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What Is Date:Italy?

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Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#51

Post by phainopepla2 »

turtletontine wrote: post #28
bsimpson wrote: post #23

It's wild to think about how different things were in pre-modern times. There are no computers, sensors, watches, or spaceships. There are also no TV-style distractions, and a lot more people are growing food. When would you notice that the longest day of the year is a few days away from what the books say it's supposed to be? For that matter, the printing press was only a century old. How well-known was it that part…

In an agrarian economy people are definitely much MORE attuned to the cycles of the seasons. If your town always starts planting crop X two weeks before the solstice, and the harvest festival is the week after the equinox, you’re going to keep track of these things.

I think that when OP said "When would you notice" they meant you the reader in contemporary times, to draw attention to the high level of attunement you're referring to

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#52

Post by iberator »

cdot2 wrote: post #15

Julian date is sometimes used to synchronize timing for encrypted radio systems. My understanding is that early radio systems adapted it because it was used by astronomers. Astronomers used it because it didn't skip any days which would cause issues tracking long term astronomical cycles.

Julian date works exactly like Unix epoch, but instead of starting in junary 1 1970 it starts something like 2500 years ago.

Super easy for astronomy as you don't need to handle timezones and other junk

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#53

Post by reaperducer »

foobiekr wrote: post #34
himata4113 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still a weak argument since it's extremely rare in practice that's why I suggested blaming the ISP instead since ISP's are the ones that have historically tampered with http content.

Attacks in general are all rare in practice in the grand scheme of the internet. So?

Not everyone has to prepare their home for a leopard attack.

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#54

Post by sohex »

thurn wrote: post #3

I wonder how Paradox handles this stuff in their games like Europa Universalis. Have they ever made a "the pope wants you to switch calendar systems" event which changes the actual in-game date?

My initial thought was that that would probably be taking the simulationism too far. My second thought was how funny it would be to swap calendars to get out of a truce early.

“My Lord, you can attack them until March of next year!”

“Then March of next year it shall be!”

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#55

Post by dredmorbius »

hamdingers wrote: post #22
tomtomtom777 wrote: post #5

Please use HTTPS. I use HTTPS only. I don't think HTTP is acceptable for anyone let alone a technical blog post. It takes a few minutes, and it prevents me and all your visitors from getting all kinds of MITM injections. Thanks.

Surprised this is downvoted. Chrome forces me to click through a warning to even visit HTTP sites nowadays.

"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances..." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>.

A long-standing HN guideline. Regardless of how merited the complaint may be.

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#56

Post by toast0 »

foobiekr wrote: post #33
voidfunc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MITM attack on a read-only text webpage... okay. More annoying is the slightly shiny/shaded text that is supposed to highlight something. Who chose this style palette?

It’s html. Which is code that your browser executes. Millions of routers are compromised. BGP attacks happen. Anything http stands out as an interesting target for injection. This position is foolish. It’s not a major ask to enable https.

> BGP attacks happen.

If you control the IP a domain name points to, you can get a certificate issued. Https might help on a small BGP takeover, but it might very well not.

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#57

Post by quuxplusone »

turtletontine wrote: post #28
bsimpson wrote: post #23

It's wild to think about how different things were in pre-modern times. There are no computers, sensors, watches, or spaceships. There are also no TV-style distractions, and a lot more people are growing food. When would you notice that the longest day of the year is a few days away from what the books say it's supposed to be? For that matter, the printing press was only a century old. How well-known was it that part…

In an agrarian economy people are definitely much MORE attuned to the cycles of the seasons. If your town always starts planting crop X two weeks before the solstice, and the harvest festival is the week after the equinox, you’re going to keep track of these things.

Yeah, but I took the parent comment as a non-rhetorical question. Say you were one of these "MORE attuned" people of the past: how long [literally] do you think it would take you to notice that the calendar was drifting? Like, if the calendar says the equinox should be on Monday, but in fact it's actually technically more like Tuesday, would you notice? What if it was technically on Wednesday?

If the rate of drift was like 5 days per year, then sure, people'd probably notice in a year or two — three tops, right? But how fast would the drift be? It's a question about how much people can detect small changes in daylight and how big the change actually is.

I also observe that we put up with tons of drift in our months: the new moon is hardly ever on the first of the month! And that's really easy to detect (within a day or two). So maybe people would notice a drift relative to the seasonal cycle and just not mind, the way we don't mind a drift relative to the lunar cycle.

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#58

Post by qotgalaxy »

bsimpson wrote: post #23

It's wild to think about how different things were in pre-modern times. There are no computers, sensors, watches, or spaceships. There are also no TV-style distractions, and a lot more people are growing food. When would you notice that the longest day of the year is a few days away from what the books say it's supposed to be? For that matter, the printing press was only a century old. How well-known was it that part…

[dead]

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#59

Post by no-name-here »

sohex wrote: post #54
thurn wrote: post #3

I wonder how Paradox handles this stuff in their games like Europa Universalis. Have they ever made a "the pope wants you to switch calendar systems" event which changes the actual in-game date?

My initial thought was that that would probably be taking the simulationism too far. My second thought was how funny it would be to swap calendars to get out of a truce early. “My Lord, you can attack them until March of next year!” “Then March of next year it shall be!”

> My second thought was how funny it would be to swap calendars to get out of a truce early.

Congress did something similar last year - National Emergencies declared by the president, such as for tariffs, are required by law to be reviewed within 15 days by Congress. So Congress redefined the calendar so that the remainder of the days during that session are not officially considered to be calendar days. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/us/congress-johnson-calen...

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#60

Post by cratermoon »

Georgelemental wrote: post #43
jauco wrote: post #8

It’s actually worse than that. It wasn’t always whole coubtries who decided to adopt (or not) but cities and sometimes people within cities (i.e. the protestants in the city would be lagging, or maybe I’m misremembering and this was about people who where abroad) In any case, for awhile, the date you picked depended on who you were writing to. And then also the relative standing. If he was of much lower standing you…

We still have this sort of thing today. In the occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers change to daylight savings time on a different day than the Palestinians

Arizona in the US does not observe DST at all. Within Arizona is the Navajo nation, which does observe DST. Within the Navajo nation are Hopi enclaves, where DST is not observed, and finally, within one of those Hopi enclaves is a Navajo community where, again, DST is observed.
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