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QA: Pass
this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2025
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I'll just leave this here: https://clocks.brianmoore.com/
I wonder if the issue is that AIs just have no idea how to draw a clock. Or, is it that they've been trained on papers where doctors talk about the various issues patients sometimes have when drawing clocks.
I suspect it's probably the first one. AIs seem to have a real problem with anything visually complicated. One of the easiest ways to spot AI slop is to look at the logos on t-shirts.
There's a fun tidbit that we humans only take pictures of clocks at 10:10 that genai can't make make a clock show any other time.
It's true that ads almost always show 10:10, but there are plenty of learning materials online that have other times.
AI run on statistical probability. The more options there are in something, the harder it is to get right. A clock face becomes hard because practically the entire clock changes from moment to moment, and logos on shirts are similar in that they're largely all in the same place but vary dramatically in shape to be as distinct from each other as possible, which is basically the exact opposite of what an AI wants. When your whole thing is basically averaging stuff out on a probability curve that's weighted towards specific keywords, having massive variation in your data points is bad.
Yeah and some clocks have a second hand and some don't sometimes clocks use roman numerals sometimes they're arabic numerals, and that's if it can understand based on context if someone saying just "clock" in the data the scraped is referring to a digital clock or an analog clock.
In general LLMs don't understand logic, though I suspect they have given some of them ability to run some code validation logic (that's not actually AI) when you tell it to generate code in some languages. I say this because I've had it produce some code that could compile, but it seemingly put some example code into a function and had some other example code that needed to call that function with another parameter so it just created a third function that accepts the additional parameter and calls the first function (throwing away that parameter). It compiles but doesn't have any understanding of how stupid that is on a logical level. So it seems like it's just trying stuff until it's capable of compiling without there being any understanding of how anything works.
Entertaining mess. Nine new borked clocks a minute. A couple readable.
Oh, those AIs just really love that 2013 Hannibal Series!
I remember studying this (the illness, not the show) in psychology. Something like wernickes aphasisa? Or maybe brochas aphasisa?
Your brain fails to process like the left half of what it's seeing, so they draw clocks only showing the left half with so the numbers there.
I was assuming they saw the post here a couple of days ago and screenshotted or got the idea from there
LGTM! (probably on a Friday)
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at first I thought PM was the pm in AM/PM
Agile Manager / Project Manager
Agile Meridian / Post Manager
I thought Prime Minister
QA passed boss. All KPIs are green lights. The customer will be thrilled boss.
(Manager hasn't been here long enough to recognize the sarcasm through the calm voice and dead eyes of the QA lead)
"Why do all these test runs say "skipping .."
"Oh, the tests are just excited to have the day off"
That might be a good thing for all the gen alphas who can't read a clock. There are a lot of them.
When I see these generation-hating comments — specifically older generations hating on something the younger generations do — I can’t help but think about whose fault it is for whatever slight the older generation feels.
Who created digital clocks? Who created iPads and iPhones? Who created video games? Every single generation has their own slang that each previous generation fails to understand (not because it doesn’t make sense, but because the previous generations are too lazy and/or stubborn to learn).
/soapbox
Ok boomer. No one uses sundials anymore either. /s.
Yeah but it's sad that you'll never appreciate the aesthetic of a good analog watch face. Every kid I see with a smartwatch uses a digital face.
i'm less concerned with the loss of an aesthetic and more concerned with a transformation around how time is perceived entirely. when we made the shift from sundials to 12 hour clocks, it was part of an industrial revolution that saw the workers go from taking life day by day with a greater degree of flexibility to highly regimented and dehumanizing subsegments of time. now we've gone from the largest unit of time we display being 12 hours to 1 hour. we feel a constant state of disconnection from the moments that got us to this moment and a lack of concern about the future moments as our environments are further degraded.
i'm less worried about millenials, gen z, and gen alpha not liking rolexes than i am about our constantly grinded down state of being. we percieve time differently than the generations that came before us and it makes us feel isolated and like everything is moving too fast. and much of the wisdom about how to transition from a colonial society to a post colonial society is to collectively slow down and i don't know how capable we are of that as we lose the slow sweeping hour hand displaying a fractional time rather than a number constantly climbing but always displaying an exact timestamp rather than a set of portions
These thoughts are way too deep for a silly meme thread, but I'm here for it! 🫡
There are computer science students who don’t know what a filesystem is.
It's the little kit that you use to curate your fingernails
If its a system it needs to be some kind of swiss army knife type thing
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the iPad kids are entering college.
I'm mostly talking about this entire comment thread and not just this comment, but what's with people on Lemmy and putting so much value on analogue clocks? I saw someone here a few weeks ago, who said that you couldn't be intelligent if you didn't know how to read a clock. I can read analogue clocks and I can understand why people like them, but digital clocks have their own advantages and I can absolutely understand people preferring them. It almost feels like a similar situation to 12 hour vs. 24 hour time, where people who use one system don't understand why they would want to use the other one.
Probably because they’re dead simple.
It’s not even about preference but about versatility and adaptability.
You don’t have to be prefer to use them, but being able to deal with the unexpected and figure out the unfamiliar is generally a sign of intelligence.
I don't really 'see' analog or digital anymore, I've transcended that clock racism and now all I see is the format-agnostic bitstream.
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Seconds hand does not show seconds.
Polling the API every second, are you crazy?!
When an API request fails, the seconds clock handle becomes red, and the time health management microservice sends an alert SMS to your phone once per second (scaled with the number of clients)
I keep trying, but the clock only displays 4:29.
What do?
Task for the next story. For now, just file a ticket and shove it up your manager's ass.
How will the system know when to poll the API if it doesn't know seconds?
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If a real physical clock, that's a helluva set of complications.
What about showing birthdays? We need a birthday experience. We need to hire a birthday guy to build it fast.
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