8 ms·

How much is time wrong around the world?

158 points by ot 13y ago

zviad 13y ago
Original article: http://poisson.phc.unipi.it/~maggiolo/index.php/2014/01/how-much-is-time-wrong-around-the-world/ http://poisson.phc.unipi.it/~maggiolo/index.php/2014/01/how-...
- moogleii 13y ago
  Sadly it can't seem to handle the traffic as much as Slate
wtvanhest 13y ago
I'm going to argue that the colors should be flipped. Having sunlight last longer seems like a feature not a bug. Taking Boston in to consideration, it is dark here by 4:15 for weeks at a time in early winter. Every day of the year, SF stays light later. Boston would be dramatically more livable if it were to just change to the next time zone. The red areas seem far more desirable to me.
- pisarzp 13y ago
  I agree with you. What is more, nn current society majority of people starts work around 9 and stays awake until 22:00 (probably even longer). We should actually move the time by at least an hour everywhere and/or permanently enable daylight saving time.
- Brian-Puccio 13y ago
  By "having the sunlight last longer", you mean to say "having the sunlight later in the day. It's not that there's a longer period of sunlight, it's a matter of personal preference as to when during the day the sunlight is. (And I prefer it earlier and loathe DST.)
  - wtvanhest 13y ago
    Right, I thought that was pretty obvious...
    - Brian-Puccio 13y ago
      I think it's obvious as well. However, I run into all sorts of people who are convinced that DST actually gives them more hours of sunlight in a day (i.e. a 24 hour period). If I ask these people how that's possible about half proclaim "well you lose it from the winter when it's colder out" (!) while the other half just admit they have no idea. Just like you wouldn't say "this laptop battery lasts longer than the other" if you started them at different times, I wouldn't say the "sunlight lasts longer" either.
  - bostonpete 13y ago
    Where do you live? In Boston, the sun rises around 5 AM throughout the month of June -- that's with DST. Without, it, the sun would be up at 4 AM. Anything before 7:00 is wasted for most -- anything before 6:00 is wasted for the vast majority.
    - Brian-Puccio 13y ago
      Slightly west of you in NY where it rises at 5:30a EDT/ 4:30a EST. I find it much easier to wake up at 5:00a if sunrise was half an hour ago and the sun is well up in the sky. I can get up, go for a bike ride on the boardwalk, shower, enjoy breakfast by a window. And with sunset at 8:30p EDT/7:30p EST ... well, if I'm outside in the evening, I'm usually hungry and want dinner by 7:30p, so the sunsetting then wouldn't bother me in the least. The winter is most miserable when the sun rises after 7:00a, waking up in complete darkness is miserable for me. If the vast majority doesn't like getting up to do things when the sun is up already because they'd rather sleep in bed so they'd rather have everyone change their clocks at great expense shrug I guess that's their prerogative.
  - clarky07 13y ago
    I suspect you are greatly in the minority there (based on both my personal conversations with others on the topic, and the linked picture showing far more red than green. Perhaps you should move to an area that is on the eastern edge of a timezone?
brey 13y ago
brilliant concept ... ... but this could probably be the poster child of where not to use the Mercator projection. yeah, Greenland overlaps five time zones. but they're tiny at that latitude! this makes it seem like places as far apart as New York & Los Angeles are in the same time zone. edit: Miller not Mercator - but the point stands that it's distorting the size of countries at high latitude, significantly exaggerating the issue.
- zviad 13y ago
  It's not Mercator and I feel personally offended (it's Miller). I decided to use a equirectangular just because otherwise drawing the gradients would have been a hell.
  - brey 13y ago
    ok, it's not Mercator, but it has the same high-latitude distortions any projection where Greenland is the same size as South America is IMO the wrong choice :)
    - santialbo 13y ago
      Relevant http://i.imgur.com/10sfTYY.png http://i.imgur.com/10sfTYY.png
      - kremlin 13y ago
        http://mapfight.appspot.com/in-vs-gl/india-greenland-size-comparison http://mapfight.appspot.com/in-vs-gl/india-greenland-size-co... ^ companion knowledge
    - baddox 13y ago
      Unless the data you are conveying has nothing to do with relative area of different regions, like this map.
  - snogglethorpe 13y ago
    > I decided to use a equirectangular just because otherwise drawing the gradients would have been a hell. If you've got a function that maps between map-position and globe-position, couldn't you just compute the gradient color for each pixel one by one? That doesn't sound particularly difficult... :]
wnevets 13y ago
its perfect apparently.
gruseom 13y ago
I wonder if Spaniards used to stay up late before Franco changed their time zone in the 1940s. Does anybody know?
- darrhiggs 13y ago
  Yes, but the 1940's, and before, were different:[0] ""So you used to work in the morning at one job. Then it was necessary to stop to rest. And then there was another job in the late afternoon and evening — in order to earn enough money to survive," she says. "It's said to be the origin of our way of life now."" [0] http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/11/30/244995264/spains-been-in-the-wrong-time-zone-for-seven-decades http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/11/30/244995264/spai...
