Comments by "Chaos Corner" (@chaos.corner) on "Absolutely Nobody Likes Programming Timezones" video.

This is why you shouldn't let politicians be in charge of anything important.
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I wonder when the last time the ball was actually useful was. Assuming it isn't still used in some weird way.
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@callyral OK.
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@jindrichlukas3220 No. Then they just go and cause problems elsewhere. Just make sure they stick to things like naming national holidays and opening malls.
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@techmage89 Other than tectonic drift, longitudinal measurements relative to one port are relative to all ports. Many ships would be out of sight of landmarks other than the stars for long periods of time so accurate timekeeping was essential for navigation. The speed of the earth at the equator is approximately 1000mph so just a minute of error in timekeeping could be 16 miles error in location. A few minutes could make a port or small island very hard to find.
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@techmage89 Sorry, I'm too tired right now to process where this is going but yeah, local noon was often fine as a standard for many purposes. Especially in the UK where everything fits in one timezone anyway. I think even with trains, cities didn't really have to stay in sync. It's just simpler for the people on the train (and probably most importantly the engineer) to keep things simple. The thing I always come back to is that it's all pretty much arbitrary anyway. Often people are too fixed in their thinking that 0:01 should be the middle of the night and 12:00 should be when the sun is nearly overhead but there's nothing that says that has to be so.
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