I was driving to work the other day and noticed some sort of timer in the lower right hand corner of the display while in tuner mode with the default tuner screen. I have never seen this before and don't know if it's Hijack or the current software, and I can't find info on it anywhere. It appears to be some sort of life timer, as it was at 15:17 at ~8AM, incrementing by minutes. It went away and I haven't been able to get it to appear again, though it did just appear on it's own.

If it's already been discussed, please point me to it, I can't find it in the FAQ with a quick search timer.

This feature is indeed a timer, known affectionately as a "clock". The reason it doesn't agree with your idea of time is because it's showing the radio station's time. Try using "RDS clock" as your search term (a phrase search over all groups may be a good start).

Sorry that link doesn't work - it's because the BBS in its infinite wisdom decided that POST was a sensible HTTP method for a search function (which as everyone knows is Plain Stupid).

I thought it might be that, but I can't recall that particular station ever broadcasting an RDS signal and I know the RDS indicator wasn't on. (Is there still an RDS indicator?)
I've only seen one station in the Austin area broadcast an RDS signal and it had call leters and the time off by a few minutes, not by 6 hours, so that's why I was thinking it was some type of timer indicating something like hours of use since last time the kernel was flashed or something...

I get the false clock on a station that doesn't use RDS quite often. The empeg is interpreting random noise as an RDS clock. I also get the TA (or is it TP) flag every now and then.

Or, in other words, RDS is completely worthless in the U.S.

Yeah it is, but just think of the volume of RDS spam if they ever figured it out...

So I guess this was a case like robricc pointed out as I haven't seen it again or ever before on the one station. And I've also seen false traffic announcements as well. I was all excited when that first lit up only to be let down later...