christianp, 8 days ago

An update from another corner of the internet:

Two statements about a commit on GitHub:

a) It was made 2 years ago.
b) It was made on 17th September 2022.

The controversy deepens!

SvenGeier, 18 days ago

@christianp Depends: "uploaded one year ago" on which planet?

christianp, 18 days ago

@SvenGeier !!!

SvenGeier, 18 days ago

@christianp
Mars orbital period is 687 days.
687 days ago was Jun-23-2022. If we allow for 2 weeks slack, that fits quite well... 🤷‍♂️

Colinvparker, 18 days ago

@christianp They are both accurate even if about the same video, because 2022-06-05 is between 1 and 2 years ago (as of 2024-05-10). A child born on that day is considered a 1 year old, for example.

christianp, 18 days ago

@Colinvparker yeah, @joshg made the same analogy. I'm happier with saying "it's one year old", but I feel that "it was uploaded one year ago" is a different statement.
If I was making a statement like that, I'd say "it was uploaded nearly two years ago".

The reason that this caught my attention was that I gave the talk that this video accompanies two @BigMathsJam s ago.

joshg, 18 days ago

@christianp
Yeah, it's not even so much a question of accuracy as good communication around number.
@Colinvparker @BigMathsJam

k8nowak, 18 days ago

@christianp I could see how it came to that conclusion with something like floor(today() - 5-jun-22) expressed in years.

joshg, 18 days ago

@christianp
If YouTube thinks video ages should be like birthdays, I guess so

christianp, 18 days ago

@joshg that's a good analogy.

I'd be happy with "this video is one year old", but "this was uploaded one year ago" feels different.

joshg, 18 days ago

@christianp
Agreed.