The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Quoth

DST is an awful WWI invention by either British or Germans, depending on what you read.

Causes loads of problems and only really works in two bands, as it's pointless in the Tropics and too far north/south (Iceland).

I couldn't agree more. There were moves to abolish it in the EU, but they seem to have come to nothing.

[issybird]

I love DST. Never was an hour's worth of sleep lost in a better cause than to get more light in the afternoons and evenings.

And that said, to keep it ranty: Google's taking over Fitbit and getting rid of the Fitbit dashboard was a disaster for users. I lost years' worth of weight data and my Fitbit scale doesn't sync anymore. I have a new old stock Fitbit Zip (my favorite tracker since it's petite and I don't care about anything but the count) but I have to be very careful about syncing or the battery drains in weeks. Not syncing has the same effect since it keeps trying to phone home.

Another rant: sometimes all you want to do is count your steps. When my old Zip died I went looking for a basic pedometer and not only were the reviews crappy overall, they were honking huge. Obviously tended for the geezer contingent (raises hand) but that was ridiculous.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I couldn't agree more. There were moves to abolish it in the EU, but they seem to have come to nothing.

Mainly due to UK opposition. Though UK has left the EU (against wishes of majority in Scotland and NI, and a flawed referendum were the main NI party got Russian finance), the end of DST still can't be implemented because of the UK, because you have a UK land border on the Island of Ireland. The island of Ireland can't be having two time zones for half the year.

IST = Irish Standard Time = UTC+1, so while UK, Ireland and Portugal are the same time, the UK and Irish times are defined differently. Spain was also the same till Franco won and changed Spanish time to be the same as Germany as a sop to his NAZI friends.

See where Spain is on a map and look North.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Mainly due to UK opposition. Though UK has left the EU (against wishes of majority in Scotland and NI, and a flawed referendum were the main NI party got Russian finance), the end of DST still can't be implemented because of the UK, because you have a UK land border on the Island of Ireland. The island of Ireland can't be having two time zones for half the year.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of DST, but why would a land border make DST impossible? Timezone changes happen across land borders all over the place.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by meeera

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of DST, but why would a land border make DST impossible? Timezone changes happen across land borders all over the place.

It happens in the US.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It happens in the US.

It happens on every continent, and in any country large enough (except China).

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by meeera

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of DST, but why would a land border make DST impossible? Timezone changes happen across land borders all over the place.

Because it's a land border in Ireland created by the British in 1922. Brexit created all manner of difficulties at that border that contravened British law.

Also 1/2 the year it would be the same time.

So the EU decided that because of the unique situation on the SMALL Island of Ireland, where nearly 1/2 identify as Irish in the British held part, that the UK still has a veto on DST. It's not a Catholic / Protestant split either. Six counties of the 9 county province of Ulster are in the UK instead of Ireland since 1922. In fact the vast majority of Unionists apart from a Nationalist Enclave in Belfast and a Unionist one in Londonderry / Derry lived in only 3 counties and mostly Antrim and Down. The River Bann starts in the Mourne Mountains and flows west then north into Lough Neagh. The lower Bann then north from Lough Neagh to the Atlantic coast. That would have been a fairer Nationalist - Unionist boundary. There was meant to be a boundary commission but it never sat. UK invented huge debts and offered to write them off if the Boundary Commission was scrapped.

The UK was only created in 1800, though the Pope gave Ireland to Henry II in 12th C.

See "Good Friday Agreement".

It would be equivalent to Florida having two time zones for only half the year and part of it being occupied by France, Spain or Mexico.

[BetterRed]

In Australia DST is a state issue, Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia don't have; New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia do have.

From time to time the burghers of south east Queensland try to introduce DST for their corner of the state (it's the most populous region) to align with the southern states. Queensland is 2243 km (1394 m) tall, which is about the distance between Miami and Cochrane, Ontario; or Palermo and Oslo.

OTOH: the two parts of Samoa are divided by the International Date Line, American Samoa is a day behind the Independent State of Samoa.

[PeterT]

Neat. Someone mentioning Cochrane, Ontario. I went there with my parents years ago to catch the train to Moosonee (The Polar Bear Express).

I'll always remember my father asking to see the wine list in Moosonee and the waiter returning with a bottle of Kressmann Red in one hand and a bottle of Kressmann White in the other. That and the fact that although we were at the southern end of James Bay there was no fresh fish on the menu

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Neat. Someone mentioning Cochrane, Ontario. I went there with my parents years ago to catch the train to Moosonee (The Polar Bear Express). (

Closest I would have ever got was when my cousin took me canoeing in Algonquin National Park. On the same trip I stayed a couple of nights at the Algonquin NYC, which was planned, the canoeing wasn't.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Because it's a land border in Ireland created by the British in 1922. Brexit created all manner of difficulties at that border that contravened British law.

