OT: New time zones?

[Joerg Lorenz]

Chatterbox. Watch out you don't fall into the gap between the end of timezone 24 and the beginning of timezone 1.

That is why the Brits say "Mind the gap".

[Commander Kinsey]

The top bit is between Alaska and Russia. A nice refreshing swim.

No, it's because we copied the blame society bullshit from the yanks.

[NY]

I wish the world would agree to shift their time half-way between their winter and summer times and then stay there all year round - a good compromise between winter and summer time.

Or else, if we *must* have the twice-yearly shift, at least make the spring changeover towards the beginning of March rather than the end, so the two changeover dates are equidistant from the summer solstice.

At least modern digital clocks adjust automatically (or else have a single GMT/BST toggle that is operated manually) so there's no need to go round to all the mechanical clocks, moving the hands forwards or backwards. However we have three chiming clocks and it is a PITA having to move the hands forwards in quarter-hour chunks, letting the clock go through its chiming sequence before moving another quarter hour, so as not to disrupt the chiming mechanism. In the autumn it's worse because you have to stop them for an hour as the lesser evil than winding forwards by 23 hours ;-)

I'm surprised that even our 2015 Honda car still needs to be adjusted manually (with a GMT/BST switch), rather than changing automatically based on GPS data (eg date) from the satnav which allows the changeover date to be calculated by the established formula (it's predictable by rule, not chosen at random each year).

[Ed Pawlowski]

Many cars have to be switched manually. Here in the US some states do not change. In addition, the dates of the change have been different during the life of the car. The sats do not change time, locals do.

[rbowman]

Around here in December if school lasts more than about 8 1/2 hours it's going to be dark on one end or the other.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Clocks that automatically switch (without using a time standard) could make it so easy you don't correct for the inaccuracy of the clock (it could have been a little slow of fast during the preceding 6 months or so). For that reason, I don't set it an hour ahead or behind. I set it RIGHT (usually according to my cell phone, which is set automatically).

BTW, when setting up the countdowns on my website, I discovered an odd error. I was checking it this time of year and had defined Christmas as

12:00 AM on Dec 25. However, the countdown was changing at 1 AM rather than midnight (because there is a 23-hour day in there). That problem (which has now been fixed) is why I called DST Damn Stupid Time.

[Mark Lloyd]

IIRC, the sats transmit GMT.

[Mark Lloyd]

Obviously you can't fix that by just changing the clocks.

[Joerg Lorenz]

The satellites transmit UTC (=Universal Time Coordinated). During summertime Greewich near London has UTC+1.

[williamwright]

Silly person.

Bill

[Rod Speed]

williamwright [e-mail] wrote

Your sig is sposed to have a line with just -- on it in front of it, dinosaur.

[Joerg Lorenz]

Am 02.09.22 um 22:50 schrieb NY:

There is no "compromise" needed. Just calibrate when the sun reaches the highest point over the horizon at June 21st as 12:00 o'clock at Greenwich. Add 1 hour every 15 degrees of longitude.

A good, objective and simple rule. Minor adjustments to the zones should be possible as it is done today in Europe or the US for practical reasons.

[Carlos E.R.]

But the "navigation computer", having GPS, knows what is the current time zone.

[Carlos E.R.]

My car can get the hour automatically from the radio (GPS is not integrated, it uses Android Auto with an external phone). However, I have that disabled because many stations transmit bad data (with several definitions of "bad"). This could be worked around if I could tell the car to use the time of a certain station only, but no such feature.

[Joerg Lorenz]

That thing is so smart! I'm impressed. ;-)

[Joerg Lorenz]

Am 01.09.22 um 22:42 schrieb micky:

Here the changlog from my updater in Linux Mint:

tzdata (2022c-0ubuntu0.22.04.0) jammy; urgency=medium

• New upstream release (LP: #1986984): - Chile will spring forward on 2022-09-11, not 2022-09-04 - Iran no longer observes DST * Update ICU data to latest (2022b) * d/po/*.po: change Kiev msgids to Kyiv to reflect upstream change

-- Simon Chopin [e-mail] Tue, 30 Aug 2022 10:04:54 +0200

[Joerg Lorenz]

tzdata (2022c-0ubuntu0.22.04.0) jammy; urgency=medium

• New upstream release (LP: #1986984): - Chile will spring forward on 2022-09-11, not 2022-09-04 - Iran no longer observes DST * Update ICU data to latest (2022b) * d/po/*.po: change Kiev msgids to Kyiv to reflect upstream change

-- Simon Chopin [e-mail] Tue, 30 Aug 2022 10:04:54 +0200

[williamwright]

Silly person.

Bill

[Rod Speed]

williamwright [e-mail] wrote

Your sig is sposed to have a line with just -- on it in front of it, dinosaur.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

One advantage of changing the clocks is that if gives you 2 chances a year to get your clocks set right. Still, it'd be simpler to change he school hours.