Blog Post: On the Timing of Time Zone Changes

I've written a blog post describing the chaos that ensues when governments don't provide enough notice of their changes to time zones. http://codeofmatt.com/2016/04/23/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/ <http://aka.ms/weboutlook> Enjoy! -Matt

Excelent work. You missed Uruguay, who went throw something very similar to what turkey went through but a couple of months before. Actually, what happened in Uruguay and the inability of government officials to even understand what went wrong is what brought me here to this mailing list. I'll share your post widely ! -Carlos Sent using CloudMagic Email [https://cloudmagic.com/k/d/mailapp?ct=pi&cv=7.6.23&pv=9.3&source=email_foote...] On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 8:15 PM, Matt Johnson <mj1856@hotmail.com> wrote: I've written a blog post describing the chaos that ensues when governments don't provide enough notice of their changes to time zones. http://codeofmatt.com/2016/04/23/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/ [http://codeofmatt.com/2016/04/23/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/] [http://aka.ms/weboutlook] Enjoy! -Matt

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I thought about Uruguay, but I had to draw a line somewhere. Turkey seemed like a good starting point, due to the news coverage. There were a few others in that time period as well, such as Cayman Islands, who led us all to think they would start DST and then cancelled it. And of course, many other countries have done this over the years. I just thought it would be good to document the problem. -Matt ________________________________ From: Carlos Marcelo Martinez Cagnazzo <carlosm3011@gmail.com> Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2016 4:50 PM To: Matt Johnson Cc: Time zone mailing list Subject: Re: [tz] Blog Post: On the Timing of Time Zone Changes Excelent work. You missed Uruguay, who went throw something very similar to what turkey went through but a couple of months before. Actually, what happened in Uruguay and the inability of government officials to even understand what went wrong is what brought me here to this mailing list. I'll share your post widely ! -Carlos Sent using CloudMagic Email<https://cloudmagic.com/k/d/mailapp?ct=pi&cv=7.6.23&pv=9.3&source=email_foote...> On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 8:15 PM, Matt Johnson <mj1856@hotmail.com> wrote: I've written a blog post describing the chaos that ensues when governments don't provide enough notice of their changes to time zones. http://codeofmatt.com/2016/04/23/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/ <http://aka.ms/weboutlook> Enjoy! -Matt

On Saturday, April 23, 2016, Matt Johnson <mj1856@hotmail.com> wrote:
I've written a blog post describing the chaos that ensues when governments don't provide enough notice of their changes to time zones.
http://codeofmatt.com/2016/04/23/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes
Interesting. I notice that you didn't ask for clarity in the announcements about the time when the transitions occur, but that is a common cause of concern to the TZ community. Would it be worth adding that? -- Jonathan Leffler <jonathan.leffler@gmail.com> #include <disclaimer.h> Guardian of DBD::Informix - v2015.1101 - http://dbi.perl.org "Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be amused."

That's an excellent idea. Added to the list of recommendations in the article. Thanks! -Matt ________________________________ From: Jonathan Leffler <jonathan.leffler@gmail.com> Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2016 9:41 PM To: Matt Johnson Cc: Time zone mailing list Subject: Re: [tz] Blog Post: On the Timing of Time Zone Changes On Saturday, April 23, 2016, Matt Johnson <mj1856@hotmail.com<mailto:mj1856@hotmail.com>> wrote: I've written a blog post describing the chaos that ensues when governments don't provide enough notice of their changes to time zones. http://codeofmatt.com/2016/04/23/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes<http://codeofmatt.com/2016/04/23/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/> <http://aka.ms/weboutlook> Interesting. I notice that you didn't ask for clarity in the announcements about the time when the transitions occur, but that is a common cause of concern to the TZ community. Would it be worth adding that? -- Jonathan Leffler <jonathan.leffler@gmail.com<mailto:jonathan.leffler@gmail.com>> #include <disclaimer.h> Guardian of DBD::Informix - v2015.1101 - http://dbi.perl.org "Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be amused."

Excellent as always Matt.. On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 8:55 AM, Matt Johnson <mj1856@hotmail.com> wrote:
That's an excellent idea. Added to the list of recommendations in the article.
Thanks!
-Matt
------------------------------ *From:* Jonathan Leffler <jonathan.leffler@gmail.com> *Sent:* Saturday, April 23, 2016 9:41 PM *To:* Matt Johnson *Cc:* Time zone mailing list *Subject:* Re: [tz] Blog Post: On the Timing of Time Zone Changes
On Saturday, April 23, 2016, Matt Johnson <mj1856@hotmail.com> wrote:
I've written a blog post describing the chaos that ensues when governments don't provide enough notice of their changes to time zones.
http://codeofmatt.com/2016/04/23/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes
Interesting. I notice that you didn't ask for clarity in the announcements about the time when the transitions occur, but that is a common cause of concern to the TZ community. Would it be worth adding that?
-- Jonathan Leffler <jonathan.leffler@gmail.com> #include <disclaimer.h> Guardian of DBD::Informix - v2015.1101 - http://dbi.perl.org "Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be amused."
-- Soner Gönül http://sonergonul.net http://twitter.com/sonergonul

Thanks and good work. Attached is a proposed patch to tz-link.htm to mention this topic and cite your blog post. (One nit in your post: two instances of "it's" should be "its".)

