- I once digged into this database out of curiosity and found incredibly detailed research on many edge cases. Like time zones in Germany being temporarily aligned to Moscow during soviet occupancy after World War Two.
One particular commenter stood out to me, so I looked him up because I was interested which kind of people spend so much time correcting timezone information.
Turns out he was an astrologer and wanted his astrology-program to work perfectly correct.
I find it funny that we have to thank astrology for the correct calculations in our banking software :).
- Amusing story of the chaos of timezones in Saudi Arabia and a man who made his own: https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/196902/dinner.at.when....
Linked from https://github.com/eggert/tz/blob/main/asia#L3818
- If you like this there has been a interesting discussion on the tzdb mailing list about how to handle the Vancouver change and the next releases of the tzdb and the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository: https://lists.iana.org/hyperkitty/list/tz@iana.org/thread/IE...
- > I’ve perused the tz repository before, and I always learn something interesting. For example, during WWII Britain adopted double summer time, adding two hours to the clock in the summer and one hour in the winter.
My country, Spain, did the same but never fixed it, so we are still in this "double summer time". It is one of the main reasons why Spanish people seemingly do everything later (breakfast, lunch, dinner) than other European countries.
by ColinEberhardt
1 subcomments
- I agree, timelines are fascinating. I did my own research and built a simple visualisation of the changes in time zones over a 120 year period:
https://blog.scottlogic.com/2021/09/14/120-years-timezone.ht...
by liampulles
0 subcomment
- It's well worth subscribing to the tz updates mailing list, not just to be cognisant of timezone changes, but to add a bit of bemusement to your day.
- Is this article finished? There are mentions of excerpts from the database, but the excerpts are not reproduced or linked to, as far as I can tell.
- The comment actually has it backwards. It says BC is moving from daylight to standard time, but should be the opposite. It's got the offset right though.
by russellbeattie
3 subcomments
- Just last night some friends brought up the time change tonight and the news from British Columbia, and what the California government has or hasn't done about it currently and in the past and why we haven't just gotten rid of the system already to save us the trouble of adjusting clocks twice a year.
And of course, there was instantly a heated debate about whether to permanently choose Standard Time or Daylight Saving Time, with passionate, almost religious arguments for both options. I feared sectarian violence was about to erupt at the dinner table.
Our collective relationship with time is truly unhinged.
#teamdaylightsaving
- > the Time Zone Database also contains a surprising amount of whimsy.
Which I would find "cute" if the database contained an equal amount of reason. I am perennially irritated that "US/Pacific" which is an _official_ name of a time zone _as used_ by the relevant time keeping authority, is called "backwards."
I still think we should move away from a tz database, a 1970s idea, and move to a .timezone TLD with tzinfo stored in TXT records. Give each country it's own NS in the TLD and give them the authority to update it. If you still want a "full file" then do a zone transfer. Plus, we could also use punycode, and easily have fully internationalized time zone names, something we currently lack.
I genuinely dislike the structure and nature of the tz database.
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