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No doubt changing daylight saving rules at short notice is difficult but we should be asking ourselves why is it so. The major problem adjusting to daylight sa

No doubt changing daylight saving rules at short notice is difficult but we should be asking ourselves why is it so. The major problem adjusting to daylight saving should be as it's always been - that of human adaptation to the sudden change of time. That our computers cannot adapt at a moment's notice simply says there's fundamental problem with their design. Moreover, the problem should have been long solved by now. Remember the huge kerfuffle over the Y2k problem 22 years ago? You'd think we'd have learned from that and fixed the problem back then. Either we're lazy or slow learners or both.

DougN7 4y ago
In my opinion it’s because it’s so easy to assume a day has 24 hours. Coding for an occasional day that has 23 and another with 25 just doesn’t occur to most people.
- hilbert42 4y ago
  Yeah, like so. But these changes aren't just 'one-offs', they're in fact common enough for a streamlined procedure to be in place - yet it's not.
sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
Far more coordination with this than something like Y2K. This is a government deciding the rules of time have changed in some way. Y2K, the rules of time didn't change, but a pattern of implementation decisions frequently used over the previous few decades broke down. A system that needs to know about the rule change has to actually receive it in some way. It has to be connected or the update has to be brought to it. That alone creates a lot of systems that cannot react to a change like this at a moment's notice. You know when Y2K and Y2038 hit relative to yourself because they're numerical rollovers that can be computed from your current time. You can't know when the congress of Whereveralia has decided to change DST rules without someone or something telling you.
- hilbert42 4y ago
  The fundamental problem is that we humans are slaves to our computer systems instead of them being our slaves. By definition, a computer is a streamlined process or procedure designed to help humans but that's so often not the case. (Something that's so often overlooked.) The fact is that the biggest problem in computing is that their ergonomics suck big-time. This daylight saving issue is yet another instance of it. Seems to me that both hardware designers and programmers should have a course in ergonomics as a prerequisite before they embark on their profession. I say that as someone who has literally lost years off my life trying to get poorly designed computers to adapt to doing the simplest of tasks.
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
    That's a nice rant, and I don't entirely disagree with you, but it has little to do with my comment.
    - hilbert42 4y ago
      Politics can change faster than the time it takes to lick a postage stamp and can do so in the most unpredictable ways. That's been a fact of life for the whole of human existence. That said, a processor can do billions of operations in the time it takes to lick a stamp. Thus, there's plenty of leeway there to ensure that computers don't even enter the political equation.
      - sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
        My point is that ergonomics and design is secondary to connectivity (continuous, intermittent, sneakernet, whatever) for a great deal of systems that need to care about time, including the latest political whims regarding time. The fastest processor ever created can't do anything with information it doesn't have.
        hilbert42 4y ago
        "...with information it doesn't have." That's my point. But when it eventually gets that info it shouldn't be impeded in updating as is the present system.
gramie 4y ago
I think that the problem is that DST is a really, really bad idea. So you have a process that starts at 1:30am on November 6, 2022. If that's in Ontario, is that the first 1:30am or the second one? (At 2:00am, clocks go back to 1:00am, so we do that hour again. If the process is supposed to start at 2:30am on March 12, 2023, that's too bad, because at 2:00am the time jumps to 3:00am, so no times from 2:00am to 2:59:59am are valid. And now some regions are abandoning DST and others aren't. I'm not sure if it's still the case, but in Indiana one part of the state was on Central Time and another part on Eastern Time, and both observed DST. There was a third part that was on Central Time but did not observe DST, so part of the year it would match Central Time and the rest of the year it matched Eastern Time (IIRC).
- DerekL 4y ago
  Starting in 2006, the entire state of Indiana uses DST.
hocuspocus 4y ago
It's an issue everywhere you rely on data that's not purely static, but evolving too slowly to treat it as dynamic. The Y2K problem was entirely preventable in comparison. Timezones will keep changing erratically.

DougN7 4y ago

In my opinion it’s because it’s so easy to assume a day has 24 hours. Coding for an occasional day that has 23 and another with 25 just doesn’t occur to most people.

hilbert42 4y ago
Yeah, like so. But these changes aren't just 'one-offs', they're in fact common enough for a streamlined procedure to be in place - yet it's not.

sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago

Far more coordination with this than something like Y2K. This is a government deciding the rules of time have changed in some way. Y2K, the rules of time didn't change, but a pattern of implementation decisions frequently used over the previous few decades broke down. A system that needs to know about the rule change has to actually receive it in some way. It has to be connected or the update has to be brought to it. That alone creates a lot of systems that cannot react to a change like this at a moment's notice. You know when Y2K and Y2038 hit relative to yourself because they're numerical rollovers that can be computed from your current time. You can't know when the congress of Whereveralia has decided to change DST rules without someone or something telling you.

hilbert42 4y ago
The fundamental problem is that we humans are slaves to our computer systems instead of them being our slaves. By definition, a computer is a streamlined process or procedure designed to help humans but that's so often not the case. (Something that's so often overlooked.) The fact is that the biggest problem in computing is that their ergonomics suck big-time. This daylight saving issue is yet another instance of it. Seems to me that both hardware designers and programmers should have a course in ergonomics as a prerequisite before they embark on their profession. I say that as someone who has literally lost years off my life trying to get poorly designed computers to adapt to doing the simplest of tasks.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
  That's a nice rant, and I don't entirely disagree with you, but it has little to do with my comment.
  - hilbert42 4y ago
    Politics can change faster than the time it takes to lick a postage stamp and can do so in the most unpredictable ways. That's been a fact of life for the whole of human existence. That said, a processor can do billions of operations in the time it takes to lick a stamp. Thus, there's plenty of leeway there to ensure that computers don't even enter the political equation.
    - sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
      My point is that ergonomics and design is secondary to connectivity (continuous, intermittent, sneakernet, whatever) for a great deal of systems that need to care about time, including the latest political whims regarding time. The fastest processor ever created can't do anything with information it doesn't have.
      - hilbert42 4y ago
        "...with information it doesn't have." That's my point. But when it eventually gets that info it shouldn't be impeded in updating as is the present system.

gramie 4y ago

I think that the problem is that DST is a really, really bad idea. So you have a process that starts at 1:30am on November 6, 2022. If that's in Ontario, is that the first 1:30am or the second one? (At 2:00am, clocks go back to 1:00am, so we do that hour again. If the process is supposed to start at 2:30am on March 12, 2023, that's too bad, because at 2:00am the time jumps to 3:00am, so no times from 2:00am to 2:59:59am are valid. And now some regions are abandoning DST and others aren't. I'm not sure if it's still the case, but in Indiana one part of the state was on Central Time and another part on Eastern Time, and both observed DST. There was a third part that was on Central Time but did not observe DST, so part of the year it would match Central Time and the rest of the year it matched Eastern Time (IIRC).

DerekL 4y ago
Starting in 2006, the entire state of Indiana uses DST.

hocuspocus 4y ago

It's an issue everywhere you rely on data that's not purely static, but evolving too slowly to treat it as dynamic. The Y2K problem was entirely preventable in comparison. Timezones will keep changing erratically.