18 ms·

I've always wanted to abolish not only DST, but time zones in general. Sure, it's cool that noon means the sun is high, but increasingly the cost of managing a

I've always wanted to abolish not only DST, but time zones in general. Sure, it's cool that noon means the sun is high, but increasingly the cost of managing anything across zones (or across days, or both) is notably higher than the relatively rare cost of learning "I moved to a new state, my work hours are during daylight, 3pm-11pm". When coordinating we can just use the same times. "Conference call will be at 5pm." "That's early for me, can we make it 6pm?" Instead of "Okay, call will be at 9am" "In what time zone?" "Eastern". "that's 6am for me, can we make it 8?" "You mean 10am? Sure". I had a road trip to the grand Canyon. Nothing like crossing from Pacific, to Mountain, to AZ (with no DST) and into federal land in AZ (with DST). Coordinated with another couple coming to the same spot from a different direction. It was...non-trivial...and we often gave up on actually knowing when something was, being happy if we were coordinated within a few hours.

deleted 8y ago
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foepys 8y ago
You will achieve nothing by getting rid of timezones, really. Instead of calculating timezones, you will start to calculate when people actually want to sleep, which is actually harder without set "zones". So you end up with "awake/business zones" instead of timezones.
- henrikschroder 8y ago
  To make it even worse, these "awake zones" will start spanning multiple weekdays. So, when is Sunday, again? Is that the period of daylight that starts at 21:00 on Saturday and lasts until 09:00 Sunday? Or is it the period that starts at 21:00 on Sunday and lasts until 09:00 Monday? When's your business open, again? Timezones are extremely useful.
  - matz1 8y ago
    Either way you still have to lookup the business hours. Timezone are dumb.
koala_man 8y ago
How do you feel about https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish , "So You Want To Abolish Time Zones"
- zeeZ 8y ago
  We could make up a new system to make it equally confusing for everyone: https://www.swatch.com/en_gb/internet-time/ https://www.swatch.com/en_gb/internet-time/ It's what I always suggest whenever someone doesn't know what to do when presented with a UTC timestamp I have them.
- TallGuyShort 8y ago
  >> causes the question "What time is it there?" to be useless/unanswerable The question should have been "what time can I call you" anyway. Not everyone works a 9-5. My in-laws get pissed if I call while they're napping and don't want to turn off their phones in case there's an emergency. Some of my friends work night-shifts in the medical field. I put my kids to bed early and my colleagues start their work day exceptionally late. You have to coordinate anyway because everyone is in a unique situation. >> necessitates significant changes to the way in which normal people talk about time And right now, how I talk about time varies depending on where in the state I am and what time of year it is and where in the state the person I'm talking to is. I could go on. I'm sure there are complexities to eliminating time zones I haven't thought of, but honestly this sounds like they're trying to exaggerate the problem and it doesn't even sound that bad.
- golangnews 8y ago
  The article poses the question: I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. What time is it there? Google tells me it is currently 4:25am there, so I'd better not call. The answer without time zones would be: It's 18:30 UTC Google tells me business hours are 23:00 to 03:00, so I'd better not call. Abolishing time zones would make little difference to this kind of question, it will always rely on knowledge of local hours and on top of that your Uncle's schedule. It would simplify a lot of coordination though. Unlikely to happen any time soon IMO as people are attached to the status quo and have no big reason to change.
baxter001 8y ago
For most people international time coordination issues are rare, rare enough that it's more valuable to have a local time, to tell someone you're meeting at 13:30 so they have a natural feeling for the fact it's comfortably after lunch, but not too late. For everything else there's UTC.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Every now and then I'm on a complicated trip and wish everyone would just use UTC. The other 48 weeks or so of the year, local time has a lot of advantages.
panic 8y ago
You’re free to use GMT if you want. The rest of us would prefer it not to change from Friday to Saturday in the middle of lunch.
- goobynight 8y ago
  Why would it matter if it is technically midnight Saturday in the middle of lunch? Does the name of the day affect you? Remember that the premise here is that nothing would change other than the labels we assign to periods of time.
  - highwind 8y ago
    Business days/hours are currently labeled using the time system based on solar time: We are open Monday~Friday 9AM~5PM Saturday 11AM~2PM etc. Without timezones, this would be really confusing. You'd have to say something like "We are open from Day1 9PM until Day2 5AM, etc." which can be annoying.
    - matz1 8y ago
      I would prefer one time zone. Even with current multiple time zone you still have to look up for the business hour/days. You can't just assume business day mean monday-friday 9am-5pm.
