What do you think?

You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_time

36 points

As someone who has written a ridiculous amount of code that deals with date and time, I support this 100%.

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28 points

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!

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31 points

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.


  1. 1 ↩︎

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10 points

What is left to say. The Babylonians made a wise choice.

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6 points

We need 6 fingers and switch to base12 math.

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4 points

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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2 points

And the other hand to count up to 5 dozens, aka 60

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3 points

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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0 points

Who over the age of 6 counts on their fingers

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23 points

I could get used to that, it’s actually a great idea. Though probably impossible to implement due to inertia, at least currently.

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9 points

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.

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19 points

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.

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20 points

I sit in a cubicle and I update bank software for the 2000 metric switch.

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6 points

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.

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2 points

Although it is only software/devices that are 32-bit

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12 points

Not bad, but I prefer Swatch Internet Time

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12 points

Me too. If the standards wouldn’t be held by a private company.

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Damn, that's interesting!

!damnthatsinteresting@lemmy.ml

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