Can daylight savings screw up timestamps?

[jimbob12345678]

More specifically when the clocks go back an hour, as they just have in the UK. Managed to avoid any potential issues up till now what with it happening at 2am but it's something I've always been curious about.

 

I know on PS3 if you change the daylight savings option in the settings, the timestamps on your console get 1hr added or taken off to reflect the change. However I just noticed today that it doesn't happen after the auto time update on PS4. That means if I had carried on playing tonight and earned another trophy on Aegis Rim it would have been out of order on my console and therefore out of order on here too? Or am I missing something?

Edited October 25, 2020 by jimbob12345678

[Kittet3]

It shouldn't mess anything up but I'm not going to pretend I understand how it works. timestamps are saved server side on Sony and then converted to your timezone on the site so rn it says you got the trophies 42 minutes apart on my side. 

[jimbob12345678]

7 hours ago, Kittet3 said:

It shouldn't mess anything up but I'm not going to pretend I understand how it works. timestamps are saved server side on Sony and then converted to your timezone on the site so rn it says you got the trophies 42 minutes apart on my side. 

I guess that would mean that daylight savings stuff is purely cosmetic so to speak? As in it's only there on our end and for SONY it's just X trophy obtained X time after previous trophy?

 

I should just earn another trophy now and see what timestamp PSNP has after I sync it. Maybe that will shift everything by an hour for me. (or say that I got the trophy an hour from now hahaha )

[IDiivil]

No.

 

Timestamps are based on an absolute value that is calculated as the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00 1/1/1970 (UTC). Timezones, daylight saving, user settings have no bearing on this kind of absolute value.

 

As long as you've synced the system clock with the server, it knows that time it is and will assign timestamps correctly.

 

Although I should add that it is possible for the system clock itself to become confused, like what happened with the PS3 leap year bug ten years ago. But for the most part, whatever time you set to the system should have no effect on trophy timestamps.

Edited October 25, 2020 by IDiivil

[jimbob12345678]

37 minutes ago, IDiivil said:

No.

 

Timestamps are based on an absolute value that is calculated as the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00 1/1/1970 (UTC). Timezones, daylight saving, user settings have no bearing on this kind of absolute value.

 

As long as you've synced the system clock with the server, it knows that time it is and will assign timestamps correctly.

So I just earned another trophy now at 11:58am UK time, which that is the time displayed on my console and on the timestamps here on PSNP.

 

But the other trophies I have on Aegis Rim were earned before the daylight savings change took effect and they still show the same timestamps they did back then.

 

So what you're saying is correct but you actually have to look at the trophies in date order on site to notice the extra hour gained from daylight savings. That's actually pretty badass, albeit kinda confusing Good to know though!

 

(To anyone reading this who's still confused if you look at my aegis rim trophies in date order you will see I got the Yakushiji's Prologue Cleared and the Amiguchi's Prologue Cleared with timestamps 10 hours, 14 minutes and 59 seconds apart but the site says +11 hours, 14 minutes, 59 seconds because that is how much actual real time passed between the two!)

[IDiivil]

3 hours ago, jimbob12345678 said:

So I just earned another trophy now at 11:58am UK time, which that is the time displayed on my console and on the timestamps here on PSNP.

 

But the other trophies I have on Aegis Rim were earned before the daylight savings change took effect and they still show the same timestamps they did back then.

 

So what you're saying is correct but you actually have to look at the trophies in date order on site to notice the extra hour gained from daylight savings. That's actually pretty badass, albeit kinda confusing Good to know though!

 

(To anyone reading this who's still confused if you look at my aegis rim trophies in date order you will see I got the Yakushiji's Prologue Cleared and the Amiguchi's Prologue Cleared with timestamps 10 hours, 14 minutes and 59 seconds apart but the site says +11 hours, 14 minutes, 59 seconds because that is how much actual real time passed between the two!)

 

All the date and timezone conversions are after the fact though. If you go to your profile on this website and change your timezone to something like US west coast UTC-7, you'll notice that the timestamps for those trophies are 5:43pm and 4:58am, and there's 11 hours 14 minutes between those two times with no DST conversions. That is because that timezone hasn't even had the DST shift yet.

 

The times themselves are stored in an integer form, because that makes sense and is not confusing. The times we see are just calculated based off those and they depend on our location, timezones, and what kind of daylight saving schedule that locaiton follows.

[Melanogaster1987]

6 hours ago, IDiivil said:

No.

 

Timestamps are based on an absolute value that is calculated as the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00 1/1/1970 (UTC). Timezones, daylight saving, user settings have no bearing on this kind of absolute value.

 

As long as you've synced the system clock with the server, it knows that time it is and will assign timestamps correctly.

 

Although I should add that it is possible for the system clock itself to become confused, like what happened with the PS3 leap year bug ten years ago. But for the most part, whatever time you set to the system should have no effect on trophy timestamps.

 

If the timestamps are based on Unix time, I just hope that we don't run into the year 2038 bug. We'll probably be gaming on the PS8 by then, but no doubt I'll still be chipping away at my PS3 and PS4 backlogs!

[pinkrobot_pb]

51 minutes ago, Melanogaster1987 said:

If the timestamps are based on Unix time, I just hope that we don't run into the year 2038 bug. We'll probably be gaming on the PS8 by then, but no doubt I'll still be chipping away at my PS3 and PS4 backlogs!

 

I am not sure about the PS3, but PS4 should be safe. Its software is based on FreeBSD whch should be storing UNIX timestamps as 64-bit value. That means you can still sync your trophies as late as December 4th of the year 292,277,026,596 AD.

[AJ_Radio]

Daylight Savings Time is completely stupid and should be removed. It was a dumb idea back in the 1930s, because they thought they could save time by going back one hour during the Fall, then turning the clock forward during the Spring.

 

Arizona doesn't do Daylight Savings Time. Why DST is still a thing is beyond me.

[You]

Yeah but here in the UK they do it for many economic timing reasons, and also children are potentially walking home in the dark as it starts getting dark at about 4pm in the winter months.

I think it's stupid but I do see the benefits.