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Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

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Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#291

Post by bena »

maratc wrote: post #242
bena wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really dislike this argument of "I'd rather enjoy the sun in the evening than in the morning" ignoring all of the other problems it causes. Sunlight in the morning is useful . It's better for your sleep rhythms. It's safer for school children, etc. And to be completely fair, I don't see that many more people "enjoying the sunlight" during the weekend when they have the entire day to do so. Like, what is the sun goi…

> I really dislike this argument of "I'd rather enjoy the sun in the evening than in the morning" My argument is not "I'd rather enjoy the sun in the evening than in the morning", my argument is "From what I can observe, most people would prefer an hour of sunlight at the end of the day rather than in its beginning". This is not about what I think, it's about what most people think. > what is the sun going down at 6…

Did you take a poll, or do you just have the feeling that that is the case? Not to mention, it's a bit weaselly. It offsets the burden of defending the position to "most people".

And it doesn't even matter what "most people" think. "Most people" in this case, would be wrong. Even if it were "most people" and not "most people whose opinions you've happened to remember on the subject because they happen to align with yours".

And it's going to get darker earlier in winter. That's just what it does. People are really just lamenting the lack of daylight hours in general. Because during the winter, few places have sunlight during 6pm and 7pm even if we kept DST year round. What they say they want is sunlight between 5pm and 6pm. And after the clocks roll back, it'll start getting dark soon after 5.

And once again, I ask, for what? Having the sun rise just after 6am is better for everyone. School kids waiting for the bus are safer, kids walking to school way safer. Better driving when you're waking up. Everything is more in line with your circadian rhythms, etc.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#292

Post by tobyjsullivan »

chgs wrote: post #261
wakahiu wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everyone I work with in Kenya uses standard dates and times. It’s a requirement when you work internationally.

Do they exclusively speak English as well?

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#293

Post by xeromal »

nerdponx wrote: post #249
nine_k wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is indeed a more logical clock, as it follows the natural cycle of activity. Equally, calendars that put the end of the year at the time after harvest ("autumn"), or at the start of agricultural work ("spring") are also more logical. Positioning the beginning of a new day at noon, and a new year t a solstice, is just a technical convenience, because these are easy to detect with very simple astronomy tools.

What makes it more logical? The wheel turns all the same no matter where you mark the beginning. In the Northern hemisphere, there's actually something nice about starting the year in the dead of winter: it feels like the year is born in the spring and then dies away the following winter, not unlike a lifetime.

March should be the 1st month then I'd think. I'm pretty sure that's how the roman calendar worked. War started in spring.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#294

Post by xeromal »

pc86 wrote: post #256
IggleSniggle wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not odd as in a more unusual system, but odd in that it is widely incompatible with the calendar of most of the world, but still official calendar. Kinda like the Kodak calendar (which was instead 13 28-day months (364 days), and iirc does the off-day adjustments over the corporate winter holiday...actually pretty reasonable)

Merry Corporate Winter Holiday!

lmao

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#295

Post by samatman »

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.

Intuitive is a synonym for "what one is used to", so I believe you when you say that according to your intuition, what you're accustomed to makes the most sense.

In a place with considerable skew in daylight hours between the summer and the winter, this would be quite unintuitive, because daylight hours would become longer (and night hours shorter) during winter and spring, and the opposite for summer and autumn.

Either that, or a fixed conventional notion of "dawn" which only corresponds to the sun rising around the Equinoxes. Either way would be unintuitive.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#296

Post by dudeinjapan »

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

Wow, this is great! This is exactly how Ive thought times should be done. Ive always called it “local sunrise time”. All the advantages of DST without the biannual spikes in traffic fatalities.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#297

Post by ar_lan »

samatman wrote: post #295
wakahiu wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Intuitive is a synonym for "what one is used to", so I believe you when you say that according to your intuition, what you're accustomed to makes the most sense. In a place with considerable skew in daylight hours between the summer and the winter, this would be quite unintuitive , because daylight hours would become longer (and night hours shorter) during winter and spring, and the opposite for summer and autumn. Ei…

It's also incredibly condescending, at least the way they wrote it.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#298

Post by lozf »

dfc wrote: post #97

Does anyone understand what was meant by "This is because almost every standard (except ISO8601, whatever) is just a file, and you can read it." Initially I thought it was because the PDF of ISO-8601 is not a file commonly distributed with operating system. But that's not unique to ISO8601, you won't find IEEE 1588-2019 or NMEA 0183 v4.11 on your computer either. For ~20$ I think I can buy a PDF of the standard from…

> For ~20$ I think I can buy a PDF of the standard from ISO.

You might find most standards for ~20 USD, but ISO8601 direct from iso.org will set you back 173 CHF (~200 USD) for part 1¹, 194 CHF (~220 USD) for part 2². For $20 you get only the latest amendments from them.

Meanwhile the Estonians will gladly sell you their version of part 1 for just under 30 USD.³

¹: https://www.iso.org/standard/70907.html

²: https://www.iso.org/standard/70908.html

³: https://www.evs.ee/en/evs-iso-8601-1-2019

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#299

Post by ironmagma »

lxgr wrote: post #265
grishka wrote: post #204

Another fun fact about timezones: if the government abolishes DST one year, and then moves some timezones an hour the next year, it creates a wild mess. Especially when you're building an Android app. Especially when it's the early 2010s so the timezone database is built into the system image but most devices that run your app don't receive system updates at all. Instead of picking the timezone with the correct offse…

This makes me wonder: Should NTP servers broadcast the tz database...? (And should the tz database support a stable but turing-complete scripting/bytecode language?)

That sounds like the beginning of a story that ends with an RCE.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#300

Post by borski »

tobyjsullivan wrote: post #292
chgs wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone I work with in Kenya uses standard dates and times. It’s a requirement when you work internationally.

Do they exclusively speak English as well?

Many do, yes. And I’d suspect that’s true for those the parent commenter works with in particular.
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