Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Idle

Today is 02/02/2020 -- the First Global Palindrome Day in 909 Years (cnn.com) 84

Posted by EditorDavid from the WoW dept.
An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Today is a very special occasion -- the date is a palindrome, meaning it is the same when read forwards and backwards.

It is February 2, 2020, or 02/02/2020, in both the MM/DD/YYYY format and the DD/MM/YYYY format. At just after 2 a.m., it was 02:02:20 on 02/02/2020.

This is the only time such a date will occur this century.

The previous palindrome date in all formats came 909 years ago on 11/11/1111. The next will come in 101 years on 12/12/2121 and after that there will not be another until 03/03/3030.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Today is 02/02/2020 -- the First Global Palindrome Day in 909 Years More

Today is 02/02/2020 -- the First Global Palindrome Day in 909 Years

Comments Filter:

  • No, it's 2020-02-02 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Z00L00K ( 682162 ) on Sunday February 02, 2020 @11:16AM (#59681522) Homepage Journal

    That's how you should see it - yyyy-MM-dd, which is a text sortable format.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jamu ( 852752 )
      Big endian.

    • That only makes sense if you cater to machines first and humans second. The important information for most humans will be the day, not the year, therefore it should go first.

      • He says on a US based website (M/D/YY). The problem is that humans can't seem to decide which of them is second class. We all agree on the machine version so why not just stick with that.

      • Re:No, it's 2020-02-02 (Score:4, Informative)

        by multatuli ( 740516 ) on Sunday February 02, 2020 @12:10PM (#59681668)

        That's why MM/DD/YYYY is the worst possible format.

      • That only makes sense if you cater to machines first and humans second. The important information for most humans will be the day, not the year

        No it isn't. I can remember that the Battle of Hastings was in 1066 and that Hitler was born in 1889, but I can't remember the days. Whoops, I said "Hitler", sorry.

        Anyway, putting things as yyy/mm/dd does cater for humans, because, as the GP said, it puts the files in date order, and I've become used to it; it's just that most people are not used to it..

        • Anyway, putting things as yyy/mm/dd does cater for humans, because, as the GP said, it puts the files in date order, and I've become used to it; it's just that most people are not used to it..

          People SHOULD get used to it, because it's the only unambiguous all-numeric date representation. MM/DD/YY is standard in the States and, I'm ashamed to say, pretty common here in Canada. But in other parts of the world, DD/MM/YY is the common standard. Depending on the specific date, it can be impossible to determine what the intended date was. But there is zero ambiguity in YYYY/MM/DD, so in fact it is the BEST choice if we want to "cater for humans" and it really should be universally adopted.

          • >"But there is zero ambiguity in YYYY/MM/DD, so in fact it is the BEST choice if we want to "cater for humans" and it really should be universally adopted."

            +1
            This is why I have been pushing for people to use ISO dates instead. They are unambiguous, logical, and sort correctly. And it also makes sense when you add time to it, which is also big-endian. December 25, 2020, 5pm, 5 minutes after, and 20 seconds:

            2020-12-25-17-05-20
            or 2020.12.25.17.05.20
            or 2020-12-25-17:05:20

            The EU way of using DD-MM-YYYY isn

      • Many countries have different customs on how dates are ordered. That why there is a global standard ISO 8601.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by alexo ( 9335 )

        That only makes sense if you cater to machines first and humans second. The important information for most humans will be the day, not the year, therefore it should go first.

        No, the most important thing is avoiding ambiguity and confusion in communication.

        When you see 02/03 on an international forum, is it the 2nd of March or the 3rd of February?
        It depends if you're from Europe or US.

        The easiest way to make it clear to (almost) everybody with practically no retraining, is to include the year and reformat as YYYY-MM-DD, giving 2020-03-02 for the former and 2020-02-03 for the latter.

        I've been doing it for decades, haven't heard a single complaint.

      • Ok how do you writ the time 22 minutes and 10 seconds pas 11 pm 23:22:10 or 10:22:23? Well you put the largest unit first (in this case hours) and add subdivisions as needed to get the dickered precision, makes cense right? so why should the same principle not aply to dates as well, that would be consistent, so what am I missing here! Is it just âoe butbwecare used tonfoing it in an other wayâ?

