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Timezone Bullshit

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Re: Timezone Bullshit

#181

Post by treesprite82 »

phaemon wrote: post #172
treesprite82 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you tell your computer that the timezone your machine is set to is called "LOL", then of course that's what it should report. What else would it do? If `TZ=EST date` adjusts the offset to EST, then a reasonable person would expect `TZ=EDT date` to either adjust the offset to EDT, or fail noisily if it's not aware of that offset code. At a skim through the documentation I don't see anything warning about it's cur…

> or fail noisily if it's not aware of that offset code. But it is aware of it! You just told it, using the TZ variable, what EDT is. It's a timezone called EDT, with no offset from UTC! If you wanted an offset, you should have written `TZ=EDT+4 date`

If I'm understanding the examples, it looks like (in general) commands such as `TZ=EST date` work as expected (i.e. you can set offset just using the offset code).

> But it is aware of it! You just told it

The user didn't intend to. Defining a new offset code should be explicit, not a silent fall-back when it's unable to find EDT.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#182

Post by wiredfool »

throw0101a wrote: post #52
Lvl999Noob wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the topic of DST... can you explain why some countries use DST? Anytime I look for the reasoning of it, it says that DST helps "make better use of daytime" but how? The earth isn't gonna say "Damn! These people changed their clocks. I better change by rotation and give them more sun time." Whether you have DST or not, you still have the same amount of time with sunlight in a day.

The closer one is to the poles, the more the number of hours of daylight shifts over the seasons. So at/near the equator, in a place like Panama, you will get roughly 12 hours of daylight in both the December and June Solstices. * https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/panama/panama Whereas in the Edinburgh you go from having 7 hours of daylight in December to over 17 hours in June: * https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/uk/edin…

The worst thing is that the farther north you go, the less it matters. In Ireland, DST only really makes a difference for a month or so around the change. In the summer, light. In the winter, dark.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#183

Post by steerablesafe »

phaemon wrote: post #172
treesprite82 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you tell your computer that the timezone your machine is set to is called "LOL", then of course that's what it should report. What else would it do? If `TZ=EST date` adjusts the offset to EST, then a reasonable person would expect `TZ=EDT date` to either adjust the offset to EDT, or fail noisily if it's not aware of that offset code. At a skim through the documentation I don't see anything warning about it's cur…

> or fail noisily if it's not aware of that offset code. But it is aware of it! You just told it, using the TZ variable, what EDT is. It's a timezone called EDT, with no offset from UTC! If you wanted an offset, you should have written `TZ=EDT+4 date`

why doesn't this work the same way for 'EST' then? You don't specify offset so it should just display in UTC as well, right?

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#184

Post by iggldiggl »

datejfktn wrote: post #84
Hamuko wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it makes laws without popular consultation That's not accurate. > This online consultation, which ran from 4 July to 16 August 2018, received 4.6 million responses from all 28 Member States, the highest number of responses ever received in any Commission public consultation. According to the preliminary results (see annex), 84% of respondents are in favour of putting an end to the bi-annual clock change.

Selection effect. Those who really cared about this commented. But what about the 99% rest of population? It's a mistake thinking that because they dont realllly care they will accept either way. Resistance to change is huge, especially when it plays into the narrative "Bruxelles demanded it" And what I meant by lack of popular consultation is that if you go on EU streets and ask about this change 95% of people will…

> Selection effect. Those who really cared about this commented.

And a disproportionate proportion of those (more than two thirds) were from Germany, were that topic was an especially hot issue for some reason or other.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#185

Post by iggldiggl »

iso1631 wrote: post #72
datejfktn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For once pretty much no one is aware of this supposed change. There was like a couple of articles on the day it was voted and that's it. This will 100% not happen, it's another one of those things that the EU parliament votes that everyone ignores, and it's perfect ammunition for those complaining that it makes laws without popular consultation. Trying to go forward with this change will generate massive anti EU back…

> For once pretty much no one is aware of this supposed change The consultation had 4.6 million responses. > Having variable time offsets between EU and UK would add yet another layer of disruption on top of Brexit. So?

> The consultation had 4.6 million responses.

