Pushing the whole company into the past on purpose
138 comments
·January 9, 2025nonrandomstring
fishstock25
> watch -n1 date
Um, that's a pretty inaccurate way to notice an offset in the millisecond range, isn't it?
nonrandomstring
That doesn't even show ms. Add something like +%s%N (ns) to the options if you want finer resolution.
mkl
The problem is using watch you have no control* over when in each second it's getting the time, so it could be nearly a second late (e.g. it's getting the time once per second, but happens to be doing it when it's a few milliseconds away from ticking over to the next second).
* Okay, you have a little control in that you can press enter, or otherwise set it running, at a particular moment.
singleshot_
I’m not sure I get the fifty years bit at the very end. Anyone care to explain?
drewbug01
I believe the author worked at Facebook in the past. The "fifty years" bit is likely a reference to that company's recent policy change that explicitly re-authorizes the use of what are rightly considered slurs - even if they were common sentiment to express publicly fifty-some years ago.
null
gred
[flagged]
thenaturalist
Like any freedom in an interconnected society, freedom of speech and expression is not absolute, but limited when it infringes on other rights: right not to be insulted or discriminated against.
It's really a rather simple concept entirely void of cencorship.
In case of more interest, Kant is a good source for educating oneself:
> Kant holds in contrast that there is no innate right to unlimited freedom but only an innate right to freedom “insofar as it can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with universal law” (6:237).
Diggsey
The "right to not be insulted" is literally censorship.
dimensi0nal
"you can call people mentally ill but only if they're targets of the regime" isn't exactly in line with the principles of free speech in the first place.
dani__german
"The right to not be insulted" is not a right at all. if you don't like what the other person is saying, your recourse is to leave, not to imprison the other person, or some derivative thereof.
DiggyJohnson
What is this “right to not be insulted”?
CrimsonRain
I insult you. What now?
llm_trw
So when are we locking up everyone that's insulted Trump?
blackeyeblitzar
[flagged]
bdangubic
(un)fortunately Kant is not one of the Founding Fathers :)
Animats
Is there a standard "smearing" period now? For a while, Google had a 24 hour adjustment period, 12 hours on each side of the leap second, while Facebook used a shorter period.
fanf2
Not as far as I know.
The cosine adjustment that Google originally used is not the best: NTP aims to measure the difference in rate between the client’s hardware clock and real time, and it works best if the rates are fairly constant. With the cosine smear, the rate changes continuously! If you use a simple linear smear, NTP just has to cope with two small rate changes at the start and end of the smear.
The smear needs to be slow enough that NTP’s algorithms have time to react without overshooting; 24 hours is a reasonable choice tho you can go a bit faster. There’s some disagreement about when the smear occurs relative to the leap second; if the leap is in the middle of the smear the max offset is 0.5 seconds, but if the leap is at the end of the smear the offset is always slow. They were able to test the up-to-one-second-slow scenario in a system-wide live trial, whereas they could not do the same for the sign flip. I think if you can cope with a 0.5 second offset from real time then a 1.0 second offset should not be much more troublesome.
ghostpepper
I wonder how much those broadcast/studio clocks are worth. I looked everywhere to find a digital alarm clock with orange LEDs and couldn't find one.
jelder
The cheapest one I could find was about $250:
https://timemachinescorp.com/ntp_poe_wifi_dotmatrix_clock_ti...
quitit
>Of course, here it is ten years later, and the guy in charge just sent it back fifty years. Way to upstage me, dude.
Seeing that this was written by Rachel by the Bay, I thought it was going to be a post about Facebook's recent policy change, and indeed it was.
noobermin
I wish I wasn't so stupid or unlucky. In another life I could be doing amazing shit like rachel by the bay instead of pushing code no one cares about and rushing deadlines only to get paid late.
DecoySalamander
"Amazing shit" like devops or bad political puns? Surely it's not too late for you to try either or both.
Havoc
Surprised it takes 20 hours to smear one second. Normal desktops definitely aren’t that sensitive. Anybody know what sort of gear is?
wodenokoto
> Of course, here it is ten years later, and the guy in charge just sent it back fifty years. Way to upstage me, dude.
