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posix and right directories?
by Bill Seymour March 5, 2024

March 5, 2024

Is there some document that explains what the posix and right subdirectories in my Linux' /usr/share/zoneinfo are all about? Are they a regular Zoneinfo thing, or are they somehow specific to Debian Linux? I checked theory.html and didn't see anything related to this. --Bill Seymour

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Eastern Standard Tribe - Cory Doctorow
by Brian Inglis March 3, 2024

March 3, 2024

Suggest mentioning in tz-art.html: Cory Doctorow's 2004 novel "Eastern Standard Tribe" Quotes from blurbs: "He may live in London and work for an EU telecommunications megacorp, but Art's real home is the Eastern Standard Tribe. ... The world is slowly splintering into Tribes held together by a common time zone, less than family and more than nations." "The book concerns itself with the conspiracies of management consultants around the world who form secret allegiences on the basis of the timezones that they choose to sleep in - everyone who keeps New York time all over the world ends up all pallsy-wallsy and savages those degenerates on Pacific time." https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7143989-eastern-standard-tribe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Standard_Tribe downloadable for free in many formats with his other books from https://craphound.com/est/download/ -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada La perfection est atteinte Perfection is achieved non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter not when there is no more to add mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retirer but when there is no more to cut -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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Happy Leap Day...
by Arthur David Olson March 1, 2024

March 1, 2024

...to those who celebrate; Happy March 0 to those who don't. @dashdashado

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NZ Leap Day Self Pay Petrol Pump Failures
by Brian Inglis March 1, 2024

March 1, 2024

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/leap-year-glitch-broke-self-pay-pum… -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada La perfection est atteinte Perfection is achieved non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter not when there is no more to add mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retirer but when there is no more to cut -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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[PROPOSED] Asia/Almaty matches Asia/Tashkent from now on
by Paul Eggert March 1, 2024

March 1, 2024

This pacifies ‘make check_now’. * NEWS: Mention this. * zonenow.tab: Remove Asia/Almaty. --- NEWS | 9 +++++++++ zonenow.tab | 4 +--- 2 files changed, 10 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS index 43f2ab05..8efa195f 100644 --- a/NEWS +++ b/NEWS @@ -1,5 +1,14 @@ News for the tz database +Unreleased, experimental changes + + Changes to data + + Asia/Almaty has been removed from zonenow.tab as it now agrees + with Asia/Tashkent for future timestamps, due to Kazakhstan's + 2024-02-29 time zone change. + + Release 2024a - 2024-02-01 09:28:56 -0800 Briefly: diff --git a/zonenow.tab b/zonenow.tab index b6f29109..1e7a86be 100644 --- a/zonenow.tab +++ b/zonenow.tab @@ -199,7 +199,7 @@ XX +2518+05518 Asia/Dubai Russia; Caucasus; Persian Gulf; Seychelles; Réunion XX +3431+06912 Asia/Kabul Afghanistan # # +05 -XX +4120+06918 Asia/Tashkent Russia; west Kazakhstan; Tajikistan; Turkmenistan; Uzbekistan; Maldives +XX +4120+06918 Asia/Tashkent Russia; Kazakhstan; Tajikistan; Turkmenistan; Uzbekistan; Maldives # # +05 - PKT XX +2452+06703 Asia/Karachi Pakistan ("PKT") @@ -215,8 +215,6 @@ XX +2743+08519 Asia/Kathmandu Nepal # # +06 XX +2343+09025 Asia/Dhaka Russia; Kyrgyzstan; Bhutan; Bangladesh; Chagos -# +06 until 2024-03-01; then +05 -XX +4315+07657 Asia/Almaty Kazakhstan (except western areas) # # +06:30 XX +1647+09610 Asia/Yangon Myanmar; Cocos -- 2.40.1

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Administrivia: Mailing List Archives
by Kim Davies Feb. 25, 2024

Feb. 25, 2024

Hi all, We’ve done a little bit of work to fix some old corrupted email messages in the mailing list archive at http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/. They’ve been corrupted ever since they were originally imported over a decade ago, but were noticed by an astute reader recently. Also, some of the historical links were broken for roughly the last three weeks for an unrelated reason, but these should work as expected now. If you notice anything awry please let me know. kim

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leap-seconds.list format
by Byron Torres Feb. 19, 2024

