/Time Data

Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Time Zones

- Zain Rizvi tl;dr: 22 misconceptions, starting with: (1): UTC offsets go from -12 to +12. (2) Every UTC offset corresponds to exactly one time zone. (3) There are more countries in the world than time zones - there are 244 time zones used by the 195 countries in the world. (4) Every time zone has exactly one agreed upon name. (5) Time zones are always offset from UTC by an integer number of hours. 

featured in #497

The 2038 Problem

tl;dr: “”The 2038 problem" relates to an issue with how Unix-based systems store dates and timestamps. Most Unix systems use a 32-bit signed integer to represent the number of seconds since January 1st, 1970. This is known as the Unix epoch or Unix time. The core of the issue is that a 32-bit variable can only store integers up to 2147483647. Once the system clock ticks past this at 03:14:07 UTC on January 19, 2038, it will integer to overflow, setting its value to −(231).” 

featured in #496

35 Misconceptions About Date And Time

- Gérald Barré tl;dr: (1) Everybody uses the same calendar. (2) 1 year equals 12 months. (3) GMT is the same as UTC. (4) Time zone offsets are always integer numbers of hours. (5) Weeks start on Monday. And more.

featured in #372

Hate Leap Seconds? Imagine A Negative One

- Randy Au tl;dr: Earth's rotation, relative to the fixed stars, has sped up and is predicted to continue to do so. Although there are no immediate implications, if it continues over a sustained period of time, we might find ourselves having to consider a negative leap second, as explained here.

featured in #282

The Largely Untold Story Of How One Guy In California Keeps The World’s Computers Running On The Right Time Zone. (Well, Sort Of)

- Daniel Rosehill tl;dr: "Brief odyssey into the esoteric world of the tight-knit time zone data maintenance community who quietly keep the world’s computers from avoiding DST-related-meltdowns."

featured in #264

Exploring 120 Years Of Timezones

tl;dr: Since the rules for timezones are constantly in change, this post visualizes the increasing complexities of dealing with time related data.

featured in #253

Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Time Zones

- Zain Rizvi tl;dr: UTC offsets go from -12 to +12, every UTC offset corresponds to exactly one time zone, there are more countries in the world than time zones, and more.

featured in #212

Building A More Accurate Time Service At Facebook Scale

- Zoe Talamantes Oleg Obleukhov tl;dr: How FB improved accuracy from 10 milliseconds to 100 microseconds and verified these results in our timing laboratory.

featured in #177

Pendulum

- Sébastien Eustace tl;dr: When facing complex use-cases, "datetime instances show limitations" and are not intuitive. Pendulum provides "a cleaner and more easy to use API."

featured in #170

The Complexity of Time Data Programming

- Heimir Sverrisson

featured in #94.1