I feel like there's a link to a story missing there
this_user
It's about the company's recent course change, which includes Zuckerberg's Joe Rogan interview from last week. IMO this has a lot to do with the younger generations. Gen Z were heavily supporting Trump in the recent election, and Zuck has probably realised that he needs to align Meta with them if they want to remain a relevant player in the social media space.
jazzyjackson
I don't buy it, Gen Z hasnt swung right, but the young left has swung apathetic. Zuck has his own reasons for sucking up to Trump and it's not to stay popular with the kids, who have already moved on from Meta properties.
dani__german
Gen Z exit polling data from the 2024 US Presidential Election shows a significant rightward shift among gen Z voters. Instagram is still popular with "the kids", and it does tend to have more lax moderation. It leans somewhat conservative/right favored through inaction/sheer mass of posts.
https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-genz-kamala-harris-trump-...
XorNot
The hypothesis I saw proposed is that his marriage is breaking down/actually done. Basically he's going the Elon route.
cipheredStones
> Gen Z were heavily supporting Trump in the recent election
What on earth are you talking about? 18-29 year olds were the most Democratic age group, as usual. 18-29 year old men might have slightly favored Trump, but to a significantly lower degree than older men.
ren_engineer
Gen Z only voted democrat by a 4% margin which is an absolute death sentence for the democrat party considering people only vote further right as they get older. For context Obama won that demographic by 20% in 2012, and won it by even more in 2008. If those numbers hold democrats have no path to winning national elections
https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latin...
intended
Right wing streamers who are not part of Fox themselves put two and two together and came up with section 230.
They even said that Trump could threaten Facebook with specifically removing protections for the platform, and then turn around and not do it: resulting in damage to the platform without having to do anything.
I think everyone knows why Zuck is doing it. If there were any other republican government, the capitulation wouldn’t be this abject.
isoprophlex
The guy in charge being Lizardman, who almost tripped over his own claws to get rid of fact checkers, to allow calling non-heterosexuals metally ill, etcetera etcetera now that we are witnessing the second coming of The White House Cheeto
declan_roberts
[flagged]
isoprophlex
The moment big tech senses a shift in the political magnetosphere, they don't just bend, they quantum tunnel into perfect alignment with the new paradigm. What's more, in this case it is as if they were waiting for permission to shed their liberal democratic haha rainbow flags exoskeleton and reveal their true form without even bothering with keeping up appearances
Punchline being that these tech companies were never the bastions of progressive values they claimed to be -- they were surfing the zeitgeist until a bigger wave came along
jiriknesl
The guy isn't sending the company 50 years back.
I come from a post-communist country which had a lot of censorship. It was happening 50 years ago as well (it was happening since the end of 40s to the end of 80s). Call me sensitive. ;)
The guy is removing the company from 50 years back.
purplethinking
No no, the guy is definitely sending the company back 50 years, to a time when free speech actually meant something, and when a single party didn't control 90% of all media outlets, social media, institutions and controlling policy at most Fortune 500 companies.
techfeathers
50 years ago when there were like 3 television channels? Do we really want to return to the “free speech” when no one had a voice
senkora
This seems to be the reason for writing about the topic right now:
> So, yes, in June 2015, I slowed down the whole company [Facebook] by a second.
> Of course, here it is ten years later, and the guy in charge just sent it back fifty years [by ending fact checking?]. Way to upstage me, dude.
sunshowers
The fact checking is the tip of the iceberg — it's what the marketing machine led with because it's the least objectionable. Far far worse is letting queer people like myself be called mentally ill, though not any other group (e.g. religious people). Yes, it's part of the common discourse, but the common discourse is objectively morally abhorrent.
I worked at FB for a decade, and I now am rooting for its complete destruction.
