Hacker News Reader

Comment by jac_no_k | Hacker News Reader

Ex-pat in Japan, Tokyo area here.

Not having to change clocks is nice. Pressure companies / employers to have flex time to allow earlier starts and earlier leaves. Even though Japan culture tends to lag 10 to 15 years behind, it does change.

Now if the rest of the world (London / New York) would stop shifting clocks around on different dates, it would make global synch ups easier to handle.

View on HN

How many clocks do people really have to change these days? Everybody has a phone in their pocket that magically has the right time.

Everytime the government changes the rules, people have to modify the firmware of basically any device with a clock, the people have to go around updating those (especially ones that don't have any auto update mechanism). Source: I'm a software engineer and I had too update hundreds of copy machines manually a few years ago.

I replaced all the wall clocks in my house with ones that set themselves from the NIST radio broadcast. My computers (and presumably phone) are all ntp based. None of those require firmware updates. It's quite nice to never mess with the clocks and have everything just be correct.

You may wish to know that the current executive budget proposal would shutter the NIST time radio broadcasts (WWV, WWVH, and WWVB)[1][2][3].

[1] https://swling.com/blog/2018/08/information-from-the-nist-re...

[2] https://www.kb6nu.com/nist-to-shutter-wwv-wwvh-wwvb/

[3] https://www.nist.gov/director/fy-2019-presidential-budget-re...

"Illustrative program reductions in FY 2019

-$6.3 million supporting fundamental measurement dissemination, including the shutdown of NIST radio stations in Colorado and Hawaii"

NTP gives you accurate time in UTC. It doesn't tell you how many hours you're offset from UTC.

Databases like tzdata do that, and they have half a dozen updates every year.

Well yeah, but then you tell your devices that you're UTC-4, and when it receives the NTP update, it just automatically subtracts 4 hours.

Or, like in the case of most phones, GPS-enabled devices know what time zone you're currently in, and then automatically adjust accordingly.

Your device from 2005 that hasn't received a firmware update will show the wrong time if you're in New York.

GPS does not contain your current timezone, like NTP it gives out UTC.

The reason your phone (that's set to use "New York" as a timezone) knows to change the UTC offset from -4 to 05 on the first Sunday of November is because it has received a firmware update at some point since 2006. A standalone device from before 2006 can not know that the spring forward/fall back dates in the US changed, unless it's updated.

Your statement "None of those require firmware updates. It's quite nice to never mess with the clocks and have everything just be correct" seems naive at best.

> The reason your phone (that's set to use "New York" as a timezone) knows to change the UTC offset from -4 to 05 on the first Sunday of November is because it has received a firmware update at some point since 2006. A standalone device from before 2006 can not know that the spring forward/fall back dates in the US changed, unless it's updated.

Fair enough, good point - I didn't think about that.

> Your statement "None of those require firmware updates. It's quite nice to never mess with the clocks and have everything just be correct" seems naive at best.

I never said that, possibly you're replying to a different person than intended.

Right. I'm not asking about changing rules. I'm asking about the burden of keeping the current daylight savings rules. The person I was responding to said "not having to change clocks is nice". I live in a daylight savings region and I already don't change any clocks.

Not having to change clocks is nice, but having a little offset over the sun time is good.

I lived in Japan as a student, and when you wake up at noon to get only 4 hours of daylight it's really depressing, and feels like you've wasted your whole day in bed.

Anyway, prepare to adjust your watch twice a year!

https://www.ft.com/content/4db264b4-a764-11e8-8ecf-a7ae1beff...

“...wake up at noon ... feels like you've wasted your whole day in bed.”

Well it’s half true

> when you wake up at noon to get only 4 hours of daylight it's really depressing

That's just a normal winter to some people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com