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Comment by gffrd | Hacker News Reader

> A joint international effort is now being launched towards achieving this

Just pin it to GMT and call it good.

They mean local lunar time, for coordination between actors on the moon. Lunar day length and even, due to gravity, second length differ from Earth (i.e., time moves at a different speed).

> They mean local lunar time, for coordination between actors on the moon. Lunar day length and even, due to gravity, second length differ from Earth (i.e., time moves at a different speed).

These two sentences aren't related to each other. Time moves at a different speed on the moon than it does on Earth. But that only affects interactions between the Earth and the moon. Two actors that are both on the moon are both on the moon; their Earth-based clocks will work without adjustment if their goal is to coordinate with each other.

That's basic physics, it surprises me some users seem to not understand how time works even on a forum like HN.

Doesn't sound like a compelling reason against UTC. Add a leap second every 50 years for relativity.

As the article noted, clocks lose 56us per day on the Moon, relative to the Earth.

So the moon gets a leap second every 50 years. Why does that prevent you from using UTC?

I would go with TAI personally.

There is no Greenwich on the Moon!

Name the first permanent moon settlement New Greenwich, problem solved.

If the EU won’t bite the bullet and just adopt English as the official language, there’s no way they’re pinning this to Greenwich time

I'm confused.

English is an official EU language is one of the (few) working languages of the European Commission (French is also used a lot). And the United Kingdom remains a member of the European Space Agency. GMT overlaps with European time zones, with countries like France being big proponents things like UTC (and TAI, and the metric system in general).

He's referring to the current animosity between the UK and Europe. Both groups frequently go out of their way to make life harder for the other. The EU proposing the English GMT would be unlikely in this climate. Also FWIW I think only Portugal overlaps with GMT.

Also Ireland, which is important because of Northern Ireland. It would be politically inconvenient if the time in Dublin were ever to be different from the time in London.

Also known as “Paris mean time minus 9 minutes 21 seconds.”

Having English as the official language of the EU when England isn’t in the EU would be quite funny.

What other language could the EU possibly use as a common language for communications between member states? English is the only language that you can use everywhere within the union and have a decent chance of being able to communicate with people (and this is true everywhere else in the world too).

It'll finally be the year of the Esperanto lingua franca.

Ireland and Malta are in the EU, both with English as the official language.

This is along with the fact that English is lingua franca in EU and wider.

> Ireland and Malta are in the EU, both with English as the official language

It’s a nitpick to be sure, but shouldn’t it be “ Ireland and Malta are in the EU, both with English as AN official language”

Sure, although English is absolutely the dominant language in almost all of the Republic of Ireland, where in Malta the situation is similar to the Netherlands, where most people it's just a very proficient second language.

Ireland and Malta are two EU members where English is one of the official languages.

But they picked Irish and Maltese ad their "EU must support it" language, since English was already there.

When Brexit was looming there was a bit of a scare that when the UK was gone English would no longer be supported.

But luckily the EU institutions were not insane.

this kind of thing doesn't happen immediately, English support gone in one generation would be more the thing.

Ireland would change their request if it comes to it, because practically nobody speaks Irish

According to Wikipedia, 93% of students in the EU currently learn it at school…

It’s rather humbling how many languages are spoken by individuals there - and my experience is that people there often have other languages in common too.

How so? The US also uses English and not Lakota or some (or multiple) native American languages.

We should rename English to "European" while we're at it, or "Standard".

If you really want to annoy an English person, use an American flag to represent English-language localization

EUs English guidelines emphasized en_UK because that used to be the main audience to whom texts should be unambiguous. That requirement is no longer there, so en_EU (which defacto exists, although it has many variations) might now officially move closer to en_US, since that is what most cultural exposure is to for those to whom English is not a first language (i.e. almost everyone in the EU).

I therefore propose a half EU/half US flag pictogram to refer to English from now on.

Yeah just forget about the Australians, Irish, South Africans, ...

"English (Traditional) vs English (Simplified)"

(joke explanation: this is a reference to the two Chinese writing systems, used in PRC and Taiwan)

en_US would actually be closer to English (Traditional) than en_UK, if linguists are to believe.

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