41–50 of 89 posts
Long before most of you were born there was a special number you could call to get the time here in the USA. It would give you a localized time every 10 seconds. It was considered an authoritative value, but I knew that normal analog clocks drifted a fair amount, and I was fascinated by the Time voice. There was also a special number to dial that was called Information. When I was about 12, I suddenly thought that’s…
I recently bought my first not-super-cheap watch, and found out that all around the world there radio stations which broadcast the atomic clock time that a lot of clocks/watches listen to. After setting the time zone (I guess this also changes the frequency that it listens on) it starts to sync itself using that signal. It is also solar-charging - so this basically means that I never have to touch it. Although it's a…
I had a weather station with an external antenna that could never sync, even during the night, even placed outside in the "best" side of the house on my neck of the EU.
A solar powered, low battery wristwatch that's never outside in the middle of the night will fare much worse.
It's interesting old school tech that works fine in the places where it does work.
For elsewhere, I guess synching through a phone is more practical. So far it works fine. I just hope it doesn't get deprecated (I do, unfortunately, have a feeling the Casio app will break before the radios stop transmitting).
NIST is a great example of a true Public Good. Also, has anyone else ever used their Randomness Beacon? I once used it to settle an argument in a book club over which book to read next. It's basically a very fancy and high tech coin flip. https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/interoperable-randomness-beac...
As long as we forget that little thing called Dual_EC_DRBG, right?
Long before most of you were born there was a special number you could call to get the time here in the USA. It would give you a localized time every 10 seconds. It was considered an authoritative value, but I knew that normal analog clocks drifted a fair amount, and I was fascinated by the Time voice. There was also a special number to dial that was called Information. When I was about 12, I suddenly thought that’s…
You mean popcorn?
Long before most of you were born there was a special number you could call to get the time here in the USA. It would give you a localized time every 10 seconds. It was considered an authoritative value, but I knew that normal analog clocks drifted a fair amount, and I was fascinated by the Time voice. There was also a special number to dial that was called Information. When I was about 12, I suddenly thought that’s…
That's brilliant. Sometimes talking to real humans is great. It reminds me of two things. When I was a child I was given a postage stamp and wrote a letter to "Wallace and Gromit Ltd" and posted it. Remarkably, I got a reply from Aardman Animations with a card signed by Nick Park himself. Someone at Royal Mail obviously understood and looked up the real address of the studio. Later as a teen I noticed the clock on ou…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As long as we forget that little thing called Dual_EC_DRBG, right?
Admittedly, that was probably the NSA getting their grubby hands into NIST. A good thing being almost permanently tarnished by a bad thing.
I recently bought my first not-super-cheap watch, and found out that all around the world there radio stations which broadcast the atomic clock time that a lot of clocks/watches listen to. After setting the time zone (I guess this also changes the frequency that it listens on) it starts to sync itself using that signal. It is also solar-charging - so this basically means that I never have to touch it. Although it's a…
That “all around the world” leaves significant gaps: https://hagensieker.com/2019/11/17/multiband-6-what-is-it/ I had a weather station with an external antenna that could never sync, even during the night, even placed outside in the "best" side of the house on my neck of the EU. A solar powered, low battery wristwatch that's never outside in the middle of the night will fare much worse. It's interesting old school t…
I recently bought my first not-super-cheap watch, and found out that all around the world there radio stations which broadcast the atomic clock time that a lot of clocks/watches listen to. After setting the time zone (I guess this also changes the frequency that it listens on) it starts to sync itself using that signal. It is also solar-charging - so this basically means that I never have to touch it. Although it's a…
That “all around the world” leaves significant gaps: https://hagensieker.com/2019/11/17/multiband-6-what-is-it/ I had a weather station with an external antenna that could never sync, even during the night, even placed outside in the "best" side of the house on my neck of the EU. A solar powered, low battery wristwatch that's never outside in the middle of the night will fare much worse. It's interesting old school t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> detect extremely tiny gravitational waves via an array of hyper-accurate clocks. I wonder how tiny is feasible. Would it get to a level of accuracy where you could detect neutrinos? We know they have some (v tiny) mass, so it should in theory be detectable that way?
Moving objects don't emit gravitational waves though. They have to be orbiting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That “all around the world” leaves significant gaps: https://hagensieker.com/2019/11/17/multiband-6-what-is-it/ I had a weather station with an external antenna that could never sync, even during the night, even placed outside in the "best" side of the house on my neck of the EU. A solar powered, low battery wristwatch that's never outside in the middle of the night will fare much worse. It's interesting old school t…
Could be, I don't have much experience with it, but so far it has worked every time without me doing anything special - I can check the status of the last sync attempt, which it does nightly on its own (or I can trigger it). The UX isn't great - all manipulation of the seconds hand, but other than that it has been flawless. This is in Germany - your mileage may clearly vary.
I kinda wish the German transmitter had more range (like the US one does) but even the blog I linked to, you can see someone in the continental US who needs to hang their watch from their window blinds for syncing to work reliably.
I even looked into hacking my own transmitter (https://github.com/hzeller/txtempus) before giving up and just buying one of the models with bluetooth phone sync.