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.Beat Swatch Internet Time

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Re: .Beat Swatch Internet Time

#31

Post by firecall »

anileated wrote: post #19

I don't think global time would be a problem like many people suggest. If you're in US and talk to somebody in Australia, you will quickly develop an intuition that time @X is night (or whatever it happens to be) over there, just like our other intuitions about how many things (weather, season, how long are sunsets, etc.) are different in different places. Timezones are failing at all of their jobs. Getting time to c…

Australian here!

I constantly forget which way the half hour difference is between Adelaide and Melbourne / Sydney!

Then I have regular contact with offices in London and LA. For some of the year it’s not too bad, and then our clocks switch the opposite way and it gets less convenient! Which way is which I can never remember.

Queensland doesn’t bother changing their clocks at all.

Writing software that deals with Timezones isn’t too bad these days, but supporting it is as it constantly confuses users I find!

Re: .Beat Swatch Internet Time

#32

Post by fragmede »

xnorswap wrote: post #26
anileated wrote: post #19

I don't think global time would be a problem like many people suggest. If you're in US and talk to somebody in Australia, you will quickly develop an intuition that time @X is night (or whatever it happens to be) over there, just like our other intuitions about how many things (weather, season, how long are sunsets, etc.) are different in different places. Timezones are failing at all of their jobs. Getting time to c…

It's worth noting that technically London uses GMT for 5 months and BST for 7 months. The GMT offset is zero, but it's important to note the difference especially when configuring servers to avoid nasty daylight savings surprises kicking in at at end of March. There has been talk of moving to a +1 offset all year round for lighter evenings in winter, albeit at the cost of some very dark morning, but given we couldn't…

the obvious solution is to move it by .5 the whole year round.

Re: .Beat Swatch Internet Time

#33

Post by Symbiote »

globular-toast wrote: post #25
embedding-shape wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even UTC+-0 I have seen rarely Hover the timestamp here on HN and you'll see it at least once in your life time :) I'm guessing it's mostly developers, especially ones working internationally, who come across it every day. Others seem to prefer to convert between people's timezone, while we just send UTC+00:00 to each other.

I was about to comment that it's not UTC, it's in my local time. Then I remembered my local time (Europe/London) is currently equivalent to UTC, so I have no idea what it's actually displaying (it's not indicated in any way). It's actually a problem in these parts that it's not obvious to us whether a time is in UTC or local time. I've found so many things displayed in UTC that people have assumed is local time then…

Your comment currently says "7 minutes ago" and 12:03:56, yet here it is 13:11.

Re: .Beat Swatch Internet Time

#34

Post by anileated »

nickorlow wrote: post #29
anileated wrote: post #19

I don't think global time would be a problem like many people suggest. If you're in US and talk to somebody in Australia, you will quickly develop an intuition that time @X is night (or whatever it happens to be) over there, just like our other intuitions about how many things (weather, season, how long are sunsets, etc.) are different in different places. Timezones are failing at all of their jobs. Getting time to c…

I used to think this, but mirroring the sun position makes a lot of sense. If I wanted to meet w/ someone in Australia, I would still need to know extra information (what their equivalent 9-5 working hours are).

You would need to know that person's working hours, so I don't see how you are avoiding something.

Sure, if you talk to someone there for the first time, you would need to learn what time is generally day/night. However, you will know that 2-3 times in. Just like you would automatically know that now it's summer in Oz, or 3 hour short days near Arctic circle, if you talk to anyone from there even very occasionally.

Case in point, we have global calendar with no problems.

Re: .Beat Swatch Internet Time

#35

Post by embedding-shape »

globular-toast wrote: post #25
embedding-shape wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even UTC+-0 I have seen rarely Hover the timestamp here on HN and you'll see it at least once in your life time :) I'm guessing it's mostly developers, especially ones working internationally, who come across it every day. Others seem to prefer to convert between people's timezone, while we just send UTC+00:00 to each other.

I was about to comment that it's not UTC, it's in my local time. Then I remembered my local time (Europe/London) is currently equivalent to UTC, so I have no idea what it's actually displaying (it's not indicated in any way). It's actually a problem in these parts that it's not obvious to us whether a time is in UTC or local time. I've found so many things displayed in UTC that people have assumed is local time then…

Yeah, the UI is slightly ambiguous about it, but FWIW I see the time as one hour off, which makes sense since I'm in +1 :)

The API shows a unambiguous timestamp, which is the exact same value I see for your comment: https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/46958592

> created_at: "2026-02-10T12:03:56.000Z"

Re: .Beat Swatch Internet Time

#36

Post by alexpotato »

Having worked at firms based in New York, Chicago and London, every time there has been a debate about "Should we use local or UTC time?", I ALWAYS mention Swatch Internet Time.

The fact that it's now on the front page of Hacker News makes me so happy.

Re: .Beat Swatch Internet Time

#37

Post by psyonity »

TapamN wrote: post #14
fainpul wrote: post #8

This always felt like a marketing gimmick. I've never seen it actually used for anything, unlike UTC.

The Sega Dreamcast online RPG "Phantasy Star Online" displayed the current time in beats.

I _just_ got my dreamcast with PSO back online and was wondering what time it was displaying!

Thank you for helping me discover the source of this little brainwurm.

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