Also 1/2 the year it would be the same time.

So the EU decided that because of the unique situation on the SMALL Island of Ireland, where nearly 1/2 identify as Irish in the British held part, that the UK still has a veto on DST. It's not a Catholic / Protestant split either. Six counties of the 9 county province of Ulster are in the UK instead of Ireland since 1922. In fact the vast majority of Unionists apart from a Nationalist Enclave in Belfast and a Unionist one in Londonderry / Derry lived in only 3 counties and mostly Antrim and Down. The River Bann starts in the Mourne Mountains and flows west then north into Lough Neagh. The lower Bann then north from Lough Neagh to the Atlantic coast. That would have been a fairer Nationalist - Unionist boundary. There was meant to be a boundary commission but it never sat. UK invented huge debts and offered to write them off if the Boundary Commission was scrapped.

The UK was only created in 1800, though the Pope gave Ireland to Henry II in 12th C.

See "Good Friday Agreement".

It would be equivalent to Florida having two time zones for only half the year and part of it being occupied by France, Spain or Mexico.

This is an enormous amount of extraneous information. Is the key part "because the UK won't let them"? So it has little or nothing to do with the fact that it's a land border?

Because there are actual towns in Australia where part of the town flips to DST and part doesn't.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by meeera

This is an enormous amount of extraneous information. Is the key part "because the UK won't let them"? So it has little or nothing to do with the fact that it's a land border?

Because there are actual towns in Australia where part of the town flips to DST and part doesn't.

Obviously you don't get it.

[BetterRed]

I assumed that the UK and Ireland would be in the same time zone via them being in the Common Travel Area, an agreement that predates the existence of the EU and its foreunners by almost 30 years, and entered into a full 50 years before they joined the EEC in 1973. If they're not the same now then that's surely down to the EU's awkward squad.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I assumed that the UK and Ireland would be in the same time zone via them being in the Common Travel Area, an agreement that predates the existence of the EU and its foreunners by almost 30 years,

Why would free travel and timezones be connected? Mainland Australia has five timezones, more if you count the little niche ones like Central Western, with no travel restrictions at all. As I said, there are _towns_ with more than one timezone.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I assumed that the UK and Ireland would be in the same time zone via them being in the Common Travel Area, an agreement that predates the existence of the EU and its foreunners by almost 30 years, and entered into a full 50 years before they joined the EEC in 1973. If they're not the same now then that's surely down to the EU's awkward squad.

No, it dates from Railways in the 19th C. Ireland had separate time and indeed before railways many places in Great Britain (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1800 and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland maybe from 1923, they nearly reverted to just GB after 1921).

Almost half the population of Northern Ireland and almost all the population of The Irish Free State (Later just Ireland, Éire is Irish and the name has never been The Republic of Ireland) never accepted the unilaterally imposed partition of 1921. Actually a step towards independence was promised in 1914, but WWI came. The IRA had about zero support before the so-called Easter Rising, designed to provoke British atrocities, as has all IRA campaigns since.

The 1998 Good Friday agreement leveraged the membership of UK & Ireland both in the EU, so that Nationalists in NI could really identify as Irish and Unionists in NI really identify as British. The Assembly was a non-Demcratic Fudge because the First Minster and Second Minister have to come from Nationalist and Unionist parties or vice versa. Not all NI parties in NI are Unionist or Nationalist.

The Republican (non-constitutional Nationalists) and Loyalist (non-constitutional Unionists) terrorists mostly disarmed (there were later breakaway groups.

There had never been a border fence, but from 1922 there were customs posts and from 1970 military checkpoints. After 1998 GFA all the customs posts and army checkpoints and towers removed. It was as if NI was simultaneously in the UK and Ireland, via the magic of both being in the EU. The original 1914 plan was no partition, but the IRA violence from 1916 gave the British the excuse to partition to placate the Unionists and to have Unionist votes in Westminster.

Then Brexit. The UK was unable to negotiate an exit without taking into account the laws of the UK and the Treaties etc regarding NI!
The EU managed eventually to come up with a formula and essentially Boris Johnson agreed what Theresa May had been sacked for suggesting.

Magically, though UK has left the EU, there is still no physical border or customs posts on the island of Ireland between the six counties of 9 county Ulster comprising Northern Ireland, and the other 26 counties of Ireland.

So a DST in NI and no DST in the rest of Ireland is impossible. NI and the rest of Ireland have never been in different time zone as such apart from brief failed experiments of different DST.