A disproportionate amount of which were from Germany (2/3 of the responses, even though Germany only is only ~ 16 % of the EU-population pre-Brexit).

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#186

Post by asoneth »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #176
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The infuriating thing is that our solution to this is to change the clock instead of just changing our schedules. It's completely ridiculous.

Easier to get a few computers to automatically change their clock twice a year than every human being to change their schedule.

This. Coordinating a mass schedule change is just an alternate implementation of a time shift.

The primary benefit of mass schedule change is that it might make (some) programmers' lives easier. The disadvantage is that it makes everyone else's lives harder as they adapt to schedule shifts.

(Clocks exist to serve people, people don't exist to serve clocks.)

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#187

Post by bluefirebrand »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #73
Lvl999Noob wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it was easier in the times before the internet. Now a consistent timeline should be far more convenient than not having to change your habits by a little bit. Edit: If changing schedule is normalized, then it would be just as convenient as changing the clock. In countries without DST, if someone started using DST instead of changing their own schedule, it would be just as difficult.

I don’t think anyone other than programmers thinks DST is much of an inconvenience. The clock changes twice a year, big deal. That’s infinitely less complicated than asking your boss if you can start earlier, which means the store at the subway station will need to be open an hour earlier (since its business comes from commuters), which means restaurants will need to be open earlier to address the lunch crowd, which…

> I don’t think anyone other than programmers thinks DST is much of an inconvenience. The clock changes twice a year, big deal

Everyone, and I mean everyone, I talk to about DST hates DST and wants it gone. It's definitely not just programmers who dislike it.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#188

Post by m463 »

yen223 wrote: post #97
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The infuriating thing is that our solution to this is to change the clock instead of just changing our schedules. It's completely ridiculous.

We should embrace this pragmatic approach. We can solve climate change by collectively shifting our thermometers down a few degrees!

BST - Beach Standard Temp

or maybe

FST - Florida Standard Temp / Florida Submerged Temp

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#189

Post by asoneth »

throw0101a wrote: post #52
Lvl999Noob wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the topic of DST... can you explain why some countries use DST? Anytime I look for the reasoning of it, it says that DST helps "make better use of daytime" but how? The earth isn't gonna say "Damn! These people changed their clocks. I better change by rotation and give them more sun time." Whether you have DST or not, you still have the same amount of time with sunlight in a day.

The closer one is to the poles, the more the number of hours of daylight shifts over the seasons. So at/near the equator, in a place like Panama, you will get roughly 12 hours of daylight in both the December and June Solstices. * https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/panama/panama Whereas in the Edinburgh you go from having 7 hours of daylight in December to over 17 hours in June: * https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/uk/edin…

The goal makes sense but our current DST implementation of a sixty-minute jump twice a year seems unnecessarily large and disruptive. (And not just dealing with kids -- traffic accidents and heart attacks spike after.) Whereas if there was a way to coordinate a daily shift it would be less than a minute.

It reminds me of when I'm camping. I usually fall into a dawn-based time system: Wake up around ~dawn, eat breakfast ~d+2h, lunch ~d+6h, dinner ~d+12h, bed down ~d+16h. You maximize daylight this way but the main problem is that you end up drifting relative to everyone else and if you want to rely on a standard watch to keep your schedule it requires some mental math.

I'd love to figure out how to use a combination of dawn-based time system for my daily routines plus UTC for remote collaboration.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#190

Post by shadowgovt »

larrik wrote: post #143

> Either use the tzdb name like America/New_York, or use an offset from UTC, depending on what you want. I bet storing an offset is far more pain, given that anyone in a DST area will have 2 offsets per year.

Offsets can very easily be the wrong answer (though the author is quite correct that it depends on what you're trying to do). If your user intends to use one of the timezones that has a daylight savings calculation, the offset changes as the year goes on. Offsets can also change if the definition of the timezone itself changes (Russia ceased to use daylight savings in 2014).

Offsets can be useful if one is attempting to record a historical incident, where the timezone had a particular-defined offset at the point in time the incident occurred (though for my money, I'd just convert that time to UTC on storage).

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