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Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

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Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#171

Post by pavel_lishin »

IgorPartola wrote: post #149

I know this is a popular sentiment here but it bears repeating: timezones need to go away. Time according to timezones measures the position of the sun. Except when we clearly decide with daylight savings time that we don’t care about the position of the sun, we just want it to be a certain time. When the sun is directly over NYC it is usually 1pm or 2pm, depending on time of year, but 5pm or 6pm in London. Why? Are…

May I recommend you read this article titled "So You Want To Abolish Time Zones"?

https://qntm.org/abolish

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#172

Post by ta1243 »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #140
dmd wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Like how Spider-Man actually belongs to Sony, not Marvel, and it gets loaned back to Marvel? Or more like how Blade isn't part of the MCU, but totally belongs to Marvel?

Except Blade is part of the MCu now since Deadpool 3

But I think the analogy may be being stretched

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#173

Post by vundercind »

IgorPartola wrote: post #158
andix wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also argue that different languages need to go away. Would make everything easier.

It is much harder to do. We all speak the same 24 hour clock and it is not a culturally significant thing. It would be nice if everyone could understand everyone but there is something to be lost by losing languages. There is absolutely nothing to be lost by doing away with timezones.

Of course there's something lost. If I see my colleague's local time will be 9:00PM, I know not to schedule a meeting then. It's a method for translating familiar associations of hours across space.

Also, and more importantly, "it's 5:00 somewhere!" would cease to be true.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#174

Post by teo_zero »

IgorPartola wrote: post #156
aniforprez wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you can propose a proper way to locally represent time where a person is currently present in relation to the position of the sun then no, time zones will never go away. I know time zones suck for us as programmers but it's a practical way to separate different regions that will experience different times of day differently. As long as we have clocks and times with "midnight"s and "noon"s, time zones will exis…

Just because you personally are used to a specific type of clock doesn’t mean you can’t imagine a different kind. Submarines use 24 hour clocks and give no hecks about where the sun is. The solution is to just use UTC. That’s it. That means in NYC you’d get to work at 13:00 and go home at 21:00, which used to be 9am-5pm. That’s it. Your whole transition has been completed. The rest is just what your calendar says. Ni…

> NYC you’d get to work at 13:00 and go home at 21:00

And if you plan to meet your colleagues after dinner, would you say "see you tomorrow?".

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#175

Post by pavel_lishin »

zarzavat wrote: post #42
squiggleblaz wrote: post #19

I kind of thing a half hour daylight savings difference instead of an hour is a pretty low bar for the weirdest timezone. Almost any of the others are weirder: Antarctica/Troll definitely sounds weirder. The Moroccan and Gazan timezones that can't be expressed by the system as it was written because at least that means that they have some different kind of a rule, even if lunar time is well known. Same with the ones…

> even if lunar time is well known The date of Ramadan is not well known because it's based on being able to see the moon from the local position on Earth. If the sky is particularly overcast for instance, then you cannot see the moon, regardless of where the moon is. This presents problems for implementation of the calendar into the workings of a nation state. Many countries that adopt the Islamic calendar officiall…

> The date of Ramadan is not well known because it's based on being able to see the moon from the local position on Earth.

Note to self, look up what Islamic scholars think should be done about Ramadan on a moon base.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#177

Post by teo_zero »

IgorPartola wrote: post #149

I know this is a popular sentiment here but it bears repeating: timezones need to go away. Time according to timezones measures the position of the sun. Except when we clearly decide with daylight savings time that we don’t care about the position of the sun, we just want it to be a certain time. When the sun is directly over NYC it is usually 1pm or 2pm, depending on time of year, but 5pm or 6pm in London. Why? Are…

It would be an interesting experiment.

You would have to give up many concepts that have local relevance, while gaining better understanding with non-local interlocutors. I think the balance depends on how many of your daily interactions happen at local or non-local scope.

Swatch tried it in the 90s and failed. Maybe we are more globalized today...

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#178

Post by PopAlongKid »

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…

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

For as long as clock sync for electronic devices has been common, I have suggested to anyone who would listen that we should adjust forward 10 minutes on the first Sunday of each month for six months, and then back 10 minutes on the first Sunday of the other six months. A ten minute change once a month is not only easier to adjust to (almost unoticeable), but if you miss it, it's not as big a deal as being off by an hour would be.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#179

Post by ides_dev »

spockz wrote: post #3

I really love this way of writing. Informational with occasional bits of humor. It makes it read and ingest.

Absolutely agreed, it’s a really nice conversational tone. It is technical without being dry and entertaining without watering down the information. I strive to write like this.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#180

Post by wakahiu »

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

This is common across East Africa, including Kenya where I’m from. The night ends at 6:00AM, with 7:00AM being saa moja (first hour) of the day. Similarly, the day ends at 6:00PM (thenashara). Intuitively, this clock makes much more sense than the English clock. There’s rarely confusion between times because it’s embedded in the language.
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