What a stamp costs over a 60-second window, against the clock

What a stamp costs over a 60-second window, against the clock

⌈log₂ 2D/r⌉ bits, for a window of D at a resolution of r. A second-resolution clock over a 60-second window needs 7 bits per stamp; a microsecond clock over the same window needs 27. Refining the clock by a factor f costs log₂ f bits per stamp — a decade is between three and four — and the plate asserts that at every step rather than remarking on it. Beside a 32-bit key the coarse clock is a rounding error and the fine one is 46% of the structure — and the choice is almost never made deliberately, because the resolution comes from whatever the system's timestamps already were.

Drawn at 700 × 342, wide on the page. Everything above is what clock-stamps returns with no arguments; the caption is the generator's own, computed from the numbers in the drawing rather than written beside it.

4 essays call clock-stamps. The drawing above is what it returns with no arguments at all; every call below passes it something, because a placement that passes nothing draws whichever member of the family the generator happens to default to rather than the one its essay argues about — which is what optcheck and figfill exist to catch.