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Very nice of them to have automatic time conversion to my local time when visiting the page. Something practically no one bothers to do. Alas it is in the middl

by rapsey 1y ago

Very nice of them to have automatic time conversion to my local time when visiting the page. Something practically no one bothers to do. Alas it is in the middle of the night for us europeans.

ta1243 1y ago
I'm in Thailand, my Laptop is in Singapore time, my DNS is routed via a UK provider but my IP via Thailand. It tells me > October 14, 2025 00:15 - 01:30 United Kingdom Time
- 4pkjai 1y ago
  Is this something you think they can or should fix?
  - floating-io 1y ago
    Been a while since I've looked at available APIs, but can't the browser handle conversions into its own local system TZ? If it's going by IP geolocation, I would call that a bug.
    - jaggederest 1y ago
      it's way easier too. Just parse an ISO UTC date string into a javascript date object and it'll correctly display the local time, no conversion needed.
    - johncoltrane 1y ago
      Browsers can handle conversions just fine but they need some context. If that context is somehow tampered with, then the results might be weird. In this case, SpaceX seems to be using UNIX timestamps(1) which is probably fed to a combination of Date and Intl to obtain a localized date string. Extrapolating the country where the user is located is not really rocket science either. But, if my context is somehow tampered with (VPN, internal clock, browser settings…), then I will get a potentially "wrong" date, for whatever definition of "wrong". The problem is fundamentally the same on the server side because you can only rely on the information you get… which might be wrong. So either you take the safest route, which is to display the local time of the organization or its UTC representation and let visitors figure out their local date on their own, or you take a somewhat riskier one, which is to try to display a localized date to your users and accept the potential flaws of the method. [1] https://sxcontent9668.azureedge.us/cms-assets/future_missions.json https://sxcontent9668.azureedge.us/cms-assets/future_mission...
  - stonogo 1y ago
    Yes, by setting the datetime attribute (in UTC) on a time element, then on the client side pulling that into a Date object and calling toLocaleString().
  - swiftcoder 1y ago
    Absolutely. If they sent UTC over the wire and handled it client-side, it would just work (your browser tends to know its own timezone)
OtherShrezzing 1y ago
>Very nice of them to have automatic time conversion to my local time when visiting the page. F1 finally has a really nice system for showing time[0]. They show both the local time at the circuit and the local time wherever the user is. For years they showed only the track time, without even a hint about the timezone the track was in. [0] https://www.formula1.com/en/racing/2025 https://www.formula1.com/en/racing/2025

by rapsey 1y ago

Very nice of them to have automatic time conversion to my local time when visiting the page. Something practically no one bothers to do. Alas it is in the middle of the night for us europeans.

ta1243 1y ago

I'm in Thailand, my Laptop is in Singapore time, my DNS is routed via a UK provider but my IP via Thailand. It tells me > October 14, 2025 00:15 - 01:30 United Kingdom Time

4pkjai 1y ago
Is this something you think they can or should fix?
- floating-io 1y ago
  Been a while since I've looked at available APIs, but can't the browser handle conversions into its own local system TZ? If it's going by IP geolocation, I would call that a bug.
  - jaggederest 1y ago
    it's way easier too. Just parse an ISO UTC date string into a javascript date object and it'll correctly display the local time, no conversion needed.
  - johncoltrane 1y ago
    Browsers can handle conversions just fine but they need some context. If that context is somehow tampered with, then the results might be weird. In this case, SpaceX seems to be using UNIX timestamps(1) which is probably fed to a combination of Date and Intl to obtain a localized date string. Extrapolating the country where the user is located is not really rocket science either. But, if my context is somehow tampered with (VPN, internal clock, browser settings…), then I will get a potentially "wrong" date, for whatever definition of "wrong". The problem is fundamentally the same on the server side because you can only rely on the information you get… which might be wrong. So either you take the safest route, which is to display the local time of the organization or its UTC representation and let visitors figure out their local date on their own, or you take a somewhat riskier one, which is to try to display a localized date to your users and accept the potential flaws of the method. [1] https://sxcontent9668.azureedge.us/cms-assets/future_missions.json https://sxcontent9668.azureedge.us/cms-assets/future_mission...
- stonogo 1y ago
  Yes, by setting the datetime attribute (in UTC) on a time element, then on the client side pulling that into a Date object and calling toLocaleString().
- swiftcoder 1y ago
  Absolutely. If they sent UTC over the wire and handled it client-side, it would just work (your browser tends to know its own timezone)

OtherShrezzing 1y ago

>Very nice of them to have automatic time conversion to my local time when visiting the page. F1 finally has a really nice system for showing time[0]. They show both the local time at the circuit and the local time wherever the user is. For years they showed only the track time, without even a hint about the timezone the track was in. [0] https://www.formula1.com/en/racing/2025 https://www.formula1.com/en/racing/2025