Posting from the future: how exactly does this happen?

[benjoi84]

Apparently, I was entered into some kind of queue?

 

[05XR8]

I had a message the same but it read “In a minute”.

 

[eran0004]

I don't know how it works but I guess that it's due to the algorithm that calculates how long ago a post was published. Let that time be p and current time c, then the time x between publish and now would be x = c - p.

Assuming that the variable c only updates once in a while, then it's possible that p is greater than c, which makes x negative, i.e. p appears to be in the future.

If that's the case, then it's not that your post will actually be published 9 minutes into the future, but rather that the system didn't check the current time since 9 minutes ago.

 

[Daniel]

View attachment 1451819
Apparently, I was entered into some kind of queue?

Is there a chance you unknowingly travelled to Australia or New Zealand?

 

[benjoi84]

Thanks for the replies...

I'm really surprised the forum system even has the ability to display the text in the first place.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Assuming that the variable c only updates once in a while, then it's possible that p is greater than c, which makes x negative, i.e. p appears to be in the future.

My guess, is that the page gets your system time and then subtracts the server logged timestamp of the post (converted to your time zone), if your clock is wrong for your time zone, you get the issue.

Tested on my phone...

 

[Jordan]

That's correct, the "relative" timestamps are just calculated by comparing your system's time with the server's timestamp on the post. There is no queue.

I'm not seeing any issue with the server's time, so the issue would have to be caused by a system time or browser issue. If your system's time is correct, future timestamps can still be caused by caching bugs in the browser which should be fixed by refreshing the page.