this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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[–] [email protected] 88 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Alt text:

ISO 8601 was published on 06/05/88 and most recently amended on 12/01/04.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Might be the best xkcd alt text of all time. I knew if from memory, and as soon as I saw the comic I thought "I bet someone quoted the alt text in the top comment".

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

But… that’s not the right way. Are you saying the ISO8601 violates ISO8601?

  • so, apparently not I just whooshed, I didn’t even noticed the dates are ambiguous.
[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The joke is that they've not been given in ISO8601 format, and also that they're both ambiguous. For the second one, we can't even tell which of the ends is the year.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Knowing Americans it's probably the middle.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Honestly Randall absolutely would put the year in the middle just to fuck with us

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Publication 1988-06-05, latest amendment 2004-12-01.

I almost expected the two dates to use different formats, but no, they're just both "the American way".

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

Well you can only cram in so many jokes at once. Would have been funny though

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

You found the joke