is there a way to make this show what time of day it is out of game?

Hi.

Currently there is no way to get the current local time while in factorio because this would differ from player to player causing desynchro in multiplayer game.

Umm, Lua provides os.time() and os.date ([format [, time]]) -- which can actually return UTC which would not differ from player to player if you really needed that... But i think the request was for each player to see their own local time, so why would the differences matter anyway? Does mod behaviour need to be consistent across all players at all time? What about players that have different settings? :-B

But i suppose Factorio might not allow mods the access to those functions?

But i suppose Factorio might not allow mods the access to those functions?

Right on the spot. We don't have access to the os library at all.