Steve B.

If you drive west thru northern Arizona in summer, you pass from NM (mt. time) to the Navaho Rez., 1 hr different, then thru the Hopi Rez., so back to mt. time, then back into the Navaho territory, different time and then maybe out of the Navaho Rez. and into the state of Arizona or Utah, so different time again.

downtube42

Thankfully I can just google "what time is it in Pune", and not struggle with the base 12, 30-minute offset, DST impacted arithmetic. Also very good is that India has one timezone in the entire country; my coworkers have gone from Pune to their home states across the continent during COVID but it's all the same time.

wphamilton

Why would you want to keep polling for the current time, when you can calibrate just once when powering on? It's worse than silly - it's just dumb architecture.

CargoDane

Watches - even electronic ones - drift. And since most of our phones are connected to the internet anyway, it would be "dumb architecture" to not make it synchronise with an atomic clock over the internet. And most people don't turn off their phone every day either, nor feel like setting it every day.

I have a front light for the bike (a Trelock LS760 Vision) which has an integrated clock (in addition to showing how many hours is left on the chosen brightness setting). The clock is absolutely useless, as after a day or two of non-use, it is already more than half an hour wrong. After a week, it's hours wrong. A fortnight, and it's inching in on having day as night and vice versa.
I don't actually see the point of having a clock in your headlight, but when they do, it should be somewhat accurate.

Of course, not all clocks are that effed up. I had a small Mp3 player which lost about 10 minutes/month. That was extremely good in my book. I could actually use it and was happy to adjust it a little once in a while. I used my internet-connected phone to set the clock on the mp3 player accurately.

Iride01 

Were in my statement did I say that I'm for having a clock constantly polling for time?

That would be silly and dumb architecture. That's why none to my knowledge do that.

My statement is more about people wanting to blast technology as bad, yet use it themselves. After all you are apparently okay letting your phone be set by technology wouldn't be available in bygone days.

Yet still it's really no different than me tuning my 50 year old short wave radio to the time broadcast and setting my watch as I used to do in junior high and high school. Only the new methods are more accurate with the synchronization and do not requiire my involvement.

Lemond1985

This switching of clocks forward, and then back again twice a year can be very tough for people's bodies to adapt to, and no doubt causes many deaths, illnesses, accidents, and much economic loss every year.

I think the rather obvious solution would be to have the clocks in the spring go forward only 30 minutes for the first week, with then the remaining 30 minutes to be advanced the following week. With the reverse happening in the fall. May as well keep it simple.

wphamilton

We're talking about appliance clocks, not phones or computers.

Modern electronic clocks will not "drift" that much. Computer-grade crystals will typically offset about .6 seconds per week. So you'd be off by 30 seconds after a year.

If you'll check back, you'll notice that is said it's silly if *the only reason* to be connected constantly is to sync the clock. Regarding your headlight's design, it would be a dumb fix to give it internet connectivity instead of simply a higher-quality crystal.

CargoDane

It doesn't matter. I was not actually advocating for having everything connected. I said it was a good reason to be connected IF it is such a chore to set your clocks twice a year. I don't consider it a chore, but the OP and a lot of other posters apparently thinks it is an unsurmountable task. FOR THEM, they could get around it by having everything either internet connected or have them synced with a radio signal.
S.a.r.c.a.s.m.

As for the clock not drifting. The MP3 player I talked about that drifted ridiculously much was my Shanling M0. And the light I talked about was the Trelock LS 760 I-GO Vision. Hardly old hat (look them both up).
My Shanlng Q1 doesn't drift quite as much, but still several minutes/months.

wphamilton

You responded to literally "Having a device connected to the internet just to set time is silly."

These poorly designed devices poll at predefined intervals. Constantly, as in all the time (NOT meaning every microsecond or whatever you were imagining) It IS dumb, but sadly it's pretty common.

berner

There are some places that use standard time year round. I found I liked that as evenings were long and a better way to end each day.

Iride01 

If my coffee pot could connect to the internet and get it's own time, I'd be okay with that. Sure beats having the 12:00 constantly flashing at me. <grin> Thankfully it's small and not backlit so the flashing LCD is not so noticeable. Of course if it did make a time request via the internet, then it'd have to have the smarts to know where it's located and be able to update the ever changing dates that Daylight time starts and ends.

As far as time requests, I don't have that many time requests going through my firewall and I have quite a bit of stuff connected to the network.

Oh..... the statement you quoted me on.... you did note I marked that as sarcasm, didn't you?

zacster

Having the smarts to do that is trivial if it were connected to the internet. It would likely use the ISP location and be a server side function. But I agree, it would be silly to connect just for that. My kitchen has four LED/LCD clocks that all need to be set and I sync them up manually because it drives me crazy to see different times on digital clocks. Three of them count seconds from when you press the button, the coffee pot doesn't though and I need to pull the plug to get it to restart counting seconds. And another annoying thing is that the iPhone doesn't have a digital seconds clock, only the analog face on the icon so with all this tech I'm still watching the second hand go around to 12 to set things.