[mosburger]

#3 Embrace the Uncomfortable - one thing I did a few years ago that might fall into this category (as an American) is start using the 24h clock. It makes working w/ remotes a lot easier because you become good at doing the +12 math and knowing which hour it represents. :)

[daigoba66]

I'm surprised most technical folks don't default to a 24h clock. I've been doing it since I was a teenager and had a digital wristwatch that I could set to a 24h clock.

Time just makes more sense that way. Otherwise you get weirdness like this: 12:00 AM occurs before 11:00 AM on the same day.

[zeveb]

> Otherwise you get weirdness like this: 12:00 AM occurs before 11:00 AM on the same day.

I too prefer a 24-hour clock, but when I don't use it I always use 'midnight' and 'noon' (or, sometimes, '12:00m' for 'meridiem'), just to be completely clear.

[khgvljhkb]

How wonderful would the world be if we had a base 10 clock instead of 24?

Let's make a day be 86400 seconds (already a SI standard), and then you can divide that into tenths, hundreds or whatever. One thousand of a day is 84.4 seconds, which is close to a minute (which is (/ 60 (/ 24 one-day))).

We have metric for measurements in space, but something as simple for day-to-day time measurement would be nice.

[prolepunk]

^ Typical HN comment.

I'm sorry I'm making fun of you, but I just can't help myself as this happens all the time -- somebody comes up with a reasonable idea, and then the next commenter takes it so widely out of proportion, willing to re-engineer the whole society just to marginally improve his own comfort.

[khgvljhkb]

This is something I ponder every month, when I have to enter hours into a timesheet with decimal time...

[cp9]

not to mention this is a 200 year old idea that was a terrible idea then and hasn't gotten any better since

[criddell]

Sounds a little like Swatch's effort a few years ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

[wildmusings]

Revolutionary France actually tried this. Thankfully, Napoleon saved the French from themselves.

It's not a bad idea in principle, but the massive cost of switching wouldn't be worth the marginal gains.

[zeveb]

> Let's make a day be 86400 seconds (already a SI standard), and then you can divide that into tenths, hundreds or whatever.

Why not keep the day as it is, which can be conveniently divided into halves, thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, eights, ninths, tenths and twelfths, as well as any multiples of those you like?

[knz]

It's even easier if you use UTC-0. Joking aside, after enough usage you don't even need to do the +12 maths. Personally, I'd take using metric over converting people to 24 hour time. My day job involves working with UTM spatial data (all metres) but our public facing outputs are all feet and miles for our American audience. It's trivial to convert but drives me insane when a customer asks if I can convert something from feet to miles. I don't think I have ever seen a compelling reason for the US not to convert to metric. Every other country faced the same expense and learning curve.

[zeveb]

> I don't think I have ever seen a compelling reason for the US not to convert to metric.

It's expensive, the benefits are minor, and our system is fine (it could be better of course: a switch to nautical miles would be nice, and making a gallon 256 cubic inches would be great). I've never seen a compelling reason to convert — and neither have Americans in general.

> Every other country faced the same expense and learning curve.

If every other country jumped off of a bridge, would you? The French system really isn't as good as it's cracked up to be.

French units optimise for abstract unit conversion (e.g. inches to feet or millimetres to kilometres); standard units optimise for concrete manipulation (e.g. dividing a gallon into cups, or a litre into decilitres). The thing is, unit conversion really isn't that common compared to manipulation (after all, what do units of measure exist for if not to manipulate objects?).

[knz]

And yet 98% of the world decided that the benefits were worth the expense. Standardization is so prevalent in many aspects of our world for good reason - suggesting that the metric system is somehow immune to these benefits is ridiculous.

[zeveb]

> And yet 98% of the world decided that the benefits were worth the expense.

It was imposed on much of the world by Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin (much like right-hand driving, as it happens); one can't really say that many folks had any choice in the matter.

> Standardization is so prevalent in many aspects of our world for good reason - suggesting that the metric system is somehow immune to these benefits is ridiculous.

I'd never deny it. There really are benefits to standardization. The rest of the world is free to standardize on feet and pounds any time it wants grin

[greggyb]

All dates are yyyy-mm-dd and all clocks are 24-hour on every device I own. Took a little bit to get comfortable with these, but the former has been very helpful on technical fora with international membership. No one has ever been confused by my dates.

[swiley]

That's a good first step, now switch it to UTC.

[kwhitefoot]

:-)

[turaw]

As a fun bonus, you also get to have a daily 1337 o'clock celebration!