  - dhimes 8y ago
    Indeed, it's important enough to move the date line so that weekdays in Tonga and Samoa (etc.) align with New Zealand. If I understand it correctly, this had to do with the fact that the sabbath is taken seriously by many peoples.
  - cecja 8y ago
    We live in a society
  - tasuki 8y ago
    You used the word midnight. Mid-night. Middle of the night. Definitely not middle of lunch!
walrus01 8y ago
ISPs commonly set all equipment and systems that log, or alert, or do just about anything, all to UTC. makes things a lot simpler. It does mean that things like maintenance notification need to be manually converted to local customer time by a NOC, though.
dukoid 8y ago
How can you argue for such a thing while at the same time using am/pm (opposed to 15:00-23:00 etc.)? O:)
- ergothus 8y ago
  Uh....advanced stupidity? You're right, that was terrible. I tried the 24 hour clock for several years but got annoyed that no one else understood, (or worse, thought I was trying to pretentiously declare military service that I haven't done) so I don't even notice anymore. But yes, 24 hour clock is more clear and less aggravating. (11:59pm is followed by 12:00am, and 12:59am is followed by 1:00am? Madness)
lisper 8y ago
Just use UTC. This is routine in aviation. Although consumers see airline schedules in local time, behind the scenes everything is done in UTC.
wil421 8y ago
This is such a terrible idea that would cause so much confusion. I’m suprised someone always mentions this suggestion in time zone discussions. How would being on the same time help anyone trying to coordinate? Instead of remembering Australia is X hours ahead you would have to memorize the exact time business starts/ends in every locale.
- Nullabillity 8y ago
  Which you have to do anyway, because not everyone works 8-17.
  - ddingus 8y ago
    Not really. Just use a safe zone inside general hours.
    - matz1 8y ago
      No, you still need to know the other person safe zone is.
      - ddingus 8y ago
        In rare cases; otherwise, business day convention, right along with a ton of other conventions make local timezones a total win. Going with one time for everyone would require a lot more information. I work across zones and continents a lot. This is not hard. Besides, moot point. One time stamp will never fly politically. I will not support an effort to attempt it either.
        matz1 8y ago
        Different business have different business day and different open hour. Either way you still have to Look up this information. China got this right with one time zone. I will support the effort to attempt this.
ipqk 8y ago
The only people I know that want to get rid of timezones are technical people, often programmers. Which is crazy to me, because we literally invented computers to solve the coordination issue with timezones. Getting rid of timezones just offloads the difficulty back to our brains.
- ergothus 8y ago
  1 - I thought the primary initial use of modern computers was artillery calculations, not timezones? I don't recall Babbage's goal, but I doubt it was timezones. 2 - While technical people are often the most vocal, anyone that deals with spanning timezones tends to hate them. Aviation, shipping, scheduling, offices that span timezones - all groups that aren't getting smaller. 3 - "Getting rid of timezones just offloads the difficulty back to our brains." How does getting rid of timezones get rid of computers?
  - function_seven 8y ago
    > anyone that deals with spanning timezones tends to hate them. Aviation, shipping, scheduling, offices that span timezones - all groups that aren't getting smaller. I think you're confusing the map with the territory. What these people hate is that their job requires coordinating resources in far-flung parts of the world, all with different waking and operating hours. If time-zones go away, they still have to deal with the fact that a plane isn't going to depart Shanghai until an hour after sunrise, or that the post office won't deliver the packages until just before solar noon. But now they have to keep track of the offsets in each city manually instead of applying the agreed-upon TZ offset. Time-zones acknowledge a fact about our world. Humans living in different places wake up, work, play, and sleep at different times. These times are (loosely) encoded in the offset. Get rid of that offset, put everyone on UTC, and you lose some information in the process.
  - ipqk 8y ago
    Sorry, I poorly worded that (and even used the word literally. Sigh). My bad. I meant that we invented computers to do mathematical calculations, of which timezones are a great example. Getting rid of the timezones doesn't mean we get rid of computers. It just means all benefits we get from using computers for timezones are now lost. and we have to do mental calculations to figure out what 4:30am means at any given location.
hetman 8y ago
It's really not that hard. Just ask Google to translate the time for you. Which I feel also demonstrates that the cost are not particularly high either. It mostly effects programmers and doesn't really require ongoing costs once a system is setup to deal with it. If it's too hard for the programmers we probably need to write some better libraries.
Al-Khwarizmi 8y ago
I agree but now that you're on that, why don't get rid of the confusing "am/pm" thing and embrace a 24-hour clock?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

