Hacker News Reader

Comment by samwillis | Hacker News Reader

I wander if we need a new version of ISO8601 which includes the TZ location rather than just an offset. Something like:

  2022-03-13T07:21:39@Europe/London

I suppose that’s also problematic if the location changes to a different time zone due to boundary changes. Maybe we need a coordinate (and planetary body) system:

  2022-03-13T07:21:39@Earth/51.5055853,-0.1014699

We need that full frame of reference to be sure we will be correct in future.

View on HN

I think tzdata timezone locations (like Europe/London) are fully sufficient, since they are tracking the clock everyone uses in that location. If the boundaries change, then so will the clock for everyone in that boundary, so the time probably won't be right regardless.

I think coordinates are not completely right, since the time context is mostly political/cultural, not geographic. I don't have examples but I can easily imagine a border region specifying some event in a time that is referencing the region across the border.

> I think coordinates are not completely right, since the time context is mostly political/cultural, not geographic.

My point was that geopolitical boundaries change and so what the “major” city near by for reference is now, may be wrong in the future. Coordinates ensure it’s completely future proof from boundary changes and correct to an exact location.

There will always be outliers. If you're scheduling a meeting in a small town on the border of 2 countries that honor different time-zones, then you're probably just going to have to pick one to be the source of truth, and hope it's the other side causing the disruption (changing their clocks) and they'll pay for the administrative overhead.

This happened when Mexico and US stopped being on the same DST schedule - San Diego and Tijuana now have a time difference part of the year.

Well, there's also continental drift :-) honestly everything we do in IT is approximation - some of them are worth accounting for, many are not - at least for most of us.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com