DiggyJohnson
I don’t think (most) queer people nor (most) religious people should be called mentally ill at work or on social media. However, I also don’t think a standalone policy should address either case specifically. Professional decorum and the typical “no hate speech” should cover it. What say you to that position?
freeone3000
It would be if those were not specific exceptions to the hate speech policy: “ Mental characteristics, including but not limited to allegations of stupidity, intellectual capacity, and mental illness, and unsupported comparisons between PC groups on the basis of inherent intellectual capacity. We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like “weird.””
Source: https://transparency.meta.com/policies/community-standards/h...
sunshowers
You are welcome to take this up with Mark Zuckerberg.
ClassyJacket
[flagged]
jimbob45
[flagged]
pjc50
Newsflash: people don't like being called mentally ill on either continent.
sunshowers
I'm advocating for moral virtue and the reduction of suffering, but short of that I'm arguing for the same standards. I'm an Indian immigrant living in the US.
morkalork
If an adult told you they believed Santa was real, you'd call them mentally ill and yet..
pessimizer
If wanting to kill yourself over your sex isn't mental illness, I have no idea why insurance or the state should be concerned about it. We're not collectively paying for flat-chested women to get breast implants, or ugly men to get nose jobs, although they both may be upset about their bodies. We're also not labeling it as "life-saving."
I don't understand how we can insist that these conditions are both the worst mental illnesses, and not mental illnesses at all, at the same time. And maybe you do understand, but it's not so clearly explained that people shouldn't be allowed to discuss it in public.
> though not any other group (e.g. religious people).
Is this made up?
brooke2k
Gender dysphoria is a potential cause of mental illness, not a mental illness in itself. If someone has a job they hate or an unhealthy relationship which is causing them to be severely depressed, the best treatment is simply to quit that job or that relationship and work towards something better.
It's just the same for transgender people. Growing up feeling that you're in the wrong body can cause a lot of mental distress, and the best and most universally effective option for fixing that distress is to simply transition to living as another gender.
Not all people who are transgender experience severe enough dysphoria to cause serious mental health issues, and yet they still decide to transition and report being happier afterwards. [1] However, many transgender people do experience distress over it, and a proportion of that population are even suicidal over it.
This is why I consider it to be a cause of mental illness, not a mental illness in and of itself. And it's important to note that, even for the group that experience suicidality, transitioning is still an effective treatment. [2] [3]
Plastic surgery, on the other hand, is not even close to universally effective for people who are depressed about being "flat-chested" or "ugly." Cosmetic surgery such as breast enhancement has been shown to have a much, much higher rate of regret than transgender surgeries. [4]
In short, the reason that gender-affirming care is considered a treatment for gender dysphoria, whereas breast enhancement and rhinoplasty are not considered treatments for body dysmorphia, is simply that the former is effective and the latter is not.
1. https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbtq/transgender-people-gender-i...
2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10925986/
KittenInABox
> We're not collectively paying for flat-chested women to get breast implants, or ugly men to get nose jobs, although they both may be upset about their bodies.
Umm...We actually do pay for breast implants/breast reductions in the case of medical need which can vary from reconstruction to hormone imbalances, the latter of which makes sense to consider being transgender under since hormones do quite a bit to help with the illness.
sunshowers
Is pregnancy an illness, mental or otherwise? Should insurance or the state not cover the medical costs of pregnancy?
What are your credentials, anyway? Why do you think you know more than decades of in depth research and millennia of anthropological evidence?
jacoblambda
> We're not collectively paying for flat-chested women to get breast implants, or ugly men to get nose jobs
Uh insurance actually does cover them, particularly for reconstructive surgeries. It should be noted that the conditions under which insurance would cover a trans person's gender affirming surgery is going to be essentially under the same conditions they would for a cis person. Now it's worth noting that Medicaid does generally cover gender affirming surgeries in certain states however Medicaid is required to be primarily paid for by the state rather than the federal government. Medicare only covers them under specific circumstances with a large pile of supporting documentation attached. And then with private insurance providers it is highly dependent on the company and policy whether they cover them or not.
> We're also not labeling it as "life-saving."
Gender affirming surgeries are almost always the very last step for trans people and it's far quicker, easier, and more common to get them as a cis person than it is as a trans person.
