Are the Americans Awake? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#171

Post by JJMcJ » Tue, Jul 11, 2023, 8:15 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #66

JJMcJ wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, also. Hardly cheating. They are part of the United States.

This gets complicated. State versus non-state, incorporated versus unincorporated territories, etc. Hawaii's an easy "yes" answer. American Samoa isn't by several possible definitions.

I'm not disagreeing with you as I write this, but there are many people who act like Hawaii is some kind of obscure appendage instead of being a state just like the other 49 states.

Puerto Rico is as close to a state as it's possible to be without actually being a state.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#172

Post by rpearl » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 4:05 AM UTC

throwaway09223 wrote: post #158

rpearl wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A second is defined to be exactly the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom. I don't see anything referencing any planets?

Well, a second is more specifically defined as: "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom taken as an average over 11 samples distributed throughout the earth in order to approximate the earth's inertial frame " Seconds as used in Coordinated Universal Time are in fact defined based on planets, a…

The SI definition of a second, available at https://www.bipm.org/documents/20126/41483022/SI-Brochure-9...., section 2.3.1, does not reference our particular planet, nor any particular means of measurement, nor does it have to.

In principle this frequency can be measured in any inertial frame. Seconds are not defined on Earth specifically.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#173

Post by Sankozi » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 8:43 AM UTC

justrealist wrote: post #169

Sankozi wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what is your point. With single TZ: - I need to learn when people at different location work. With multiple, perfect TZs: - I still need to learn when people at different location work, and additionally I need to translate (or add TZ to) every clock time when communicating with those people. Learning when people work is similar amount of work in both cases. You always have to keep at least time off…

> With multiple, perfect TZs: - I still need to learn when people at different location work That's not true — I can roughly assume that everyone is at work by 9am their time. I just need to know their timezone. If I didn't have a timezone, I'd have to memorize the approximate offset of every city in the US.

So instead knowing city -> offset mapping, you need to know both city -> TZ and TZ -> offset mapping, and end up with something worse (because TZ will never be perfect, so offset from TZ is usually worse than "human" offset based on the location).

I really see no benefit.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#174

Post by procgen » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

BizarreByte wrote: post #73

defparam wrote: post #6

I'm happy they thought it was important to address why this information is useful (at least to them), only to then not address it at all.

It is generally accepted discussion forums are more tolerable when Americans are asleep, but they probably didn't want to outright state this for obvious reasons. I'm not taking a stance on this one way or another, but using the context of Reddit? Yah, that's the unspoken part.

> It is generally accepted

Is it, though?

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#175

Post by wpietri » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 10:20 PM UTC

pseudalopex wrote: post #156

wpietri wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's part of the manual-scheduling paperwork. I get that you're used to it, but we could eliminate it. The dialog would go more like: "I looked at our calendars and put it at a time that seems to work for both of us. Feel free to move it if that's better for you." Which is what I often do anyhow with Google Calendar with shared access (as when we work for the same company) or as with Calendly.

https://qntm.org/continuous

That is a good rant, but I think it's wildly overstated. E.g., The whole notion of a timetable is an early-railroad-era artifact. By modern standards, it's a terrible interface. Them not being viable is great.

I should note that I'm not seriously proposing it. My point is more to get people thinking. Our current hodgepodge approach is extremely historically contingent. I personally believe that there's no good solution to this, just different bad ones.