As someone who has written a ridiculous amount of code that deals with date and time, I support this 100%.
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
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Damn, that's interesting!
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Great! Now you'll not only need to convert between timezones but also between metric and standard time.
Also the respective intervals adjusted by leap days and leap seconds will be different!
Both 12 and 60 are superior highly composite numbers^[1] which makes mental math easy. 60 in particular is a very nice number because it has 12 divisors and is the smallest number divisible by all the numbers 1 through 6.
What is left to say. The Babylonians made a wise choice.
We need 6 fingers and switch to base12 math.
I mean, you already have 12 phalanges on one hand (3 each, from 4 fingers) and you can use your thumb as an indicator.
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Nah. Just start counting on your fingers. 123 on the index, 456 on the middle, 789 on the ring, and the rest on your pinkie. Its based on the segments of each finger, and it's how Mayans used to count.
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I could get used to that, it's actually a great idea. Though probably impossible to implement due to inertia, at least currently.
The proof that it is probably not possible ever is that metric time was already adopted during the French Revolution, during the period when they were metricising everything else, and even they decided that it wasn't worthwhile.
Neat but holy good fucking god the amount of programming it would take if it was ever decided to change this going forward, not to mention how historical times would be referenced. Datetime programming is already such a nightmare.
I sit in a cubicle and I update bank software for the ~~2000~~ metric switch.
Lol. Seriously though, for something like this these days, it will be interesting to see what happens given we will have to face the year 2038 problem. This kind of thing was still doable for the 2000 switch because of the relatively small number of devices/softwares, but because of the number of devices and softwares now, let alone in 2038, I really have no idea how it's going to be managed.
Although it is only software/devices that are 32-bit
Not bad, but I prefer Swatch Internet Time
Me too. If the standards wouldn't be held by a private company.
Now I finally know how it feels to be a real American
For once I hate metric (time)
The advantage of 12 and 60 is that they're extremely easy to divide into smaller chunks. 12 can be divided into halves, thirds, and fourths easily. 60 can be divided into halves, thirds, fourths, and fifths. So ya, 10 isn't a great unit for time.
I don't understand how its any easier than using 100 and dividing...
1/2 an hour is 30 min 1/2 an hour if metric used 100 is 50 min
1/4 an hour is 15 min 1/4 an hour metric is 25 min
Any lower than that and they both get tricky..
1/8 an hour is 7.5 min 1/8 an hour metric is 12.5 min
Getting used to metric time would be an impossible thing to implement worldwide I reckon, but I struggle to understand how its any less simple than the 60 min hour we have and the 24 hour day...
And 1/3 of 100 is 33.3333333333333. There are strong arguments for a base 12 number system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal), and some folks have already put together a base 12 metric system for it. 10 is really quite arbitrary if you think about it. I mean we only use it because humans have 10 fingers, and it's only divisible by 5 and 2.
That said, the best argument for sticking with base 10 metric is that it's well established. And base 10 time would make things more consistent, even if it has some trade offs.
Ancient central Americans used a base 12 number system and counted on their fingers using finger segments (3 per finger, 4 fingers, 12 segments). Makes fractions way more intuitive
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Yes, this is great, always was.
And dont spoil it with timezones.
The clock should go from 0.0 to 1.0. Dinner time would be around 0.7083 o-clock.
Dinner time would be around 0.7083 o-clock.
This is fairly similar to .beat time; in that system you would write it as @708. I guess you could make it @708.3 to be more specific.
I loved the idea behind Swatch's .beats. A "beat" was slightly short of 1.5 minutes, so totally usable in everyday life. If you need more precision, decimals - as @[email protected] suggested - are allowed.
However, one big issue of it is that it is based on Biel, Switzerland local time and the same for everyone around the world. Might not be that big of a problem for Europeans, but while e.g. @000 is midnight in Biel, it's early morning in Australia, and afternoon/evening in the US.
And the second, bigger issue becomes obvious when you start looking at the days. E.g. people in the US would start work @708 on a Tuesday and finish @042 on Wednesday. Good luck scheduling your meetings like this.
Pair it with International Fixed Calendar and I'm on board.
The new year should start with spring though, not in the middle of winter.
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I noticed this my senior year of high school (1991) So much easier. Every month has Friday the 13th too! Lol
Yeah but don't make the units "metric hours/minutes/seconds" for crying out loud. Make another unit of measurement.
US miles, or Scottish, or Swedish, or what? Reusing a word for a different meaning is never the solution.
This is really neat, but of course people on Lemmy are already talking about using it practically as a replacement for standard clocks...
I swear, I've run out of facepalm on the topic of metric vs. ________.
A friend once mused that “wearing a watch is like being handcuffed to time.” It’s one of the reasons I stopped being a watch guy (but more because I checked it compulsively but didn’t know what time it was when a coworker saw me check and ask the time).
Anyway, I prefer to try not to keep track of the time unless I need to be somewhere.
I think you meant to link decimal time per Wikipedia?
No. But they are so similar, I'd be happy to adopt either. In fact, decimal time was actually used briefly.
Here is the link you wanted:
I feel like I'm going crazy at moments like this.
Wikipedia on Metric Time:
The modern SI system defines the second as the base unit of time, and forms multiples and submultiples with metric prefixes such as kiloseconds and milliseconds.
Edit: Attention that this is the SI second, not a decimal second
Wikipedia on Decimal Time:
This term is often used specifically to refer to the French Republican calendar time system used in France from 1794 to 1800, during the French Revolution, which divided the day into 10 decimal hours, each decimal hour into 100 decimal minutes and each decimal minute into 100 decimal seconds
metric-time.com :
With metric time the day is broken into 10 hours.
A metric hour is broken into 100 minutes.
A metric minute is broken into 100 seconds.
So either Wikipedia is wrong or the website.
Then the wikipedia is wrong? Because what the website you linked calls metric time Wikipedia calls decimal
Maybe I'm not understanding this right. A quick google search shows that there is 86 400 seconds in a day. With metric time, an hour is 10 000 seconds. That means that a day would be 8.6 hours, but on this clock it's 10? How does that work?
One metric second != one (conventional) second
So it's not using the SI second? That's a bit weird
I guess it could make sense. Reading a bit more and it looks like the second is defined as a fraction (1/86400) of a day. Using 1/100000 wouldn't be tgat crazy. But more than just fucking up all our softwares and time-measuring tools, that would also completely change a lot of physics/chemistry formulas (or constants in these formulas ti be more precise). Interesting thought experiment, but i feel that particularly changing the definition of a second would affect soooo mucchhh.
I Used to joke about this with my Canadian coworkers. Didn’t know it was an actual thing?
Having a second that is not in line with the definition of the second, which if the most metric thing, is an abomination.
It's close enough that counting Mississippis is still roughly accurate.
(for non-US people, we sometimes estimate seconds by counting 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi... just because it's a long word that takes about the right amount of time to say)
Your departure form US defaultism is celebrated here, dear person.
I didn't want anyone to think I'm actually from that shithole state, Mississippi.
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