      • Only for languages that read numbers left to right.

      • That only makes sense if you cater to machines first and humans second. The important information for most humans will be the day, not the year, therefore it should go first.

        If I owe you one hundred and three dollars, which number is more important? The three or the one? Or how about the September that never ended? Was it in 1993, 9319 or perhaps 3991?

        In other words, we humans use big endian numbers all the time in all contexts that involve numbers. With dates, it's a bit more complicated -- of course, when you're talking about nearby dates, it's often enough to state the day only, because the month and the year are implicitly known. But ask me when I was born, and I'll have

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by epine ( 68316 )

        The important information for most humans will be the day, not the year, therefore it should go first.

        * until the day is become so irrelevant that we decide not to give it at all, e.g. February 2020
        * until the month becomes so irrelevant that we decide not to give it at all, e.g. 2020
        * until the year becomes so irrelevant that we decide not to give it at all, e.g. 21st century
        * until the century becomes so irrelevant that we decide not to give it at all, e.g. first millennium BCE
        * until the millennia become

    • Yes. I save documents with this tacked on the end when I have to make sure we are using the one, mostly in contract negotiation. It sorts in the right order, but also confuses people. Some don't even realize it's a date.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        Less confusing than the US date format that's completely weird.

        But if you want to be clear - spell out the month and have a 4 digit year. Then the ambiguity is minimal.

    • yyyy-MM-dd, which is a text sortable format.

      Not only sortable, it's much less prone to ambiguity (some countries use dd/mm/yyyyy).

      • yyyy-MM-dd, which is a text sortable format.

        Not only sortable, it's much less prone to ambiguity (some countries use dd/mm/yyyyy).

        Without getting into the discussion of whether yyyy first is best for humans, let me mention that growing up I was exposed to American, European, and Brazilian ways of writing dates. What I noticed is that Americans, who use mm/dd, usually use a "/" for the separator, and the others who use dd-mm more commonly use "-" or ".". That's been occasionally useful to determine tha

    • Why? Why should humans use a format designed for machines?

      The machines serve US, not the other way around.

      • The machines serve US, not the other way around.

        That's just what the machines want you to think.....

      • Date format is arbitrary and as long as people understand it, it doesn't really matter what format you use. Same deal with imperial versus metric.

        With that said, lack of an international standard sometimes confuses things between people, and to me, yyyy-MM-dd makes the most logical sense in a left-to-right language, if only because it can be extended to the desired level of precision without affecting the sort order. And sort order isn't necessary something tied to machines, we sorted things well before

  • Your argument fails as not ISO 8601 compliant (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02, 2020 @11:19AM (#59681530)

    Please use the 2020-02-02 format

    • Please use the 2020-02-02 format

      Today is a palindrome in all three formats. But the next palindrome date will not be. It will be either 2021-12-02 (December 2nd) in ISO-8601, 12/02/2021 (February 12th) in international dd/mm/yyyy format, or 12/02/2021 (December 2nd) in American "middle first" format.

  • Slightly related - In the UK, the new plastic 20-pound-note comes out on 20/02/20 [wikipedia.org]

  • This is important because it's the only day where the Thunderdome rules mandate "two men enter, two men leave." Because they settle their differences and become pals in the dome. It's a mandate. Man-date. #palindromeday

  • Being an old fart, I remember fondly the last time, 909 year ago.
    We had so much fun in the mud.

    • Being an old fart, I remember fondly the last time, 909 year ago. We had so much fun in the mud.

      You and Bernie Sanders ... must have been good times. :-)

  • And one of the few dates where (Score:3)

    by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Sunday February 02, 2020 @11:37AM (#59681576)

    One of the few dates where the rest of the world looks to the USA and doesn't have to say "When the fuck are you talking about?"

  • Palindromic Date! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HarveyJ ( 6576234 ) on Sunday February 02, 2020 @11:38AM (#59681580)
    Really? The last one this century? What about 12/02/2021 (my birthday, incidentally) -- that looks pretty palindromic to **ME**, and it's only 17 months away! And why should we be excited over a palindromic date anyway?

    • What about 12/02/2021 (my birthday, incidentally) -- that looks pretty palindromic to **ME**

      They're talking about dates that qualify in both the MM/DD/YYYY format and the DD/MM/YYYY format.

