Credit: AFP/Illustration image
Dear reader,
If you read us in Lebanon, you will notice that the time displayed on L’Orient Today and L’Orient-Le Jour websites and their stories will be different from Lebanon’s official time, at least until the end of April.
We have decided not to undertake the technical work demanded by the Lebanese government’s last minute decision to postpone daylight savings time by one month.
If an article is published at noon by “official” Lebanese time, it will have been published at 1pm on our site.
Unprepared for the government’s decision, our software developers believe that hastily launched reprogramming entails several risks (of synchronization, archiving, billing...) to our digital platforms.
It is true that IANA, the governing body for internet addresses, which also manages the global time zone database, has been notified of the postponement and has developed an update, but it only received a one-day warning of the planned change.
"Typically, computers around the world get a copy of this database indirectly through an update from their OS manufacturer (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Linux distributor, hardware distributor, etc.). For this change to reach all devices in the country, it could take months. For some devices, such as hardware routers, it may never reach them if they are not set to update periodically," explains Rudy Zeinoun, chief technology officer (CTO) of Whitebeard, the web development agency working on our platforms.
As of Saturday afternoon, our platforms’ servers had not yet received the update.
We want our site and applications to keep our readers informed as seamlessly as possible, so we decided to switch to daylight savings time on schedule, tonight.
We do not want our readers to think that this decision betrays our indifference or hostility to anyone’s religious beliefs or observances.
While primarily technical, this decision might be seen to be political. With the vast majority of Lebanon’s residents — including those working at L’Orient Today / L'Orient-Le Jour — facing heavy challenges, we refuse to waste the time and energy required to enact a decision undertaken with such carelessness by the country’s political leaders. It is a testimony to how disconnected these individuals are from the country’s current realities.
L'Orient Today