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Telstra pulls the plug on Australia's 'talking clock' which has given 'millisecond precise' time for the past 66 years. The Daily Mail reports that the phone service talking clock is to be shut down after 66 years.
The speaking clock function that gives people the precise time down to the second will be a thing of the past come October.
For the last 66 years, Australians have been able to dial 1194 to hear the old-fashioned voice of a man telling them the exact time. 'At the third stroke it will be 1.10 and 40 seconds,' before a beeping sound plays and the the new time is repeated.
The service still receives about two million calls a year - a lot considering today's technology.
Telstra, which provides the service's network and billing, is pulling the plug on October 1 - saying it's not compatible with their new network technology. It was always the best way of setting clocks, especially since many mobiles don't have visible seconds on their clock. I will miss it.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @05:49PM (5 children)
I have no opinion on this.
(Score: 4, Funny) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 24 2019, @05:53PM
How dare you. I have the opposite opinion, and find your views to be unbearable!
(Score: 3, Funny) by acid andy on Wednesday July 24 2019, @07:11PM (3 children)
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Wednesday July 24 2019, @07:27PM (2 children)
A classic of blog spam.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @08:06PM (1 child)
Really? Sarcastic spam?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25 2019, @07:09PM
What, you never received an "Oh, yeah. Like a Nigerian prince is going to send YOU a million dollars!" email?
(Score: 5, Funny) by SomeGuy on Wednesday July 24 2019, @05:51PM (7 children)
They should have found a way to monetize it instead.
"At the third stroke it will be... time to buy a brand new Samsung Galaxy S10!"
Or added to existing data mining.
"Caller identified as Carol Tardsky of 4567 Wallaby Way... commencing advertising spam for brand new clocks!"
Oh, and: "not compatible with their new network technology"?
WTF does that mean? Oh, right, "phones" are not even for making calls any more. They will re-implement it as a Twatter service or Fuckbook page.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 24 2019, @08:18PM (6 children)
sounds like a rule 34 porn social networking site that really exists if I've ever heard one
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday July 24 2019, @08:23PM (4 children)
It's a pity I am not sexually attracted to books. Unless they are the instruction manuals of motherboards or valve amps with proper schematics ofc.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Wednesday July 24 2019, @08:32PM (2 children)
You're lazy too!
Letting us meat-bags destroy the world instead of a Robopocolypse!
Where's the fun in that?
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday July 25 2019, @10:53AM (1 child)
Yours is a valid point, but we did detect the irony in having meatbags built the robota (worker), and then destroying self without us robots having to lift a mechanical finger.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Thursday July 25 2019, @02:59PM
Bender is very disappointed in you.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @11:14PM
I am. I like my women like I like my books -- bound in leather.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Wednesday July 24 2019, @08:27PM
BING! BING! BING! We have a winner!
Yeah, it is real.
Absolutely, Positively, NOT safe for work, or near girlfriends, significant others, children or politicians.
https://www.fuckbook.com/en/ [fuckbook.com]
Keep out of the hands of minors and probably miners as well.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @05:58PM
um, ntp works on mobile. as to not displaying seconds, that is of the devil.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 24 2019, @05:58PM (1 child)
Wasn't this clock featured in the Twilight Zone, or the Outer Limits? "At the third stroke you will have a stroke" or something to that effect?
Just kidding - I've never heard of this clock. But, hey, can't we do a horror episode with a clock like this?
(Score: 3, Informative) by dwilson on Thursday July 25 2019, @03:56AM
Maybe not that clock specifically, but -a- talking clock, yes. Most countries have one. Sometimes more than one.
I used to work a fifteen days on, six days off shift, and spend seven of the fifeteen days on-call for after hours problems. After some of the field operations folks got in the habit of calling me direct at all hours of the night whether I was on-call or not, I got in to the habit of call-forwarding my company cellphone to one of the Canadian talking clocks when I went to bed. Got the idea from an old BOFH episode. Good times.
- D
(Score: 2) by TheFool on Wednesday July 24 2019, @06:13PM (8 children)
I wonder if they're just using the new technology as an excuse to stop supporting it, or if the machine this is running on is in fact so ancient that it can't be put on the new network without significant modification. It feels like it could be either if it's been up for 66 years.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 24 2019, @06:31PM (4 children)
Maybe the new network equipment has too much latency so the clock could no longer be accurate.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @08:23PM
May be Windows 10.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pipedwho on Wednesday July 24 2019, @10:19PM (2 children)
This is probably a symptom of the eternal latency creap that seems to happen on everything these days. Systems go 'digital' and latency seems to go through the roof for anything that involves human interaction.
The only way to listen to this talking clock these days is over some sort of codec based audio system. And those systems introduce indeterminate coding and network transfer delays to signal. Delays that could be anything from 10 to 100ms (or more in some cases). Australia's new NBN (National Broadband Network) is effectively moving everyone's analog phones over to VOIP systems, which further compounds the problem. They're probably thinking what's the point of a millisecond accurate talking clock when your phone can use NTP to cancel out most of the (symmetrical) network latency anyway.