  - darrhiggs 13y ago
    …also it appears there has been a 10 year campaign by an economist to change the clock in Spain;[0] an organisation [1], and progress (dependant on one's perspective) [2] [0] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/03/will-spains-leisurely-culture-speed-up-if-we-fix-its-clocks/274493/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/03/wil... [1] http://www.horariosenespana.es/ http://www.horariosenespana.es/ [2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24294157 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24294157
  - gruseom 13y ago
    That explanation isn't very convincing. People in other relatively poor countries didn't develop that distinctive pattern.
    - darrhiggs 13y ago
      I don't think it matters if it's convincing or not. I was answering the question, and the linked resource affirms it was.
- sweedy 13y ago
  they are still up late, because many people also have long working hours, as they are forced through the siesta lunch break
clarky07 13y ago
It is interesting to see that much more of the world errs to the side of having sun later in the day. As someone who lives just on the other side of a timezone line in a green area, I can definitely see the appeal. It gets dark at 4-4:30 in the winter here, and it sucks. There is actually a bill in our state now to stay on daylight savings all year. I really hope we pass it and don't have to "fall back" next year.
- gruseom 13y ago
  I so agree. Whenever I hear people say "changing the time twice a year sucks, we should stop doing that," I wonder whether they mean "let's ruin everything" (stay on 'standard' time all year) or "let's have daylight in winter too". This is rather a huge difference, and I wish they would always make it clear so I could tell whether to completely oppose or joyfully support them. :) I think they mostly mean making daylight saving permanent, but have a recurring dread that maybe they don't.
  - oinksoft 13y ago
    I really don't like false times. I can put up with time zones because they are at least constant. Every time I adjust my clock because the government said so is a "the sky is green and 2 + 2 = 5" moment, especially since they moved the times in 2007 so that we only get a few months of "real" time.
  - dade_ 13y ago
    This is one thing I miss about Saskatchewan, the big red mark in the middle of Canada. They are always on DST, which means you can watch the sunrise every clear winter morning and don't go home in pitch black world. It works just fine and no one misses the time change. It would save a lot of confusion and work much better IMHO.
    - gruseom 13y ago
      Hey, you just solved my dread problem. If Canada gets rid of the time switch they won't do it in a way that forces Saskatchewan to change. (I'm in Alberta.) Thanks!
blueblob 13y ago
Down for me: http://web.archive.org/web/20140107014545/http://poisson.phc.unipi.it/~maggiolo/index.php/2014/01/how-much-is-time-wrong-around-the-world/ http://web.archive.org/web/20140107014545/http://poisson.phc...
chimeracoder 13y ago
Since the rest of the site seems to be down, here is a direct link to the relevant image: http://i0.wp.com/poisson.phc.unipi.it/~maggiolo/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/SolarTimeVsStandardTime.png http://i0.wp.com/poisson.phc.unipi.it/~maggiolo/wp-content/u...
- bsimpson 13y ago
  He brags about using SVG in the post, but shares as PNG. =\
sirsar 13y ago
Here's Google's cache. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://poisson.phc.unipi.it/~maggiolo/index.php/2014/01/how-much-is-time-wrong-around-the-world/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
kybernetikos 13y ago
If you don't like having your time wrong, you could use my decimalised time system that rotates the numbers based on your geolocation so that solar noon where you are is always at the top of the clockface. http://kybernetikos.github.io/UIT/ http://kybernetikos.github.io/UIT/ (You will of course have to allow it access to your location)
snissn 13y ago
Earlier this year I was curious as to what would happen if we used a clock that was actively calibrated to the solar high noon. I made this little web page here: http://mseiler.com/highnoon/ http://mseiler.com/highnoon/ that uses your geolocation data and a few date-time and astronomy libraries to do just that. It tells me that in NYC the time is shifted by about 11 minutes and that number varies a lot throughout the year. It would be a very different world if we were to set up meetings using the actual solar time calibrated to the date and location of our meeting points!
- upofadown 13y ago
  I suspect that your clock (or one with the same result) is the future... Right now we have 2 clocks; Universal Time and time zone time. Even today, there is no real practical reason to have such small time zones. It would make sense to expand the size of the time zones to that point that there is only one (Universal) and just use solar time for the cases where daylight is important.
MichaelGG 13y ago
