Comment by njkleiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by njkleiner | Hacker News Reader

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Okay, I'm genuinely confused now, can someone please explain this to me?

First of all, how is nobody taking about the fact that OP was scheduled for an exam that takes place... at midnight.

There are two possible cases here.

Some people are alleging that OP lives in the same place as the exam takes place -- which is not clear to me from the information available -- and use this as an excuse for saying "OP should adopt to local customs".

But that would imply the exam takes place on midnight in local time. Is that actually a thing? Like, is this normal? Why on earth would anyone assume that's the case in an ambiguous situation like this, I can see why you would assume it's at noon without giving it too much thought.

The second case is that OP not in the same place (e.g. the given time at midnight does not match OP's local time), but in this case I blame the institution for allowing people to attend exams remotely while not properly accommodating for time differences.

While 12:00 AM/PM may be technically valid time descriptions, I was under the impression that it was common (in places that use the 12 hour system) to instead write 12:00 noon/midnight specifically to avoid this.

From what I understand, Americans are confused by this too, so why are people so eager to blame Europeans, rather than the system?

Second, I don't understand people saying they use 11:59/12:01 AM/PM as a mnemonic. This makes no sense to me as 00:01 a valid time. How do the above times resolve anything, when all you do is increase/decrease the time, relative to the label, which is what makes it confusing in the first place.

I don't understand how I'm supposed to know which of AM/PM 00:01 refers to, unless I already know what AM/PM means.

Third, people making comparisons to reading an analog clock. When I read an analog clock, I get a time in a 12 hour window. Fair enough. But when I then translate it to 24h, what I do is use my knowledge of whether it is currently day or night to translate it. Which has nothing to do with memorizing which label is which. Analog clocks don't have AM/PM labels so how would this make any more sense?

OP here. The online exam is run by Pearson Vue. With my brief research I found it’s a British company. That could be the reason they use AM/PM.

I think with better UX on their scheduling app this would have been avoided. Imagine how much cost they could save with minor improvement. It wasted the proctors, customer service and my time. Unless they don't acknowledge own fault and require customers to pay for another exam.

But the thing that made me realize is that the root case is the time notation itself. Imagine how much frustration and unnecessary expenses this could inflict in general.

I hope this doesn't come off as unnecessarily combative, but the real solution here is to check, verify, double-check and triple-check when presented with notation that's unfamiliar with you.

> How do we solve this more universally?

It's not a universal problem. While entire cultures and countries /could/ invest resources changing (and more people experience confusion centered around any transition), it really isn't a problem for most. And when it is, it's unlikely to be a problem a second time. Once bit, twice shy.

Perhaps universal is too broad “scope” here. Companies nowadays offer services on the internet with reach to every corner of the world. Their customers shouldn’t need to adapt any specific cultural or company origin habits to use their services. Companies should adapt instead if they are offering services to other demographics. It should be easily understood without ambiguity. Yes we all learn from mistakes, but what if this doesn’t result in mistakes all.

Thinking of this further, it seems to me this type of issues are related to accessibility.

Regarding double checking unfamiliar notation: it’s my habit to verify when it’s unclear. The problem is that i know what AM/PM mean. This is a special case i misunderstood. One cannot conclude the misunderstanding until pointed out by an external party.

Based on the comments in this post, it’s obvious i’m not the only struggling with this. Imagine what impact this has on general population as the cultural/country borders are pretty much non-existent on the internet.

Not the OP, just offering some thoughts.

> There are two possible cases here. (snip) I was under the impression that it was common (in places that use the 12 hour system) to instead write 12:00 noon/midnight specifically to avoid this.

IMHO the bigger takeaway ought to be that what is "common" in your area isn't necessarily common in another part of the country, or in another country. This confusion exists because the Europeans (and nowadays the Americans) exported their time measurement system across cultures, to mixed success. It's never obvious and should not be assumed to be... that confusion can exist no matter what actual UNIX time the test was scheduled at.

> Second, I don't understand people saying they use 11:59/12:01 AM/PM as a mnemonic. This makes no sense to me as 00:01 a valid time.

For this specific case, it helps clarify what is "noon" vs "midnight". For some reason people are a lot better with knowing 11:59pm is, vs 12:00AM. The cutover is what throws people off. And for most purposes, the +/- 1-3 minute difference won't matter.

The midnight/noon thing doesn't really help when you're going across oceans though. Or, like you said, if you're not familiar with AM/PM at all.

>I was under the impression that it was common (in places that use the 12 hour system) to instead write 12:00 noon/midnight specifically to avoid this.

(In the US) I've probably seen that done outside this thread but I'm not sure. Just "noon" or "midnight" would be more common than that and if numerals are being written, I'd say "12 noon/midnight" is far rarer than "12 AM/PM". In places where 12 hour time notation is used, people are just expected to know 12 hour time notation.

> For some reason people are a lot better with knowing 11:59pm is, vs 12:00AM.

You mean, people have a mental association like "Oh look it's 12:00 AM [= midnight], better get to bed now" because they see these times in specific contexts, and then use that as a jumping off point to extrapolate the meaning of AM/PM as a whole?

I'd certainly prefer to take an exam at midnight in my local time zone rather than noon. No need to fight with morning brain fog.

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