereas I just want to do Year/month/day regardless of other little details like punctuation / numeric vs named month / zero padded digits or whether there should be a timezone etc etc. Usually I'm just adding a date to private notes, so it really doesn't matter.

When I have to fill out official forms on paper, I have to make an effort to change my habit.

Re: Freedom Clock

#69

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:30 PM UTC

activitypea wrote: post #33

jacknews wrote: 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.

I'd much rather have D/M/Y, since then data is ordered by relevance. If I'm seeing a full date, I probably care more about the day than the month, and more about the month than the year. This is just pure bikeshedding tho, both are infinitely better than M/D/Y

[deleted]

Re: Freedom Clock

#70

Post by 5e92cb50239222b » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:30 PM UTC

warent wrote: post #42

One thing I've come to learn is that American formats are human-friendly rather than machine-friendly. Our date system is like the Fahrenheit system; it works well when thinking like a human. in Fahrenheit, you just think of it in terms of 50 being the middle, "not cold and not hot". Then you understand 80 is high warm, closing in on hot, etc. Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important informatio…

Yeah, I don't think so. If it's 0°C outside, I know it's probably time to put winter tires on because the water in the puddles will freeze. If water in the pot on my stove is close to 100°C, I know it will boil soon. Same with dates — it has nothing to do with being machine readable or not, dates should go from largest to smallest (yyyy-mm-dd, etc) or vise versa, not turn 180 degrees at midpoint for some reason. Your units make no sense, you're drawing the bullseye afterwards if remember my idioms correctly.