I'd like to see Telstra release an App that emulates the talking clock with a nice NTP/GPS synced millisecond accurate clock that could be used in the same circumstances as the 'talking clock'. Keeping the same voice for nostalgia sake of course.
'Back in the day' ultra low UI latency was a critical design element. Think CD player vs DVD vs Blueray player. Or ATM/point of sale keypad PIN entry delays, phone/TV/smart device cold boot times, drive by wire throttle lag in cars, and just about everything else that prioritises 'software' design over a comprehensive hardware up system design. These days people don't seem to care, so manufacturers just pedal whatever crap they can get away with.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday July 25 2019, @07:17AM (1 child)
I understand the point that you are making, but if it is simple a case of latency then ntpd shouldn't work either. However, millions of computers rely on ntpd [wikipedia.org] to keep their clocks sufficiently accurate to communicate with each other. I'm sure that a human would find the speaking clock accurate enough.
And for those who say people don't wear wrist watches nowadays. I wear one everyday. Many professions (aircrew, armed forces, divers etc) wear watches everyday too.
(Score: 2) by pipedwho on Thursday July 25 2019, @09:59AM
The NTP compensates for latency by assuming the delay in both directions is symmetrical and measuring the round trip delay, then halving it. Over time it gets more accurate as the number of samples increases.
Humans might find the speaking clock accurate enough, but it has always been a bastion of accuracy, which it can no longer satisfy as a simple audio playback over the new style digital codec based listening systems that have almost entirely replaced the POTS.
My son was using it to update our clocks at the last daylight savings time change, and I jokingly commented that because he used a cell phone all our clocks are now a little late. He went back and checked with a land line, and lo and behold there was an obvious time difference between the beep on the cell phone which matched the clocks, and the beep on the landline which came in just a little earlier (probably 100ms or so). He also noticed the NTP synced digital time on the computer and cell phone was in sync with the beep on the talking clock. He went back and readjusted all the clocks while I sat back laughing at his fastidious dedication to punctuality.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday July 25 2019, @01:23AM (2 children)
It's a custom-built electromechanical Rube Goldberg device from the 1950s, a marvel of homebrew engineering but not something that can simply be plugged into Telstra's current system. So they'd need to replace it with something completely new, which is what I assume they're balking at.
And before someone leaps in and says you can do it with a Raspberry Pi and some shell scripts, the speaking clock has been running continuously for sixty-six years, so it'd need to be something with similar endurance and longevity.
(Score: 4, Informative) by driverless on Thursday July 25 2019, @01:32AM
Here's the 1954 video footage of it being installed [youtube.com], with footage of the crates being unloaded from ships and the multi-ton device being set up. Audio is read optically from glass disks (using 70-year-old technology!), two fully redundant systems run the clock. That's why it's lasted nearly seven decades, why Telsra is phasing it out, and why it can't be easily replaced by any of the peanut-gallery solutions that later posts have suggested.
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Thursday July 25 2019, @02:35AM
They did replace ol'George (the original device) about 30 years ago, but it was still with a custom, high-availability industrial-grade system, nothing off-the-shelf.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @06:17PM (3 children)
"it's not compatible with their new network technology"
That non-existent reason has been used to push criminal control of networks, computer software and so on. What worked since the beginning is shut down to push in another near-obsolete fraud technology.
There has never been a place where existing technology had to be shut down for technical reasons because it was "incompatible" with the new stuff. For Microsoft, they almost never tell you the old software is incompatible etc, because it will reduce sales. But where the system can pull this fraud, the above "reason" is used.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Wednesday July 24 2019, @08:06PM (1 child)
It actually may not be compatible with their new technology. 66 years is a long time. The existing system may be using mechanical switches for all we know.
That being said, it's utterly fucking ridiculous they couldn't re-implement this in a few days with new technology. I can make this feature in Asterisk in about 5 minutes, and have it up and running for the entire United States. I will NOT be paying for 2 million calls into it, but it would work. It's really simple.
Pseudo-Code:
Answer()
SayUnixTime()
HangUp()
I'm tired now. I need a vacation. /sarc
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @03:34AM
It's a frigging audio stream. How hard can that be to pipe into the new audio system?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 25 2019, @04:01AM
You have made a demonstrably untrue statement.
Example 1: When the existing technology is based on the RS-232 protocol and the new stuff is ethernet, the existing twisted-pair copper wiring will have to be replaced, if it was installed when RS-232 was the new juice. Furthermore, a service implemented using RS-232 is not going to work side-by-side with ethernet over the same copper; It would need RS-232->ethernet bridging equipment installed, at the very least, along with all the extra configuration overhead and on-going maintenance that would entail.
Example 2: Broadcast TV going digital. Once that slice of spectrum is re-purposed for digital TV, existing analog TV receivers cease working.
That being said, both those examples are hardware issues, and need not have any impact on an end-user of a service. A talking clock can most certainly be re-implemented in whatever new back-end tech they're rolling out. The decision not to is pure greed on their part.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @06:22PM (4 children)
Which ones drop the seconds?
