News article: Turkey’s plan to ignore daylight saving time has been foiled by smartphones
http://qz.com/533126/turkeys-plan-to-ignore-daylight-saving-time-has-been-fo... Turkey, like other countries on Eastern European Time (EET), was supposed to turn its clocks back by one hour on Sunday (Oct. 25) for the annual end of daylight saving time—or, as it’s known in Europe, “summer time.” But this year, the Turkish government told citizens to wait until Nov. 1 to allow more hours of light for voting in the nation’s upcoming parliamentary elections, reports the BBC. However, anyone who uses internet- or radio-connected mobile devices or computers to tell time knows that those clocks sync automatically to international standards. Today, Oct. 26, many people in Turkey with the latest Apple, Android, and Windows devices woke up with their clocks an hour slower than the government’s. The hashtag #saatkac (“what’s the time”) is trending among Twitter users in the country. The government has done this before for national elections and university entrance exams, in each case delaying the clock changes by one day. This year, however, Turkey has asked citizens to wait 14 days before turning their clocks back. For the next two weeks, then, the country is on “Erdogan Time,” a national joke and a nod to president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s paternalistic reputation.
Philip Newton <philip.newton@gmail.com> writes:
However, anyone who uses internet- or radio-connected mobile devices or computers to tell time knows that those clocks sync automatically to international standards.
Of course, that's not actually true. They just use whatever they thought the time in the country was going to be when they were last updated. In an ideal world, the lesson Turkey (and other governments) should take away from this is that they need to give more than just a couple weeks of notice for changes like this.
On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 10:30 AM, Random832 <random832@fastmail.com> wrote:
an ideal world, the lesson Turkey (and other governments) should take away from this is that they need to give more than just a couple weeks of notice for changes like this.
Ideally, governments should take away from this that a sane government should not change civil time law instead of clearly communicating via print, radio, TV, and Internet exactly when a major event is supposed to occur.
On Oct 27, 2015, at 2:30 AM, Philip Newton <philip.newton@gmail.com> wrote:
http://qz.com/533126/turkeys-plan-to-ignore-daylight-saving-time-has-been-fo...
Turkey, like other countries on Eastern European Time (EET), was supposed to turn its clocks back by one hour on Sunday (Oct. 25) for the annual end of daylight saving time—or, as it’s known in Europe, “summer time.” But this year, the Turkish government told citizens to wait until Nov. 1 to allow more hours of light for voting in the nation’s upcoming parliamentary elections, reports the BBC.
However, anyone who uses internet- or radio-connected mobile devices or computers to tell time knows that those clocks sync automatically to international standards. Today, Oct. 26, many people in Turkey with the latest Apple, Android, and Windows devices woke up with their clocks an hour slower than the government’s.
That story certainly got some key facts wrong. One substantial error is the claim that timezone rules are "international standards". They are not, with the possible exception of the EU. Instead, they are national rules (at best), subject to national political whims. The other substantial error is the implication that software that changed on 10/26 is "latest". It may be the latest software release, but it clearly is not the latest tzdata release. Clearly it isn't sufficient for governments to announce this sort of thing with just 3 or 4 weeks lead time. paul
Paul_Koning@dell.com wrote:
Clearly it isn't sufficient for governments to announce this sort of thing with just 3 or 4 weeks lead time.
It's not just computers. The Diyanet (the Presidency of Religious Affairs) warned that preprinted calendars contain Muslim prayer times that are now incorrect, and asked the faithful to manually add an hour. <http://www.dailysabah.com/nation/2015/10/25/turkey-to-end-daylight-savings-t...>. My cell phone (running Android 6.0 Marshmallow, released 2015-10-05) still has the old rules for Asia/Istanbul. My work desktop (Fedora 21) and my home desktop (Ubuntu 15.10) do have the current rules. Other operating system distributions that are up to date include Arch Linux <https://www.archlinux.org/packages/core/any/tzdata/>, CentOS <https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2015-October/021425.html>, Debian <https://packages.debian.org/sid/tzdata>, Linux From Scratch <http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/ticket/3845>, Oracle Linux <https://oss.oracle.com/pipermail/el-errata/2015-October/005451.html>, Red Hat Enterprise Linux <https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHEA-2015-1863.html>, and Scientific Linux <http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/7.1/x86_64/updates/fastbugs/...>. Apologies if I missed your favorite OS distribution and if it is up to date. Obviously many operating systems are not yet updated, though; it's not just Android. This weekend's confusion probably deserves a comment, which the attached proposed patch adds.
