News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar. Parent comment

Re:Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we ex... by ISL on Sunday September 25, 2022 @04:58PM (#32976157)
It's not obvious why a new system is needed. UTC, TAI, or unix-time are sufficient.

The primary defect I see in the SIT proposal is that it isn't obviously based on the SI, but rather tied to the Earth. Defining a new unit that is 86.4 seconds long feels troublesome for everyone.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we ex... by shadowofneptune on Sunday September 25, 2022 @11:50PM (#32979194)
I don't see what makes the second less tied to the Earth than the day. The SI system is for scientific purposes, it doesn't have units important for civil purposes like liters. If you were to completely redefine civil timekeeping (good luck!), the day feels like a better unit to focus on.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we ex... by naniwaduni on Sunday September 25, 2022 @05:26PM (#32976450)
Or, more closely, Julian day number.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we ex... by kybernetikos on Sunday September 25, 2022 @05:54PM (#32976748)
Yeah, I played around with a decimal time: https://kybernetikos.github.io/UIT/ but eventually realised that my seconds, minutes and hour equivalents were just names for some of the decimal places of the Julian day number.
[ Parent | on HN ]