Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Timezone Bullshit

blog.wesleyac.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 334 posts

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#301

Post by Dylan16807 »

jackson1442 wrote: post #273
jacobsenscott wrote: post #266

I cringe every time someone send me an email that says "I can meet at 10 PST" no matter what time of the year it is. But what can you do. As far as the unix utilities go, the behavior is non-intuitive for sure, but can probably never be changed without breaking massive amounts of existing systems. The behavior is also reasonable considering the system constraints at the time it was written. Consulting an ever changin…

> I cringe every time someone send me an email that says "I can meet at 10 PST" no matter what time of the year it is. Why? An average person (read: non-developer) rarely needs to think about their timezone, save for when it changes. As a human, it seems relatively straightforward to intuitively determine whether that person is in DST or not. If you were a UNIX machine (or a developer providing input to one such mach…

> As a human, it seems relatively straightforward to intuitively determine whether that person is in DST or not.

But you don't know if someone used a calculator and invoked actual PST during the summer.

> I usually just say something along the lines of "1045am CT," omitting the S/D in its entirety.

Good.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#302

Post by jacobsenscott »

jackson1442 wrote: post #273
jacobsenscott wrote: post #266

I cringe every time someone send me an email that says "I can meet at 10 PST" no matter what time of the year it is. But what can you do. As far as the unix utilities go, the behavior is non-intuitive for sure, but can probably never be changed without breaking massive amounts of existing systems. The behavior is also reasonable considering the system constraints at the time it was written. Consulting an ever changin…

> I cringe every time someone send me an email that says "I can meet at 10 PST" no matter what time of the year it is. Why? An average person (read: non-developer) rarely needs to think about their timezone, save for when it changes. As a human, it seems relatively straightforward to intuitively determine whether that person is in DST or not. If you were a UNIX machine (or a developer providing input to one such mach…

I cringe because I've dealt with so many timezone bugs, because it is notoriously hard to get right. So it is just sort of a PTSD reaction. Of course I know what they mean, I just cringe to myself.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#303

Post by rowls66 »

kukx wrote: post #271
fishywang wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>than getting every single person and company to adjust its schedule but by using DST we are just pretending that we didn't ask people/companies to adjust their schedules. in reality they did, just the "clock" stayed the same.

Yes, it is similar to how creating inflation by the government is just a way to tax poor and the middle class, without actually rising taxes.

Wrong. Inflation is a way to tax lenders, and reward debtors who get to repay their debts with less valuable currency. As the poor and middle class are more likely to be net debtors, they tend to benefit from inflation.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#304

Post by spiralx »

Izkata wrote: post #217
jmgao wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> both The USA and Canada have been toying with the idea of dropping daylight savings time Individual states are toying with the idea as well [1], which presents a problem if one of the tzdata locations decides to change its rules. You're screwed no matter what you choose to do. :-( 1: https://www.syracuse.com/state/2020/11/state-senator-introdu...

It gets worse: DST in Indiana has to be handled on a per-county basis for anything prior to 2006. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Indiana

It gets worse: from when I had to deal with this some years back IIRC in Saudi Arabia the start and end of DST is set by decree every year.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#305

Post by davchana »

bjourne wrote: post #260
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 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. Iran used to do that. But for some reason they abandoned it and now use "normal" daylight saving time.

Indian offices, schools, shops do this. Although I don't think its by government order, it is just the it is always. Almost every timings psoster show winter/summer times.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#306

Post by exporectomy »

Lvl999Noob wrote: post #66
ceilingcorner wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...no, actually it’s extremely logical. Changing clocks society wide is far easier than getting every single person and company to adjust its schedule.

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.

What's this inconvenience you're talking about? I often don't even realize when daylight savings changes because everything is automatic. My alarm wakes me up at the new correct time, the clocks on my phone and computer have adjusted themselves. Sometimes I wonder why the clock on the oven is wrong and then Google to find out that daylight savings just happened. Maybe some people have more dependence on non-internet-connected clocks or work through the night on Sunday?

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#307

Post by kenneth »

jwalton wrote: post #27

Another reason not to use EST/EDT is that they are overspecifying the time zone in most cases. If you ask for output in EDT, but the date is in December (which is not part of daylight savings time) then should the date output be UTC-4 or UTC-5? Technically you asked for EDT. Using EST as a shortcut isn’t a good idea, either - most software will “know what you mean” and use EST or EDT appropriately... except, both The…

I just always write ET, PT, MT, CT.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#309

Post by exporectomy »

xyst wrote: post #203

On macOS (Catalina-10.15.7), it looks like it is fixed or uses an updated version of the libc library mentioned in the article Expected: $ TZ=LOL_THIS_DOESNT_EXIST date Sat 10 Jul 2021 12:00:00 AM LOL Actual: $ TZ=LOL_THIS_DOESNT_EXIST date Wed Feb 10 17:02:02 UTC 2021 Otherwise I agree with the article. Have told so many co-workers that storing your dates in anything other than UTC will bite you in the ass later on.…

It's not as simple as UTC everywhere. If you're representing a fixed point in time, independent of any local time, then yes. But sometimes, a date/time is relative to the local time zone and in those cases, the local time zone is the correct one to store it in. For example, scheduled times for future events in the real world such as appointments. You can't store it as UTC because you can't know what the time zone offset will be in the future since that's a political decision.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#310

Post by exporectomy »

jackson1442 wrote: post #273
jacobsenscott wrote: post #266

I cringe every time someone send me an email that says "I can meet at 10 PST" no matter what time of the year it is. But what can you do. As far as the unix utilities go, the behavior is non-intuitive for sure, but can probably never be changed without breaking massive amounts of existing systems. The behavior is also reasonable considering the system constraints at the time it was written. Consulting an ever changin…

> I cringe every time someone send me an email that says "I can meet at 10 PST" no matter what time of the year it is. Why? An average person (read: non-developer) rarely needs to think about their timezone, save for when it changes. As a human, it seems relatively straightforward to intuitively determine whether that person is in DST or not. If you were a UNIX machine (or a developer providing input to one such mach…

It may have to do with the appearance of arrogance in incorrectly using a term they don't understand instead of a simpler term they do.
Post reply on HN