FWIW, 2015g was included in iOS 9.1, watchOS 2.0.1, and OS X 10.11.1. Deborah
On Oct 27, 2015, at 10:19 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert@CS.UCLA.EDU> wrote:
Paul_Koning@dell.com wrote:
Clearly it isn't sufficient for governments to announce this sort of thing with just 3 or 4 weeks lead time.
It's not just computers. The Diyanet (the Presidency of Religious Affairs) warned that preprinted calendars contain Muslim prayer times that are now incorrect, and asked the faithful to manually add an hour. <http://www.dailysabah.com/nation/2015/10/25/turkey-to-end-daylight-savings-t...>.
My cell phone (running Android 6.0 Marshmallow, released 2015-10-05) still has the old rules for Asia/Istanbul. My work desktop (Fedora 21) and my home desktop (Ubuntu 15.10) do have the current rules. Other operating system distributions that are up to date include Arch Linux <https://www.archlinux.org/packages/core/any/tzdata/>, CentOS <https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2015-October/021425.html>, Debian <https://packages.debian.org/sid/tzdata>, Linux From Scratch <http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/ticket/3845>, Oracle Linux <https://oss.oracle.com/pipermail/el-errata/2015-October/005451.html>, Red Hat Enterprise Linux <https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHEA-2015-1863.html>, and Scientific Linux <http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/7.1/x86_64/updates/fastbugs/...>. Apologies if I missed your favorite OS distribution and if it is up to date. Obviously many operating systems are not yet updated, though; it's not just Android.
This weekend's confusion probably deserves a comment, which the attached proposed patch adds. <0001-europe-Add-comment-re-EEST-in-Turkey.patch>
Hi all, I'm from Uruguay, where we had a *very similar* situation a month ago: http://www.elobservador.com.uy/uruguayos-llegaron-una-hora-antes-sus-trabajo... (in Spanish, Google Translate is your friend) Actually I subscribed to this mailing list after this problem, and out of interest to learn how time zone maintenance and distribution works. Thanks! -Carlos On 10/27/15 12:25 PM, Paul_Koning@dell.com wrote:
On Oct 27, 2015, at 2:30 AM, Philip Newton <philip.newton@gmail.com> wrote:
http://qz.com/533126/turkeys-plan-to-ignore-daylight-saving-time-has-been-fo...
Turkey, like other countries on Eastern European Time (EET), was supposed to turn its clocks back by one hour on Sunday (Oct. 25) for the annual end of daylight saving time—or, as it’s known in Europe, “summer time.” But this year, the Turkish government told citizens to wait until Nov. 1 to allow more hours of light for voting in the nation’s upcoming parliamentary elections, reports the BBC.
However, anyone who uses internet- or radio-connected mobile devices or computers to tell time knows that those clocks sync automatically to international standards. Today, Oct. 26, many people in Turkey with the latest Apple, Android, and Windows devices woke up with their clocks an hour slower than the government’s.
That story certainly got some key facts wrong.
One substantial error is the claim that timezone rules are "international standards". They are not, with the possible exception of the EU. Instead, they are national rules (at best), subject to national political whims.
The other substantial error is the implication that software that changed on 10/26 is "latest". It may be the latest software release, but it clearly is not the latest tzdata release. Clearly it isn't sufficient for governments to announce this sort of thing with just 3 or 4 weeks lead time.
paul
participants (7)
-
Andrew Paprocki -
Carlos M. Martinez -
Deborah Goldsmith -
Paul Eggert -
Paul_Koning＠dell.com -
Philip Newton -
Random832