November 19, 2022

Engadget: Governments vote to retire the leap second by 2035

Engadget: Governments vote to retire the leap second by 2035. “Introduced in 1972 as a way to adjust Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to reconcile discrepancies that can come up between atomic time and observed solar time, the leap second has been the bane of tech companies for decades. In 2012, for instance, Reddit was down for about 40 minutes when the addition of a leap second that year confused the company’s servers. More recently, Cloudflare saw part of its DNS services affected due to a time change in 2016.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
March 28, 2022

MakeUseOf: 8 Chrome Extensions to Track Your Web Time and Activity

MakeUseOf: 8 Chrome Extensions to Track Your Web Time and Activity. “Without so many distractions available online, it is really challenging to avoid wasting your time on social media or entertainment sites. Though visiting these sites can be relaxing and fun, it’s worrying if it is eating up your productive time. Luckily, there are Chrome extensions that can track your web time, showing how much time you spend on these distracting websites. Below, we mention the eight best Chrome extensions to track your web time.”

Useful Stuff 0
December 3, 2021

NIST: NIST Recommends Steps to Boost Resilience of U.S. Timekeeping

NIST: NIST Recommends Steps to Boost Resilience of U.S. Timekeeping. “The nation should bolster research and development of systems that distribute accurate time via fiber-optic cable and radio as part of the effort to back up GPS and enhance the resilience of critical infrastructure that depends on it, according to a new report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).”

Research & Opinion 0
August 13, 2021

ZDNet: Does anyone really know what time it is? Facebook does

ZDNet: Does anyone really know what time it is? Facebook does. “Our technology can’t work worth a darn if the Network Time Protocol (NTP) isn’t keeping our servers and PCs coordinated with one another. Without it, backups would fail, financial transactions would go awry, and many fundamental network services wouldn’t work. To help with these issues, Facebook started making its internet clocks more accurate in 2020. Now, the social media giant is open-sourcing its technology, Time Appliances Project (TAP), and enabling anyone to turn a commodity server into a reliable NTP time appliance.”

Tweaks & Updates 0
November 7, 2018

GQ: The Time Capsule That’s as Big as Human History

GQ: The Time Capsule That’s as Big as Human History. “If you were to build your own time capsule, what would you want people—or alien beings—a million years from now to know about us? That we were loving, or warmongering, or dopes strung out on memes and viral videos? That we flew to the moon and made great art, ate Cinnabons (that we measured at 880 astonishing calories), and committed atrocities? How could you begin to represent these times, as lived by nearly 8 billion people? And what would give you, of all people, the right to tell the story? After these questions would come another wave of more logistical ones. Assuming the capsule was found, how would it be translated into the language of the future, whatever that language might be? And what materials could be employed that might last that long? And how could you lead a future […]

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
February 4, 2018

SJX: Introducing the Neuchâtel Observatory Chronometer Database

SJX: Introducing the Neuchâtel Observatory Chronometer Database. “Put together by Dr Christian Müller, the Observatory Chronometer Database (OCD) is a comprehensive compilation of all 3356 wristwatch movements ever submitted to the Neuchâtel Observatory for testing between the years 1945 to 1967 – the golden age of mechanical wristwatch chronometry. Then known as the Observatoire Astronomique et Chronometrique de Neuchatel, as it was described on historical chronometer certificates, the Neuchâtel Observatory conducted annual contests for various classes of timekeepers, from pocket watches to wristwatches, both mechanical and quartz (the OCD only covers mechanical wristwatches).”

New Resources 0
January 22, 2018

CNET: Facebook seeks to redefine time with ‘flicks’

CNET: Facebook seeks to redefine time with ‘flicks’. “If Facebook gets its way, maybe the next time you want your friend to hold the door for a second, you’ll say, ‘Hang on for 705,600,000 flicks.’ Well, OK, you probably won’t. But you could, because Facebook introduced a new unit of time on Monday called the flick. The company thinks it’ll be useful for programmers if not for talking to your pal while you run back for your keys.”

Tweaks & Updates 0
March 2, 2017

Phys.org: How social media has synchronized human civilization

Phys.org: How social media has synchronized human civilization. “Human activity, whether commercial or social, contains patterns and moments of synchronicity. In recent years, social media like Twitter has provided an unprecedented volume of data on the daily activities of humans all over the world. Observing this activity on the scale of a city, a continent, or the globe reveals the patterns. In a paper published by the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) have observed a new pattern of synchronized activity: a simultaneous peak of Twitter activity stretching across half the planet, from Europe and Africa to Asia and Oceania.”

Research & Opinion 0
October 23, 2016

Chrome Extension Times Your Web Site Visits

Want to time how long spend on various Web sites? Then you’ve got more nerve than me. Also, you need this Chrome extension. “TimeYourWeb has a few ways to see how much time you’ve spent on a site. While you’re on a page, the extension icon in your toolbar will show you how long you’ve spent on a given tab so far, so you can see if you’re wasting too much time at a glance.”

Useful Stuff 0
April 10, 2016

A Roundup of Tools for Making Timelines

Hey! Joyce Valenza’s got a nifty roundup of time-lining tools. “Timelines are a perfect tool for inquiry projects. They force students to see contexts; to make critical decisions about relative importance; to make connections among people, events and movements; to visualize history and processes; to discover patterns and sequences; to examine cause and effect; and to juxtapose content from across disciplines and media.”

Useful Stuff 0

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