I'm in Guatemala, and frequently see late dinners (later than 8PM+), but Guatemala is about "perfect" in time. (And fortunately, doesn't participate in timezone shifting nonsense, except on years when the local government arbitrarily decides to implement a timeshift for a few months.) So it's probably more a cultural thing, than a slightly shifted timezone. While this article is interesting, I don't get the obsession people collectively have with specific times and needing timezones. Don't like getting up when it's dark? Get up later. Yes, that requires participation if you depend on others' schedules. Schools are particularly notorious, starting at ridiculously early hours. (My kids would have had to get up at 5.30 or so, but I created a private school for them, and it starts at 9. Works fantastic for them, they can stay up a bit later and play. There's no traffic rush for the teacher, which is good. A much better solution than starting at 7.30.) I imagine if there were no timezones, people would cope with this better, since they'd be forced to. Instead of saying "kids shouldn't be up past 8!" they'd actually stop and think about it.
- dfc 13y ago
  People's obsession with "specific times" is kind of nice when you want to get on a plane, execute a contract before the offer expires, allocate scarce resources like tables at a restaurant or telescope time, calculate hours of ec2 usage, ensure adequate physician coverage in an ER, etc. I think "specific times" are one of the hallmarks of modern society.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    How do relative times help in your scenarios? How on earth would timezones fit into EC2 billing?
    - dfc 13y ago
      Relative times? Timezones? Neither of these concepts appear in my comment. My comment is concerned with "people's collective obsession with specific times" and this gem: "Don't like getting up when it's dark? Get up later. Yes, that requires participation if you depend on others' schedules." Modern civil society requires depending on other people; this is one of the big problems with division of labor. Imagine bringing your child to the hospital and having the nurse explain: "Sorry Doctor Bob decided he wanted to get up a little later today. So your child will not receive the routine emergency care that he needs. Oh and you should probably rush home. this is can be a rough area. Sometimes the cops that work the night shift decide they want to be in bed before it gets too bright and the day shift cops are not real big on getting up when it is dark." Collective obsession with coordination and organization is a hallmark of modern society. How am I going to schedule a trip if I am not sure when the plane will take off? How should I mitigate the risk that the pilot of my connecting flight decides to take off early so he can put his kids in bed when it gets dark? I have no idea how timezones fit into EC2 billing. But I do know how specific times relate to billing: "Billing commences when Amazon EC2 initiates the boot sequence."[^1] That is a specific time, not a "We think it started sometime after 0200 and before 0330." [^1]: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#Billing http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#Billing
zer 13y ago
Interesting fact just for fun: Afghanistan shares a 76 km long border with China; this is where the biggest time zone jump occurs, an impressive 3.5 hours.
dfc 13y ago
The Olson tzdb used to have support for a solar-noon time zone for Saudi Arabia. I forget the specifics but there was a need for solar noon and a religious observance. It was just recently removed due to constraints regarding the size of unsigned chars.[^1] It would be neat to remake the map with the tz shapefiles and animate it a la xearth.[^2] [^1]: http://efele.net/maps/tz/world/ http://efele.net/maps/tz/world/ [^2]: https://github.com/eggert/tz/commit/a9ac0f6938c416f724a52115ca7b0b7abb13c347 https://github.com/eggert/tz/commit/a9ac0f6938c416f724a52115...
stretchwithme 13y ago
The anniversary of your birth may not always fall on the same day. A year is actually 365 and 1/4 days long. If you were born before 6 AM, this doesn't affect you. But for everybody else 25 - 75% of the time, the anniversary of their birth actually falls on the day after, depending on what time of day you were born and whether it was leap year and whether you born before the end of February (where we get that extra day every four years). And then throw in daylight savings time. Of course, the reality is that sticking with the same day is good enough, just as having some arbitrary number describe noon. 12 is, after all, an arbitrary number too. The important thing is that people agree on what these conventions mean and that they help mark time.
- stretchwithme 13y ago
  Sorry, this should read "the anniversary of their birth actually falls on the day after or day before" If you're born the year before leap year early enough in the day, leap year makes the anniversary of your birth move to the previous day. Needless to say, time can make your brain hurt.
Void_ 13y ago
I noticed this when travelling from Eastern Slovakia to Western Germany. It was really noticeable. I personally prefer the red zones where the sun sets really late in the summer, so it's nice to see the map of those. :-)
bsimpson 13y ago
Interesting to see how big US Central Time is. Most states in Central Time (e.g. the Dakotas) should be on Mountain Time if we are strictly adherent to the time zones. (Similarly, much of Eastern Time should be in Central, and Hawaii is off by a timezone, presumably to keep them on the same date as the mainland US.)
- blahedo 13y ago
  In the US (and other countries that have internal time zone borders), a lot of the variation is to keep the TZ boundary falling through relatively unpopulated areas OR to keep more of a state/region on the same time as its capital or major city.

