5 ms·

UTC everywhere, done.

by matte_black 9y ago

birdmanjeremy 9y ago
This is such a terrible idea.
- space_fountain 9y ago
  Why? Vary opening hours now the time. Makes sense to me.
  - bunderbunder 9y ago
    You'd end up with the official calendar day either flipping in the middle of the day, or at a different time in every locale.
    - birdmanjeremy 9y ago
      This is a really good, simple, reason I had not even thought of. Thanks!
      - squiggleblaz 9y ago
        An alternative is just to count seconds. Be as precise as you need (m? k? M?). A little like unix timestamps, except without the rule that says "there's 86400 of them in a day no matter how many seconds there were in that day". And then let "Sunday", "Monday" etc become simply approximate terms. And I never have any idea what day of the month it is so I don't care. (Birthdays and public holidays are set based some recurring feature of the count.) A refinement of this uses a time period that is approximately 100,000th of a day so then people can easily notice the day. In practice we might use hectokiloperiods instead of periods. Someone will invite a less woeful name. Nothing about telling time will be particular familiar. Doesn't mean it won't work. But I suspect it'll be awful. I'm fine with daylight savings and all the rest of it. Except days of months. Can't we just say "Monday, third week of June"? or "Wednesday, 39th week"?
  - shaki-dora 9y ago
    Right now, you understand the basic meaning of different times no matter where you are: Noon means lunchtime, 8am is rather early, 10pm rather late etc. You can travel and this doesn't change. You can watch British movies and you'll understand the time references. Switching to UTC changes all that. And, almost as important, it doesn't help in the least: you still need to think about your co-worker's geographic location when trying to find a time that's good for your phone call.
  - astura 9y ago
    It sounds like a decent idea on the surface but then times would be meaningless. Right now a time "means" the same thing everywhere. When we ask "what time is it in Japan?" we understand the answer. We understand when its "noon" in Japan, we know whereabouts in the day it is and what we can expect people to normally be doing, ex, eating lunch. If it's 3am in Japan we know its not a great time to call beyond emergencies. If you're in the East Coast US and its 5am and at the same time its also 5am in Japan, but they mean different things, you no longer "understand" what time it is in Japan. You don't really have much of a way of answering "is it a good time to call someone in Japan?" - You have to figure out a way to "translate" from your time to theirs. It would be very, very confusing. So in the end you'd end up re-inventing time zones. It only works if nobody knows anything about other parts of the world.
- castis 9y ago
  Come on, acting dramatic without offering anything to the discussion is completely useless behavior. Why is it terrible?
  - jjeaff 9y ago
    Except, instead of converting your time to theirs and thinking "oh, that's too late for them". You have to come up with some other conversion. Hmm, it's 9pm for me on the west coast, so 9pm is 9pm late or early for NYC? What is a normal bed time in NYC? We would basically be replacing standard timezone conversion with some kind of non numeric system of identifying the time of day in a place by comparing it to normal activities. We would be getting rid of timezones and create something like "activity" zones. It would be a nightmare. If sunlight had no bearing on human activity, and people didn't tend to follow similar patterns, then utc would be fine.
  - birdmanjeremy 9y ago
    It appears someone beat me to it, take a look above. It's been a topic of discussion here before, and there are some very good reasons why this is not the case. Like not knowing what time someone might be awake in a different location, or not knowing what business hours might be across the world.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
koolba 9y ago
Only if they get rid of leap seconds as well.
- bduerst 9y ago
  Why not just switch everything to metric seconds?
taeric 9y ago
That doesn't actually help... My problem is that I walk the kids to school every day. A few weeks ago, it was solidly dark when we did this walk. Now it is broad daylight. Will remain that way for the rest of the year. Even with the change in time coming up. I confess in the grand scheme, this is not a major concern of mine. It isn't as easy as just moving to UTC, though. When families move, you typically try and keep the same "clock" bedtimes, as an easy example. (Even though, they actually care about sun height for bedtime/waketime.)
- hosh 9y ago
  Pre-modern views on this is that you are supposed to align with the natural order of the world. If we are waking up at the same clock time and it is darker, we are not living in a way that is aligned. It is darker because it is closer to winter, a time when emotions, metabolisms, and such all shift towards less activity and more reflection. Kids went to bed because the whole family, the whole community ran on sunup and sundown. I'm not suggesting we go backwards towards a pre-modern time. We do have some great flaws in what we are doing now (modernity). Our civilization runs on clock time and is very productive, yet we live in very dysfunctional and unhealthy ways.
  - taeric 9y ago
    Apologies if I am misunderstanding, but I think this is agreeing with me. Right? Specifically, I'm saying I would like it if we had a stable measure to the sun time of where we are. We don't. But it is not DST that really kills it. Rather, the idea that the sun down/up times are static for a place is weak. At best.
dragonwriter 9y ago
TAI everywhere, if you don't want to deal with fiddling adjustments.

