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Comment by crooked-v | Hacker News Reader

What about storing current geo coordinates and a timestamp of when they were recorded? I feel like that should be enough for a theoretical future system to adjust mapping for continental drift.

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The problem with geo coordinates is reverse mapping them back into political owners, so you can then determine current timezone policy.

There's 4 things at play here:

   - Coordinate location on the planet
   - Identifier for that location
   - Political entity for that location
   - Current timezone policy

Of those, coordinates are the only thing that doesn't change over time (for the spans we're talking about).

But are also a pain in the ass to use. F.ex. I'm sure someone on HN has the lat long for London memorized, but I don't.

London is perhaps the only major city where you could be expected to know one of these coordinates. It's defined to have longitude 0.

I suggest giving date and time in the form of phase/frequency references to nearby pulsars. That should guarantee stability for a few million years.

Especially assuming an increase in computing intelligence in that time.

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