158 points by ot 13y ago

zviad 13y ago

Original article: http://poisson.phc.unipi.it/~maggiolo/index.php/2014/01/how-much-is-time-wrong-around-the-world/ http://poisson.phc.unipi.it/~maggiolo/index.php/2014/01/how-...

moogleii 13y ago
Sadly it can't seem to handle the traffic as much as Slate

wtvanhest 13y ago

I'm going to argue that the colors should be flipped. Having sunlight last longer seems like a feature not a bug. Taking Boston in to consideration, it is dark here by 4:15 for weeks at a time in early winter. Every day of the year, SF stays light later. Boston would be dramatically more livable if it were to just change to the next time zone. The red areas seem far more desirable to me.

pisarzp 13y ago
I agree with you. What is more, nn current society majority of people starts work around 9 and stays awake until 22:00 (probably even longer). We should actually move the time by at least an hour everywhere and/or permanently enable daylight saving time.
Brian-Puccio 13y ago
By "having the sunlight last longer", you mean to say "having the sunlight later in the day. It's not that there's a longer period of sunlight, it's a matter of personal preference as to when during the day the sunlight is. (And I prefer it earlier and loathe DST.)
- wtvanhest 13y ago
  Right, I thought that was pretty obvious...
  - Brian-Puccio 13y ago
    I think it's obvious as well. However, I run into all sorts of people who are convinced that DST actually gives them more hours of sunlight in a day (i.e. a 24 hour period). If I ask these people how that's possible about half proclaim "well you lose it from the winter when it's colder out" (!) while the other half just admit they have no idea. Just like you wouldn't say "this laptop battery lasts longer than the other" if you started them at different times, I wouldn't say the "sunlight lasts longer" either.
- bostonpete 13y ago
  Where do you live? In Boston, the sun rises around 5 AM throughout the month of June -- that's with DST. Without, it, the sun would be up at 4 AM. Anything before 7:00 is wasted for most -- anything before 6:00 is wasted for the vast majority.
  - Brian-Puccio 13y ago
    Slightly west of you in NY where it rises at 5:30a EDT/ 4:30a EST. I find it much easier to wake up at 5:00a if sunrise was half an hour ago and the sun is well up in the sky. I can get up, go for a bike ride on the boardwalk, shower, enjoy breakfast by a window. And with sunset at 8:30p EDT/7:30p EST ... well, if I'm outside in the evening, I'm usually hungry and want dinner by 7:30p, so the sunsetting then wouldn't bother me in the least. The winter is most miserable when the sun rises after 7:00a, waking up in complete darkness is miserable for me. If the vast majority doesn't like getting up to do things when the sun is up already because they'd rather sleep in bed so they'd rather have everyone change their clocks at great expense shrug I guess that's their prerogative.
- clarky07 13y ago
  I suspect you are greatly in the minority there (based on both my personal conversations with others on the topic, and the linked picture showing far more red than green. Perhaps you should move to an area that is on the eastern edge of a timezone?

