I am native to the united states and, to this day, I still do not fully get what time "12:00 AM" and "12:00 PM" mean. I try to set meetings for 12.01PM. If I absolutely must meet exactly at noon, I start the meeting "at noon".
Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?
41–50 of 221 posts
Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?
#42Do you know what 12:01 AM means? 12:00 AM is one minute before that.
> 12:00 AM is one minute before that.
Which is strange, because it does not follow the concept that all other of those time"stamps" do.
12 AM implies that 12 hours of something has passed, but it's nothing that we would align our lives against. And why is 11 AM after 12 AM on the same day? There's no logic (ok, some, but... well... a strange one) behind that.
Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?
#43Imagine if 12AM meant 12 noon. What would one second past 12 noon be? It'd have to be 12:00:01 PM. Even one millisecond past 12 noon would be PM. So "12AM" could only exist for an infinitesimal length of time, in contrast to 11AM, 10AM etc. which each last for an hour.
Why not just call it 00:00:01 PM? And similarly, 00:00:01 AM?
Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?
#44When working at international companies that have little interaction between countries (i.e. not so much that it would be standardized, but enough that it would be an issue): eventually everyone learns to write dates and times in both ways (14:00 / 2pm, 4/12 / 12 April). The Europeans think that they're translating for the "dumb Americans who can't count higher than 12", the Americans think they're translating for th…
How often does this actually happen? It’s never been common for my European coworkers or my American ones. I rarely schedule meetings with Europe in the Eastern TZ afternoon and the same with India. If I say I’m deploying at 11pm on Saturday everyone understands.
Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?
#45I always look it up on Google. I regularly run into this kind of problem when looking at log files which use AM/PM time. Related question: How do you even say "14:00" in English? In school I learned that you say o'clock but I never heard that in real life.
14:00 -> fourteen hundred hours
14:01 -> fourteen oh one
14:10 -> fourteen ten
etc
Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?
#46Imagine if 12AM meant 12 noon. What would one second past 12 noon be? It'd have to be 12:00:01 PM. Even one millisecond past 12 noon would be PM. So "12AM" could only exist for an infinitesimal length of time, in contrast to 11AM, 10AM etc. which each last for an hour.
1-based indexing biting us again
Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?
#47I always look it up on Google. I regularly run into this kind of problem when looking at log files which use AM/PM time. Related question: How do you even say "14:00" in English? In school I learned that you say o'clock but I never heard that in real life.
"Fourteen hundred"
Fourteen o'clock works too but is less natural.
Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?
#48Imagine if 12AM meant 12 noon. What would one second past 12 noon be? It'd have to be 12:00:01 PM. Even one millisecond past 12 noon would be PM. So "12AM" could only exist for an infinitesimal length of time, in contrast to 11AM, 10AM etc. which each last for an hour.
I would have thought it's AM for the whole of the 12th hour. So 12:00 AM, 12:01 AM, 12:59 AM, 1:00 PM (hour one, past the hour of noon). An hour being a time span of 60 minutes, not an instant!
In the "correct" usage, you have an illogical jump between 11:59 AM and 12:00 PM.
Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?
#49[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?
#50Say "noon" or "midnight". ya, I know that's cheating.