Just an onlooker... but if you changed the policy to an automatic 90 or 180 delay between notice of tz change and public release of new databases versions... that would tend to draw public attention to violations of the policy. John Alvord On Apr 24, 2016 12:23 PM, "Paul Eggert" <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
Thanks and good work. Attached is a proposed patch to tz-link.htm to mention this topic and cite your blog post. (One nit in your post: two instances of "it's" should be "its".)

That would simply shift the release burden from Paul to the tens/hundreds of others who patch everyone around the world in various OSes/platforms. We're not going to let our customers fail and see an incorrect time. The only "public" that would know about this is anyone subscribed to the mailing list. -Andrew On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 10:16 PM, John Alvord <johngrahamalvord@gmail.com> wrote:
Just an onlooker... but if you changed the policy to an automatic 90 or 180 delay between notice of tz change and public release of new databases versions... that would tend to draw public attention to violations of the policy.
John Alvord On Apr 24, 2016 12:23 PM, "Paul Eggert" <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
Thanks and good work. Attached is a proposed patch to tz-link.htm to mention this topic and cite your blog post. (One nit in your post: two instances of "it's" should be "its".)

On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 10:16 AM, John Alvord <johngrahamalvord@gmail.com> wrote:
Just an onlooker... but if you changed the policy to an automatic 90 or 180 delay between notice of tz change and public release of new databases versions... that would tend to draw public attention to violations of the policy.
That would be causing pain to people who can do little about it. While deeply satisfying, it would be the wrong thing to do for our users. See the list of countries that make these last-minute changes, and look them up on the a Transparency or Freedom list. -- Sanjeev Gupta +65 98551208 http://www.linkedin.com/in/ghane

I'd be against this. It would result in more use of unofficial and unreleased data, or manual hacking of downstream systems. A better plan is to work on two fronts: 1) Increase awareness so that governments might try to provide more lead time in the future, and 2) work on technical solutions to improve distribution of tz data, reducing the amount of lead time necessary (which varies per implementation). -Matt ________________________________ From: John Alvord <johngrahamalvord@gmail.com> Sent: Sunday, April 24, 2016 7:16 PM To: Paul Eggert Cc: Matt Johnson; Time Zone Mailing List Subject: Re: [tz] Blog Post: On the Timing of Time Zone Changes Just an onlooker... but if you changed the policy to an automatic 90 or 180 delay between notice of tz change and public release of new databases versions... that would tend to draw public attention to violations of the policy. John Alvord On Apr 24, 2016 12:23 PM, "Paul Eggert" <eggert@cs.ucla.edu<mailto:eggert@cs.ucla.edu>> wrote: Thanks and good work. Attached is a proposed patch to tz-link.htm to mention this topic and cite your blog post. (One nit in your post: two instances of "it's" should be "its".)

On 4/25/16 12:33, Matt Johnson wrote:
I'd be against this. It would result in more use of unofficial and unreleased data, or manual hacking of downstream systems.
A better plan is to work on two fronts: 1) Increase awareness so that governments might try to provide more lead time in the future, and 2) work on technical solutions to improve distribution of tz data, reducing the amount of lead time necessary (which varies per implementation).
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc7808/
-Matt
------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:* John Alvord <johngrahamalvord@gmail.com> *Sent:* Sunday, April 24, 2016 7:16 PM *To:* Paul Eggert *Cc:* Matt Johnson; Time Zone Mailing List *Subject:* Re: [tz] Blog Post: On the Timing of Time Zone Changes
Just an onlooker... but if you changed the policy to an automatic 90 or 180 delay between notice of tz change and public release of new databases versions... that would tend to draw public attention to violations of the policy.
John Alvord
On Apr 24, 2016 12:23 PM, "Paul Eggert" <eggert@cs.ucla.edu <mailto:eggert@cs.ucla.edu>> wrote:
Thanks and good work. Attached is a proposed patch to tz-link.htm to mention this topic and cite your blog post. (One nit in your post: two instances of "it's" should be "its".)