foepys 8y ago

You will achieve nothing by getting rid of timezones, really. Instead of calculating timezones, you will start to calculate when people actually want to sleep, which is actually harder without set "zones". So you end up with "awake/business zones" instead of timezones.

henrikschroder 8y ago
To make it even worse, these "awake zones" will start spanning multiple weekdays. So, when is Sunday, again? Is that the period of daylight that starts at 21:00 on Saturday and lasts until 09:00 Sunday? Or is it the period that starts at 21:00 on Sunday and lasts until 09:00 Monday? When's your business open, again? Timezones are extremely useful.
- matz1 8y ago
  Either way you still have to lookup the business hours. Timezone are dumb.

koala_man 8y ago

How do you feel about https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish , "So You Want To Abolish Time Zones"

zeeZ 8y ago
We could make up a new system to make it equally confusing for everyone: https://www.swatch.com/en_gb/internet-time/ https://www.swatch.com/en_gb/internet-time/ It's what I always suggest whenever someone doesn't know what to do when presented with a UTC timestamp I have them.
TallGuyShort 8y ago
>> causes the question "What time is it there?" to be useless/unanswerable The question should have been "what time can I call you" anyway. Not everyone works a 9-5. My in-laws get pissed if I call while they're napping and don't want to turn off their phones in case there's an emergency. Some of my friends work night-shifts in the medical field. I put my kids to bed early and my colleagues start their work day exceptionally late. You have to coordinate anyway because everyone is in a unique situation. >> necessitates significant changes to the way in which normal people talk about time And right now, how I talk about time varies depending on where in the state I am and what time of year it is and where in the state the person I'm talking to is. I could go on. I'm sure there are complexities to eliminating time zones I haven't thought of, but honestly this sounds like they're trying to exaggerate the problem and it doesn't even sound that bad.
golangnews 8y ago
The article poses the question: I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. What time is it there? Google tells me it is currently 4:25am there, so I'd better not call. The answer without time zones would be: It's 18:30 UTC Google tells me business hours are 23:00 to 03:00, so I'd better not call. Abolishing time zones would make little difference to this kind of question, it will always rely on knowledge of local hours and on top of that your Uncle's schedule. It would simplify a lot of coordination though. Unlikely to happen any time soon IMO as people are attached to the status quo and have no big reason to change.

baxter001 8y ago

For most people international time coordination issues are rare, rare enough that it's more valuable to have a local time, to tell someone you're meeting at 13:30 so they have a natural feeling for the fact it's comfortably after lunch, but not too late. For everything else there's UTC.

ghaff 8y ago
Every now and then I'm on a complicated trip and wish everyone would just use UTC. The other 48 weeks or so of the year, local time has a lot of advantages.

panic 8y ago

You’re free to use GMT if you want. The rest of us would prefer it not to change from Friday to Saturday in the middle of lunch.

goobynight 8y ago
Why would it matter if it is technically midnight Saturday in the middle of lunch? Does the name of the day affect you? Remember that the premise here is that nothing would change other than the labels we assign to periods of time.
- highwind 8y ago
  Business days/hours are currently labeled using the time system based on solar time: We are open Monday~Friday 9AM~5PM Saturday 11AM~2PM etc. Without timezones, this would be really confusing. You'd have to say something like "We are open from Day1 9PM until Day2 5AM, etc." which can be annoying.
  - matz1 8y ago
    I would prefer one time zone. Even with current multiple time zone you still have to look up for the business hour/days. You can't just assume business day mean monday-friday 9am-5pm.
- dhimes 8y ago
  Indeed, it's important enough to move the date line so that weekdays in Tonga and Samoa (etc.) align with New Zealand. If I understand it correctly, this had to do with the fact that the sabbath is taken seriously by many peoples.
- cecja 8y ago
  We live in a society
- tasuki 8y ago
  You used the word midnight. Mid-night. Middle of the night. Definitely not middle of lunch!