brey 13y ago

brilliant concept ... ... but this could probably be the poster child of where not to use the Mercator projection. yeah, Greenland overlaps five time zones. but they're tiny at that latitude! this makes it seem like places as far apart as New York & Los Angeles are in the same time zone. edit: Miller not Mercator - but the point stands that it's distorting the size of countries at high latitude, significantly exaggerating the issue.

zviad 13y ago
It's not Mercator and I feel personally offended (it's Miller). I decided to use a equirectangular just because otherwise drawing the gradients would have been a hell.
- brey 13y ago
  ok, it's not Mercator, but it has the same high-latitude distortions any projection where Greenland is the same size as South America is IMO the wrong choice :)
  - santialbo 13y ago
    Relevant http://i.imgur.com/10sfTYY.png http://i.imgur.com/10sfTYY.png
    - kremlin 13y ago
      http://mapfight.appspot.com/in-vs-gl/india-greenland-size-comparison http://mapfight.appspot.com/in-vs-gl/india-greenland-size-co... ^ companion knowledge
  - baddox 13y ago
    Unless the data you are conveying has nothing to do with relative area of different regions, like this map.
- snogglethorpe 13y ago
  > I decided to use a equirectangular just because otherwise drawing the gradients would have been a hell. If you've got a function that maps between map-position and globe-position, couldn't you just compute the gradient color for each pixel one by one? That doesn't sound particularly difficult... :]

wnevets 13y ago

its perfect apparently.

gruseom 13y ago

I wonder if Spaniards used to stay up late before Franco changed their time zone in the 1940s. Does anybody know?

darrhiggs 13y ago
Yes, but the 1940's, and before, were different:[0] ""So you used to work in the morning at one job. Then it was necessary to stop to rest. And then there was another job in the late afternoon and evening — in order to earn enough money to survive," she says. "It's said to be the origin of our way of life now."" [0] http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/11/30/244995264/spains-been-in-the-wrong-time-zone-for-seven-decades http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/11/30/244995264/spai...
- darrhiggs 13y ago
  …also it appears there has been a 10 year campaign by an economist to change the clock in Spain;[0] an organisation [1], and progress (dependant on one's perspective) [2] [0] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/03/will-spains-leisurely-culture-speed-up-if-we-fix-its-clocks/274493/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/03/wil... [1] http://www.horariosenespana.es/ http://www.horariosenespana.es/ [2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24294157 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24294157
- gruseom 13y ago
  That explanation isn't very convincing. People in other relatively poor countries didn't develop that distinctive pattern.
  - darrhiggs 13y ago
    I don't think it matters if it's convincing or not. I was answering the question, and the linked resource affirms it was.
sweedy 13y ago
they are still up late, because many people also have long working hours, as they are forced through the siesta lunch break

clarky07 13y ago

It is interesting to see that much more of the world errs to the side of having sun later in the day. As someone who lives just on the other side of a timezone line in a green area, I can definitely see the appeal. It gets dark at 4-4:30 in the winter here, and it sucks. There is actually a bill in our state now to stay on daylight savings all year. I really hope we pass it and don't have to "fall back" next year.

