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

Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

ssoready.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 466 posts

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#331

Post by maratc »

bena wrote: post #291
maratc wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 y…

   > And it's going to get darker earlier in winter.
It's summer we're talking about when we talk about DST. There's no DST in the winter.

   > School kids waiting for the bus are safer, kids walking to school way safer.
For several months in the summer, the schools are closed. Other months during DST, the schools start at 08h00 and the vast majority of the kids wake up about seven-ish, to leave their house at about 07h30. It is inconsequential for the kids whether the sun has risen at 06h30 or at 05h30 that day; when they wake up, there's light outside anyway.

For the rest, let me give you an analogy. For several months this coming summer, I am going to give out an hour of free internet[0] each day. This won't interfere with the (paid) one that people are having otherwise. I'm not going to ask the question "would you prefer this hour to be between 05h30 and 06h30, or between 18h30 and 19h30?" but I am going to ask this question instead: What would the majority prefer, in your opinion?

[0] - any useful utility can be substituted: free hour of water, free hour of electricity, etc.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#332

Post by ucarion »

__alexs wrote: post #45

I think the old Riyadh timezone is the weirdest personally https://github.com/eggert/tz/blob/be62d5918223b4df209cc94163...

If you go by the wtf-ness of the comments on a tz, Asia/Riyadh has gotta be up there. But contemporarily it behaves as `-3`, which is vanilla.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#333

Post by yyyfb »

layer8 wrote: post #272
rob74 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this, and considering the limited advantages of DST (especially for a country that is relatively far to the south), I wonder why they didn't decide to scrap DST completely? Maybe they will if the EU eventually manages to do it?

The EU likely won’t scrap it, because the CET countries want to stay in a common time zone (no new time zone borders) for economic reasons, but either the very Eastern or very Western ones in that range would object to permanent DST or permanent non-DST, because it would move them too far from the solar day either in winter or summer. It can’t be fixed without one country or another getting the short stick, which mea…

If the continental US can do it (and it looks like it might soon, with California voting for it) I'm not sure I buy that argument. Heck if China can survive on one timezone...

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#334

Post by ucarion »

prmoustache wrote: post #14

In my opinion, the best way to see it is not to pretend their are weird timezones. It is not because most of the world do summer time and that when they do they have a 1h transitions that we should take it for granted. This article do not mention the Chatham Standard Time Zone from Chatham Islands archipelago in NZ which is 45 minutes ahead of New Zealand Daylight Time, nor the Central Western Standard Time (Australi…

I mention Asia/Kathmandu instead of Pacific/Chatham or Australia/Eucla mostly because it's not one of those "exotic birds / kangaroos outnumber humans 5:1" kinds of places.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#335

Post by sethammons »

tshaddox wrote: post #327
ianburrell wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone would create local time zones and use them. It is convenient to have the clock synchronized to the local day. Using UTC optimizes for long distances when people use local clocks much more often. How do you handle the date changing in the middle of the day? If I was on UTC, the date would change at 5pm. Is that still Wednesday or would it be Thursday? Also, it doesn't solve the problem since still need to fig…

> How do you handle the date changing in the middle of the day? It seems like you would have to do absolutely nothing? Just like you do absolutely nothing to "handle" the hour changing throughout the day. People work overnight shifts. People schedule important events close to and on either side of midnight.

"did it happen wednesday the 23rd or wednesday the 24th?"

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#336

Post by ucarion »

Tepix wrote: post #220

I'd like to know the rationale behind these weird timezones, in particular non-hourly offsets to UTC. Why was it chosen that way? Why is it being upheld? It must be a big hassle. Why not switch to a normal 60 minute offset to UTC?

tzdb often has the answer, and it's almost always because everyone used to do local solar time (i.e. on average, the sun is at the top of the sky at noon) until convenience (i.e. train and plane schedules) required an offset friendlier to mental math.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#337

Post by antod »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #147
hhdhdbdb wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That no odder than Gregorian

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)

Not reasonable at all... it's Corporate Summer Holiday around here.

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#338

Post by Navarr »

layer8 wrote: post #272
rob74 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this, and considering the limited advantages of DST (especially for a country that is relatively far to the south), I wonder why they didn't decide to scrap DST completely? Maybe they will if the EU eventually manages to do it?

The EU likely won’t scrap it, because the CET countries want to stay in a common time zone (no new time zone borders) for economic reasons, but either the very Eastern or very Western ones in that range would object to permanent DST or permanent non-DST, because it would move them too far from the solar day either in winter or summer. It can’t be fixed without one country or another getting the short stick, which mea…

US is the same way; my hot take has always been "time to move to a -/+ 30 minute timezone"

Re: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

#340

Post by layer8 »

yyyfb wrote: post #333
layer8 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU likely won’t scrap it, because the CET countries want to stay in a common time zone (no new time zone borders) for economic reasons, but either the very Eastern or very Western ones in that range would object to permanent DST or permanent non-DST, because it would move them too far from the solar day either in winter or summer. It can’t be fixed without one country or another getting the short stick, which mea…

If the continental US can do it (and it looks like it might soon, with California voting for it) I'm not sure I buy that argument. Heck if China can survive on one timezone...

They certainly could if they had started that way, but changing it now will disadvantage at least one of the countries (Spain for example), and those countries’ politicians don’t want to risk the ire of their voters for the greater good. And DST is regulated on the EU level, so can’t be changed by individual EU members without breaking EU law, like apparently individual US states can.

It’s status quo bias and loss aversion. Similar to how it would be better for the US to change their voting system, but it will never happen because it would disfavor one of the political parties who’d have to approve the change.

Post reply on HN