Hacker News Reader

I think sometimes people get too hung up on arbitrary numbers.

Will another ~2.5% of elapsed time really make much of a difference?

Also, why shouldn't the people who discovered it get to open it at this point?

I don’t know a lot about Westpoint but my hunch is if someone from Westpoint wrote “don’t open this for 200 years” on the time capsule then it won’t be opened until exactly 200 years has passed.

Most people, probably including those who created the time capsules, like nice 'round' numbers for some reason. It's why we have terms like centenial, bicentenial, etc.

People bury time capsules in the hopes that it is unearthed 50 or 100 or 200 or 1000 years

You'll notice that most time capsules are buried with the expectation that it is unearthed on non-arbitrary dates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_capsules

> Also, why shouldn't the people who discovered it get to open it at this point?

The people who created the time capsules, if given the choice, would probably want it opened in 2028 rather than 2023.

195 is a multiple of 13, to commemorate the 13 original colonies, 3, for the trinity, and 5, for the Five Freedoms.

So what would be the recommendation if it was found at 205 years instead of 195 years?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com