gruseom 13y ago
I so agree. Whenever I hear people say "changing the time twice a year sucks, we should stop doing that," I wonder whether they mean "let's ruin everything" (stay on 'standard' time all year) or "let's have daylight in winter too". This is rather a huge difference, and I wish they would always make it clear so I could tell whether to completely oppose or joyfully support them. :) I think they mostly mean making daylight saving permanent, but have a recurring dread that maybe they don't.
- oinksoft 13y ago
  I really don't like false times. I can put up with time zones because they are at least constant. Every time I adjust my clock because the government said so is a "the sky is green and 2 + 2 = 5" moment, especially since they moved the times in 2007 so that we only get a few months of "real" time.
- dade_ 13y ago
  This is one thing I miss about Saskatchewan, the big red mark in the middle of Canada. They are always on DST, which means you can watch the sunrise every clear winter morning and don't go home in pitch black world. It works just fine and no one misses the time change. It would save a lot of confusion and work much better IMHO.
  - gruseom 13y ago
    Hey, you just solved my dread problem. If Canada gets rid of the time switch they won't do it in a way that forces Saskatchewan to change. (I'm in Alberta.) Thanks!

blueblob 13y ago

Down for me: http://web.archive.org/web/20140107014545/http://poisson.phc.unipi.it/~maggiolo/index.php/2014/01/how-much-is-time-wrong-around-the-world/ http://web.archive.org/web/20140107014545/http://poisson.phc...

chimeracoder 13y ago

Since the rest of the site seems to be down, here is a direct link to the relevant image: http://i0.wp.com/poisson.phc.unipi.it/~maggiolo/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/SolarTimeVsStandardTime.png http://i0.wp.com/poisson.phc.unipi.it/~maggiolo/wp-content/u...

bsimpson 13y ago
He brags about using SVG in the post, but shares as PNG. =\

sirsar 13y ago

Here's Google's cache. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://poisson.phc.unipi.it/~maggiolo/index.php/2014/01/how-much-is-time-wrong-around-the-world/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

kybernetikos 13y ago

If you don't like having your time wrong, you could use my decimalised time system that rotates the numbers based on your geolocation so that solar noon where you are is always at the top of the clockface. http://kybernetikos.github.io/UIT/ http://kybernetikos.github.io/UIT/ (You will of course have to allow it access to your location)

snissn 13y ago

Earlier this year I was curious as to what would happen if we used a clock that was actively calibrated to the solar high noon. I made this little web page here: http://mseiler.com/highnoon/ http://mseiler.com/highnoon/ that uses your geolocation data and a few date-time and astronomy libraries to do just that. It tells me that in NYC the time is shifted by about 11 minutes and that number varies a lot throughout the year. It would be a very different world if we were to set up meetings using the actual solar time calibrated to the date and location of our meeting points!

upofadown 13y ago
I suspect that your clock (or one with the same result) is the future... Right now we have 2 clocks; Universal Time and time zone time. Even today, there is no real practical reason to have such small time zones. It would make sense to expand the size of the time zones to that point that there is only one (Universal) and just use solar time for the cases where daylight is important.

MichaelGG 13y ago

I'm in Guatemala, and frequently see late dinners (later than 8PM+), but Guatemala is about "perfect" in time. (And fortunately, doesn't participate in timezone shifting nonsense, except on years when the local government arbitrarily decides to implement a timeshift for a few months.) So it's probably more a cultural thing, than a slightly shifted timezone. While this article is interesting, I don't get the obsession people collectively have with specific times and needing timezones. Don't like getting up when it's dark? Get up later. Yes, that requires participation if you depend on others' schedules. Schools are particularly notorious, starting at ridiculously early hours. (My kids would have had to get up at 5.30 or so, but I created a private school for them, and it starts at 9. Works fantastic for them, they can stay up a bit later and play. There's no traffic rush for the teacher, which is good. A much better solution than starting at 7.30.) I imagine if there were no timezones, people would cope with this better, since they'd be forced to. Instead of saying "kids shouldn't be up past 8!" they'd actually stop and think about it.

