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It's weird that the author chooses Iceland as an example of a GMT+0 country, rather than Britain which is where Greenwich is.
by aynsof 9y ago
It's weird that the author chooses Iceland as an example of a GMT+0 country, rather than Britain which is where Greenwich is.
- admp 9y agoUnlike Britain, Iceland does not have Daylight Saving Time, and therefore is GMT+0 throughout the year.
- drewmate 9y agoPrecisely. GMT does not change with Summer time, though the time in Greenwich (and teh rest of the UK) does. [0] [0] https://greenwichmeantime.com/uk/time/british-summer-time/ https://greenwichmeantime.com/uk/time/british-summer-time/
- Piskvorrr 9y agoThe usual mismatch between "London is in GMT+0" and "...in BST"
- Pxtl 9y agoAm I the only programmer who is suddenly super duper envious of Iceland?
- ygra 9y agoDST should not be the only reason to use UTC. It's probably just what makes it obvious once a year that someone uses timestamps wrong.
- juststeve 9y agoi read somewhere that some people may not like referring to britain as the default 'reference point' for timezones due to political/cultural reasons of their country. personally i dont have an issue with it, and i'm not saying that's the case here, maybe the author just likes iceland?
- jackfoxy 9y agoThe UK developed the first portable timepiece good enough to accurately tell longitude. It's theirs.
- perilunar 9y agoThe French didn't like it, but were outvoted. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Meridian_Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Meridian_Confere...
- jcranmer 9y agoTo be slightly more accurate: in the 1880s, the British Empire had the preeminent navy and thus the preeminent naval charts. While other countries (including the US) maintained more local meridians for doing geodetic surveys of their own countries, it was the Greenwich Meridian that tended to dominate naval charts, which meant that it was more or less a de facto standard anyways by the Meridian Conference.
- ianburrell 9y agoThis is an old article since iOS has added UTC time zone to system settings and clock app. Android still doesn’t support UTC time zone, and need to use Iceland as hack. Which depends on Iceland not changing their time zone.
- syrkis 9y agoHad anyone here tried to live life with their iPhone on UTC?
- yusyusyus 9y agoyes. it makes reading logs easier.
- __s 9y agoI don't have a phone, boss wants me to get one, & I'll be setting it to UTC if I end up with one I've had my own devices set to UTC for the past few years. It made sense for coordinating when my friends are in whichever places of time, especially for online PvP gaming. It worked well when I was working remotely
- jsmthrowaway 9y agoUTC as a world clock is a happy medium, and works well. You get it in the notifications tray.
- tzs 9y agoThere are probably better choices than Iceland, if Android supports them. Iceland doesn't do DST now, but has in the past (1917-1918, and 1939-1968). The farther North a place is, the stronger the case for DST, so I wouldn't count on Iceland changing not their mind someday. I'd pick someplace reasonably close to the equator. Then there is little difference in sunrise and sunset times throughout the year, and there is pretty much no case to be made for DST on sunlight grounds. Some good choices, if whatever you are trying to set supports any of them: • Liberia. City of Monrovia if you have to specify by city. There's only 0:43 difference between the longest and shortest daylight periods of the year there. • Guinea, city of Conakry. • Togo, city of Lomé. There are a few other countries in the general area of these three that are on UTC+0 but these three have never had DST so are probably more likely to stay that way.