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Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

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Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#231

Post by azernik »

RegnisGnaw wrote: post #229
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.…

There is no more exceptions, IDT got extended to last Sunday of October in 2013.

Huzzah, at last!

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#232

Post by antisol »

ajdlinux wrote: post #141
twelvechairs wrote: post #30

Along with Kathmandu for weird offsets is Australian Central Western Standard Time (UTC +8:45), used in a tiny area of Australia with the largest town being Eucla (population 37). Being mainly within Western Australia (which doesn't use daylight savings) but partially within South Australia (which does use daylight savings) there has also been informal use of UTC+9:45 Historically there was also Dublin mean time (UTC…

An interesting aspect of ACWST is that it has no legal status - it's observed purely by local convention, though it's still managed to make it into tzdata.

indeed! and not only is it in tzdata, there are signs on the road telling you about it

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#233

Post by rainingmonkey »

libraryofbabel wrote: post #221
brodo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And also similar to the French Revolutionary calendar (1793 to 1805) which had twelve 30-day months and 5 or 6 jours complémentaires . I like that Tolkien’s legendarium got the first mention here though.

The ancient Roman calendar was before that, with 10 months of 30 or 31 days and intercalated days when it's no month at all.

Sometimes priests moved these days to suit political shenanigans.

Caesar ended this madness and "rationalised" the system, coincidentally making his year-long consulship last for 446 days.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#235

Post by em500 »

fragmede wrote: post #136
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…

India is UYC+5:30, and doesn't do daylights savings time, which is interesting for interacting with the rest of the world. Of course, China famously has one time zone despite being really wide which makes things interesting both internally and externally.

Most of the world doesn't do DST either[1], nowadays it's mostly a European/American thing.

[1] See the map at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_by_countr...

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#236

Post by iggldiggl »

ta1243 wrote: post #183
IgorPartola wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

OK, you're in LA. You finish work at 2300 on Monday. You have plans to go to the theatre on Tuesday after work. Is that 0100 on Tuesday (after finishing at 2300 on Monday) or 0100 on Wednesday (after finishing at 2300 on Tuesday)

Along the same vein… how are public holidays supposed to be handled? Do those always start and finish at midnight UTC, even if midnight UTC happens to be right during the middle of the solar day (and everybody's waking hours)? Or does every place define a specific time (aligned to solar midnight or some other suitable point during the night) for when holidays are supposed to start and end, which is basically reintroducing timezones through the back door?

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#237

Post by bloppe »

wakahiu wrote: post #180
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.

I would probably be a bit confused by the fact that 6pm is 13 hours after 5pm, but I'm assuming Swahili has better ways of communicating time

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#239

Post by marcosdumay »

weinzierl wrote: post #93
entuno wrote: post #80

The time zone in Palestine is a bit weird as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_the_State_of_Palestine They have DST, but it's not on fixed dates, the government just announces each year when it's going to start and end. Sometimes with less that a week's notice, which must cause all kinds of interesting problems for people.

Not sure if true today, but used to be the case in Brazil too. Once almost missed a flight because of that.

Brazil doesn't have DST anymore. And when it had, it used to be announced with 6 months of antecedence. It also had "standard" dates that were almost always used.

If your comment was about the 2019 change that almost all computers got wrong, this one was announced with 6 months of antecedence like most others.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#240

Post by ars »

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.…

It's because of Passover: The Seder (main celebratory meal) lasts till midnight and later, and it's a very big deal for children.

So they don't want Daylight Savings Time to make it end even later than it already does.

It's also because of the fast day of Yom Kippur - people wanted the faster to end 1 hour earlier.

So they wanted DST to match up to those days - but that made the DST period too short, and led to the negotiations.

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