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Comment by throw0101b | Hacker News Reader

> 2:20 p.m. ET

Amused at "ET".

I guess they didn't want to confuse people with EDT (which we're currently 'in') and EST ('winter time', which will be 'entered' on November 5).

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This is the standard way to refer to the eastern US time zone, exactly to reduce the confusion you mention

Seconded. For normal conversation, I started using PT/MT/CT/ET. I can’t ever remember if it’s daylight savings or not, and people generally understand what you mean.

ET, EST, EDT, EST5EDT, US/Eastern, Zone R, and various America/* timezones are all defined names for this zone in various standards.

There are finite timezones affected, I wonder why they don’t just provide a table of all local times.

I wonder how confusing this is for residents of areas that don’t observe daylight savings, such as Arizona, Puerto Rico or the Hopi nation.

> […] Arizona, Puerto Rico or the Hopi nation.

There's some Inception-level stuff going on here: the state of Arizona does not observer DST, the Najavo nation with-in Arizona does, but then the Hopi nation with-in Najavo nation does not:

* https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2016/03/1...

Another weird one is American Samoa. The Uniform Time Act—which requires areas to switch to and from DST in a uniform manner—has no provisions for areas on the Southern hemisphere. So if American Samoa wanted to observe daylight savings—which they might have prior to 2021 when neighboring Independent Samoa was on DST—they would have to do so with the rest of USA, which is in their winter time.

I expect they're already used to dealing with it.

At one time, Indiana residents could be in four different de facto time zones (Eastern/Central, did/did not observe DST). It's been simplified a lot in recent years.

I’m kicking myself for losing track of it, but I bought an old booklet that described changes in Indiana time zones in the 50s and 60s. Different communities would observe different time zones, and sometimes a community would change zones between years.

Probably no more confusing than the time zone shift itself. If what you're after is “the time in New York, regardless of the time zone New York is in” — which is generally what you want to express — then “ET” is perfect for the job.

I've never been able to remember which time we're in so I always just use the two character version. It's not like it actually matters except when planning a meeting after a transition will occur.

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