[HN Gopher] The Accursed Alphabetical Clock
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The Accursed Alphabetical Clock
Author : ohjeez
Score : 58 points
Date : 2026-04-15 02:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (boat.horse)
(TXT) w3m dump (boat.horse)
| gnabgib wrote:
| As a Show HN (40 points, 15 days ago, 27 comments)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47571401
| gorgoiler wrote:
| What a ridiculous idea. As hard to read as it is dumb!
|
| For a senior engineer like myself with decades of experience it
| is trivial to see how to fix this to make it much more readable.
|
| 1/ pick a sunny day
|
| 2/ at each hour, measure the bearing to the sun
|
| 3/ encode as a dict[str, float] e.g.
| {"twelve":180.00}
|
| 4/ sort the hours by dict.get
|
| Voila.
|
| As an added bonus, for some reason this ends up sorting the
| minutes _and_ seconds too. ("# wtf?!")
|
| For now, I was only able to fix the hours when I could see the
| sun (eleven, twelve, and two to eight -- I don't get up very
| early and I like lunch). Patches form the arctic circle welcome
| :P
|
| I also need to tilt my head a bit as eleven is at the top instead
| of twelve. Other than that I would say it's a considerable
| improvement on the OP's rather _naive_ implementation! Scoff!
| eru wrote:
| Here in Singapore on many sunny days, the bearing is largely
| the same hour after hour. The sun just changes apparent
| altitude.
| fellerts wrote:
| Jam a stick in the ground aligned with the earth's axis and
| take your bearing from the shadow's direction. Then follow
| GP's instructions. Never mind that we've reinvented the
| sundial...
| eru wrote:
| > Jam a stick in the ground aligned with the earth's axis
| [...]
|
| You mean place a stick flat on the ground? (Singapore is
| pretty much on the equator.)
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| The closer you are to the equator, the taller the stick
| needs to be. If you're _really_ close, the height
| requirements diverge, and the stick is at this point
| technically more of a space elevator[1] than a stick.
|
| But don't lose hope, just tell Bezos that Musk wants to
| fund your space elevator, and vice versa, to goad one of
| them into funding your $10tn near-equatorial sundial
| boondoggle.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
| rich_sasha wrote:
| You could make either method more secure by hashing the encoded
| time and displaying that.
|
| Make sure to use a cryprographically-secure hash function and a
| strong salt.
| alfanick wrote:
| Imagine the mechanical gears behind this if it was an analogue
| watch. So many funky curved gears in there.
| throwway262515 wrote:
| Syntax is wildly continuous with semantics, what's the problem?
| unholiness wrote:
| I love the fractal nature of this, where the big shape of one two
| three four... is then roughly repeated both on a slower scale
| (twenty thirty forty...) and on a narrower scale (twenty-one
| twenty-two twenty-three twenty-four...).
|
| I'm now wondering the hausdorf dimension of the graph of
| alphabetical numbers <n, and how other languages might compare.
| cbdevidal wrote:
| Could someone please explain the minute hand? It says it's Nine :
| Twenty-nine but the minute hand is pointing at the word Twelve.
| nDRDY wrote:
| I think the labels are pointlessly confusing.
| secretdark wrote:
| I mean to be fair the entire thing is pointlessly confusing.
| nDRDY wrote:
| Maybe, but the labels and hour markers that contradict the
| meaning of the hand positions is just perverse :-)
| pimlottc wrote:
| > Accursed
|
| For those who don't know, the accent indicates that the -ed
| ending is pronounced as a separate syllable, I.e. "a-curse-ed".
| For that extra mysterious, old-timey feel!
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