[HN Gopher] One Guy Keeps the World's Computers Running on the R... ___________________________________________________________________ One Guy Keeps the World's Computers Running on the Right Time Zone Author : xrayarx Score : 107 points Date : 2021-10-18 11:16 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (onezero.medium.com) (TXT) w3m dump (onezero.medium.com) | riffic wrote: | The right time zone is UTC. | Afforess wrote: | You misspelled TAI. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Atomic_Time | [deleted] | topspin wrote: | " | lifthrasiir wrote: | Paul Eggert is demonstrably male. (EDIT: Also he didn't request | any other pronoun so far.) | nofunsir wrote: | Reminds me of Ken Nordine's word jazz performance What Time Is | It? | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVYpCdY4Y_0 | gh02t wrote: | > These are the people for whom adjudicating upon such matters as | France's attempted move to the decimal system and the | International Atomic Agency's periodic decision to add nuclear | seconds to the world time system are the bread and butter that | they grapple with at work every day. | | I believe the author is referring to leap seconds? International | Atomic Agency is I think jumbling up the International Atomic | Energy Agency and International Atomic Time. The agency | responsible for leap seconds is the International Earth Rotation | and Reference Systems Service (IERS); the IAEA is not involved in | timekeeping standards as far as I know. | fsckboy wrote: | just as an aside, he's separately and also referring to the | deal between UK and France where the French agreed to accept | Greenwich being the Prime Meridian in exchange for the UK | adopting the metric system. | Sporktacular wrote: | Rambling and nearly unending | mappu wrote: | There is also this excellent summary from LWN: | https://lwn.net/Articles/870478/ | | Although it seems like a few more events have passed since then. | high_byte wrote: | I wonder what DST does to data collection such as weather and | stuff. just imagine one team collecting data with DST and another | without DST and then merging the data. | dexterdog wrote: | that's why you either collect everything as utc or a timestamp | with time zone so things can be properly compared. | kfprt wrote: | Dependency https://xkcd.com/2347/ | Hokusai wrote: | Great text on why it's so difficult to put into code human | activities. Do you want a library to deal with complex math | equations? No problem, you can define clear unit test that will | stand the trial of time. Do you want to code time zones or | addresses? Thought luck. | apozem wrote: | I don't mean to be rude to the author, but I found this style of | writing difficult to read. Too verbose, too full of asides, to | focused on himself and not the actual information. Makes getting | useful information out of the text needlessly difficult. | tpmx wrote: | It's perfectly fine to be 'direct' to Youtubers doing these | kinds of things. They are (often) the ones abusing the social | contract, not you. | jccalhoun wrote: | Completely agree. It was painful and it was weird the things he | explained and the things he didn't. The listserv looks like a | listerv. When that isn't going to make any sense to anyone who | doesn't knkow what a listerv is. Then there was the reference | to the Hashemite Republic of Jordan. I was like, "is that some | breakaway part of Jordan? But no, it just seems like the | Hashemites are the royal family? ugh. | coldpie wrote: | I agree, but it was mercifully not full of animated meme GIFs, | so I still found it to be relatively pleasant reading. Not | everyone's a writing master, and not every writing style is to | everyone's taste. On balance I found it worth the read. | Causality1 wrote: | It wouldn't be a Medium article if you didn't have to wade | through five pages of utter dreck to get the significant | information. | frant-hartm wrote: | It strongly reminded me of The long read articles from The | Guardian | | https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-long-read | atty wrote: | I don't know how everyone else feels, but I would happily have my | "'normal" hours be completely changed if the whole world could | just define a single, global time. I'm sure it would be a massive | undertaking, but it would make my life so much easier to be able | to talk to my globally spread out teammates and never wonder | about what time zone they're referring to, or worry about time | conversion when traveling. | culi wrote: | I'm with you. Abolish timezones and make times based on | sunrise/sunset again. E.g. the workday shouldn't be "8am to | 5pm" but "one hour after sunrise till sunset". This makes a lot | more sense for our health and biology | peeters wrote: | That's not what OP is suggesting. You're suggesting infinite | timezones (i.e. use solar time). OP is suggesting to only | have one universal timezone. