[HN Gopher] Zero point leet seconds (2018)
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       Zero point leet seconds (2018)
        
       Author : susam
       Score  : 108 points
       Date   : 2022-11-06 11:07 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (susam.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (susam.net)
        
       | thefilmore wrote:
       | You can't go faster than leet.
        
       | jesse__ wrote:
       | And this is why I come to HN
        
       | layer8 wrote:
       | This proves that Earth is a truly leet planet.
        
         | karmakaze wrote:
         | And flat (with edge-wrapping)? For light to go 'around' the
         | world--it travels in a straight line.
        
       | Scaevolus wrote:
       | Remember, the speed of light in fiber optic cables is ~1.47x
       | slower than its speed in a vacuum, which means an equatorial
       | transit is 0.2s instead. This difference is significant enough
       | that some High Frequency Trading firms have used microwave links
       | to reduce latency from Chicago to New York from 7.5ms to 5ms.
       | https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/priva...
        
         | hwillis wrote:
         | Well. Significantly more than that due to latency from switches
         | etc and also because of the fact that there's so little land
         | along the equator, meaning there's only one cable that travels
         | roughly equatorially. It's from Fortaleza, Brazil to Kribi,
         | Cameroon: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
         | 
         | If you set up a bunch of good first-surface mirrors, I'm pretty
         | sure you could get to pretty much the speed of light. You'd
         | have to put them pretty high up in the air to avoid hitting
         | things (a problem for cables as well, obviously) but putting
         | the beam 2km in the air would still only lengthen the path by
         | 4pi km, or .03%.
         | 
         | I have always found it very neat that the propagation speed of
         | a light wave in glass is roughly the same as electrical waves
         | in a coaxial cable. Both are shockingly slow compared to
         | air/vacuum, but for _completely_ different reasons. In both
         | cases the advantages in signal integrity are immense.
        
       | an1sotropy wrote:
       | If I get nothing else done today, I will at least have learned
       | this cool fact/number.
        
       | gdtyh wrote:
       | As the manager of a vulnerability research team, I almost always
       | organise my team's meetings to start at 13:37. It's become
       | customary for us to refer to it as "leet o'clock".
        
         | bitwize wrote:
         | L33t o'clock has been a thing for me for years now. I
         | experience that weird phenomenon where you look at a clock and
         | it happens to be 11:11, except for me it's 13:37 and I'm like
         | "hey, it's l33t o'clock!"
         | 
         | There's another one I call "Razor o'clock" at 7:11 pm, i.e.,
         | 19:11.
        
         | unnouinceput wrote:
         | I am born at leet o'clock. Usually I say 13:40 for rounding
         | reasons and before today I never thought about it this way,
         | even though I am familiar with leet speak. But from this day on
         | I'll be proud of my birth time, no more rounding.
        
           | b4je7d7wb wrote:
           | I'm qurious when you would say your birthtime? I don't even
           | know mine.
        
             | maxnoe wrote:
             | I only learned it when I got married and had to hand in a
             | copy of my entry in the birth registry.
             | 
             | Missed leet time by one minute though...
             | 
             | In our working group (astrophysics) leet o clock is the
             | traditional time for cake.
        
             | cauefcr wrote:
             | Many cultures care about it for astrology reasons.
        
         | blitzar wrote:
         | Good thing are only 60 seconds in a minute other wise the
         | _8:00:85_ "boobs o'clock" morning meeting would be awkward.
        
         | codetrotter wrote:
         | Leet o'clock is my favourite time of the day. It also just so
         | happens that right now as I am typing this the current time in
         | my time zone is 13:37 :D
         | 
         | Edit: the time changed to 13:38 just before I hit submit :(
        
           | vasco wrote:
           | Similar to "the game"[0] (you all just lost), for many years
           | in a group of friends we'd text each other "leet" at 13:37
           | whenever we'd notice and whoever did it first won that day.
           | Obvious gentleman's agreement to not just use an alarm clock
           | and notice it naturally during the course of the day. Have
           | been doing it for about 20 years now with one of them that
           | kept it up.
           | 
           | [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game)
        
             | Sharlin wrote:
             | Used to be common on IRC as well.
        
             | Naga wrote:
             | I'm shocked that you do this to be honest, because I have
             | my friends and I also do this. I didn't realize that we
             | weren't alone. Not that I thought we were special, moreso
             | that we didn't think anyone else would want to do something
             | so silly.
        
               | QuadmasterXLII wrote:
               | The other explanation is that you two are friends who
               | don't know each other's usernames
        
               | vasco wrote:
               | Looks from the profile the other user is from Canada and
               | I was referring to a friend group from childhood in
               | Portugal, none of which are in Canada nowadays. I think
               | we're just not so special :)
        
         | isaacremuant wrote:
         | When do people eat? I presume not from 13 to 14.
         | 
         | Also, how long do the meetings last? If you're serious, it's a
         | nice gimmick but terrible for actual time management.
        
           | gdtyh wrote:
           | They're quite short meetings, typically less than 22.284
           | minutes apiece.
        
             | raldi wrote:
             | .284?
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | potench wrote:
               | Should be .2833333 1337 seconds
        
       | e38383 wrote:
       | I had no idea that I needed to know that, but now I don't know
       | how I could live without it.
        
       | codeflo wrote:
       | I'm not sure that's worth remembering specifically. You should
       | really already roughly know the Earth's circumference, 40k km,
       | and the speed of light, 300k km/s. 40/300 = 4/30 = (4/3)/10 =
       | (1.33)/10 = 0.133.
        
         | TheRealPomax wrote:
         | Which is not as fun as 0.leet: knowing that there's a 0.leet is
         | good trivia, and no trivia is "worth" remembering... you just
         | remember it because it's interesting and fun =)
        
         | zufallsheld wrote:
         | https://xkcd.com/1053/
        
       | mightybyte wrote:
       | Yep. I say that because I was very recently looking into the
       | network latency for computers on the other side of the world. I
       | ran the same theoretical calculation of circumference of the
       | earth divided by the speed of light and measured ping times and
       | they lined up quite well. Now, to be clear, OP definitely has one
       | up on me because I didn't notice the 1337, but it stuck in my
       | head that to one significant digit it's ~100 milliseconds to get
       | around the world. Now four significant digits stick in my head.
       | Thanks OP!
        
       | cgs wrote:
       | Flew Newark to Portland on UA 1337 the other day. If only that
       | flight took 0.1337 sec...
        
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       (page generated 2022-11-06 23:01 UTC)