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by dave_universetf 995 days ago
There's a sibling thread making the same point, and: yeah, I overgeneralized on that bit. The instance I had in mind was the M.A.S.H. TV show, which has a couple exchanges involving "hack" for time synchronization (unsurprisingly, by the most over the top soldierly characters). All I can offer as a defense is that it was late and I assumed that I couldn't remember others for that reason. But looking around now, film usually goes with the more recognizable "mark".

Here's a memoir from a retired USAF airman where he recounts what the hacking procedure looked like, though: https://code7700.com/2023_time_hack.htm

1 comments

Reading this writeup, the procedure takes up to two minutes:

* each person in the room pulls up the stem when their individual second hand is pointing at 0, and also sets the time to the prearranged hour/minute,

* then everyone waits a bit longer until this is done;

* after another minute, everyone pushes down the stem simultaneously

Is there an alternative where you could have some way to force your second hand to the 0 position rather than waiting up to a minute for it to get there on its own then freeze it?

I do see why hacking is nice for time zone changes.