[Discuss] Abolish DST (was This year's Beowulf Bash is not for the lily-livered)

[me at mattgillen.net (Matthew Gillen)]

On 11/23/2021 11:29 AM, grg wrote:
> and we're supposed to teach computers to deal with this garbage??  what a
> colossal waste of time (measured in which standard?;)  - even if necessary
> if we want computers to interact with these inconsistent and mercurial
> humans.  (do I sound bitter about this?;)
> 
> everything about time is arbitrary and it changes all the time.  forgive me
> if I can't get worked up about a 1-hr shift every half revolution or so.

Amen.

What's a bit ironic about this is that our human-invented system is so 
complicated we now need computers to help us keep track.  Tucson, AZ 
doesn't recognize DST, and naturally my company has an office there.  If 
the calendaring application didn't know all our stupid human rules (that 
satisfy some trite political purpose) and do the conversion for me, I 
don't think I'd ever have a scheduled meeting with them.

Of the hundreds of offices, this /one/ has extra special rules compared 
to all the others.  My brain doesn't have room for those kind of details.

It's a minor annoyance how often my machines need to update the tzdata 
package (how often can this change really???), but I suppose I should be 
thankful that every time it updates, that's one less dumb exception or 
change I have to have conscious knowledge about.

I sleep well at night knowing real computers store their time in UTC, 
and only care about tzdata for display purposes.

Matt