Everyone post what state they're from where you're getting your different times. That might be a clue as to what we're seeing. I see 19:40:41. I'm in Utah.
*Edit - Ok so far here's what we have:
Somewhere in Europe: 19:48:00
New York and Massachusetts: 19:49:00
Utah and Oregon: 19:40:41
California: 19:37:40
Alberta: 19:44:12
The most logical explanation is that the Content Management System used to publish state.gov simply used a different timestamp when replicating the page to each of the mirrors.
A timestamp for something like a presidential term ending would be tied to a hard coded static value, not a dynamic value dependent on location. This is either a rogue employee, comms, or a giant mistake.
So it’s either everything?
Date changes mean someone is tweaking a value in a database. Dates for something like a term ending are hard-coded in UTC time. This means the minutes would not change based on your location.
19:40:41 Oregon
2021-01-11 19:40:41 in Denver.
Wayback machine shows 2 times:
2021-01-11 19:22:18
and
2021-01-11 19:40:41
2021-01-11 19:44:12 Alberta, Canada
Site down:
We’re sorry, this site is currently experiencing technical difficulties. Please try again in a few moments. Reference ID:
Interesting. My parents are also here in Utah and they're getting the same numbers as me.
I got two times and I'm europe. .19:48 and 19:37
I'm in Europe and it shows up as 19.48 for me. I'm so confused.
19:49:00 Massachusetts
19:37:40 CALI
Ok there might be something to this. It's weird because it's not like it's adjusting for time zone. But it does appear to be different based on where you are in the country.
The origin server is just rendering the current UTC time at page load because his database entry lists that he still currently holds the position.
The time doesn't change at every page load because their CDN will cache the rendered result. It will update eventually when the cached copy expires. It looks regional because CDN caches are regional.
You can inspect the cache details if you are nerdy and curious. DDG for "akamai pragma headers curl".
Yes it is the current date and time UTC
I saw 40:41 in TX. But the site is down now.