A thief who stole 106 rare clocks | Hacker News Reader

A thief who stole 106 rare clocks

smithsonianmag.com

95 pointswhatami55 comments

A man with one clock always knows what time it is. A man with two clocks is never sure.

We have no data on a man with 106 clocks.

If even a portion of them chime the hour: the man is insane.

Me: patiently explaining how I, a 106 clocks enthusiast, havent stolen any clocks, to the authorities at my door to no avail as the roaring cacophany of time clangs bangs and bongs behind me.

My deafened cat: groaning in agony

My wristwatch: absent you fool please set in and let me educate you a poor plebian on the 106 clocks lifestyle....

It's become a bit of a running gag with my wife to count the clocks in her parents' house when we visit and see if we come up with the same number. We rarely do, either because we have different interpretations as to whether a half-assembled clock counts or not or because we overlook one of many. We've yet to break into three figures, but we've gotten most of the way there.

Midnight and noon are intense. Her father has them all set a bit off from each other to enjoy each chiming in turn.

I really… really really really really want to spend a day with your parents.

Once.

Getting dangerously off topic, but I recently bought a GPS-syncing wall clock. Now it matches our computers! And everything else. No more concerns.

A man with 106 clocks can be sqrt(106) times more confident in knowing what time it is.

Why sqrt? The ensemble is 1-P(Wrong time probability for a single clock)^106

Every clock is wrong; they're just wrong by different amounts.

Surely one clock is right.

Kind of like how the kilogram used to be always right.

You'd need to steal a lot more than 106 clocks to control the UTC timescale, (un)fortunately.

Only then could you say that your clock is "right" -- and only a month in arrears (https://www.bipm.org/en/time-ftp/circular-t).

Unless you're Doctor Emmet Brown. Also, Mr Pedantic is curious of your definition of a clock. If you are limiting it to just analog clocks with manual only adjustments sure, it might be hard to keep them in sync. But I'm willing to think that all of those reading this thread have clocks in sync

You would be _amazed_ how many issues you can get with so-called synchronized time. Ship on-board NTP servers are currently a thing of my team's nightmares.

Well, don’t leave us hanging

Can't go into specifics due to privacy issues, desyncs being common is well-known enough though. It's just unreasonably hard to build a service that's resilient, that doesn't require manual intervention or maintenance.

I've heard the rule to never bring two chronographs to sea for navigation. If they agree, then you might as well have stuck with one. If they disagree, then you'll just wonder which one is "right" (if either).

If one breaks, you can pull the spare from the drawer at least.

He stole 106 clocks?! Frankly, I’m amazed he found the time.

I was about to type this :)

A man with 106 clocks can calculate the mean value, and give an estimate with a high confidence within two standard deviations of that.

The wisdom of crowds of watches.

The time for these clock puns to stop is now!

Dude, don’t be such a clock blocker.

There's a neat novel that has the Marie Antoinette Breguet as a core McGuffin. Written a few years before the timepieces were recovered: The Grand Complication, by Allen Kurzweil.

I imagine he'll end up doing hard time.

Not in this case; his time was up.

The judge says that his job at the restaurant counts as time served.

Somewhat off-topic but I am greatly annoyed at the lack of NTP wall clocks for residential use. You can get them, of course, but they're aimed at businesses and generally cost the local equivalent of ~$400 to $500 USD. Which seems excessive.

Do most households still have wall clocks these days, given wristwatches, phones and other personal electronics, etc. all have time functions built-in? I admit I don't, but mainly due to the ongoing maintenance burden of winding/battery replacement and time setting/correction. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and get a nice PoE+NTP wall clock.

You can get an ipad and hang the display up as a wall clock app, for cheaper

I specifically wanted an analog-style clock to fit with the rest of the decor. I could use a tablet, but it would be jarringly out of place with the rest of the house. And it also seems like a huge waste of compute to have even a low-end tablet just acting as a simple clock.

I need to sit down and dedicate the time to learn some electronics and "maker"-y skills, I'm sure there would be a way to mash together something like an ESP32 and one of those DIY clock quartz movement kits to get what I want.

Why the complexity of NTP (network & internet) when you could use a GPS syncing wall clock for much less?

I already have wireless network infrastructure and an internet connection. I also live in an old house with very thick walls... I haven't checked GPS reception indoors here, but if it's anything like mobile phone coverage there will be little to zero reception, and it's far too much effort to run in a cable for an exterior antenna.

Also, just having a quick look I can't see anywhere locally that sells GPS synchronised wall clocks (or at least analogue-style ones, which is what I want)

It was a good suggestion though, thank you. I had not though of NTP alternatives. I did look at radio-controlled clock as well, but there's no public broadcaster of sync signals in Australia. Apparently you can DIY it [1] by playing the signal over headphones and have the RCC pick it up as harmonic leakage from the cable, but that would not look good with a wall-mounted clock.

[1] http://www.jrcomputing.com.au/Set_Watch/Set_Watch_Auto.html

A clock thief knows no peace, he will always have to watch his six.

He's truly living on borrowed time

Stolen time?

Museum should have had a watch dog.

Its a shame that such accomplished heists have to remain hidden until the criminals death and even then the widdow gets punished by the vengefull machinery of power. Lessons learned: Honesty has no reward. When involved in crime, melt the evidence down.

Original source or second hand information?

amusingly, the second hand is the third hand

Really enjoyed all the minute details in this piece, like watching a documentary.

Still, it was rather alarming.

Nice of him to do this for hour enjoyment!

This actually was his second offense.

On the other hand, he almost got away with it.

He had a really good escapement plan.

I think all those clocks somehow helped him avoid doing time.

Surprised he found the time to steal them all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35632682

Guess he couldn’t find them second hand.

He had too much time on his hands.

In search of lost time(pieces)

Well done

He must be a Proust fan.

i had already clocked this.

It was just a matter of time until he got caught

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