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Timezone Bullshit

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Re: Timezone Bullshit

#221

Post by Johnny555 »

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 think it's hugely inconvenient, I have to shift my waking and sleeping time by an hour twice a year and it takes at least a week to settle into the new schedule, and I have at least a half dozen clocks to shift time on, including one that needs a ladder.

Without DST why would I need to ask my boss to start an hour earlier? I've lived in places without DST and it was just fine, I didn't notice or miss any "extra" hour of daylight.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#222

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

datejfktn wrote: post #101
majewsky wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No representative democracy is asking the electorate to vote on each and every bill. It defeats the purpose of having a parliament in the first place.

I agree with you. I was just pointing out that it's wrong to say this this decision had ample consultation, because overwhelmingly the population is not aware of it.

And almost all the respondents were German (apparently this is a big deal in Germany).

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#223

Post by jolmg »

xyzelement wrote: post #216
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.

You got a bunch of longish replies to your question and I can't tell if they covered the simple answer. DST changes the question of : is it dark at 7am when I get up or not? is it light when I get off work at 5 or not? It aims to shift the usable daylight hours to correspond with human activity.

It's interesting how it's easier to change time than to change the hours in which we work. I wonder if there's any country where the government has enough control over working hours to shift those around instead. Instead of shifting the clock one hour, we could shift the time we start and end work.

It's like DST is the wrong solution to an XY problem.

Thinking practically though, DST is bound to work without enforcement, so it has that advantage.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#225

Post by prussian »

tzset(3) explains this. GNU is actually sort of bailing the author out in the unfortunate cases like America/New_York where it ignores you forgot to provide the prepending colon.

In terms of EDT, LOL, etc: again, well explained in the tzset manpage. EST works only because it appears the timezone database has EST and again, GNU is being helpful and assuming you meant to add the prepended colon.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#226

Post by ggm »

The other side of this is people assuming sydney time is brisbane or adelaide time, because they have limited experiental knowledge of a continent. we're well trained with mountain/central/eastern and Hawaii but we sometimes forget that LA is not next door to Chicago, I mean how far can it be?

Well.. Brisbane is not Sydney time. half the year we're 1 hour offset. AEST is not AEDT.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#227

Post by outadoc »

de_Selby wrote: post #123
outadoc wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. Say you want to save an event that you know will happen on the 14th of July at 15:00 Paris time, in the year 2025. Current time zone rules tells you this will be at 13:00 UTC. Well, if France decides to abolish DST and stick to standard time before then, you'll be wrong.

For that use case definitely, though a law change is a bit of an edge case. For stamping times like in a log though UTC should always be used server side.

Sure! But my point is there's no one true way to do it and you always have to think about what you're trying to represent and how you're going to use it.

Also, I would argue time manipulation is full of many "edge cases" like this one, which is why it's so hard. It's going to work fine until it doesn't.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#228

Post by WorldMaker »

SamBam wrote: post #125
remram wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument sounds very similar to the "let's abolish timezones" argument so let me post this again: https://qntm.org/abolish Changing your schedule works for you and your boss, but does not let people in other parts of the world know when they can reach you. Officially shifting something is necessary, and then you might as well have timezones.

I find it insane that there are otherwise-smart people in the world that want to abolish time zones. For example, this NY Times article. [1] In includes the most bizarre history: > A century and a half ago, time zones didn’t exist. They were a consequence of the invention of railroads. ... and goes on to describe that it's suddenly so confusing and laughable that when it was 7:00 in New York, it would now be 8:00 in…

Some extended timezone databases even have tried to collect historic city timezones from before the railroads, most often to the nearest 15 minute offset, but sometimes even minute specific offsets. It's interesting to explore those.

On that Michigan versus Maine thing, as someone in a city that historically was -0045 from its current timezone, I feel it interesting to point out that DST is closer to local noon than "Standard Time" in the city, versus that cities that define the other edge of the time zone and have local noon closer to Standard Time noon. (Our hour-wide time zones make the question of DST versus Standard Time much more complex than just picking one or the other, when talking about abolishing DST or standardizing only on DST.)

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#229

Post by prussian »

cfstras wrote: post #99

The part about "using the text of the invalid timezone" seems to be fixed in latest GNU date (8.32): $ TZ=EDT gdate Wed Feb 10 13:22:23 UTC 2021 $ gdate --version date (GNU coreutils) 8.32 ... 8.30 (shipped in debian buster) still has the problem. The BSD version of date shipped with MacOS 10.15 also does not seem to have this bug.

more likely the libc. I have the same version of GNU date using glibc and this behavior persists, as I would expect.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#230

Post by deepsun »

Is there a way to know which timezone (e.g. America/Phoenix) I'm in right now?

I did actually missed a meeting due to that. I was in small city in Montana, checked list of these timezones, but didn't know which one to choose. So I saw Phoenix has the same time as me, and set it at my device.

However, turned out that Montana actually uses America/Denver (which is Colorado) as their timezone. Is there a way to know that?

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