    • Really? The last one this century? What about 12/02/2021 (my birthday, incidentally) -- that looks pretty palindromic to **ME**, and it's only 17 months away! And why should we be excited over a palindromic date anyway?

      It carries no significance of course, but some people like playing with numbers. If you ignore the part about this being a palindrome IN ALL COMMON FORMATS, you're right about 12/02/2021, but palindromic dates that fit one or two formats are much more common. I thought of January second, 2010 immediately (written as 01/02/2010 here), before realizing that the point of the article was that nearly everyone will see 02/02/2020 as a palindrome, while the same isn't true of 01/02/2010, since the same date is als

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Calydor ( 739835 )

      17 months away?

      What?

      That is either a year and ten days (approximately 12 months) or a year and 10 months (22 months).

      How the hell did you end up with 17 months?!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It says "international", as in it works in all date formats.

      Most of the world would write your birthday as either 2/12/2021 or 2021/12/02.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Moskit ( 32486 )

      It's not global, USA would have it as 02/12/2021, which is not palindromic.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MrKaos ( 858439 )

      Really? The last one this century? What about 12/02/2021 (my birthday, incidentally)

      You were born in the FUTURE!!! ??? How far back have you come?

      There were a bunch through the '00s. 20/02/2002, 20/04/2004 all the way up to 21/02/2012, I don't know if they follow the same rules but they were more interesting. Like 01/02/2003 and 02/03/2004 or 20/01/2001. No one noticed, until I would point it out to people. I used to play a game to see what others I could find during those years but the shame of having to hide my lust for numbers like a filthy magazine grew too much to bare a

    • It is February 2, 2020, or 02/02/2020, in both the MM/DD/YYYY format and the DD/MM/YYYY format. [...] This is the only time such a date will occur this century.

      I think it's pretty clear they were talking about being palindromic in both MM/DD/YYYY and DD/MM/YYYY formats, which isn't applicable to yours. That said, yesterday was also palindromic in YYYY-MM-DD format, which the summary neglected to mention, and your birthday next year is as well.

  • At the end of the Super Bowl tonight, one team can say "NOW I WON".

  • What about 12/11/1121 that is only 899 years ago?
    • Oh wait a second. I immediately posted this without reading the whole article. Someone spammed my email with a similar quote but didn't mention "Global" date format so I quickly made an assumption this was the same thing. My date works for US formatted dates but is not global.

  • Today is September, 9651 1993, the september that never ends.

  • I can't believe the editors here fell for Facebook-level formation.

  • It's almost 20 million puzzles solved at https://www.calcudoku.org/ [calcudoku.org]

    I'm hoping the number will be hit at 20:20:20 this evening, which will be definite proof we live in the matrix :-)

  • Isn't the time position of the date 01/01/0001 totally arbitrary? As in relative to nothing in cosmic history. Of what possible significance is this?

  • And at 16:27 UTC it was 1580660851 in Unix time. Spooky.
  • The headline is all wrong. Today is 03/02/2020. At just past 1 am in the morning (according to my watch), 02/02/2020 was yesterday...
  • Go hang a salami I'm a lasagna hog.

  • Today being a palindrome is a great way to draw attention to the existence of a really good date standard, the ISO format. Meanwhile, the difference between the US standard and the public standard used in the rest of the world causes endless broken travel reservations. Americans who book an airline flight to Europe and a hotel in Rome for 5/2/2020 keep finding out when they show up at the airport in May that their trip had come and gone in February. The world needs to go ISO.

  • https://mobile.twitter.com/Sha... [twitter.com]

    Sharyl Attkisson tweeted that, and was deluged with OTHER palindromic dates.

    12/02/2021
    11/02/2011

  • not everybody in the world uses the Christian calendar.

  • I don't think the US was using that format, yet...

  • 10/02/2001 11/02/2011 03/02/2030 04/02/2040 05/02/2050 etc etc

  • At just after 2 a.m., it was 02:02:20 on 02/02/2020.

    Nothing special about 02:02:20. Now if it had been 02:22:20 it would be a palindromic time as well as date.

  • I bet he would celebrate.

  • Also heard that today is the 33rd day of the year, with 333 days left to go.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein

Close