[brimble]

It's some thing about "getting people to think about the future" but all it does is make it harder to read. I've never seen it anywhere but HN.

[kragen]

https://longnow.org/ideas/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-di...

[allturtles]

That seems, I don't know, silly? It feels mean to say silly, but I can't think of a better word. Why not use 6 digits, or 7 digits, or 20 digits? Then you'll really trigger some long-term thinking in your readers. I could start writing all my dates in years since the birth of the universe, to give people a feel for the long past and how insignificant their little lives are. But this defeats the purpose of dates, which is to communicate facts about time using a common system of numbering.

[telotortium]

I'm pretty sure it's just kragen.