Kind of puzzled about timestamps

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

On 3/8/21 7:28 AM, John Abreau wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, Mar 6, 2021 at 7:48 PM Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com <mailto:dragonhawk at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     On Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 9:57 PM Joshua Judson Rosen
>     <rozzin at hackerposse.com <mailto:rozzin at hackerposse.com>> wrote:
>      > And as a general word of advice from someone whose been burnt way too many times:
>      > if you're going to put timestamps in your filenames, either just use UTC
>      > or explicitly indicate which timezone the timestamps are assuming.
> 
>     Even that's not enough, because the stupid humans keep changing what
>     the time zones mean.  Say you find a file that has a stored time of
>     2007 MAR 31 17:00 UTC.  If that file was written before 2005, then the
>     offset to US Eastern is 5 hours.  If that file was written after 2005,
>     the offset is 4 hours.  Which did the human mean when they instructed
>     the computer to write the file?  No way of knowing, in the general
>     case.
> 
> 
> I'd argue that this case does not matter, because the human is making a reference to an event in the future, and it is impossible in principle to anticipate unexpected future changes in such definitions.
> 
> You could plan a vacation in Switzerland in 2030, but if an asteroid obliterates Switzerland in 2028, your vacation plans become null and void. It's not a contingency you need to plan for when making your vacation plans.
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29 Date input formats
*********************

First, a quote:

      Our units of temporal measurement, from seconds on up to months,
      are so complicated, asymmetrical and disjunctive so as to make
      coherent mental reckoning in time all but impossible.  Indeed, had
      some tyrannical god contrived to enslave our minds to time, to make
      it all but impossible for us to escape subjection to sodden
      routines and unpleasant surprises, he could hardly have done better
      than handing down our present system.  It is like a set of
      trapezoidal building blocks, with no vertical or horizontal
      surfaces, like a language in which the simplest thought demands
      ornate constructions, useless particles and lengthy
      circumlocutions.  Unlike the more successful patterns of language
      and science, which enable us to face experience boldly or at least
      level-headedly, our system of temporal calculation silently and
      persistently encourages our terror of time.

      ... It is as though architects had to measure length in feet, width
      in meters and height in ells; as though basic instruction manuals
      demanded a knowledge of five different languages.  It is no wonder
      then that we often look into our own immediate past or future, last
      Tuesday or a week from Sunday, with feelings of helpless confusion.
      ...

      —Robert Grudin, ‘Time and the Art of Living’.

-----Info: (coreutils)Date input formats, 50 lines --Top------------------------


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