Gender affirming care however is generally what is referred to as life-saving more than anything else. This is primarily access to medication in the form of Hormone Replacement Therapy and additionally in the form of access to counseling and therapy to support the transition and to mitigate gender dysphoria among other issues.
And the thing I think most people don't really understand is how disgustingly cheap the primary form of care, Hormone Replacement Therapy, is.
For trans women the main medication is estradiol. This medication is extremely cheap and most pharmacies won't take insurance for it due to how cheap it is. A month's dose in the cheapest form at one of the higher doses is going to be at most 15-20 USD per month. More expensive forms of estradiol that don't have to be taken as rigorously and/or have less risk of side effects cost around 1.5-3x that depending on the form. For the first few months to a year they'll also generally take a testosterone suppressor until the estradiol suppresses testosterone by itself and those medications only cost around 10 USD per month or less.
For trans men the main medication is testosterone. It's controlled so it's more annoying to get due to it's abuse as a "performance enhancing drug" but even at the higher doses it costs more or less the same amount or less than the equivalent doses of HRT for trans women (coming in at well under 20 USD/month, more often less than 5 USD/month).
This puts the cost of the bulk of treatment for transgender people at well under the cost of most other medications.
klooney
Facebook maybe? She mentions the cat factory
ashoeafoot
"Reenact the past , be the past, past becomes glorious present" Isil
llm_trw
That policy change reads like a more liberal version of Obama's first term compaign platform on social issues.
Lets not pretend that the current climate in SF isn't both way outside the Overton window for most of rest of the US and most of California until ten years ago.
gortok
With this comment you seem to be putting the Overton window farther right than I’ve seen it in recent memory —- outside of very rural areas.
playa06
> farther right than I’ve seen it in recent memory —- outside of very rural areas.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/985183/size-urban-rural-...
>>In 2023, there were approximately 55.94 million people living in rural areas in the United States, while about 278.98 million people were living in urban areas
If Trump won, it couldn't have been solely because of people in the boonies, who represent a much smaller proportion of total demographics. The same goes for Brexit, and all the happenings that have been shifting Western societies as a whole towards the far right.
This sort of obliviousness is not helpful in fixing the situation. Same energy as the media acting like Trump could never possibly become POTUS. These incompetents are getting in positions of power because the left and moderate right are, it seems, still not perceiving what is going on outside of their very specific bubbles.
hmmm-i-wonder
Urban voters represented 20% of voters. Sub-Urban 45%. Rural 35%
63% of Urban voters went Harris, 35% Trump. 63% of Rural voters went Trump, 35% Harris. Suburban went 52% Harris and 47% Trump
The 15% more Rural than Urban voters, combined with gerrymandering and state vote power differences offset the 5% Democrat lean of Sub-Urban voters.
If we look at who ACTUALLY voted from the voting age population, then the boonies certainly did win it for Trump despite the other 65% being pro Harris to varying degrees. If we consider people who didn't vote at all that could have, and assume the majority of those would have voted for Harris, then we can likely blame those that didn't vote for leaving the power in the hands of those in the boonies.
DiggyJohnson
Eh, that’s more an overstatement than you’re claiming of GP. Just my opinion, but yea I guess I don’t see how this isn’t a return to the centrist-status-quo-liberal perspective of like 2005-2014. Massive hand waving implied
vlovich123
Wtf is this comment in relation to? Certainly not the article which is about a strictly technical issue or how to deploy time smearing for the first time.
Nice descriptive article. I've done this on purpose too to debug remote filesystem syncs and cryptography problems where machines are out of sync. My GPS wall clock is handy for adjusting NTP, but the time it takes to scan my eyes from the wall back to the monitor.. you really do need two stacked like she did. So I now figured to use transparrent terminals each logged into a different host and lay them over one another running "watch -n1 date".
Would have been nice to have some more network, code and command line examples. You need to set up a local ntpd and need to point your local master at that temporarily. A better utility to write would be "timediff -s1 -s2" that takes two time servers and shows the offset. I bet there's a way to do that in one line. Anyone?