Feb. 19, 2024

Good day, I write here to you knowledgeable people in the hopes you can clarify some things regarding the format of leap-seconds.list file. Please forgive me if there is a more appropriate place to ask. Recently it seems the IERS has changed the format of the leap-seconds.list file they serve[1], from the old format by NIST[2]. The comments are reworded, the lines wrap at a large width, and most importantly, the whitespace between the decimal timestamps and time-differences, previously a tab, have been replaced with spaces. [1] https://hpiers.obspm.fr/iers/bul/bulc/ntp/leap-seconds.list [2] ftp://ftp.boulder.nist.gov/pub/time/leap-seconds.list This, coupled with the fact that the tz repository recently began fetching from this source (I understand that is because the NIST source was flaky), has broken a leap-seconds.list parser[3] used by the standard library of the Hare systems programming language[4], a language akin to a modern C. I'm the maintainer of the Hare stdlib date/time subsystem[5]. [3] https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/hare/tree/d0c057dbbb0f1ee9179769e187c0fbd3b0032… [4] https://harelang.org/ [5] https://harelang.org/who For context, Hare sources leap-seconds.list for UTC-TAI leapsecond data and implements timescales like UTC, TAI, GPS, etc. Hare could source from a TZIF file specified by $TZ, but the decoupling of timezone and leapsecond data allows for multi-timescale programming. We are working to improve Hare and to begin stable quarterly releases, so we ideally want guarantees for how leap-seconds.list is formatted. My questions are: * What was the motivation for the changes in IERS'es leap-seconds.list file? Is there a record of discussion regarding this? * What was the motivation specifically for the spaces-to-tab change? Did another commonly used software implement a forgiving parser? * What is the history of the leap-seconds.list file and file format? * Is the format for leap-seconds.list defined? Where and how strongly? * If there is no strong, formal definition, would a formal definition of the leap-seconds.list file format be welcome? To whom could I coordinate with? * Could at least the spaces be changed back to tabs? Personally, I do not like the idea of a make-time conversion script. It would be ideal for the source file to make this change, but before I email the contact mentioned in the new file, I thought to prod here first. Timely regards, b

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timezone-related error sparks $340 million lawsuit
by Paul Eggert Feb. 19, 2024

Feb. 19, 2024

In "US man sues Powerball lottery after being told his apparent $340m win was error"[1], Maya Yang reported in today's Guardian that a mistake caused by a quality-assurance team checking timezone configuration for a Powerball lottery website has snowballed into a $340 million lawsuit against the lottery. Due to the mistake, in which a test version of the website was loaded with random numbers, the lottery's production website temporarily displayed the wrong winning numbers. A man whose ticket matched those numbers is now suing the lottery for the $340 million prize, saying he is the rightful winner. Yang reported that the errant QA team was testing "a task involving a changing of time zones for the Powerball website from Coordinated Universal Time to Eastern Standard Time." [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/18/man-sues-powerball-lottery-…

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Checked arithmetic bug
by Dag-Erling Smørgrav Feb. 17, 2024

Feb. 17, 2024

In at least one instance around line 1187 of localtime.c, the code assumes that increment_overflow_time() does not modify the result if the operation overflowed, but that is not true when using C23 checked arithmetic. Details: https://bugs.freebsd.org/276281, particularly comment 11. One possible solution is attached. I'm not overly fond of it because it penalizes the common case, but it was easier than trying to understand and reformulate the loop in tzparse(). DES -- Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des(a)des.no

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the Republic of Kazakhstan
by ЕЛИКБАЕВ КУАНЫШ НУРЛАНОВИЧ Feb. 5, 2024

Feb. 5, 2024

Dear colleagues, Technical Regulation and Metrology Committee of the Ministry of Trade and Integration of the Republic of Kazakhstan (CTRM) takes this opportunity to express its assurances of the highest consideration. CTRM participates in the implementation of strategic functions of the Ministry in the areas of technical regulation and Metrology. CTRM informs that by the Decree of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan dated January 19, 2024 No. 20, amendments have been made to the Decree of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan dated November 23, 2000 No. 1749 «On the procedure for calculating time on the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan» (https://zan.gov.kz/client/#!/doc/192700/rus) which provides, among other things, for the Akimats of the cities of Astana, Almaty, Shymkent, Akmola, Almaty, Zhambyl, Karaganda, Kostanay, Pavlodar, North Kazakhstan, Turkestan, East Kazakhstan regions and Abay, Zhetisu, Ulytau regions, on the night of February 29, 2024 to March 1, 2024 (Astana time, 12:00 a.m.), to transfer local time back 1 hour Information that the Republic of Kazakhstan is switching to Single Time Zone (UTC+05:00) is sent for accounting in work when interacting with government agencies and organizations of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Please find the attached letter. Sincerely, Mr. Kuanysh Yelikbayev Chairman

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