[tomflack]

> Daylight saving time ends Nov. 3, setting off an annual ritual where Americans (who don’t live in Arizona or Hawaii) and residents of 78 other countries including Canada (but not Saskatchewan), most of Europe, Australia and New Zealand turn their clocks back one hour.

I find it hard to take this solution seriously when they can't even get the basic facts right. I'm sure this is some kind of argumentative fallicy but Australia's DST started in October and we put our clocks forward one hour, because we're in the Southern Hemisphere and heading in to summer. This semi-makes the article's point about confusion... but really computers have fixed all that confusion for me anyway.

[mjn]

Europe also changed in October. Not sure why the article claims November 3 "set[s] off an annual ritual" in 78 countries, when most have already changed, unless it's journalistic license in an article only targeted at Americans.

[apaprocki]

Humans program the computers, though, so the computers can't remove the confusion in places where the human government changes the rules a handful of days before a transition time. For example, this happens every year in Morocco. The entire country must update all their computers manually -- I don't see any way all devices could have correct tzdata in time for the transitions.

[tomflack]

Hah, my first thought is "humans also make the government" and I know which one I'd optimize first... sorry about the snark though.