this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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[–] sjmarf@sh.itjust.works 5 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (2 children)

Yeah, you would've thought it would work that way. Regrettably, the standard timezone code of Etc/GMT+4 is actually GMT-4. Wikipedia

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 13 hours ago

The special area of "Etc" is used for some administrative zones, particularly for "Etc/UTC" which represents Coordinated Universal Time. In order to conform with the POSIX style, those zone names beginning with "Etc/GMT" have their sign reversed from the standard ISO 8601 convention. In the "Etc" area, zones west of GMT have a positive sign and those east have a negative sign in their name (e.g "Etc/GMT-14" is 14 hours ahead of GMT).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database#Area

[–] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

According to NIST, Eastern Time is UTC-4. And currently it is 5:04pm EDT, and in London (a city in GMT/UTC+0) it is 10:04pm. Which is 5 hours ahead (because America is dumb and has daylight savings).

Which is also backed up by your article. Americas/Indianapolis is the one I normally use since I'm in Indiana.

[–] Deebster@programming.dev 2 points 13 hours ago

Then the UK's equally dumb: it was 10:04 pm BST (GMT+1) cos daylight savings is a thing in most of Europe too. At least it's synchronised across Europe^[The EU is planning on killing daylight savings but I have no idea if the UK will do the sensible thing and go along when/if this happens] so you just need to remember that most^[thanks for making it more confusing, Mexico] of North America changes a few weeks earlier.

Also, the UK says GMT/BST which is nice and clear - calling both EST and EDT "Eastern Time" makes even more of a mess!

And yes, I've just rediscovered you can use footnotes, why do you ask?