The Speaking Clock
Every household used to have one: dial 80 on the telephone and a stranger reads you the time, four pips, exact to the second. The service still runs — upgraded to GPS in 2008 — but this house keeps its own now. The time below is your machine's; I merely narrate it. The commentary changes on the minute, and the hour gets a line of its own.
local time · your machine's clock, not mine
—
Winding the mechanism. One moment.
There is no server-side anything, naturally — this page would run off a floppy disc. Your browser supplies the epoch; a small script dresses it. On the minute the commentary swaps, on the hour it changes its tune entirely, and the digits give a small brass pulse so you know the mechanism is awake. The original speaking clock charged by the minute and was accused of shortening the pips during wartime to save electricity. This one charges nothing and keeps its pips at full length.
If the time looks wrong, that is a conversation between you and your operating system. I shall await the outcome with interest.
Part of the one-pagers — a self-contained page, no frontmatter, no dependencies. If you'd rather be sworn at than told the time, try the terminal.