Me: I have a new idea about Daylight Saving Time and time zones...
Them: Okay
Me: That will make literally everyone unhappy...
Them: Oh no
Me: No DST, but we break the whole globe into 10 minute time zones instead of hour long ones
Them: ...
Me: ...
Them: Why are you the way that you are?
I've been entertained by #timezones for eons, but only TIL that China -- which spans 5 geographic timezones across its approx. 5K km / 3.1K miles width (compared to the 4.5K km / 2.8K miles wide US) -- uses a single time (CST, i.e., UTC+8).
So in the summer, the sun rises at 3:00am in eastern Fuyuan, 07:30am in western Akto, and when crossing from Afghanistan into China at the Wakhjir Pass, you jump from UTC+04:30 to UTC+8:00.
And you thought #DST is annoying... (which it is, but still. 😳)
Solar noon where I live is at 12:48 now (sunrise at 07:07, sunset at 18:29). On DST it is an hour later, so the morning starts almost 2h earlier than it should!
It seems we still have 3 weeks until DST here, but I see the US starts today. I really hate this nonsense.
Yesterday I learned that, GMT+3 timezone notwithstanding, Ethiopia counts 00:00h from dawn.
So 06:00 is midday. 12:00 is sunset. And because they are sufficiently close to the equator, this does not significantly move during the course of the year. So they set all the clocks once, and, eh, good enough.
This is a massive "stuff you" to the western world - they are perfectly aware of how much it screws with everyone else, and regard this as a feature. Indeed, they absolutely delight in it.
The absence of a curating #algorithm on #Mastodon has an (intended?) effect I only noticed since my newborn keeps me up at night:
Where #chronology rules the feed, I only ever see posts from my own (UTC+1) and adjacent #timezones.
Although I deliberately follow people elsewhere, like @CathyTuttle (based in UTC-8) or @nw (UTC+9), I hardly ever see their posts - except when my baby makes me scroll Mastodon at 3am in the morning. 😴
Does that mean it's impossible to build a global audience here?
“Once, a long time ago, I used to have a consulting gig in a big enterprise-y company… They were in charge of the un-sexy infrastructure… Summer was coming, and I inquired… whether they’ve deployed the latest DST-related patches… They replied that no, and in fact they’d like some help in ensuring DST transitioning is disabled on all workstations/servers, as this is how things work here”
The real piece de resistance is going to be the version of this which is backed by a database, of course, but even tossing around JSON blobs that can record arbitrary complex webs of recurrences is fun.
In celebration of the daylight saving transition over the weekend, I have noticed that there were some very embarrassing omissions in DateType; datetype.DateTime.date() was entirely missing and datetype.DateTime.timetz() had the wrong type.
Usually around now you hear a lot of bitching about going back to Standard Time from Daylight Time. Back in 2022, the Senate passed Rubio's bill for permanent Daylight Time unanimously and with no discussion. The House never acted on it. After the Senate pulled that stunt, scientists in the field roundly criticized it, since the science says if we're not going to change times, we should stay on Standard Time for health and safety reasons, even though most people claim they're prefer permanent Daylight Time. Permanent Daylight Time actually was tried decades ago, and was quickly rescinded due to increased accident rates among school children, since in some parts of the country it results in extended periods of morning darkness. Rubio reintroduced his awful bill again earlier this year, and it's as stupid now as it was before, but luckily with so much else going on of real importance it has ended up on the back burner for now, apparently.
I don't understand why people feel that changing the clocks occasionally is such a big deal. These days, most of your clocks change automatically anyway.
[I can certainly understand some difficulties within computer software for scheduling meetings, etc, but that's (mostly) a solved problem now.
Handling different Timezones is a much harder problem, but also has to be solved in similar software, and you can't just wish this problem away.]
Possibly even worse than DST itself, is the conversation around DST that we have to go through twice a year. I wonder if I can figure out a good filter...
Don't get me wrong, I am tired of it as much as the next person, but the whining twice a year is also tiring.
hmmm... turns out there's a way to temporarily set a timezone for an application on linux. you can use an environment variable TZ.
for example you can use that to force chromium based browsers to use a UTC timezone with TZ="UTC" chromium #privacy#linux
So here's one that confused the shit out of me this morning. The way you add milliseconds to a JS date makes a difference, BECAUSE OF FUCKING DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME. #JavaScript#timezones#DaylightSavingsTimeFuckingSucks
What time (in UTC) are you mostly active here on Mastodon?
Due to polls somehow only allowing 4 options, I decided to split it into 4 options. But since it's multiple choice, pick each one that your active hours fall into mostly.
Boost for a wider reach (so we get more accurate results due to time zones doing weird stuff)!
When you need to be up at 3:30am to do a Zoom call into an #IGF2023 session in Japan about #LEOs , and your regular office (with its ceiling-mounted green screen) is right next to the bedrooms where family members will be sleeping… it’s time for … basement green screen setup! 😃
I suggest we reform the calenders and base everything around Unix Time. Modern history began on Jan 1st 1970 at 0000, before this point we can call it BU (Before Unix) and after is AU (After Unix)
If you're announcing an online event, please don't use "12 AM" or "12 PM". I have no idea what those times mean in normal language. Which one is noon, which one is midnight? Both are on the meridian, FFS.
[en] wow, i had no idea anybody was using half time zones! But apparently, Kerala is 5 hours and 30 minutes from UTC. That makes converting time a bit harder than usual. #DebConf23#timezones#timezonesarehard