On 25/04/16 17:52, Michael Douglass wrote:
2) work on technical solutions to improve distribution of tz data, reducing the amount of lead time necessary (which varies per implementation).
All we need now is a fully populated source of TZ data via a master tzdist server :) -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk

On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 8:15 PM, Matt Johnson <mj1856@hotmail.com> wrote:
I've written a blog post describing the chaos that ensues when governments don't provide enough notice of their changes to time zones.
http://codeofmatt.com/2016/04/23/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/
Hi Matt: Excelent post, thank you for writing (and publishing it). I've been on this list for quite some time but I usually read it only now and then or when Argentina's government dedides to do "the stupid thing". Since we've been stuck on the same TZ for quite a few years now, I seldom come here. In October 2008 (after a tzdata update was missed by several sources) I wrote a post mostly to explain to my connationals WTF had happened that weekend (https://clueless.com.ar/que-hora-es). A few days later I published a plead to sysadmins from different provinces asking for information (with sources) about wheather TZ change would go on as planned or (most likely) be suspended as in most of the country. I am quite busy at the moment but, nonetheless, I'd very much like to translate your post into Spanish (obviously giving you credit and linking to the original post). Would you mind me translating it and publishing it? (or I could send you the translation and you can publish it if you prefer). -- Mariano Absatz - El Baby www.clueless.com.ar

Yes, I am fine with anyone translating and republishing as long as appropriate credit and linkback are provided. Thanks. -Matt ________________________________ From: el.baby@gmail.com <el.baby@gmail.com> on behalf of Mariano Absatz - el Baby <baby@baby.com.ar> Sent: Monday, April 25, 2016 11:21 AM To: Matt Johnson Cc: Time zone mailing list Subject: Re: [tz] Blog Post: On the Timing of Time Zone Changes On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 8:15 PM, Matt Johnson <mj1856@hotmail.com<mailto:mj1856@hotmail.com>> wrote: I've written a blog post describing the chaos that ensues when governments don't provide enough notice of their changes to time zones. http://codeofmatt.com/2016/04/23/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/ <http://aka.ms/weboutlook> Hi Matt: Excelent post, thank you for writing (and publishing it). I've been on this list for quite some time but I usually read it only now and then or when Argentina's government dedides to do "the stupid thing". Since we've been stuck on the same TZ for quite a few years now, I seldom come here. In October 2008 (after a tzdata update was missed by several sources) I wrote a post mostly to explain to my connationals WTF had happened that weekend (https://clueless.com.ar/que-hora-es). A few days later I published a plead to sysadmins from different provinces asking for information (with sources) about wheather TZ change would go on as planned or (most likely) be suspended as in most of the country. I am quite busy at the moment but, nonetheless, I'd very much like to translate your post into Spanish (obviously giving you credit and linking to the original post). Would you mind me translating it and publishing it? (or I could send you the translation and you can publish it if you prefer). -- Mariano Absatz - El Baby www.clueless.com.ar<http://www.clueless.com.ar/>

Well, it took me 3 months (actually, it took me a week in the hospital and away from work which allowed me to concentrate in this), but I did translate your excelent post into Spanish. It is at https://clueless.com.ar/acerca-del-momento-en-que-se-anuncian-los-cambios-en... and, as you can see at the top, I credited you and linked to the original post (if you want me to change anything about this, just tell me so). I also added a personal addendum in the end (and clearly marked as mine) to refer to the years when my country did the wildest things about timezone changes. Regards. -- Mariano Absatz - El Baby www.clueless.com.ar On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 3:25 PM, Matt Johnson <mj1856@hotmail.com> wrote:
Yes, I am fine with anyone translating and republishing as long as appropriate credit and linkback are provided. Thanks.
-Matt
------------------------------ *From:* el.baby@gmail.com <el.baby@gmail.com> on behalf of Mariano Absatz - el Baby <baby@baby.com.ar> *Sent:* Monday, April 25, 2016 11:21 AM *To:* Matt Johnson *Cc:* Time zone mailing list *Subject:* Re: [tz] Blog Post: On the Timing of Time Zone Changes
On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 8:15 PM, Matt Johnson <mj1856@hotmail.com> wrote:
I've written a blog post describing the chaos that ensues when governments don't provide enough notice of their changes to time zones.
http://codeofmatt.com/2016/04/23/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/
Hi Matt:
Excelent post, thank you for writing (and publishing it). I've been on this list for quite some time but I usually read it only now and then or when Argentina's government dedides to do "the stupid thing". Since we've been stuck on the same TZ for quite a few years now, I seldom come here.
In October 2008 (after a tzdata update was missed by several sources) I wrote a post mostly to explain to my connationals WTF had happened that weekend (https://clueless.com.ar/que-hora-es). A few days later I published a plead to sysadmins from different provinces asking for information (with sources) about wheather TZ change would go on as planned or (most likely) be suspended as in most of the country.
I am quite busy at the moment but, nonetheless, I'd very much like to translate your post into Spanish (obviously giving you credit and linking to the original post). Would you mind me translating it and publishing it? (or I could send you the translation and you can publish it if you prefer).
-- Mariano Absatz - El Baby www.clueless.com.ar
participants (11)
-
Andrew Paprocki
-
Carlos Marcelo Martinez Cagnazzo
-
John Alvord
-
Jonathan Leffler
-
Lester Caine
-
Mariano Absatz - el Baby
-
Matt Johnson
-
Michael Douglass
-
Paul Eggert
-
Sanjeev Gupta
-
Soner Gönül