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Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

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Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#121

Post by gausswho »

Excellent read around the acrobatics of timezone software. It really is quite flexible.

It leads me to wonder. If it's all just an automated and finite offset, there's no reason for daylight savings policies to hew to 60 minutes adjustments.

Couldn't a nation decide to have a continuously changing offset throughout the year? It might make their offset lookup table substantially longer, but this could 'solve' daylight savings time It'd be adjusting all the time and you wouldn't notice, just you don't notice when leap seconds occur.

Those who rely on analog clocks might no longer adjust the same direction each time!

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#122

Post by cube00 »

tankenmate wrote: post #117
rubenv wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true if you need to clean up temporary files every night or make a backup. But what if your cronjob has an effect in the physical world, locally? E.g. open the parking gates every morning. The world is inherently messy :-)

Well assuming that the gates don't move timezones. But obviously jobs that need to run for a given timezone should be configured to run in that timezone.

Unless the gates need to open at 2:30am and in the case of daylight savings time that hour is skipped.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#123

Post by brodo »

hprotagonist wrote: post #96
guidedlight wrote: post #18

Nah, the weirdest time zone is Africa/Addis_Ababa, which nobody in Ethiopia follows. Instead the locals offset the time by 6 hours. So the AM cycle starts at dawn (i.e. 6am), and the PM cycle starts at dusk (i.e. 6pm). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Ethiopia

Ethiopian time keeping is peculiar all over. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_calendar The Ethiopian calendar has twelve months, all thirty days long, and five or six epagomenal days, which form a thirteenth month.

That's similar to the Shire calendar system[1]. It has twelve months of 30 days, but the missing days are not in any month.

1: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Shire_Calendar

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#124

Post by maratc »

rob74 wrote: post #76
azernik wrote: post #73

The "Asia/Jerusalem" weirdness is because Daylight Savings Time is a big church-and-state issue. Religious people want the workday to be convenient for holidays that start at sunset. This led to decades (up to the mid-'00s) where Daylight Savings was the result of annual negotiations between religious and secular parties. It often caused problems when the decision wasn't made until juuuust before the transition date.…

Reading this, and considering the limited advantages of DST (especially for a country that is relatively far to the south), I wonder why they didn't decide to scrap DST completely? Maybe they will if the EU eventually manages to do it?

I would argue that DST actually makes most sense in 30-40 degrees of latitude.

With about 13 hours of sunlight in the summer, split evenly around the mid-day, it comes down to 05h30 to 18h30 under light. There are many more people who would be out there to enjoy the sunlight between 18h30 and 19h30 than there are between 05h30 and 06h30.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#125

Post by ttepasse »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #66
guidedlight wrote: post #18

Nah, the weirdest time zone is Africa/Addis_Ababa, which nobody in Ethiopia follows. Instead the locals offset the time by 6 hours. So the AM cycle starts at dawn (i.e. 6am), and the PM cycle starts at dusk (i.e. 6pm). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Ethiopia

That's very similar to how the romans conceived of time. Wonder if it's an old relic from when north africa was a bunch of provinces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_timekeeping

You'll find the ancient interpretation that the new day starts at sunset still in religions. Sabbath starts on Friday evening, Easter and Christmas day start on the eve of the day before. Possibly the Eids of Islam too, but I'm unsure.

Ethiopia is one of the ancient Christian countries, the second of officially convert and the Ethiopian Ortodox Church still seems prominent. I assume that's the reason why.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#128

Post by [deleted] »

gausswho wrote: post #121

Excellent read around the acrobatics of timezone software. It really is quite flexible. It leads me to wonder. If it's all just an automated and finite offset, there's no reason for daylight savings policies to hew to 60 minutes adjustments. Couldn't a nation decide to have a continuously changing offset throughout the year? It might make their offset lookup table substantially longer, but this could 'solve' daylight…

[deleted]

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#129

Post by dmd »

ochrist wrote: post #127

The article says that "Nuuk is in Greenland, and is part of the greater EU cinematic universe." It is correct that Greenland is part of Denmark, and Denmark is a member of EU. But Greenland voted several years ago to stay out of the EU.

Which is why it's part of the greater universe, not the regular one.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#130

Post by lazide »

ochrist wrote: post #127

The article says that "Nuuk is in Greenland, and is part of the greater EU cinematic universe." It is correct that Greenland is part of Denmark, and Denmark is a member of EU. But Greenland voted several years ago to stay out of the EU.

So…. Antman?
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