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

The surprising whimsy of the Time Zone Database

muddy.jprs.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 73 posts

Re: The surprising whimsy of the Time Zone Database

#61

Post by dlcarrier »

rawling wrote: post #33
netsharc wrote: post #22

Amusing story of the chaos of timezones in Saudi Arabia and a man who made his own: https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/196902/dinner.at.when.... Linked from https://github.com/eggert/tz/blob/main/asia#L3818

I enjoyed getting an instant rate limit screen trying to load that blob (and then the one linked from TFA). I don't think I have anything on my network hammering GH...

Generally, if you're web browser isn't leaking loads of personally identifiable information, everything reacts like you're a bot.

Re: The surprising whimsy of the Time Zone Database

#62

Post by bombcar »

ghaff wrote: post #42
charcircuit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>he world has come to agreement No, it hasn't. I commonly use PT myself which doesn't fit that format. It's the timezone that the west coast of America uses which makes it very convenient if you live there instead of having to remember if the day your meeting on is with or without daylight savings. The three timezones we use here are: PT: The time of the day that all of our clocks are going to be set to. PST: The tim…

It's very common for conferences and the like to use shorthand like PT or ET. The reality is that once you start specifying standard time or daylight savings time, the people writing the announcement regularly mess up. I don't remember what the house style was at my prior company but I regularly saw people putting EST or EDT at times of the year when it wasn't correct.

This sounds like a classic case of engineers trying to overspecify and demand that things fit their nice little database, reality and life isn’t like that.

“PT” is more correct than many other things you could list, because people always forget which is DST and which is Standard.

It’d probably be cleaner to say that Pacific is on Mountain Time half the year.

Re: The surprising whimsy of the Time Zone Database

#63

Post by globular-toast »

michaelt wrote: post #47
globular-toast wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, it doesn't matter. Everyone with an argument is wrong. All you're arguing about is when you start/finish work/school. But it it doesn't matter and you have to arbitrarily label the hours of the day with numbers, you'd obviously pick standard time and not randomly offset everything by an hour.

> you'd obviously pick standard time and not randomly offset everything by an hour Isn't Pacific Daylight Time = Mountain Standard Time? You can offset everything by an hour and still have 'standard' in the name of the timezone.

Yeah, you could just start counting from two and call it the standard counting system, but why would you? The current system works fine and there's no need to change it.

Re: The surprising whimsy of the Time Zone Database

#64

Post by ghaff »

bombcar wrote: post #62
ghaff wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very common for conferences and the like to use shorthand like PT or ET. The reality is that once you start specifying standard time or daylight savings time, the people writing the announcement regularly mess up. I don't remember what the house style was at my prior company but I regularly saw people putting EST or EDT at times of the year when it wasn't correct.

This sounds like a classic case of engineers trying to overspecify and demand that things fit their nice little database, reality and life isn’t like that. “PT” is more correct than many other things you could list, because people always forget which is DST and which is Standard. It’d probably be cleaner to say that Pacific is on Mountain Time half the year.

Funnily enough, I just got a bunch of one hour computer schedule changes for a European event in late March. I assume this is related to Daylight Savings vs. Standard Time. I'm sure I'll work it out once I'm over there.

Re: The surprising whimsy of the Time Zone Database

#65

Post by synotna »

somat wrote: post #38
themafia wrote: post #2

> the Time Zone Database also contains a surprising amount of whimsy. Which I would find "cute" if the database contained an equal amount of reason. I am perennially irritated that "US/Pacific" which is an _official_ name of a time zone _as used_ by the relevant time keeping authority, is called "backwards." I still think we should move away from a tz database, a 1970s idea, and move to a .timezone TLD with tzinfo st…

On the subject of "Things that should be in DNS" the public suffix list. Why on earth is data describing DNS trust boundaries not in the DNS? It's bizarre. https://publicsuffix.org/ So here is my RFC to correct this deficit. No public suffix records: suffixes are considered private trust them like you trust this domain. (I would like to invert this to suffixes default public and you mark them private but that conflic…

For dmarc purposes it is moving to DNS, with dmarcbis the psd tag and treewalk will replace hoping everybody uses the same file and keeps it up to date

Re: The surprising whimsy of the Time Zone Database

#66

Post by tempestn »

Majromax wrote: post #52
tempestn wrote: post #28

The comment actually has it backwards. It says BC is moving from daylight to standard time, but should be the opposite. It's got the offset right though.

As far as the timezone file is concerned, it's two changes but one shift. This is covered more fully in the complete news blob rather than the snippet shown at the top. Today, British Columbia moved from Pacific Standard Time (UTC-8) to Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7); tomorrow the timezone is renamed to Pacific Time. Unfortunately, the "PT" abbreviation is too short for the timezone database, so while they decide on a…

Ah, I see. They're reclassifying it as standard time without changing the offset. Yeah, it was my misunderstanding.

Re: The surprising whimsy of the Time Zone Database

#67

Post by pezezin »

grodriguez100 wrote: post #59
pezezin wrote: post #40

> I’ve perused the tz repository before, and I always learn something interesting. For example, during WWII Britain adopted double summer time, adding two hours to the clock in the summer and one hour in the winter. My country, Spain, did the same but never fixed it, so we are still in this "double summer time". It is one of the main reasons why Spanish people seemingly do everything later (breakfast, lunch, dinner)…

Spain is not “double summer time”, it is just on an offset that is off by one hour related to its geographical position.

That's why I wrote it in quotes, it is not an official term. But call it however you want, the results are the same.

Re: The surprising whimsy of the Time Zone Database

#68

Post by globular-toast »

Ekaros wrote: post #48
russellbeattie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The problem is that so much of our culture is tied to specific hours on the clock (e.g. "9 to 5"), even though it doesn't need to be that way. China has one time zone and it works fine. Most of Spain is west of Greenwich, yet remains on European time. People there just adjust and don't insist that certain times of day have universal meanings. Standard Time vs Daylight Saving Time is exactly the same as Big En…

I can say that it will take surprisingly little time for everyone to adjust for any new times. And often the times are already very fluid. Flexible work hours with set core hours are common enough in some places.

So why change it?

Re: The surprising whimsy of the Time Zone Database

#69

Post by bombcar »

ghaff wrote: post #64
bombcar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a classic case of engineers trying to overspecify and demand that things fit their nice little database, reality and life isn’t like that. “PT” is more correct than many other things you could list, because people always forget which is DST and which is Standard. It’d probably be cleaner to say that Pacific is on Mountain Time half the year.

Funnily enough, I just got a bunch of one hour computer schedule changes for a European event in late March. I assume this is related to Daylight Savings vs. Standard Time. I'm sure I'll work it out once I'm over there.

The additional complication is that the US and Europe switch on different dates, so they’re “out of sync” one way or another.

Re: The surprising whimsy of the Time Zone Database

#70

Post by iberator »

themafia wrote: post #2

> the Time Zone Database also contains a surprising amount of whimsy. Which I would find "cute" if the database contained an equal amount of reason. I am perennially irritated that "US/Pacific" which is an _official_ name of a time zone _as used_ by the relevant time keeping authority, is called "backwards." I still think we should move away from a tz database, a 1970s idea, and move to a .timezone TLD with tzinfo st…

Manu countries have multiple TZ
Post reply on HN