Facebook invents a new unit of time called Flicks

Image © Facebook, as from Memeburn

The company this week announced a new unit of time, because seconds, minutes and hours are just way too cumbersome.

Seriously though.

Dubbed the flick, it’s only slightly larger than a nanosecond, but is even more useful for those vested in video. And we all know video is the new cryptocurrency.

“We’ve launched Flicks, a unit of time, slightly larger than a nanosecond that exactly subdivides media frame rates and sampling frequencies,” the company’s Open Source account tweeted.

We've launched Flicks, a unit of time, slightly larger than a nanosecond that exactly subdivides media frame rates and sampling frequencies. https://t.co/w9SDBznXRE

— Facebook Open Source (@fbOpenSource) January 22, 2018

“When working creating visual effects for film, television, and other media, it is common to run simulations or other time-integrating processes which subdivide a single frame of time into a fixed, integer number of subdivisions,” Facebook explains on the GitHub page.

“It is handy to be able to accumulate these subdivisions to create exact 1-frame and 1-second intervals, for a variety of reasons.”

Nanoseconds, although the smallest unit of time, couldn’t quite achieve this, because maths. But the flick can.

Don’t worry, Facebook as a whole will still use seconds, minutes and hours to structure your day, but you may just want to switch to its new only-useful-for-videographer method of calculating time for fun.

Have a look at the GitHub project page for more information.