May 31 at 12:08:37 ET
Why is there no "datefag" flair ?
Edit: THANK YOU MODS for the datefag flair!
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Um... you'll have to explain that 1717171717 thingie...
It's the current number of seconds since the Epoch (1970-01-01 00:00 UTC) according to Unix systems. The Epoch being represented by "0". Here is the number of seconds count right now from a computer that is running Unix:
$ date +%s
1717091090
What does the epoch mean here?
Epoch time was chosen by programmers as a matter of convenience.
Think of it as an anchor point from which we can measure time. Just like you count up from 0, so you always know what “100” means. In order for epoch time to work, programmers had to agree on common “zero date”.
1970-01-01 was chosen, iirc, sometime after that date, because it was close enough to work and epoch milliseconds are extremely useful for recording dates. This way you can boil the date down to a simple number and always know what time it is referring to.
It allows you to ignore things like am/pm, time zones, and the like.
I don’t think there was much malice or subtext in the epoch that was chosen. It was intentionally picked as a reasonable “zero” — the zeroth minute, hour, and day on a “0” year in the “zero” timezone (Greenwich mean time).
Interesting. Thanks. So it’s a programmers/cpu’s version of bc/ad kind of?