4 ms·

Dunning–Kruger effect is very real. There so many systems affected by this on all kinds of timelines and life support that such a change would be catastrophic.

Dunning–Kruger effect is very real. There so many systems affected by this on all kinds of timelines and life support that such a change would be catastrophic. Just because it may seem simple to you doesn’t mean it actually is.

nulbyte 5y ago
Other countries have made these changes on shorter time frames in recent memory. I don't recall hearing about any catastrophes. In 2011, Samoa changed time zones to land on the other side of the international date line. I don't believe that was years in the making. Even last year, they announced they would no longer observe daylight saving time; they decided that 11 days before they were scheduled to switch their clocks. In January of 2015, Chile announced they would keep daylight saving time year-round when they rolled forward in April. Then in 2016, they scrapped that. In 2019, they even changed the dates on which daylight saving started and ended. While this was over the course of several years, they didn't go into this thinking about how to make it complicated for the next four years. Many of the states don't seem to think this is a serious concern, either. Several, including my own (Kentucky) passed legislation to permanently observe daylight saving as soon as Congress would allow it. I don't think the folks considering these measures are underestimating our ability to deal with these types of changes.
- NateEag 5y ago
  https://codeofmatt.com/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/ https://codeofmatt.com/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/
- jsmith45 5y ago
  The late changes to daylight saving time rules pretty much always mean that for several days to potentially over a month, users will be encountering systems with the incorrect time. Often times they will try to "correct it" by manually changing the system time but then time sync services might undo that, and if not, then once the time zone package finally makes it to the system, it "breaks" again, because the user should not have messed with the clocks in the first place. The authors of the time zone database strongly encourage long notice periods for changes, as there are plenty of programs that use this data that have a month or more of delay between when an updated database is published, and when end devices will realistically get the update. And that is for people who don't habitually put off updates! When DST rules were last change we had about a year and a half notice, which is realistically what this bill also provides.
xmprt 5y ago
I understand that there are a lot of systems that will be impacted but I don't think we should limit progress based on dependencies. It's the same excuse that's used whenever we try to ween off of fossil fuels. I've worked on tzdata changes in the past and whether it's announced a month or a year in advance, progress is slow until the very last minute when teams can't put it off any longer. In other words, programmers are serial procrastinators and if you give them 2 years to prepare, they'll spend 1.9 doing nothing and scramble to fix everything in a month. This might be the first big timestamp change in the US, but there have been a lot of changes like this in the rest of the world so any globally operating company has probably had to do this at least once already and should be well equipped to make this change on a faster timeline.
Tenoke 5y ago
This is not even what the common wrong Dunning-Kruger interpretation means, even if we don't consider that the whole thing seems to mostly be a statistical artefact. https://arelbundock.com/posts/dunning_kruger/ https://arelbundock.com/posts/dunning_kruger/

nulbyte 5y ago

Other countries have made these changes on shorter time frames in recent memory. I don't recall hearing about any catastrophes. In 2011, Samoa changed time zones to land on the other side of the international date line. I don't believe that was years in the making. Even last year, they announced they would no longer observe daylight saving time; they decided that 11 days before they were scheduled to switch their clocks. In January of 2015, Chile announced they would keep daylight saving time year-round when they rolled forward in April. Then in 2016, they scrapped that. In 2019, they even changed the dates on which daylight saving started and ended. While this was over the course of several years, they didn't go into this thinking about how to make it complicated for the next four years. Many of the states don't seem to think this is a serious concern, either. Several, including my own (Kentucky) passed legislation to permanently observe daylight saving as soon as Congress would allow it. I don't think the folks considering these measures are underestimating our ability to deal with these types of changes.

NateEag 5y ago
https://codeofmatt.com/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/ https://codeofmatt.com/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/
jsmith45 5y ago
The late changes to daylight saving time rules pretty much always mean that for several days to potentially over a month, users will be encountering systems with the incorrect time. Often times they will try to "correct it" by manually changing the system time but then time sync services might undo that, and if not, then once the time zone package finally makes it to the system, it "breaks" again, because the user should not have messed with the clocks in the first place. The authors of the time zone database strongly encourage long notice periods for changes, as there are plenty of programs that use this data that have a month or more of delay between when an updated database is published, and when end devices will realistically get the update. And that is for people who don't habitually put off updates! When DST rules were last change we had about a year and a half notice, which is realistically what this bill also provides.

xmprt 5y ago

I understand that there are a lot of systems that will be impacted but I don't think we should limit progress based on dependencies. It's the same excuse that's used whenever we try to ween off of fossil fuels. I've worked on tzdata changes in the past and whether it's announced a month or a year in advance, progress is slow until the very last minute when teams can't put it off any longer. In other words, programmers are serial procrastinators and if you give them 2 years to prepare, they'll spend 1.9 doing nothing and scramble to fix everything in a month. This might be the first big timestamp change in the US, but there have been a lot of changes like this in the rest of the world so any globally operating company has probably had to do this at least once already and should be well equipped to make this change on a faster timeline.

Tenoke 5y ago

This is not even what the common wrong Dunning-Kruger interpretation means, even if we don't consider that the whole thing seems to mostly be a statistical artefact. https://arelbundock.com/posts/dunning_kruger/ https://arelbundock.com/posts/dunning_kruger/