walrus01 8y ago

ISPs commonly set all equipment and systems that log, or alert, or do just about anything, all to UTC. makes things a lot simpler. It does mean that things like maintenance notification need to be manually converted to local customer time by a NOC, though.

dukoid 8y ago

How can you argue for such a thing while at the same time using am/pm (opposed to 15:00-23:00 etc.)? O:)

ergothus 8y ago
Uh....advanced stupidity? You're right, that was terrible. I tried the 24 hour clock for several years but got annoyed that no one else understood, (or worse, thought I was trying to pretentiously declare military service that I haven't done) so I don't even notice anymore. But yes, 24 hour clock is more clear and less aggravating. (11:59pm is followed by 12:00am, and 12:59am is followed by 1:00am? Madness)

lisper 8y ago

Just use UTC. This is routine in aviation. Although consumers see airline schedules in local time, behind the scenes everything is done in UTC.

wil421 8y ago

This is such a terrible idea that would cause so much confusion. I’m suprised someone always mentions this suggestion in time zone discussions. How would being on the same time help anyone trying to coordinate? Instead of remembering Australia is X hours ahead you would have to memorize the exact time business starts/ends in every locale.

Nullabillity 8y ago
Which you have to do anyway, because not everyone works 8-17.
- ddingus 8y ago
  Not really. Just use a safe zone inside general hours.
  - matz1 8y ago
    No, you still need to know the other person safe zone is.
    - ddingus 8y ago
      In rare cases; otherwise, business day convention, right along with a ton of other conventions make local timezones a total win. Going with one time for everyone would require a lot more information. I work across zones and continents a lot. This is not hard. Besides, moot point. One time stamp will never fly politically. I will not support an effort to attempt it either.
      - matz1 8y ago
        Different business have different business day and different open hour. Either way you still have to Look up this information. China got this right with one time zone. I will support the effort to attempt this.

ipqk 8y ago

The only people I know that want to get rid of timezones are technical people, often programmers. Which is crazy to me, because we literally invented computers to solve the coordination issue with timezones. Getting rid of timezones just offloads the difficulty back to our brains.

ergothus 8y ago
1 - I thought the primary initial use of modern computers was artillery calculations, not timezones? I don't recall Babbage's goal, but I doubt it was timezones. 2 - While technical people are often the most vocal, anyone that deals with spanning timezones tends to hate them. Aviation, shipping, scheduling, offices that span timezones - all groups that aren't getting smaller. 3 - "Getting rid of timezones just offloads the difficulty back to our brains." How does getting rid of timezones get rid of computers?
- function_seven 8y ago
  > anyone that deals with spanning timezones tends to hate them. Aviation, shipping, scheduling, offices that span timezones - all groups that aren't getting smaller. I think you're confusing the map with the territory. What these people hate is that their job requires coordinating resources in far-flung parts of the world, all with different waking and operating hours. If time-zones go away, they still have to deal with the fact that a plane isn't going to depart Shanghai until an hour after sunrise, or that the post office won't deliver the packages until just before solar noon. But now they have to keep track of the offsets in each city manually instead of applying the agreed-upon TZ offset. Time-zones acknowledge a fact about our world. Humans living in different places wake up, work, play, and sleep at different times. These times are (loosely) encoded in the offset. Get rid of that offset, put everyone on UTC, and you lose some information in the process.
- ipqk 8y ago
  Sorry, I poorly worded that (and even used the word literally. Sigh). My bad. I meant that we invented computers to do mathematical calculations, of which timezones are a great example. Getting rid of the timezones doesn't mean we get rid of computers. It just means all benefits we get from using computers for timezones are now lost. and we have to do mental calculations to figure out what 4:30am means at any given location.

hetman 8y ago

It's really not that hard. Just ask Google to translate the time for you. Which I feel also demonstrates that the cost are not particularly high either. It mostly effects programmers and doesn't really require ongoing costs once a system is setup to deal with it. If it's too hard for the programmers we probably need to write some better libraries.

Al-Khwarizmi 8y ago

I agree but now that you're on that, why don't get rid of the confusing "am/pm" thing and embrace a 24-hour clock?