Pretty clever using the timezone offset to approximate the user's location without using GeoIP. I hadn't noticed that but sure enough, my (approximate) location is in view first.
Eh. I'm in the southern hemisphere, and the Github Globe first appears in the middle of the Philippines Sea. They're just assuming everyone is in the northern hemisphere.
I think the combination of timezone and language settings would work for the obviously problematic cases (eg, Australia vs Japan/China/Asia, and South vs North America. Africa is still a problem though.)
Using the timezone was Github's way of easily getting the right orientation of the globe for the viewer's location. In my case (and I'm guessing everyone in the southern hemisphere) that doesn't work.
It looks like it starts showing the globe North of about 5° South, which would get 89% of the world's population. Pan down just another 3° (include the population centres in Indonesia, without sacrificing anything in the North) to get to 94% of the population. Of course, Github's user base may be distributed differently.
Aren't most globes oriented that way for display though? They copied the normal angle used for physical globes so it's instantly recognizable I suspect.
Clever but a bit lame given the fact that I guarantee your IP address is already analyzed from a bazillion angles (incl. GeoIP) way before it hits the frontend process. Not sure why they can't use that information.
Because that information is not available in standalone frontend component. They would have to make an additional API request to get that when timezone is available locally.
It‘s because i could see your pull request on this globe. If they use GeoIp they tell me where you live. But they use the user suplied location to not tell me any secret i should not know. Its genious!