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

(rachelbythebay.com)
283 points move-on-by | 2 comments | 12 Sep 25 02:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.442s | source
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nja ◴[12 Sep 25 14:10 UTC] No.45222350[source]▶
I'm still not totally sure why these names were deprecated in the first place...

I mean, the folks who run the tz db definitely know what they're doing, it just never 100% clicked with my thinking.

I always prefer `US/Eastern` over `America/New_York` -- it seems more "canonical" to me. New York is _currently_ the anchor city for ET, but will it always be? The place I live (Boston) is currently on ET, but in the future it might be on Atlantic Time. If there was an `America/Boston`, I would use that to be safe, but since there isn't, it just seems better to be to be specific that I mean "Eastern Time" and not "whatever the time is in NYC"... At least then if Boston switches to a different tz, I could intentionally switch to "Atlantic Time" -- doesn't that make more sense? Versus I guess what I'd have to do, which is switch to `America/Puerto_Rico`? (I had to actually search that one, too bad there's no `US/Atlantic`...)

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1. themafia ◴[12 Sep 25 17:46 UTC] No.45224650[source]▶
> the folks who run the tz db definitely know what they're doing

It's one guy. He demonstrably does NOT know what he's doing.

> I always prefer `US/Eastern`

As you should. It's the actual name of the timezone as published by the entity that defines it. Outside of the goofy definitions in the tz file it's what everyone living _inside_ of that timezone would call it and see it referenced as.

To call this "backwards" is an absolute insult to civil time keeping and drives me insane.

> doesn't that make more sense?

I always thought it should be served through DNS. Then each country can just define it's own TZ record type and embed it at the root of their country code domain and could expand on it however they like.

eastern.timezone.us

Also, since domain names have punycode for internationalization, you could actually call timezones in countries like Mexico what they're actually named for end users.

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2. TheNewsIsHere ◴[12 Sep 25 18:25 UTC] No.45225042[source]▶
This is a fantastic idea.

You could use this to promulgate SRV records that direct you to a country’s authoritative time servers, too.