I designed AlphaDec, a timezone-agnostic time format that encodes UTC timestamps into chronologically sortable strings like `2025_O2H5_389232`.The key insight: by dividing the year into 26 periods (A-Z), then subdividing with numbers and letters, you get timestamps that sort naturally as strings while remaining human-readable.Some practical benefits I've found:- Perfect as prefixes for database keys- Time-range queries by truncation (`2024_M` finds everything in that ~14-day period)- LLM-friendly for log analysis and time-based reasoning- Glanceable - you can quickly see where in the year a timestamp fallsInteresting emergent property: Periods F, M, S, and Z always bracket equinoxes/solstices, even in leap years.Live clock: https://firasd.github.io/alphadec/GitHub: https://github.com/firasd/alphadecThe readme has implementations in JavaScript and PHP. Would love feedback on the concept and where else this might be useful!Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44618307Points: 1# Comments: 0