UTC everywhere, done.

birdmanjeremy 9y ago

This is such a terrible idea.

space_fountain 9y ago
Why? Vary opening hours now the time. Makes sense to me.
- bunderbunder 9y ago
  You'd end up with the official calendar day either flipping in the middle of the day, or at a different time in every locale.
  - birdmanjeremy 9y ago
    This is a really good, simple, reason I had not even thought of. Thanks!
    - squiggleblaz 9y ago
      An alternative is just to count seconds. Be as precise as you need (m? k? M?). A little like unix timestamps, except without the rule that says "there's 86400 of them in a day no matter how many seconds there were in that day". And then let "Sunday", "Monday" etc become simply approximate terms. And I never have any idea what day of the month it is so I don't care. (Birthdays and public holidays are set based some recurring feature of the count.) A refinement of this uses a time period that is approximately 100,000th of a day so then people can easily notice the day. In practice we might use hectokiloperiods instead of periods. Someone will invite a less woeful name. Nothing about telling time will be particular familiar. Doesn't mean it won't work. But I suspect it'll be awful. I'm fine with daylight savings and all the rest of it. Except days of months. Can't we just say "Monday, third week of June"? or "Wednesday, 39th week"?
- shaki-dora 9y ago
  Right now, you understand the basic meaning of different times no matter where you are: Noon means lunchtime, 8am is rather early, 10pm rather late etc. You can travel and this doesn't change. You can watch British movies and you'll understand the time references. Switching to UTC changes all that. And, almost as important, it doesn't help in the least: you still need to think about your co-worker's geographic location when trying to find a time that's good for your phone call.
- astura 9y ago
  It sounds like a decent idea on the surface but then times would be meaningless. Right now a time "means" the same thing everywhere. When we ask "what time is it in Japan?" we understand the answer. We understand when its "noon" in Japan, we know whereabouts in the day it is and what we can expect people to normally be doing, ex, eating lunch. If it's 3am in Japan we know its not a great time to call beyond emergencies. If you're in the East Coast US and its 5am and at the same time its also 5am in Japan, but they mean different things, you no longer "understand" what time it is in Japan. You don't really have much of a way of answering "is it a good time to call someone in Japan?" - You have to figure out a way to "translate" from your time to theirs. It would be very, very confusing. So in the end you'd end up re-inventing time zones. It only works if nobody knows anything about other parts of the world.
castis 9y ago
Come on, acting dramatic without offering anything to the discussion is completely useless behavior. Why is it terrible?
- jjeaff 9y ago
  Except, instead of converting your time to theirs and thinking "oh, that's too late for them". You have to come up with some other conversion. Hmm, it's 9pm for me on the west coast, so 9pm is 9pm late or early for NYC? What is a normal bed time in NYC? We would basically be replacing standard timezone conversion with some kind of non numeric system of identifying the time of day in a place by comparing it to normal activities. We would be getting rid of timezones and create something like "activity" zones. It would be a nightmare. If sunlight had no bearing on human activity, and people didn't tend to follow similar patterns, then utc would be fine.
- birdmanjeremy 9y ago
  It appears someone beat me to it, take a look above. It's been a topic of discussion here before, and there are some very good reasons why this is not the case. Like not knowing what time someone might be awake in a different location, or not knowing what business hours might be across the world.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

koolba 9y ago

Only if they get rid of leap seconds as well.

bduerst 9y ago
Why not just switch everything to metric seconds?

taeric 9y ago

That doesn't actually help... My problem is that I walk the kids to school every day. A few weeks ago, it was solidly dark when we did this walk. Now it is broad daylight. Will remain that way for the rest of the year. Even with the change in time coming up. I confess in the grand scheme, this is not a major concern of mine. It isn't as easy as just moving to UTC, though. When families move, you typically try and keep the same "clock" bedtimes, as an easy example. (Even though, they actually care about sun height for bedtime/waketime.)

hosh 9y ago
Pre-modern views on this is that you are supposed to align with the natural order of the world. If we are waking up at the same clock time and it is darker, we are not living in a way that is aligned. It is darker because it is closer to winter, a time when emotions, metabolisms, and such all shift towards less activity and more reflection. Kids went to bed because the whole family, the whole community ran on sunup and sundown. I'm not suggesting we go backwards towards a pre-modern time. We do have some great flaws in what we are doing now (modernity). Our civilization runs on clock time and is very productive, yet we live in very dysfunctional and unhealthy ways.
- taeric 9y ago
  Apologies if I am misunderstanding, but I think this is agreeing with me. Right? Specifically, I'm saying I would like it if we had a stable measure to the sun time of where we are. We don't. But it is not DST that really kills it. Rather, the idea that the sun down/up times are static for a place is weak. At best.

dragonwriter 9y ago

TAI everywhere, if you don't want to deal with fiddling adjustments.