I am disappoint, Wolfram Alpha | Hacker News Reader

I am disappoint, Wolfram Alpha

wolframalpha.com

11 pointschrisrhoden15 comments

I cringe so hard when I see Reddit style memes like "I am disappoint" on HN. Please, please don't let this become commonplace..

Point taken.

TYL

This isn't wrong - /any/ time zone has a constant 24 hour delta before those two points in time.

What is changing is your time zone from, say, GMT to BST.

A move between non-DST and DST is considered a time zone change - in my case from EST to EDT.

This time zone change is listed there. It says 1:00pm EST to 1:00pm EDT on the page linked, and so it is incorrect.

It provides the right output if the right timezone is given:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=hours+between+1pm+est+m...

I see 24 hours (not the correct 23) when I follow that link.

Edit: Now I see that the link has both times in EST, which is not on point. See chrisrhoden's link in a sibling to this comment.

I'm disappointed that it won't intepret gmt and bst when entered into the search bar, but it clearly knows what they are in the results.

Ergo you can't search;

"hours between 1pm GMT march 10 and 1pm BST march 11 2012" http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=hours+between+1pm+GMT+m...

And get a desired response. In fact it really screws up. Going to keep trying, also I thought that BST kicked in at the end of March. (Google informs me: 25th march)

if you add a location, it gives you the right answer... example: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=hours+between+1pm+march...

0.9583 days = 22 hours 59 minutes 57 seconds

the time change does not apply everywhere, in places near the equator there is no daylight saving time change.

The result is accurate. Add a location (ie ontario, Canada) to the end of the query. Not every place has Daylight savings time.

This still says 24 hours for me. Is this different from what you're seeing?

I am not sure what you are disappointed about. A more descriptive title would be good.

It says that there are 24 hours between 1pm EST March 10 and 1pm EDT March 11, when there are really 23. It's probably using my IP address (and the original poster's IP address) to pick these timezones, so you may see something different, but it also gives the incorrect number of hours if you specify the timezones:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Hours+between+1pm+EST+M...

It also gives 0.9583 (23/24) as the amount of days, so one hand doesn't know what the other is doing.

I'm disappointed at you...

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