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Tell HN: Sudden Chile daylight savings time rules change causes chaos

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Re: Tell HN: Sudden Chile daylight savings time rules change causes chaos

#71

Post by throwaway09223 »

hilbert42 wrote: post #66
throwaway09223 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Are you saying that our computer systems are so inflexible that we cannot make them do our bidding? " Yes, of course that is the case. Any non-internet connected clock (microwaves, cars, toys, $10 alarm clocks, wristwatches, etc) will not be able to respond to these types of changes. Calling these computers may be significantly overstating their abilities. "it was about how to get computers to do our bidding - not v…

"Any non-internet connected clock (microwaves, cars, toys, $10 alarm clocks, wristwatches, etc) will not be able to respond to these types of changes." My post about 19th C. timezones and train timetables is about this very point. All these independent systems are independent 'timezones' and that's the problem - and it's a fundamental one! First, closed systems are intrinsically subject to drift and will never really…

I think you're mixing up a few different causes and concepts.

Wristwatches are generally accurate and can generally be relied upon. It's not practical or reasonable to say they should be a "last ditch resort" simply because they do not handle legislative corner cases.

All clocks are approximations to some degree, because time and space are relative. This is true of all systems of measurement in science, in general.

It's not possible to have a computer perfectly account for all legislative corner cases for the same reason it's not possible to have a perfect map: Grey areas exist within law and geopolitics. Knowing the time requires knowing map boundaries and which authority controls a given area. For example: Does Ukraine observe DST? The Donbass region?

Furthermore there are practical costs associated with automatic clocks: A GPS, an updating map system and an updating database of time legislation is expensive to implement in terms of hardware, energy, etc.

These are not problems that no one's bothered to implement. They come at a cost which we aren't willing to shoulder, or in some cases are intractably complex social questions with simple pragmatic work-arounds (make the clock dumb and set it to whatever you wish)

In reality, close enough is often good enough. Perfection isn't necessary.

Re: Tell HN: Sudden Chile daylight savings time rules change causes chaos

#72

Post by dalys »

ithkuil wrote: post #52
tgv wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they can do that on their own, can they? There's still an EU wide rule on DST. They never revoked it, AFAIK.

In 2018, the European Parliament voted to get rid of twice a year clock changes. It came after a poll of 4.6 million EU citizens showed strong support for scrapping it. I'm not sure however what's the process of getting this actually implemented.

I believe it is up to the current (always rotating) President of the Council of the European Union to raise / implement / pass it on to some other instance.

https://european-union.europa.eu/institutions-law-budget/ins...

Correct me if Im wrong. Its really hard to understand how EU works, even for us on the inside.

Re: Tell HN: Sudden Chile daylight savings time rules change causes chaos

#73

Post by delecti »

macintux wrote: post #36
toast0 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The user interface can be akward, but you can ask them for the timezone of the event. If it's for a live event in another place, they would ideally put in the local time in the other place and the timezone there. Or if it's a fixed time, not to be moved by DST changes anywhere, they could specify it in UTC. It's also a good idea to calculate and save the offset when editing. Then, if the offset changes later, you can…

I can’t even get employees at the company where I work to understand and communicate EDT instead of EST. I don’t think calendaring tools are going to have much success asking people what timezone they want.

I've mostly given up being pedantic about the difference between PT, PDT, and PST. Most people mean "PT" when talking about the time that work meetings are scheduled, but they say "PST" basically year-round, despite it being PDT more often than PST.

Re: Tell HN: Sudden Chile daylight savings time rules change causes chaos

#74

Post by jstanley »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #62
amelius wrote: post #10

I like this chaos-monkey approach to politics, and we should do it more often. Now let me slide this handle that increases taxes on HFT and see what happens.

Hell, increase tax on all trading. Most people don't need to be gambling day-to-day on equities

Most people don't need to be running most businesses, but it still hurts them if those businesses become less efficient.

Re: Tell HN: Sudden Chile daylight savings time rules change causes chaos

#75

Post by kragen »

delecti wrote: post #73
macintux wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t even get employees at the company where I work to understand and communicate EDT instead of EST. I don’t think calendaring tools are going to have much success asking people what timezone they want.

I've mostly given up being pedantic about the difference between PT, PDT, and PST. Most people mean "PT" when talking about the time that work meetings are scheduled, but they say "PST" basically year-round, despite it being PDT more often than PST.

It's not a pedantic difference; if you calculate the time as PST when it's PDT or vice versa you'll be an hour off. Holding a meeting an hour early or attending it an hour late can have serious consequences.

Re: Tell HN: Sudden Chile daylight savings time rules change causes chaos

#77

Post by vxNsr »

spiffytech wrote: post #20

This kind of thing is why it's important to store user-specified future dates as local time + IANA zone name. If a user wants a calendar event at 9am, they probably still mean 9am after accounting for time zone or DST changes. Storing dates as UTC is appropriate for dates in the past, or future dates that a user will never expect to happen at a certain wall-clock time. (An IANA zone name is something like America/New…

Can you give a few examples of what you mean by this?

Re: Tell HN: Sudden Chile daylight savings time rules change causes chaos

#78

Post by niko001 »

inciampati wrote: post #41
edbaskerville wrote: post #33

Not the worst example I've heard. In 2016 the Haitian president canceled daylight savings by decree two days before the changeover. I was flying out of the country the morning after the change, and had a really hard time explaining to airline customer service (who hadn't gotten the memo) what exactly the problem was. "When does my flight leave?" "At the scheduled time." "According to what clock?" "Huh?" I just showed…

And when did it depart?

At the scheduled time

Re: Tell HN: Sudden Chile daylight savings time rules change causes chaos

#79

Post by mike-the-mikado »

rmujica wrote: post #11

Chilean here. Unfortunately our governments have had the bad habit of changing the date DST starts on every two-three years, and that wreaks havoc everywhere in the country. We are kind of used to having a couple of days where we assume everyone will run an hour late because of this. I just hosted some Peruvian friends this week and were amazed at the kind of power the government wields just by having the ability to…

For comparison, it looks as if Punta Arenas ("the most southerly city in Chile" according to Wikipedia) is about 53 degrees south.

53 degrees north puts you around Nottingham, England (or a little north of Berlin).

Re: Tell HN: Sudden Chile daylight savings time rules change causes chaos

#80

Post by vxNsr »

kragen wrote: post #75
delecti wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've mostly given up being pedantic about the difference between PT, PDT, and PST. Most people mean "PT" when talking about the time that work meetings are scheduled, but they say "PST" basically year-round, despite it being PDT more often than PST.

It's not a pedantic difference; if you calculate the time as PST when it's PDT or vice versa you'll be an hour off. Holding a meeting an hour early or attending it an hour late can have serious consequences.

OP is calling it pedantic because most people mean PT. When someone says 9am they mean 9am regardless of the timezone, they’ll add the timezone if they’re talking with someone from a different timezone but still 99% of the time they mean 9am in their own timezone so if they’re in a region that observes dst even if they said pst they really meant pdt and you’re being pedantic by correcting them.
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