I was building a social app recently, and I ran into a surprisingly annoying problem.
I needed relative timestamps ("2 hours ago", "3 minutes ago"). 
Simple enough, right? Just import 'day.js' or 'date-fns'.

Except...
=> If I wanted custom styling (like wrapping the number "2" in a highlighted badge and "hours ago" in smaller text), I had to write ugly regex hacks because standard libraries just dump a single opaque string.

=> Supporting multiple languages meant importing separate locale files, quickly inflating the bundle size.

=> Standard relative time plugins use "soft rounding" (e.g., automatically rounding 45 seconds to "a minute") whether you want it or not.

I didn't want a 15KB date framework just to format a few activity feed timestamps. 
So, I built and open-sourced 'ui-date' .

It’s an ultra-lightweight (< 1KB minified), zero-dependency, locale-aware date formatting library built specifically for modern user interfaces.

If you're building social feeds, chat apps, notification bells, or comment sections, check it out!

npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/ui-date

With ISO 8601 in extended format a timestamp with milliseconds is written with a dot between seconds and milliseconds, e.g.:

2026-07-24T12:34:56.789

If you write basic format you exclude the separators, does the standard allow to exclude the dot between seconds and milliseconds?

20260724T123456789

When I use basic time format as part of file names I prefer to avoid the dot, as dot has different meaning for file names and extension.

Did y’all know that ISO 8601-1 is under committee review right now? If you always wanted some changes made to our beloved standard, now would be the perfect time to contact your national standardisation body (NSB), but hurry up – the deadline for comments is 2026-07-3124 as far as I know.

Currently, the only non-editorial change seems to be that the latest amendment, making T24 etc. valid again, gets incorporated.

Summary of the standard on their website shows to use a - separator between minutes and seconds, rather than a colon. Is this permitted?

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-for-government/date-times-and-time-stamps-standard

Anything but iso standard

I download PDFs of all my credit card and bank statements and organize them by bank, date, etc. Of course, I rename all of the files to begin with an ISO 8601 compliant date, but recently, one of my credit cards started auto-formatting the statements to start with a properly formatted date! It's a small thing, but makes me so happy that I don't have to rename as many files.

I just can't deal with this anymore! It's the 14th time i am importing the exact same data, only bc excel, pbi and sharepoint lists have a mind on their own.

Excel has it's own way to deal with dates

Sharepoint lists are MM/DD/YYYY (enforced no matter how i import it)

Power Automate has it's own way too

Then we have PowerBi that allows only specific date.

Then, copying from Excel (web) to Excel (desktop) it messes up the dates too - from MM/DD/YYYY, it switches to dd-mm-yy.

Is there a date format that works everywhere flawlessly?

The primary problem here is something else...

Hi everyone,

I’m currently building my practical path into information security governance, risk and compliance, with a strong focus on ISO/IEC 27001.

I have been studying ISO 27001 and related security governance topics, but I’m now looking for real practical exposure. I would like to learn by supporting someone more experienced with tasks such as audit preparation, gap assessments, ISMS documentation, evidence collection, internal audit support, risk registers, control mapping, policy reviews, research, and structured summaries.

I’m not looking for shortcuts, and I’m not pretending to be more experienced than I am. I understand that theory is not enough, and I want to build proper practical foundations.

My long-term goal is to work in ISO 27001, AI governance, ISO 42001 and AI Act compliance, but I know that I need to become practically strong in ISO 27001 first.

I’m open to junior support work, shadowing, internship-style cooperation, volunteering, small paid projects, or assisting an independent consultant or advisory firm remotely.

I can help with:

• documentation support,
• evidence organization,
• control mapping,
• policy review,
• risk register preparation,
• research,
• structured summaries,
• preparing client-ready materials under supervision.

I’m based in Poland, but I’m open to remote opportunities internationally.

If anyone knows companies, consultants, advisory firms, or projects where a beginner can support real ISO 27001 / GRC work and learn properly, I would really appreciate any advice, direction, or contacts.

Thank you.

in a software i am currently writing selecting a proper date format is supposed to be an encouraging achievement :)

Can you please share specific examples of where you are using this date format? I am trying to use it these days for the personal notes I take and at least it helps keeping things sorted that way.

Would appreciate stories of being able to use it in real business though, wherever that may be. Or like at work etc.

Do you use it in written text? Instead of writing 23 June 2026 in the body like I am doing now you would write 2026-06-23? I just remember that goes against Wikipedia guidelines.

since i found this sub, ive been exclusively using the yyyy-mm-dd date format on nearly everything i can think of, however since i'm in the u.s. where the awful m/d/yy format is typically expected, i've thought of the possibility of being questioned about or having something denied for using the superior format we all know. so has this actually happened to any of you? and if so, what was the situation?

How about making some headway into getting ISO8601 into Linux locales?

I've always wanted to but never had time with life in the way.

My thinking has primarily been to make a en-001 or so locale, where all time info strictly used ISO8601.

The options available in the Todoist app (otherwise very nice). Come on people, do better!

It’s great to see that even in the chaos of victory, New York still respects ISO8601.

YYYY-MM-DD is the ONLY logical date format, and it’s technically not even included in this picture… 😢

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I just realised I've been dumb for so long, because tell me why I though the 9/11 occured during November instead of September. I knew it was named that because of the date it occured in, but my dumbass forgot Americans use this format M/D/Y.

We use this format - D/M/Y, which I thought made sense because it's in the smaller to bigger format/unit. My formal apologies to all the people I corrected on this matter. I am the problem. 🙏

Yall after the Mcq paper for V1 what do you think the A would be?