this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
75 points (86.4% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35393 readers
6 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

It seems like it'd get increasingly impractical as the years go on to hundreds of thousands and millions of years to write them out that way, but then...I guess technically one may already do this with the preceding years, so future's fair game for it?

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 45 points 11 months ago (1 children)

it's going to be hard to get to 40k if we don't keep counting through the 10s.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (1 children)

In lore, in warhammer humans count XXX.MYY.

Like 005.M31 to 014.M31 for the Horus Heresy in the 31st millennium.

I vote we switch up to that system. The counting, not the ~~heresy~~.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 35 points 11 months ago (1 children)

People already abbreviate to the last two digits when appropriate, so it's not hard to imagine people doing the same for bigger numbers.

For keeping track of stuff electronically, we're pretty much set too. 64 bit unix time will take us well over 100 billion years.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I was looking at some old pictures of my family and some of them had dates like 921 for 1921 in them. I used to abbreviate 88 for 1988, but I’ve never seen people using 3 digits like that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

During y2k, a third digit was one of the compromises for languages like Perl. There were so many places that only displayed a two digit year but rolling over to 00 would have made it difficult to sort or do date math, or even to convert to a four digit year. So the year rolled over from 99 to 100, so dates with two digit years could be sorted correctly. If you were only displaying two digits, it probably correctly displayed as 00. If you wanted to convert to four digit years,just add 1900

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Grr. Is THAT why I had to subtract 1900 off my year for a damn c library time function?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Seeing as the current year is 12,023 I'm gonna say: Yes.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Can't wait for the drama to patch Windows XP to survive y10k.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I put in a lot of extra hours helping prevent y2k from being a disaster but I hope they’re not expecting me again for y10k

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

The chosen one. You will be frozen and revived thousands of years later to make sure we don't have to spend money to replace the label printer.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

? It's hexadecimal

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There are a lot of things it depends on.

First is whether we are still using the same calendar base date. The currently accepted international system is based on Christendom, but there are other calendars out there with different dates. You could see a switch over if another group becomes more dominant. Or you could get another system implemented entirely; France tried to change its base year to the French Revolution.

Second is if Earth is the only human inhabited planet. We are already seeing that the Martian day throws a lot of coordination up in the air, and that is without having human bases there. It is possible that Mars develops its own calendar that better fits Martian time. At that point, the only link for calendars across humanity would be the Unix Epoch.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

The Unix Epoch is obviously the correct base for any calendar.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They'll just go to A001, thus pushing back the problem for 26,000 more years.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Thus ~~pushing back the problem for 26,000 more years.~~ solving the problem once and for all!!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (5 children)

A new robot Messiah will arrive in 8630 so our year 10000 aC will be their 1370 aR

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

No I think time will just stop.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

Or we are in the year 12023

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I would hope that time and date formats would be redesigned by that point. If we would live to y10k, I'd expect a lot of space colonization. At that point, I'd expect there to be some other point of reference to define timestamps.

[–] DaleGribble88 12 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Agreed. Let's get the conversation started on this. Personally, I'd like to use midnight of January 1st, 1970. That seems like a nice rational spot. The new time scale will just count the number of seconds since then. So, for example, this comment could be written at approximately 1699879376.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

I love it! That would be EPOCH!

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

Why would that be a problem? We already often only use the last two digits to refer to the year, that'll probably not change.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There’s already a movement to call it the 10000s because that’s about how long ago we had the idea to have permanent settlements

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

It's how long archeology has said we have had permanent settlements.

In reality it's likely far earlier than that, we only just found a settlement from 11,000 BCE in Turkey, Gobekli Tepe which was likely a sanctuary/shrine, as well as other towns in the surrounding area likely having started before even then.

Big archeology pushed back to say that that's not 100% certain and that humans were still nomadic, despite all the evidence showing otherwise. It was finally just recognized officially a couple months ago.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

Y10k bug will end society

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What’s going to happen, is that I’m going to start a Humanist cult, and they’re going to name the new age after me.

They’ll call it “the year of our salvation.” They just misremember everything, and think I was some hero. The reality is I’m an asshole and should never be trusted leading a quasi-religious crusade.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I don't see why not. 5 digits isn't too bad, and the issue wouldn't come up again for another 90,000 years after that. Besides, we'll probably extinct ourselves through climate change, nuclear war, and/or AI long before then anyways.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Beyond maybe needing some sort of space calendar if we ever actually get off this rock in a way that matters, why not? An extra digit isnt all that big of a hassle.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

If we're no longer on earth, days and years will be based on whatever orbit we're following. So I guess the counter would start from zero.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Astronomers already use Julian Dates for various reasons. Right now it's 2460261.2834606, it'll be later by the time you read this. Julian dates/times are fractional days starting from January 1st, 4713 B.C. = 0. Just keep counting up from there.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

So I got confused and had to read Wikipedia for this. Day 0 is Jan 1, 4713 BC. I feel this causes more confusion if it isn’t mentioned.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

How are you still not confused??

So I just read through the same wiki and there is absolutely no explanation of why they start at 4713 BC. It's just bizarrely stated as fact with no explanation.

It would be like if invented a card game called Percluey where you had to count to 44 and Yell "Percluey" to win the game. And 8s are also called perclueys and worth -3. Then when you ask why it's 44 you just say "because that's Percluey" and then when they ask you what the heck is a "Percluey" you just shrug and sip on your spritzer.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

We'll probably have a Calendar system switch to a new major event

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

BC - Before Christ

AD - After Christ (but in Latin)

ADR - After Christ Returns (but in Martian)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

AD - After Christ (but in Latin)

eh... not quite

it actually stands for "Anno Domini", which is latin, but means "in the year of the lord"

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

we should really update this to "After when some people thought Jesus was born but they fucked up by 4-6 years. Also why is there no year zero?"

AWSPTJWBBTFUB4YAWITNYZ doesn't really roll off the tongue, though. Maybe it's better if someone can translate that into Latin.

Edit: Google Translate says "Post cum quidam putant natus est Jesus, sed eruditionis 4-6 annis. Cur etiam annus nullus est nullus?" so I propose "Post cum"

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

By then, I don't think that the use of earth's orbital period around the sun would make sense as a unit of measurement. It is important to track the seasons if you're living in an agricultural society. But the orbital period of the earth is not consistent across time, nor the time it takes for the earth to rotate. It doesn't make a good unit of measurement. And don't get me started on leap years, leap seconds, negative leap seconds, timezones and daylight saving times...

I'd prefer to base the new unit of time based on "Plank time". About 10^44 of these are about one second. Now if we switch to the duodecimal system we can define 12^41 × Plank time to be our standard unit. It's about a third of an earth second. 144 of these (12^43) equal roughly 3/4 of a minute. 144 of these (12^45) is about 1.8 hours. 12 of these (12^46) could be the equivalent of a day, 12 of that could be an equivalent of a week, and you can find an equivalent for a year. The duodecimal is unnecessary, but it makes division a bit neater. Now peak a date well before the beginning of human history to avoid the need for negative years (BC / AD) and that's it.

That way you get a single number that you can manipulate arithmetically. Not like yyyy/mm/dd format where each part is a different length.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Well, no reason not to add a digit after 9999.

But yeah, at some point we ought to stop using years. It's the second that is standardized, and the year is all off. I can't imagine we reaching 9999, but the change has no relation to the extra digit and no reason to happen anywhere near it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Nah, we'll never get there. (When we do, major Y10K crisis. 💣💥)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

According to Zager and Evans, the year 9595 will pretty much be it.

https://piped.video/watch?v=zKQfxi8V5FA

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›