The disater plan is to have a few dozens stratum 1 servers spread around the world, each connected to a distinct primary atomic clock, so that a catastrophic disaster needs to take down the global internet itself for all servers to become unreachable.

The failure of a single such server is far from a disaster.

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sounds 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

For those of us near Boulder, it's urgent.

But the stratum 1 time servers can shrug and route around the damage.

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Lammy a day ago | parent | prev [-]

And the disaster plan for the disaster plan is to realize that it isn't that important at the human-level to have a clock meticulously set to correspond to other meticulously-set clocks, and that every attempt to force rigid timekeeping on humans is to try to make humans work more like machines rather than to make machines work more like humans.

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basilgohar a day ago | parent | next [-]

I really, really can't get behind this sentiment. Having a reliable, accurate time keeping mechanism doesn't seem like an outlandish issue to want to maintain. Timekeeping has been an important mechanism for humans for as long as recorded history. I don't understand the wisdom of shooting down establishing systems to make that better, even if the direct applicability to a single human's life is remote. We are all part of a huge, interconnected system whether we like it or not, and accurate, synchronized timekeeping across the world does not sound nefarious to me.

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Lammy a day ago | parent [-]

> Timekeeping has been an important mechanism for humans for as long as recorded history.

And for 99% of that history, Noon was when the sun was half-way through its daily arc at whatever point on Earth one happened to inhabit. The ownership class are the ones who invented things like time zones to stop their trains from running in to each other, and NTP is just the latest and most-pervasive-and-invasive evolution of that same inhuman mindset.

From a privacy point of view, constant NTP requests are right up there alongside weather apps and software telemetry for “things which announce everyone's computers to the global spy apparatus”, feeding the Palantirs of the world to be able to directly locate you as an individual if need be.

	▲	rogerrogerr a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> The ownership class are the ones who invented things like time zones to stop their trains from running in to each other In a world where this didn't happen, your comment would most likely read: > The ownership class are the ones who had such indifference toward the lives of the lower class passengers that they didn't bother stopping their trains from running into each other.
	▲	kevinh456 a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Tell me how you feel about DST.

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zettabomb a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Far more things rely on reliable and accurate time-keeping than just being on time to work. Timekeeping is vitally important (even if it's not readily visible) to lots of critical infrastructure worldwide.

	▲	flaminHotSpeedo a day ago \| parent [-]
		Actually, it's really important to me to have a network of atomic clocks available to verify the times I clock in and out, I want to make sure I get paid for an accurate duration of time down to the nanosecond

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Brian_K_White a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is like the kid in school who doesn't think they should have to learn algebra since they think they will never use it.

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alsetmusic a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Wearing a watch is like being handcuffed to time."

-My Friend Andy

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henning a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And as things fell apart / Nobody paid much attention

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zzzeek a day ago | parent | prev [-]

oh....no, not really, no, the world needs GPS, so, yeah. this is not like scrooge mcduck telling you to be at work on time. scrooge still has a windup watch