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What if you say "I will call sometime tomorrow". What does that mean if you're telling that to someone in Hawaii? A business has hours of operations. In Hawa

What if you say "I will call sometime tomorrow". What does that mean if you're telling that to someone in Hawaii? A business has hours of operations. In Hawaii, those hours of operations will span multiple days on the UTC clock. What does "today" mean in UTC everywhere? What about "tomorrow"? What does "Sunday" mean? Does every place experience "Sunday" at the same time? Let's say "Sunday" is the same datetime everywhere - e.g. on 2019-11-03 it starts at 00:00 UTC and ends at 23:59 UTC. Currently, every business I go to has something like this: Mon-Thurs: 8am-8pm Fri-Sat: 8am-9pm Sun: 8am-7pm This no longer makes sense. You now have to talk about business hours for Saturday/Sunday, Sunday/Monday, etc. Saying you will meet up "Saturday" doesn't make sense. When you tell your friend you're free "Sunday the 3rd" it could mean you're free 2 different solar days. There is no useful sense of "today", "tomorrow", or even "monday" anymore. And as you stated, you still need to know offsets. Offsets that we will call what... timezones? What exactly are we getting with UTC everywhere?

coldtea 7y ago
>Let's say "Sunday" is the same datetime everywhere - e.g. on 2019-11-03 it starts at 00:00 UTC and ends at 23:59 UTC. Currently, every business I go to has something like this: Mon-Thurs: 8am-8pm Fri-Sat: 8am-9pm Sun: 8am-7pm This no longer makes sense. Yes, and that's already covered, and it's the same situation as now, when you say "I'll call you at 11" and it's not clear if it means your time or their time, and to know when 11 there you need to check an offset (timezone) list. Under the proposed scheme, you reverse the problem. "11:00" is the same everywhere, and to know the time businesses open you need to consult an offset list. It will tell you e.g. Hawaii, start of business: 14:00 (or whatever it is in UTC). As simple as that. And when you say "I'll call you tomorrow" you don't have to be vague anymore, you can use UTC as reference for today and tomorrow, so you can say "I'll call you at 18:00 (shared time)" and even if neither of you knows the other's offset they can immediately tell you if that would be a good hour or not (because of course the other side will know what 18:00 is to them). >There is no useful sense of "today", "tomorrow", or even "monday" anymore. Internationally there isn't one either. With a max +-12 hours offset, if you say "I'll you call you today" to someone, you can easily call them when the day has changed in their country but is still "today" in theirs. Monday in your country might start 12 hours ahead of Monday in theirs. If anything, a UTC-based Monday will be the same absolutely time period everywhere. It would be the same as today in England and the same as 01:00 - 01:00 in France, so the same time span for everybody. >And as you stated, you still need to know offsets As you do now if you're to make any international collaboration. >What exactly are we getting with UTC everywhere? We already spelt it out quite clearly. A central absolute time reference used everywhere.

coldtea 7y ago

>Let's say "Sunday" is the same datetime everywhere - e.g. on 2019-11-03 it starts at 00:00 UTC and ends at 23:59 UTC. Currently, every business I go to has something like this: Mon-Thurs: 8am-8pm Fri-Sat: 8am-9pm Sun: 8am-7pm This no longer makes sense. Yes, and that's already covered, and it's the same situation as now, when you say "I'll call you at 11" and it's not clear if it means your time or their time, and to know when 11 there you need to check an offset (timezone) list. Under the proposed scheme, you reverse the problem. "11:00" is the same everywhere, and to know the time businesses open you need to consult an offset list. It will tell you e.g. Hawaii, start of business: 14:00 (or whatever it is in UTC). As simple as that. And when you say "I'll call you tomorrow" you don't have to be vague anymore, you can use UTC as reference for today and tomorrow, so you can say "I'll call you at 18:00 (shared time)" and even if neither of you knows the other's offset they can immediately tell you if that would be a good hour or not (because of course the other side will know what 18:00 is to them). >There is no useful sense of "today", "tomorrow", or even "monday" anymore. Internationally there isn't one either. With a max +-12 hours offset, if you say "I'll you call you today" to someone, you can easily call them when the day has changed in their country but is still "today" in theirs. Monday in your country might start 12 hours ahead of Monday in theirs. If anything, a UTC-based Monday will be the same absolutely time period everywhere. It would be the same as today in England and the same as 01:00 - 01:00 in France, so the same time span for everybody. >And as you stated, you still need to know offsets As you do now if you're to make any international collaboration. >What exactly are we getting with UTC everywhere? We already spelt it out quite clearly. A central absolute time reference used everywhere.