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | That doesn't make sense for anyone far from the equator. Here | on the shortest day the sun rises at 9 and sets at 4 (7 hours | daylight). On the longest it rises at 5 and sets at 10 (17 | hours). | | The different between the longest and shortest day's amount | of daylight is a whole workday. | coldpie wrote: | So You Want To Abolish Time Zones, 2015-01-16 by qntm | https://qntm.org/abolish | fanf2 wrote: | Another good read on this topic is "Saving the Daylight" aka | "Sieze the Daylight" by David Prerau | http://www.savingthedaylight.com/ which describes at length | the confusion and arguments in the USA when some | organizations had different summer and winter timetables and | others did not. | coldpie wrote: | I'm a fan of proposals to eliminate (or make permanent) | DST, but I admit in the back of my head I hear that story | about moving a fence. https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a- | fence-down/ | FredPret wrote: | Chesterton's fence is a good thing to keep in mind. | | Chesterton.org, on the other hand, had me going through | not one but two select-all-the-boats captchas to even see | the content. | jareklupinski wrote: | I spent the entire article wondering why the author doesn't | just send his uncle an SMS or an email :) | bryanrasmussen wrote: | I have my phone set to make an annoying sound when I | receive an SMS. | seized wrote: | There are solutions to that though, so that you don't | annoy yourself at inopportune times. | eikenberry wrote: | You should setup your do no disturb settings so you don't | get those when sleeping. You should do this even with | timezones still in use. Sleep is important. | t-3 wrote: | Can't you just use UTC? Isn't that basically exactly what it | is? | lifthrasiir wrote: | The classic reading: https://qntm.org/abolish | | Not to mention that a lot of countries mandate that the civil | time should follow the Sun. | djbusby wrote: | Step0: change laws everywhere. | tobyjsullivan wrote: | As a more problem-specific solution, I'm an advocate for any | team/company/etc. with employees in more than one timezone | standardizing on UTC for everything. We do it with servers and | it works pretty well. | | It seems the status quo for remote companies is to standardize | on whatever timezone the top-most boss is in. Doesn't seem | optimal. | alistairSH wrote: | How does using UTC help? You still have to remember the time- | offset between EU and USA and India to make sure your meeting | is during somebody else's dinnertime (or worse). | eikenberry wrote: | It doesn't help with that but neither do timezones. When I | communicate to people internationally I'll need to know | their daytime hours in terms of _my_ timezone anyways, so | why not know them in terms of UTC? Then everyone can start | on the same page. | pbalau wrote: | Apart Facebook, Facebook does PST... | tobyjsullivan wrote: | As does Google. I'm curious if either engineering team | would make the same choice today. | galkk wrote: | There is a meme on my current job. | | We support multiple timezones. PST and PDT. | peeters wrote: | If you're saying we should have a global standard reference | time, sure I agree but we already do: Zulu/UTC. e.g. the US | military uses it despite it not being local to anywhere in the | US. | | But you don't just want to throw away local time. Local time is | important shared nomenclature for "point in a day". If you | throw away local time and just say "I had a visitor at 0300 | yesterday" you're leaving it up to the listener to both figure | out where you live and do the math for whether you had an | unexpected night visit or somebody interrupted your dinner. | ciabattabread wrote: | Your thoughts remind me of this classic: https://xkcd.com/592 | jaqalopes wrote: | Also this one: https://xkcd.com/927/ | ThinkingGuy wrote: | Also this one: https://xkcd.com/1726/ | lapetitejort wrote: | The hover text just needs to be updated slightly to USB 3.2 | 4x4 or whatever the current nonsense is and it'll still be | relevant. | ballenf wrote: | And then I'd love a watch that was a digital sundial. I just | want to know where the sun is in the sky even when it's not in | immediate view. And Outlook synced to my personal time. I'd | also have the "default" time zone available for when I'm | communicating with others. | gremloni wrote: | As in one global time where for some places in the world | daylight is always between 11p and 6a. Good luck trying to set | the baseline country. | cogman10 wrote: | Why not just use UTC and be done with it? The arbitrary | choice of "what country" was already made decades ago. | gremloni wrote: | It's easier but if you want every country to adopt this | there's going to be a fight about a new baseline country | cogman10 wrote: | I'd be happy if we said "There are 24 time zones and no | daylight savings or half hour