For anyone interested in time zones, I had a terribly unproductive afternoon the day I started looking through both the time zone mailing list[1], and the raw zoneinfo files. I love the history that lies beneath all of the changes.
Time zone news
21–30 of 85 posts
Re: Time zone news
#22Is there still a valid reason to have timezones altering between states? is it just for agriculture? While we're, talking about changing time monitoring systems, can't we have 13 months with 28 days each? (and an extra day every 4 years added on to december?) :( Simple things, but that would allow us to follow the lunar cycle.
Ha. What is your solution for existing birthdays?
Re: Time zone news
#23Is there still a valid reason to have timezones altering between states? is it just for agriculture? While we're, talking about changing time monitoring systems, can't we have 13 months with 28 days each? (and an extra day every 4 years added on to december?) :( Simple things, but that would allow us to follow the lunar cycle.
Actually you'd need December to have one extra day every year and a second extra day every 4 years.
And the months still wouldn't sync up with the synodic month, because the synodic month doesn't evenly divide the solar year no matter what you do.
Re: Time zone news
#24I'm reminded of this quote: "I was in favour of space exploration until I realised what it'd mean for date time libraries" https://twitter.com/joe_jag/status/510048646482894848
All space time clocks may run at GMT+00 with no regional differences. Actually we may remove time zones all together too. So the day time of 3pm will be different everywhere. For calendar months and seasons we already have it like that, in both hemispheres. The only issue is backward incompatibility with legacy movies, books who talk about breakfast at 8am. Similarly, a love song which talks about April/May being a s…
Removing time zones terrestially, while seeming attractive on the surface, generates more problems than it solves: http://qntm.org/abolish
There's a lot that could be improved with how we handle things like Daylight Savings Time today, but eliminating time zones is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Re: Time zone news
#25Situations like Turkey's DST extension reminds me why storing dates in UTC with no further information is not good enough.
Re: Time zone news
#26I've always joked that the more I work with i18n and l10n the more I become a fan of one world language, currency, and time zone. I know that would be rife with its own problems but hey, an exhausted developer can dream.
An exhausted developer can also pay the rent.
Re: Time zone news
#27I'm reminded of this quote: "I was in favour of space exploration until I realised what it'd mean for date time libraries" https://twitter.com/joe_jag/status/510048646482894848
All space time clocks may run at GMT+00 with no regional differences. Actually we may remove time zones all together too. So the day time of 3pm will be different everywhere. For calendar months and seasons we already have it like that, in both hemispheres. The only issue is backward incompatibility with legacy movies, books who talk about breakfast at 8am. Similarly, a love song which talks about April/May being a s…
Oh no, it's much worse than that. On Earth you can generally treat time as being the same speed everywhere. If you start a timer at T1 UTC and run it for a locally observed 60 seconds you can expect the current UTC time to be T1+60 seconds. In space relativistic effects stop being negligible and you might find that UTC time is T1+61 seconds.
Re: Time zone news
#28Is there still a valid reason to have timezones altering between states? is it just for agriculture? While we're, talking about changing time monitoring systems, can't we have 13 months with 28 days each? (and an extra day every 4 years added on to december?) :( Simple things, but that would allow us to follow the lunar cycle.
You're confusing time zones with daylight savings. Time zones exist so that the same part of the solar day has approximately the same time associated with it wherever you are in the world (prior to the railroads, that was the only time - local time). So I can say "it's 4am in China" and you'll know it's the middle of the night without having to consult Google. They can also achieve the opposite, keeping neighbours on…
Except China has a single timezone, so "4am in China" doesn't mean as much as you think it might.
Re: Time zone news
#29I'm reminded of this quote: "I was in favour of space exploration until I realised what it'd mean for date time libraries" https://twitter.com/joe_jag/status/510048646482894848
All space time clocks may run at GMT+00 with no regional differences. Actually we may remove time zones all together too. So the day time of 3pm will be different everywhere. For calendar months and seasons we already have it like that, in both hemispheres. The only issue is backward incompatibility with legacy movies, books who talk about breakfast at 8am. Similarly, a love song which talks about April/May being a s…
It seems attractive to me at first blush. However, with time zones, when you ask your associate on the other side of the world "what time is it there?", the implications of when you can expect communication is almost immediately. Having to ask "when do you get off work" seems a little more cumbersome to figure out all the following details.
But hey, we muddle through the current chaos, I'm sure we can muddle through any other chaos.
Re: Time zone news
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I asked farmers about this. They said it was stupid now that we have electricity. And even then, with the shorter days.. it was still stupid. (I'm quoting them)
I wish people would quit repeating the farmer myth. No farmer I have met wants daylight savings time. Look at Indiana for some perspective. Farm animals do not have watches.
Farm animals do not have watches.
As a parent: Neither do small children.