Astrology

Posted Sep 29, 2021 16:05 UTC (Wed) by Homer512 (subscriber, #85295)
In reply to: Astrology by tialaramex
Parent article: A fork for the time-zone database?

Leaving aside whether FOSS should make value judgements on its usage (there's a reason why "Do no harm" licenses are not considered free), an easy example where TZ could screw people over would be birth certificates. My birth day is recorded with time and day. If this happens to be around midnight around a DST change, loss of historical data could easily screw me over. Because now my in-paper certificate shows one date (in local time) and the government database (in UTC) shows another date when converted to local time.

Let's hope whoever built the database didn't follow best-practices and just keep all dates in local time without specifying time zones. Now the worst that could happen is that my retirement kicks in a day late or so.

Astrology

Posted Oct 1, 2021 11:21 UTC (Fri) by tonyfinn (guest, #144891) [Link] (1 responses)

> Let's hope whoever built the database didn't follow best-practices and just keep all dates in local time without specifying time zones. Now the worst that could happen is that my retirement kicks in a day late or so.

Or you get refused for important documents, background checks, or whatever because you provided the "wrong" date of birth?

Astrology

Posted Oct 2, 2021 11:01 UTC (Sat) by Homer512 (subscriber, #85295) [Link]

Store the date without time-zone info and it will always fit my on-paper documents which obviously were written in local time. I'd say this is the safer option for background checks. It just means that my age may drift by an hour or so because no one compensates for changes in local time-zones. Of course this could also cause issues.

Astrology

Posted Oct 3, 2021 7:29 UTC (Sun) by tedd (subscriber, #74183) [Link] (3 responses)

Do people convert their date of birth if and when they move across timezones? It may not matter if you're just moving from one coast to another (in countries that have more than one timezone), but what if you're an expat living on the other side of the world. Does your birth date change?

Astrology

Posted Oct 3, 2021 10:08 UTC (Sun) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Most important documents that ask for "date of birth" also ask for "place of birth" (passports, visa forms, things like that) and it is assumed that the date of birth as given is applicable to the place of birth. Otherwise it would be chaos.

Astrology

Posted Oct 3, 2021 12:23 UTC (Sun) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (1 responses)

Some people seek to celebrate with their families back home, so there are certainly those who celebrate "a day early" or "a day late".

Astrology

Posted Oct 4, 2021 13:39 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

And some people celebrate up to two years late or early ... my mum could only celebrate "on the day" one year in four ... :-)

Cheers,
Wol