How are people supposed to use features like this if they get dropped and re-added from time to time? If I want a convenient timer, googling "set 5 minute timer" has no advantage if I don't know whether it will work or not. Inconsistency is an enemy of convenience.
I agree with you in general but not in this particular case. Best case scenario: you get a five minute timer running right away. Worst case scenario: you click the first link and get a five minute timer right away
Screw those people for trying to monetize something you’re expecting to use for free. Your phone and computer have the capability to do timers. Why are you googling a timer with this attitude in the first place?
Your software never has bugs? We definitely had to turn something off before because something didn't line up/someone messed up planning during a bigger tech transition. This stuff happens in big orgs ran by humans, I'm happy that it's back and it's a lot better than the first result in any case.
I know that software is fiendishly difficult, but if you think a parent is ever going to put their child in a software driven car, then the industry had probably better get a bit more serious.
This doesn't make any sense. "Software" isn't produced by a single company with a single set of engineering practices and trade-offs. Safety-critical software has been around for decades and decades, and it's not developed and tested using the same practices as a minuscule D-list feature of a web service.
I already put my kids in a software driven car every day. It has automatic cruise control, automatic lane keeping, and automatic emergency braking. I don't trust Tesla's Autopilot yet but as soon as there is a self-driving car which I believe is safer than a car driven by me, I will switch to that.
Is it inconsistent? Even if it isn't google's timer, you still get results for timers provided by other websites, if you google search for "set 5 minute timer".
On the other hand I doubt many more people noticed that it went away than ppl on HN who saw the previous thread. So now they've all been re-informed and know they can rely on it again.
Why wouldn't I be surprised to see it gone later on? Kudos to Google for reshaping their brand image this way, they made my switch to alternatives much easier.
Huh that's weird. It actually shows the correct 336h for a few milliseconds first and then counts back from 35h. I wonder what's happening internally - messing up a timer shouldn't be that easy normally, right?
An obvious bug is an obvious bug, even if typical users don't often hit the bug.
I can absolutely think of a reasons why someone would use this. For example, a DM in a role playing game might pull up a very long timer as a prop to show their players.
I agree that "the number of times you want a 724 year timer to count to zero" is negligibly small, but that is a minor subset of "the number of times you want to show a 724 year timer counting towards zero"
Haha. I'm not even for sure why I need a timer in the web browser at all.
However, I will concede it is indeed rather buggy. A Google search of "timer 3 minutes" does nothing for me, as it just performs a normal search with no timer widget. A search of "timer 2 minutes" or "timer 4 minutes" works fine.
I've noticed that the language parsing of these knowledge/assistant queries is a bit strange sometimes. A more subjective example is "10 lakh in USD". This isn't a perfectly formed query -- lakh is not a currency but a unit in the Indian numbering system. However, I think most humans would assume that I'm talking about converting Indian rupees and this is reflected in the organic search results. Google understands that I'm trying to convert currency but for some reason decides that I meant "10 lakh Euro in USD".
Some kind of overflow, it resets timer to 40 hours. Same thing happens with 1 year, except timer is reset to 60 hours. Another interesting observation is that "timer 723 years" did not bring timer up, but "timer 722 years" did.
Update: "timer 100 hours" works, but "timer 101 hours" does not. That is 100 hours is 144,000 seconds, does not seem to be anything special about this number.
It can just only handle two digits in the hours place after the first tick. Any other digits get removed. 1 year becomes 60 hours because it turns 1 year into 8760 hours, then removes the "87" and leaves the "60"
Edit: this seems like it's just a display bug and the original time is still preserved. If you search "timer 100 year 1 second" then it formats to "876000h 00m 01s", then the next tick shows "0s", then the next tick shows "99h 59m 59s"
> Another interesting observation is that "timer 723 years" did not bring timer up
That is weird. Even weirder that "timer 723 year" (singular) does seem to work.
..and curiously, with the little speaker icon 'on', it produces no audio alarm for me, (firefox 103.0.2). Whereas this[1] one produces a quite notable sound.
These days browsers make sure there's user interaction before audio plays. The other website you linked requires a click to start the timer, therefore meeting that requirement. If Google made this timer muted by default, and you had to click unmute, it would likely work.
Ran into a related bug on a site I was working on the other day and had to learn this browser quirk the hard way.
A bug is a bug. "Why would anyone ever do XYZ" is a separate discussion. And if you write software for a living you know that there is always that one user who will do exactly XYZ.
Sure, a bug is a bug, but the original remark was that the software was "buggy". I read "buggy" as riddled with pretty obvious bugs. If we're calling software "buggy" for having any bugs, then, I guess, nearly all software is "buggy" (and the word looses its usefulness).
Anything over 100 hours gets recalculated modulo 100, so 101 hours becomes 1 hour. But then the page title, which is meant to show the current countdown in the tab display, gets updated to show the full time, but weirdly formatted. So at least two bugs.
Try "timer 101 hours". The page title will (very quickly) show "10:05:9x" where x is the 10s digit of the seconds. While the page itself claims it's a one hour timer (59 minutes and some seconds). So the actual time is in there somewhere, just showing up wrong in both places.
It also doesn't seem to let me enter 30 minutes as a timer, but most other minutes times work. So, yes, it's buggy.
EDIT: It's not actually modulo 100 hours, I should note. The display is showing it that way, but since it has the real time stored internally it still counts down. If it were actually modulo 100 hours then it would zero out a 100 hour (or 200 or 300...) countdown immediately, instead these wrap to 99 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds on the first tick.
EDIT: For grins I'd started a 101 hour timer a bit over an hour ago before stepping away from the computer. Despite the display silliness, it actually will run for 101 hours. After the first hour the displayed time rolls back to 99:59:59 and the page title updates correctly. I also noticed that there's a progress bar below the timer, it correctly shows the progress within the 101 hour timer the whole time.
I mean, the query is “timer $period”. It’s correct in its syntax, a period’s a period. It’s not asking for “timer TIMMY; DROP TABLES”. That’s incorrect input.
"Undefined behavior consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be compiler engineers whom the language standard protects but does not bind, alongside developers whom the language standard binds but does not protect." (source: https://twitter.com/jckarter/status/1558181259314167808 )
Google cripples the site on firefox android. There is an extension called Google search fixer that adjusts the user agent to mobile chrome on Google searches make it not do that.
My kid used this all the time because I would give him timelimits on his Minecraft time. When it disappeared, he was in complete disarray but started to rely on Siri. I think he'll be happy to see it back up and running!
For timing a meeting, try http://timeit.lol/ — it shows you an estimate of when your meeting will end, which will creep forward if you exceed the time allotted for the current agenda item. It was designed for standups, where each person gets 5 minutes to speak, but you can also add agenda items of varying length.
You can also use it in count-up mode (http://timeit.lol/?0) to count how much time each person has spoken.
True, but someone at Google working on a public facing app, even if 99.99% of users never know it's there, will still have orders of magnitude more people using their software than most of us.