zones or whatever, they are | distributed evenly from GMT starting point". | jccalhoun wrote: | Swatch Beats! | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time | bombcar wrote: | You'd save a bit in some cases but now you'd have the problem | of trying to schedule meetings because "8 am" is no longer tied | to an area, so you have to now take location into account, | _which is what timezones already do_. | atty wrote: | That's a problem I already have, because I can never remember | what time zone people or places are in. On the other hand, | with a single time zone, there is never any ambiguity about | what time someone/something is referring to (Eastern or | Western? DST or non-DST? Etc) | alistairSH wrote: | You still have to remember where people live. Just because | it's 9am everywhere doesn't mean people on he opposite side | of the globe will work through the night. | NikolaeVarius wrote: | > because I can never remember what time zone people or | places are in | | Good thing time zones are there along side UTC+/- whatever | to help you out with that | Nadya wrote: | That's already a solved case: communicate using UTC times | when dealing with people in other timezones. It then | becomes their responsibility to know their time relative to | UTC. There are even sites that you can set a clock for a | specific UTC time and when people visit the URL it will use | their local time so they don't even need to deal with | converting to/from UTC at all - technology does it for | them. | dexterdog wrote: | 8am is already not tied to an area. If you say "let's meet at | 8am" in an email to a bunch of people and don't know where | they are there is a good chance that most or maybe even all | of them will show up at the wrong time. | _jal wrote: | Which... is why, when working with my international team, I | type things like '9am PDT'. | dexterdog wrote: | Which is fine when you know the other people are in | another zone, except they then have to do the conversion | in their heads. If you speak like most people do when not | thinking about time zones you just say a time. If time is | the same for everybody then there is never any confusion. | The computers are all doing it in UTC under the covers. | The conversion is just because we have arbitrary layers | on top of that. | tialaramex wrote: | PDT meaning? The reason for using Continent/City is that | it's unambiguous and it's easy to find out what the time | is in a city -worst case you can ask someone who lives | there. | Isthatablackgsd wrote: | Pacific Daylight Time because we are in daylight time. | Some places don't observe daylight time like Arizona. | eikenberry wrote: | I always just basically ignore TZs and always use UTC | when communicating with my international team. Only using | a single timezone for everything simplifies things a lot. | jazzkingrt wrote: | I agree. Maybe in a few decades we'll just stick to China | Standard Time. | ape4 wrote: | There is a trend to move to permanent daylight savings time in | some places. I understand wanting to avoid the twice annual time | changes but why "permanent daylight savings time" - why not | "permanent time" | InitialLastName wrote: | Our society has stabilized on a business schedule and sleep | pattern that is asymmetrical about noon; most people stay up | after 6pm and wake up after 6AM, regardless of when the sun | rises and sets in their locale. If you live in the perfectly | calibrated point for your time zone (such that the sun is | directly at its apex exactly at noon, with the caveat that you | aren't on the equator) you will experience the sun rising | before 6AM for half the year, and setting before 6PM for the | other half, leaving you with wasted daylight in the summer and | lots of darkness during waking hours in the winter. Since a | larger portion of our waking (and non-working) hours are after | 6PM, the thinking goes that it is beneficial for more of the | year to bias your daylight to the evening by an hour than to | actually be perfectly calibrated to solar noon. | macintux wrote: | I would wager it's a combination of psychological factors: most | people in the northern hemisphere prefer summer to winter, and | falling back an hour in the fall in combination with the | shorter days in general means that most people waking up | _hours_ before sunrise, which is unpleasant. | | (Shorter winter hours are universally unpleasant, so it's not | obvious there's a good answer regardless.) | hibbelig wrote: | Falling back in fall means that there is more light in the | morning and less in the afternoon, the opposite of what you | were saying. | [deleted] | macintux wrote: | You're right. Oops. | cyberpunk wrote: | Yeah, in Scotland we actually pretty much universally dislike | the "return to winter time" change (that's coming up). Perm | summer time please. :) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-10-19 23:00 UTC)