41–50 of 74 posts
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From a non-software perspective it kills people. Also, if you're a parent, it's not great for sleep training children. It just messes with everyone.
Can you elaborate on how it kills people??
https://www.livescience.com/50068-daylight-saving-time-heart...
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Leap seconds is just the time abstraction being leaky: the Earth simply doesn’t have a constant rotation speed. Certainly seems more practical to correct for this once in a while rather than having a variable length second.
We could easily define a time system that is simply "number of seconds since 00:00:00 January 1, 1970" (other than epoch being different, we have this with GPS and TAI time, but the network effects for UTC are strong) and used that as our base time system. Leap seconds could then be added at higher layers simmilar to how leap hours are. Instead evryone has to deal with leap seconds weather they care about the orienta…
To keep time you do care about the position of the sun because that defines the time of day, humanity's base for the experience of time.
If you will never care about what the time is in your application, by all means, count clock cycles, otherwise: UTC is the standard for keeping time.
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Nobody "came up with" the idea. It's the consequence of a principle of the American Constitution, wherein only Congress can appropriate money. This is a bedrock principle, because it provides a check on the Executive: The President can yell all he wants, but unless Congress appropriates money to pay for whatever it is he is yelling about (in this case, a border wall), he doesn't get it. For observers outside the US,…
The problem is threefold: 1) it's not a true shutdown because the military still get paid. There is a builtin rightwing fudge of what gets deemed "essential". 2) Most governments have a similar possibility of not being able to pass a budget; but, in the Westminster system, this forces fresh elections . The people get to decide on what compromise is necessary to resume business. 3) Businesses should not make their emp…
http://time5.nrc.ca/timefreq/bulletin_tf-b.html
In Canada if a budget isn't passed it triggers an election. We don't have government shutdowns.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody "came up with" the idea. It's the consequence of a principle of the American Constitution, wherein only Congress can appropriate money. This is a bedrock principle, because it provides a check on the Executive: The President can yell all he wants, but unless Congress appropriates money to pay for whatever it is he is yelling about (in this case, a border wall), he doesn't get it. For observers outside the US,…
The problem is threefold: 1) it's not a true shutdown because the military still get paid. There is a builtin rightwing fudge of what gets deemed "essential". 2) Most governments have a similar possibility of not being able to pass a budget; but, in the Westminster system, this forces fresh elections . The people get to decide on what compromise is necessary to resume business. 3) Businesses should not make their emp…
>1) it's not a true shutdown because the military still get paid. There is a builtin rightwing fudge of what gets deemed "essential".
The military still gets paid because congress was able to agree to pay for that. It's certainly possible, for congress to be unable to agree to a DoD budget. Separating the budget process into a series of sub-budgets allows for continuity in areas where there's room for consensus.
> 2) Most governments have a similar possibility of not being able to pass a budget; but, in the Westminster system, this forces fresh elections. The people get to decide on what compromise is necessary to resume business.
Presumably, the government is shutdown until the votes are certified? And how long do the newly elected representatives have to form a budget, before a second election would be triggered? Regardless, for better or worse, the US system does not allow for snap elections, and that would be a big change, especially given the design of different term lengths for different offices.
> 3) Businesses should not make their employees into creditors.
Yes, this is pretty awful. I would be raising some hell if my employer expected me to work without paying me contemporaneously.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We could easily define a time system that is simply "number of seconds since 00:00:00 January 1, 1970" (other than epoch being different, we have this with GPS and TAI time, but the network effects for UTC are strong) and used that as our base time system. Leap seconds could then be added at higher layers simmilar to how leap hours are. Instead evryone has to deal with leap seconds weather they care about the orienta…
Yes, you can easily create a constant rate counter, but no: it wouln't keep time . To keep time you do care about the position of the sun because that defines the time of day, humanity's base for the experience of time. If you will never care about what the time is in your application, by all means, count clock cycles, otherwise: UTC is the standard for keeping time.
Leap seconds are the most stupidest thing ever. It's time to abandon UTC and start using what professional astronomers use: UT1
UT1 is a disaster for many purposes. It is, quite simply, a measure of the Earth's current angle in space. This is ideal for pointing an Earth-based telescope. Trouble is, we can't reliably predict how fast this will tick. You may think leap seconds are bad, but how about if you simply can't know the current time without having a current measurement of the position of quasars in the sky? The length of a second isn't…
The question might be super naive, but I wonder how useful/workable a time-system would be that's completely decoupled from celestial body movements? Isn't Swatch Internet Time something like that?
Gonna be really interesting once humanity becomes interplanetary or even interstellar. Will we have whole different calendars and time zones for different planets and solar systems?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
UT1 is a disaster for many purposes. It is, quite simply, a measure of the Earth's current angle in space. This is ideal for pointing an Earth-based telescope. Trouble is, we can't reliably predict how fast this will tick. You may think leap seconds are bad, but how about if you simply can't know the current time without having a current measurement of the position of quasars in the sky? The length of a second isn't…
> It all sucks, but this is reality. You can't fix reality. You'd have to tell the Earth to obey an atomic clock. The question might be super naive, but I wonder how useful/workable a time-system would be that's completely decoupled from celestial body movements? Isn't Swatch Internet Time something like that? Gonna be really interesting once humanity becomes interplanetary or even interstellar. Will we have whole di…
Time slows down as you go faster. The people leaving earth are the ones accelerating, so they're the ones who travel faster into the future- less time passes for them. If we colonise stars around us, the people going to the further stars (assume all ships leave from earth) will lose more time: Civilisation Time will be ahead of the time they measure on their regular clocks.
Maybe we could use pulsars as clocks? I think they pulse pretty regularly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
UT1 is a disaster for many purposes. It is, quite simply, a measure of the Earth's current angle in space. This is ideal for pointing an Earth-based telescope. Trouble is, we can't reliably predict how fast this will tick. You may think leap seconds are bad, but how about if you simply can't know the current time without having a current measurement of the position of quasars in the sky? The length of a second isn't…
> It all sucks, but this is reality. You can't fix reality. You'd have to tell the Earth to obey an atomic clock. The question might be super naive, but I wonder how useful/workable a time-system would be that's completely decoupled from celestial body movements? Isn't Swatch Internet Time something like that? Gonna be really interesting once humanity becomes interplanetary or even interstellar. Will we have whole di…