Debian 13, Postgres, and the US/* time zones

> You're telling me you didn't notice ? It was...

In a large fraction of cases in the FOSS world, it comes across that the developers really do want to communicate this sort of thing, but there's no clarity on where or how they should do so. See for example various deprecations in Python packaging tools (and standards).

Then you get the reverse. I just upgraded to macOS Sonoma (yes I'm always one major version behind with Apple stuff...), and I was annoyed as heck when I had to click through "Look what's new in Calendar!", "Look what's new in Reminders!", "Look what's new in StripClubs!"... I need to use my software right now, I will not read this. Then I will forget it ever popped up, and will not read it in the future either.

In this case, they did communicate it, and the aforegiven Vogon reference is a mischaracterization. The naming convention is in the current IANA doco and Eggert copy.

* https://data.iana.org/time-zones/tz-link.html#tzdb

* https://web.cs.ucla.edu/~eggert/tz/tz-link.htm#tzdb

Paul Eggert explained the continent/ocean plus largest city naming convention on a WWW page almost a quarter of a century ago. The WWW page was so well publicized that you can find its URL baked into at least four of the O'Reilly animal-cover books from the early 2000s.

* https://web.archive.org/web/20011023074744/http://www.twinsu...

It was explained on Usenet and on mailing lists prior to that.

You know, the tzdata people are quite haughty. They claim to store all that change, accurately, and yet here we are.

An example of this falsehood? Well, in the 70s my father convinced most of my hometown, at least the portions between Main St and Wharf, that DST was absurd.

For almost an entire year, this was observed.

Do you think they kept record in tzdata? I tried to convince them, but no! I still have some dateplanners my father had printed up, and even a picture of the sign that was out on the road (to alert visitors!).

But no!

Do not trust the tzdata people. As you can see, they are not so accurate.

Once upon a time I stumbled upon a small book of maps showing the time zones in Indiana each year in the mid-20th century. It was fascinating to see how various towns and cities would jump back and forth between Eastern and Central year to year, with little regard for the surrounding rural areas.

I frequently kick myself for losing track of that book.

There's a vast difference between Apple showing you all it's useless new AI integrations and developers telling system administrators what they need to know.

And I think Debian sent those notes also via its mail system (exim + mail). I don’t usually care for my workstation, but I do check it for my servers.

You are just not providing sufficient proof. Think Wikipedia style proof. The fact that DST is or isn't observed should be published in a real book. A random dude printing some date planners or putting up a sign to be photographed isn't enough proof.

NEWS.Debian entries are displayed by apt-listchanges in a pager by default when running apt upgrade, as well as sent by email.

It seems like they're being pragmatic, not haughty:

> "The tz database is not authoritative, and it surely has errors. [...] Errors in the tz database arise from many sources: Sometimes, different people in the same city maintain clocks that differ significantly. [...] Even if the time is specified by law, locations sometimes deliberately flout the law. [...] Any attempt to pass the tz database off as the definition of time should be unacceptable to anybody who cares about the facts."

https://data.iana.org/time-zones/theory.html#accuracy

If you'd be willing to scan/post those I'd love to see them!