On my Android (7.1.1), if I open the clock app, and go to the "clock" tab, I get time down to the second.
Yes, on the lock screen and in the status bar, it is minute granularity, but that simply means one has to look a wee bit deeper to get the seconds to be visible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @06:38PM
Maybe he has a BlackBerry?
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday July 24 2019, @07:03PM (2 children)
Indeed. I can't imagine that a modern mobile device won't have some straightforward way to display seconds, even if it requires downloading an app or something on some devices. (I suppose there might still be some "flip phones" or other "dumb phones" that don't run Android or Mac OS or whatever and lack a clock option that displays seconds, but I bet even that is pretty rare.) Taking a few minutes to figure that out seems more efficient than listening to phone voice, but to each his own.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @08:17PM (1 child)
I've got an Android 6.0 phone and there is no setting anywhere to show seconds. I also can't update it because the chipset manufacturer's required kernel blob is version and model specific.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @08:31PM
What if you go into the actual clock app (where you can set an alarm, or set a timer, or run a stopwatch).
Is there a "show clock" option there? Does it show seconds there?
On my Android, that is the only location were I can see seconds (absent a custom app to show a clock with seconds). I do have to enable "show seconds" inside the clock app's local settings to get seconds to appear.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @07:34PM
Blabbermouth. I thought that thing would never shut up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @07:37PM (3 children)
Recorded woman's voice:
"At the tone, Pacific Daylight time will be... 1:10, and 40 seconds"
[tone]
[click, click]
"At the tone, Pacific Daylight time will be... 1:10, and 50 seconds"
[tone]
[click, click]
"At the tone, Pacific Daylight time will be... 1:11, exactly"
[tone]
[click, click]
etc, ad nauseam
...brings a tear to the eye...
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday July 24 2019, @08:28PM
Yep. After every power outage we'd call it to re-set stuff. We had mechanical clocks and watches, but they drifted enough that you'd want to make sure.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @11:20PM (1 child)
US Naval Observatory time over telephone still going: https://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/time/telephone-time [navy.mil]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday July 25 2019, @11:34AM
"This is the US Naval Observatory telephone time service. It's time to invade IRAN"
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @08:26PM (2 children)
Myself, I used to use this same time service (the US version) to set clocks/watches back in the days before I had a Linux PC with a working NTP syncing to the internet time servers.
Not long after I had a Linux machine running an NTP client (chrony to be exact) to keep its clock synchronized, I quit calling the telephone time service, because it was just easier to set the clock/watch that needed to be set using the computer as a time source rather than picking up a phone and dialing the call in time service.
However, two million calls in a year indicate that at least some people do still call the number. Presumably to set a clock, since there is not much of any other reason to ever call it. So I wonder what those people will do when it retires?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday July 24 2019, @11:28PM (1 child)
Is our WWV, Fort Collins, Colorado, next?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Muad'Dave on Thursday July 25 2019, @02:02PM
They've already floated that possibility [npr.org].
(Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Wednesday July 24 2019, @08:26PM (4 children)
The guy is quite fed up with telling people the time and hearing the same bip for 66 years.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @09:47PM (3 children)
"What Time Is It"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @09:49PM (1 child)
found here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVYpCdY4Y_0 [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday July 24 2019, @10:40PM
Thought of this [youtube.com] instead...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @11:22PM
Tool Time!
"I don't think so, Tim"
(Score: 2) by Kell on Thursday July 25 2019, @02:19AM
Hearing my mum listen to it when resetting clocks after a blackout was a weirdly comforting part of my childhood. There was something reassuring about it - the mechanical, monotonous precision of it all made me feel like at least somebody had their shit together.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by dw861 on Thursday July 25 2019, @03:16AM
Since 1939, the time signal has been broadcast regularly on CBC Radio, allowing Canadians to set their clocks to the exact time set by the NRC.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/the-beginning-of-the-long-dash-indicates-75-years-of-official-time-on-cbc-1.2823599 [www.cbc.ca]
And this is what it sounded like in 1995.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kELOLmJzxs [youtube.com]
Environment Canada still provides a phone version of the current weather conditions, as well as a forecast, and marine forecast, etc. I still phone it, from time to time.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday July 25 2019, @05:56AM (1 child)
I bet a large percentage of those calls are the day or two after daylight savings starts or stops. People ringing up the time to find out which way to adjust the fucking clock.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Thursday July 25 2019, @03:12PM
Definitely got to keep the Fucking Clock accurate!!
https://www.cafepress.com/+wanna_sex_you_up_wall_clock,103448861 [cafepress.com]
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 1) by Happypuzzle on Thursday July 25 2019, @04:59PM
There is a great Andrew app called Clocksync that shows your current phone time and time from a NTP server on the internet. It has seconds also. If you are fussy about accuracy it can poll 5 times to be more accurate, not proper NTP but all you really need on a phone. It can sync your phone clock if rooted or warn if your time is out.