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Timezone Bullshit

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Re: Timezone Bullshit

#241

Post by [deleted] »

filoleg wrote: post #234
jolmg wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enforcem…

I think one practicality of it that you forget is the difficulty for people too, not just for businesses or government entities. For example, people are used to banks always being open 9am to 5pm. With the approach you mentioned, it means that twice a year they will have to shift it. It means you will also have to shift your entire schedule, and calendar, and literally everything. Now think about some shops and place…

[deleted]

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#242

Post by [deleted] »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #213
remram wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that is how everyone at your company feel, you don't need a schedule at all (or even a clock).

It's just the best way of contact, if people know anything else, they can use it, but even in one building it's impossible to know who is on vacation, who is fired, who is on lunch, who is on a smoking break, who is off on an errand, who left a little earlier, who is busy at a meeting, who is just busy.

[deleted]

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#243

Post by jolmg »

filoleg wrote: post #234
jolmg wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enforcem…

I think one practicality of it that you forget is the difficulty for people too, not just for businesses or government entities. For example, people are used to banks always being open 9am to 5pm. With the approach you mentioned, it means that twice a year they will have to shift it. It means you will also have to shift your entire schedule, and calendar, and literally everything. Now think about some shops and place…

> I have a daily recurring alarm for 7am. Under this proposed system, I will have to manually change it twice a year (while now it is done automatically due to the entire timezone switching twice a year). You will simply get a logistical nightmare

At least with respect to updating the alarm, that "logistical nightmare" can't be any worse than what we had before clocks updated themselves. I still remember having to update all clocks manually twice a year. It wasn't a big deal. Someone coming in late or missing an appointment because they forgot to update a clock happened rarely. Maybe it's not the case now, but you used to get multiple warnings reminding you to update your clocks.

> For example, people are used to banks always being open 9am to 5pm. With the approach you mentioned, it means that twice a year they will have to shift it. It means you will also have to shift your entire schedule, and calendar, and literally everything.

With respect to opening and closing hours of banks and shops, for those few people that go near opening or closing hours even in that time of the year, they'll make the mistake that day and either come back later when it's open or otherwise fix their issue that day or at least they won't make the same mistake the next day. The world wouldn't go up in flames because of this.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#244

Post by treesprite82 »

phaemon wrote: post #204
treesprite82 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The user didn't intend to. Well, they should have read the docs. They clearly show examples of how to define a timezone right there. It isn't a fallback, it's what TZ is for. Edit: perhaps `date` should have a `-z --zoneinfo` option, in which you could specify a timezone by file and it would fail if the file did not exist. This would fix the issue and avoid breaking existing scripts.

> Well, they should have read the docs

You can say that about any bad design choice, and in this case I'd argue that the linked docs don't even agree with the behaviour. The syntax given by the docs for creating a new timezone requires explicitly specifying an offset (then optional stuff like daylight savings).

The quirk may be documented elsewhere, but before getting caught out by it the average user has no reason to be searching through multiple sources of documentation for an oddity they don't yet know exists.

> It isn't a fallback, it's what TZ is for.

If I'm understanding, `TZ=EDT` will search for an "EDT" timezone in its database, fail, then instead silently default to creating a new timezone with 0:00 offset. That's pretty much how I'd define a fall-back.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#245

Post by freeopinion »

jolmg wrote: post #223
xyzelement wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enforcem…

I'd be interested to hear the experience of people in China. As I understand it, all of China shares a single timezone while neighbors to the north and south are spread across five timezones.

Clocks in western China are four hours out of sync with their neighbors just over the southern border in Pakistan, for example. So do businesses in western China open from 1pm to 9pm? Do people eat breakfast at noon?

I'm really curious about that experience.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#246

Post by gumby »

asoneth wrote: post #189
throw0101a wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 breakfa…

It's a technology path dependence issue.

When towns had public mechanical clocks they were typically frequently adjusted (even daily) so that noon was when the sun was directly overhead.

Once railroads were developed their schedules were a mess since each time had to be in the time of the specific station. So the railroads got time zones introduced.

Then when the move for DST came around it had to be something easy to calculate, thus a one hour shift. Sort of like the Dow Jones: something that could be easily calculated by hand.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#247

Post by [deleted] »

ben509 wrote: post #237
jolmg wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enforcem…

> It's interesting how it's easier to change time than to change the hours in which we work. I think the main pain point would be customers being confused as to when companies are open. This doesn't even work well with smartphones; all the calendar apps are hopelessly manual and can't answer something like "what are good times to run an errand involving steps X, Y, Z." At best , you can ask it when people are availab…

[deleted]

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#248

Post by BenjiWiebe »

mabbo wrote: post #47
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.

Golf courses. Well, okay, this is my wonderful father's half serious answer that I love to retell. The basic idea is that it's easier to convince everyone that is actually 5:00pm and time to leave work than it is to convince just your boss that you want to start work an hour earlier and leave and hour earlier. This problem is then applied to politicians and other powerful people, who want to go golfing after work. If…

I like DST and I'm neither rich nor a politician. I could be wrong, but I think farmers in general would be pro DST.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#249

Post by [deleted] »

ben509 wrote: post #237
jolmg wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enforcem…

> It's interesting how it's easier to change time than to change the hours in which we work. I think the main pain point would be customers being confused as to when companies are open. This doesn't even work well with smartphones; all the calendar apps are hopelessly manual and can't answer something like "what are good times to run an errand involving steps X, Y, Z." At best , you can ask it when people are availab…

[deleted]

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#250

Post by treesprite82 »

jpitz wrote: post #170
majewsky wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick: "Continent/City".

"America" isn't a continent.

America can be a continent. Definitions vary so sometimes it's split into "North America"/"South America", or pluralized "Americas".

TZ database includes "America/Santiago" and "America/Sao_Paulo" so clearly it means the continent and not just the US.

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