RE: [HighResTime] Web Worker support

To avoid the privacy issue, seems like we may need to go with a new epoch. However, wouldn't using a new epoch still suffer from the issue of the clock being adjusted while the application is running?

I don't have any concerns with using January 01 2013 as a new epoch (better than the suggestion to use someone's birthday ;)

From: James Simonsen [mailto:simonjam@google.com]
Sent: Monday, September 16, 2013 12:02 PM
To: public-web-perf@w3.org
Subject: Re: [HighResTime] Web Worker support

So is the best solution to just pick a new epoch that's relatively recent? Like 1/1/2013?

James

On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 6:37 PM, James Robinson <jamesr@google.com<mailto:jamesr@google.com>> wrote:
On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 11:45 AM, Jatinder Mann <jmann@microsoft.com<mailto:jmann@microsoft.com>> wrote:

Adding originTime to the performance.now(), gives you a time value that is comparable in either context. This assumes that we have enough bits in a double to describe time since Jan 01 1970 in milliseconds in microsecond resolution.

There have been a bit more than 2^40s microseconds since the unix epoch.  A double has 53 bits of mantissa so I think we're safe for a while.  A problem here is that the unix epoch is not at a fixed point relative to the monotonic clock.  Remember that the monotonic clock is monotonic is monotonic in terms of itself.  The computer that the application is running on may have its clock adjusted forwards or backwards while the app is running and in practice this happens surprisingly frequently.  This does not impact the monotonic clock, but it does change the delta to the unix epoch.  That's why window.performance.now() *has* to use a timebase different from the unix epoch.  What do you propose we do in this case?


Alternatively, we can define the origin for originTime to be the launch of the browser.


Defining the time to be relative to launch of browser allows identifying that browser session across multiple sites and visits by comparing the time to Date.now().  That'd be a really bad idea.

- James