dfc 13y ago
People's obsession with "specific times" is kind of nice when you want to get on a plane, execute a contract before the offer expires, allocate scarce resources like tables at a restaurant or telescope time, calculate hours of ec2 usage, ensure adequate physician coverage in an ER, etc. I think "specific times" are one of the hallmarks of modern society.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  How do relative times help in your scenarios? How on earth would timezones fit into EC2 billing?
  - dfc 13y ago
    Relative times? Timezones? Neither of these concepts appear in my comment. My comment is concerned with "people's collective obsession with specific times" and this gem: "Don't like getting up when it's dark? Get up later. Yes, that requires participation if you depend on others' schedules." Modern civil society requires depending on other people; this is one of the big problems with division of labor. Imagine bringing your child to the hospital and having the nurse explain: "Sorry Doctor Bob decided he wanted to get up a little later today. So your child will not receive the routine emergency care that he needs. Oh and you should probably rush home. this is can be a rough area. Sometimes the cops that work the night shift decide they want to be in bed before it gets too bright and the day shift cops are not real big on getting up when it is dark." Collective obsession with coordination and organization is a hallmark of modern society. How am I going to schedule a trip if I am not sure when the plane will take off? How should I mitigate the risk that the pilot of my connecting flight decides to take off early so he can put his kids in bed when it gets dark? I have no idea how timezones fit into EC2 billing. But I do know how specific times relate to billing: "Billing commences when Amazon EC2 initiates the boot sequence."[^1] That is a specific time, not a "We think it started sometime after 0200 and before 0330." [^1]: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#Billing http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#Billing

zer 13y ago

Interesting fact just for fun: Afghanistan shares a 76 km long border with China; this is where the biggest time zone jump occurs, an impressive 3.5 hours.

dfc 13y ago

The Olson tzdb used to have support for a solar-noon time zone for Saudi Arabia. I forget the specifics but there was a need for solar noon and a religious observance. It was just recently removed due to constraints regarding the size of unsigned chars.[^1] It would be neat to remake the map with the tz shapefiles and animate it a la xearth.[^2] [^1]: http://efele.net/maps/tz/world/ http://efele.net/maps/tz/world/ [^2]: https://github.com/eggert/tz/commit/a9ac0f6938c416f724a52115ca7b0b7abb13c347 https://github.com/eggert/tz/commit/a9ac0f6938c416f724a52115...

stretchwithme 13y ago

The anniversary of your birth may not always fall on the same day. A year is actually 365 and 1/4 days long. If you were born before 6 AM, this doesn't affect you. But for everybody else 25 - 75% of the time, the anniversary of their birth actually falls on the day after, depending on what time of day you were born and whether it was leap year and whether you born before the end of February (where we get that extra day every four years). And then throw in daylight savings time. Of course, the reality is that sticking with the same day is good enough, just as having some arbitrary number describe noon. 12 is, after all, an arbitrary number too. The important thing is that people agree on what these conventions mean and that they help mark time.

stretchwithme 13y ago
Sorry, this should read "the anniversary of their birth actually falls on the day after or day before" If you're born the year before leap year early enough in the day, leap year makes the anniversary of your birth move to the previous day. Needless to say, time can make your brain hurt.

Void_ 13y ago

I noticed this when travelling from Eastern Slovakia to Western Germany. It was really noticeable. I personally prefer the red zones where the sun sets really late in the summer, so it's nice to see the map of those. :-)

bsimpson 13y ago

Interesting to see how big US Central Time is. Most states in Central Time (e.g. the Dakotas) should be on Mountain Time if we are strictly adherent to the time zones. (Similarly, much of Eastern Time should be in Central, and Hawaii is off by a timezone, presumably to keep them on the same date as the mainland US.)

blahedo 13y ago
In the US (and other countries that have internal time zone borders), a lot of the variation is to keep the TZ boundary falling through relatively unpopulated areas OR to keep more of a state/region on the same time as its capital or major city.