Los Angeles time zone

Isn’t Los Angeles GMT minus 8?

Yep! That’s correct. Is there something that suggests otherwise?

The problem description page and grid_metadata.csv file says the times for LA are in GMT+8. Just wanted to verify

Ah yeah, sorry that’s so confusing. ETC timezone signs are intentionally reversed. From the wikipedia page:

The special area of “Etc” is used for some administrative zones, particularly for “Etc/UTC” which represents Coordinated Universal Time. In order to conform with the POSIX style, those zone names beginning with “Etc/GMT” have their sign reversed from the standard ISO 8601 convention. In the “Etc” area, zones west of GMT have a positive sign and those east have a negative sign in their name (e.g “Etc/GMT-14” is 14 hours ahead of GMT).

We only use ETC/GMT+8 as the timezone so as to make clear that Daylight Savings Time is ignored, as opposed to the more standard America/Los_Angeles timezone. Despite the name, it is indeed 8 hours behind GMT. Hope that clears things up!

Thank you, I should have researched a bit more before asking.