Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Freedom Clock

domsson.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 189 posts

Re: Freedom Clock

#171

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

WorkLobster wrote: post #131
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #55

Dates should be annotated as such and rendered according to your browser's time zone and formating preferences. Don't blame the other culture, blame your inept communication medium.

I dimly remember trying this five years ago and it being a bit of a mess. IIRC it was that date picker widgets in browsers presented in a different format to what the Accept-Language header suggests (a killer when you're trying to render static and editable dates in the same table), or users were confused seeing dates in their preferred format after being linked from a site that disregards them, etc. Perhaps the situ…

Seems like requiring the date author to think about widgets is too much of burden. Better to just leave it as text and have an annotation layer that optionally says "this substring is a date in format X with timezone Y" which viewers can optionally re-render according to their preferences.

That way if neither option is exercised, it's still just text.

Re: Freedom Clock

#172

Post by anotherevan »

koheripbal wrote: post #127
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.

Yes, but the confusion caused by not knowing which way your writing it makes both ways worthless (unless your audience is strictly IN or OUT of the US - OR - if one number is greater than 12). It's annoying, and I just ALWAYS use YYYY-MM-DD, and everyone is happy. Please join my cause. If there's one thing we can all agree makes the world just a little better, it's using YYYY-MM-DD to get people used to it.

I'll use YYYY-MM-DD a lot of the time when doing computer related stuff, but out in the wild I'll tend to do little-endian but write the month as three letters. E.g. 26 Mar 2023.

Re: Freedom Clock

#173

Post by doublepg23 »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #142
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…

> it works well when thinking like a human. The great way to imply that non-Americans are not "like a human". > Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important information rather than numbers. If I say March 30, the year number is implied (probably this year) and I probably have omitted it because it is not as important enough to say again. If I say 2023-03-30, the year number is probably important. M…

> The great way to imply that non-Americans are not "like a human".

Well this takes the cake for the most bad faith reading I’ve ever seen on HN.

Re: Freedom Clock

#174

Post by gs17 »

nerdponx wrote: post #90
xyzelement wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! What date format was used to land on the moon?

Not a great argument, seeing as mixed up units between European and American scientists ruined a very expensive Mars mission.

You're thinking of the Mars Climate Orbiter, where the mistake was between NASA and Lockheed Martin, both American. Besides that, the issue wasn't the specific unit system used, it was NASA not testing to make sure their specifications were met before launch and then being too bureaucratic to react in time. The exact same issue could happen in metric with CGS vs MKS.

Re: Freedom Clock

#175

Post by soerxpso »

jstanley wrote: post #8
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.

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.

Middle-Endian is how it tends to be said out loud in English. Even in countries that would write 25/3/23, you still usually answer "What day is it?" out loud with "It's March 25th" rather than "It's the 25th of March." And after that point, the year going at the end makes sense because people are generally not asking what year it is. The only thing that makes it confusing at all is Europe choosing to do it differently without a clear way to tell which system is being used in some cases (you could say this about timezones as well, and would be right to complain there as well, but that doesn't mean that someone's particular timezone is "more correct").

In my opinion though, using a number for the month at all is silly. Nobody ever answered "What month is it?" with "Five." A better format would be to use standard 3-letter codes for the month, e.g. MAR:25:23.

Re: Freedom Clock

#176

Post by jiaaro »

Freedom2 wrote: post #158
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here we are on March 25. The year comes last because it's least important. Sorry to break it to you, but in the UK, Australia or India you wouldn't say March 25, you would say 25 March or 25th March. Just as you would in Spanish, French or German. The fact that you say March 25 reflects the atypical American date standard. They do say March 25 in Chinese, but that's because they use YMD order (and when saying a ful…

As a weird contradiction, don't Americans also generally say '4th of July' when referring to the holiday?

As an American I can confirm that, not only do we say “4th of July,” both phrasings are in common use for any date of the year.

March 5th is more commonly heard in USA than 5th of March, but nobody would look at you funny either way.

Re: Freedom Clock

#177

Post by snorfalorpagus »

soerxpso wrote: post #175
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.

Middle-Endian is how it tends to be said out loud in English. Even in countries that would write 25/3/23, you still usually answer "What day is it?" out loud with "It's March 25th" rather than "It's the 25th of March." And after that point, the year going at the end makes sense because people are generally not asking what year it is. The only thing that makes it confusing at all is Europe choosing to do it differentl…

This isn't true in British English, at least in my experience. We'd say "25th of March". The "of" would be omitted when writing a sentence, but you'd include it when reading aloud.

Re: Freedom Clock

#178

Post by bigkm »

snorfalorpagus wrote: post #177
soerxpso wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle-Endian is how it tends to be said out loud in English. Even in countries that would write 25/3/23, you still usually answer "What day is it?" out loud with "It's March 25th" rather than "It's the 25th of March." And after that point, the year going at the end makes sense because people are generally not asking what year it is. The only thing that makes it confusing at all is Europe choosing to do it differentl…

This isn't true in British English, at least in my experience. We'd say "25th of March". The "of" would be omitted when writing a sentence, but you'd include it when reading aloud.

Same for Australian English.

Re: Freedom Clock

#179

Post by pclmulqdq »

Ukv wrote: post #120
pclmulqdq wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"4 July 2023" is a common written format, but you would never say it out loud.

I don't hear people say "July 4" either, but you do hear both with the ordinals as in the examples I gave.

Oh, I hear "July 4" pretty commonly. Perhaps more than "July 4th," actually. It might be a regional thing.

Re: Freedom Clock

#180

Post by mistermann »

mistermann wrote: post #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.

A rather unpopular message. :)

The winds of change are blowing though, it seems a rare in history movement may be coalescing on TikTok as we speak...TTFN, nodes!!

Post reply on HN