CFC Alerts appear to have become psychic!

[Valka D'Ur]

This came up a little while ago in my alerts:

The point is that if someone quotes you, it gives either a timestamp of x number of minutes ago, or the date.

Note that the timestamp in this alert says my post was quoted "in 6 minutes". Not 6 minutes ago.

How did the forum know that Lexicus was going to quote me a specific number of minutes IN THE FUTURE?



This is a little weird...

 

[The_J]

That's a bit strange .
Has probably something to do with misaligned clocks somewhere.
I'm curious to see if other people see it too, but I'm not very worried.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I guess it depends on if they rely on Alerts to tell them what's going on in the threads they participate in, or if someone makes a new thread, or if someone's dropped a "like" on a post. Not everyone does make use of the Alert feature. I check it regularly, though, so this caught my attention immediately. The alerts above and below it were normal regarding timestamps. It's just Lexicus' post that apparently came from the future.

 

[Daniel Boone]

I access the forums from my iPhone, and I notice that this happens when I reply to a post and then hit the back button that’s built into safari. If anyone has posted since I hit the button, it will say that they replied in _ minutes.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I'm using Edge for now and post on a Win11 laptop.

 

[Daniel Boone]

Hmm, is there a back button on edge? I hardly ever use my laptop except for playing civ.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Yeah, you can click to go back to previous pages/screens. Same with Opera and Firefox. It would surprise me if there are any browsers that don't let you do this.

Provided of course that your current page came from somewhere and wasn't "opened in a new tab/window". Those go nowhere if you press the 'back' button/icon.

 

[The_J]

I access the forums from my iPhone, and I notice that this happens when I reply to a post and then hit the back button that’s built into safari. If anyone has posted since I hit the button, it will say that they replied in _ minutes.

This scenario makes a lot of sense, thanks.
Might see if that also appear like this in Firefox.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

This scenario makes a lot of sense, thanks.
Might see if that also appear like this in Firefox.

It's obviously not just a phone problem. I don't even own anything more than a basic landline that can't access the internet at all.

And yes, there's a way to back up a page (or more) in Edge.

 

[Gori the Grey]

He posted. You posted. He edited his earlier post to include a quote from your later post. I think that's how it happened.

I noticed it at the time and thought it was funny.

 

[Patine]

It's obviously not just a phone problem. I don't even own anything more than a basic landline that can't access the internet at all.

I'm in the same boat here, Valka, though my reasons of so limiting myself are probably different.

 

[Lexicus]

I just love seeing my name in lights

 

[Quintillus]

I see the forum is learning. At this rate it will gain self-awareness (and perhaps omniscience) at around... 2:14 AM on August 29th?

The less exciting possibility is indeed that its clocks are a few minutes off. In previous months, I'd noticed forum slowdowns at about 8:06 PM Eastern, which would correspond to 12:06 AM GMT. If it's doing some sort of maintenance at midnight GMT, but it doesn't realize that it's midnight until six minutes late... hmm, I think that is off in the other direction? Lexicus's quote being 6 minutes in the future would imply that the forum is six minutes fast, not six minutes slow.

Either way, some sort of forum clock being off is the most likely scenario, but if a forum is going to gain self-consciousness in a few weeks, it might as well be CFC.

 

[Patine]

Either way, some sort of forum clock being off is the most likely scenario, but if a forum is going to gain self-consciousness in a few weeks, it might as well be CFC.

Oh, how Musk and Zuckerberg would be so disappointed it was us...