9 ms·

> keeping the natural local time Fuck that! I want a single unified global time!

bamboozled 6y ago
I don't think it's useful for everyone but the military and people who grok log files. Knowing that 6am is early is good, imagine how confused you'd be if you travel overseas but the timezone is always the same, you'd have to re-learn what time the morning is etc and constantly try adapt if to your situation. The current local systems we use have function we take for granted.. I just have a UTC clock on all my devices (along side my local time) and I find that's the most useful. Local time is what I use primarily, UTC for international calls.
- 4gotunameagain 6y ago
  I think you have been bamboozled by the poster above my friend
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    The more charitable interpretation of their comment is that it was earnest, not that they thought some elementary sarcasm would make for a great, funny HN comment.
  - bamboozled 6y ago
    Care to elaborate ? If you’re suggesting i missed some sarcasm, it doesn’t matter because this is a fairly common belief I’ve heard from others.
- johnchristopher 6y ago
  > Knowing that 6am is early is good, imagine how confused you'd be if you travel overseas but the timezone is always the same, you'd have to re-learn what time the morning is etc and constantly try adapt if to your situation. Few people travel overseas in their lifetime anyway. If you happen to do it a lot then I am sure you'd get used to shifting the numbers.
  - bamboozled 6y ago
    Then the point of them having to use UTC anyway , if all they are concerned with is local time, why should they care about UTC?
- dade_ 6y ago
  Except culturally, in some places 8 am is basically 6 am in North America.
  - dheera 6y ago
    Considering Spain and Hungary are in the same timezone, and eastern and western China are in the same timezone, this kind of thing happens a lot.
- dheera 6y ago
  I use UTC on all my devices as well and I think in UTC for my personal life. I think the entire world using a single time zone is a great idea.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Don't be surprised then if people stop actually using wall clock time and start saying things like "3 hours after sunrise" or "2 hours before dinner" or something, as both of those are much more comprehensible absent any other context than just saying 17:30Z. There is a large demand for the concept of a local time, and people are always going to use it.
    - rapind 6y ago
      I disagree. We're inundated with time displays. Right now I have 5 time displays within 20 feet (computer, stove, microwave, phone, watch). I could imagine some people would continue to reference sundown / sunup for relevant situations (kids, get home by dark) the same as they already do, but not for anything time sensitive (like say a meeting). There's just no way I would schedule a call for "3 hours past sunset" even if I was forced to tell time in binary.
      - CydeWeys 6y ago
        You're incorrectly generalizing from yourself to most people. Most people think in local time and would continue to do so regardless of whatever you attempt to do to impose something else on them. Also, think of how deleterious the abolition of local time would have on communication. Right now I can say something like "I received an urgent call at 3am" and you know immediately what that means. But if I said "I received an urgent call at 17:00Z", a lot of the meaning is lost. You'd have to know where I live, i.e. what my local time zone is, and then do some quick mental math to determine what actual time of day 17:00Z means for me. With local time, that calculation is already done for you! Local time is just too damn useful of a concept. It really truly is better than global time for most uses. Global time is really only useful for scheduling global meetings and computer stuff. Even within the US, all of our scheduling is done by US timezones.
- rapind 6y ago
  Would it really take that long for people to forget local time and meridians was even a thing? I'm not generally interested in big or frivolous changes, but my god, having the entire world on one clock would save so much grief (mostly internalized so we don't even notice the annoyance anymore). I saw we suck it up, and do it for future generations.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish
    - rapind 6y ago
      I spotted a few straw man's in that post. To think it would be hard to find out when the sun comes up in Australia is pretty ridiculous in the information age. I'm constantly meeting across time zones and it's no less difficult (moreso with DST). An interesting comparison would be dates. January in Sydney is summer time, and you just have to know that you aren't booking a beach vacation there in July.
      - pseudalopex 6y ago
        Their point is even full daylight doesn't mean people are awake.
corin_ 6y ago
For communicating internationally, it's much easier to think "it's 10am there, what does that mean in terms of whether this person I know is likely to be asleep/working/etc" than to think "it's 10pm here" then try to remember what's going on at the same-named 10pm on the other side of the world.
skrause 6y ago
So You Want To Abolish Time Zones: https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish
- dkersten 6y ago
  I don’t find that argument at all compelling. I didn’t reread it all again now so am replying somewhat from memory, so won’t address all the points, just the main ones I remember: that it boils down to “but then I won’t know if it’s the middle of the high/the business is open in other country!”, except this is already true: Countries have weird time zones like how China has a single time zone even though the country spans the area of three. Apparently Palestine and Israel have different time zones despite being the same physical location. It gets dark at different times depending on how close to the equator you are. If you want to know if it’s night or day somewhere, you already have to look it up, so nothing would change if time zones were abolished. Similarly, businesses already have varied opening hours so again you have to look it up. Hell, without time zones it would be easier because if the website says “you can call us between 0900 and 1700“ you know that you can call them when your clock is between those times, no need to mentally time zone adjust. My point is that the arguments against laid out in that post, by and large, are already the case so things don’t really get any harder, certainly not after we adjust to the idea, but without time zones we have a single consistent time, we just adjust our schedules based on our local day/night. Hell, if more people work from home and more companies hire foreign remote workers, a shift from local to global time would benefit everyone.
  - thw0rted 6y ago
    You forgot to cover the part where day names lose meaning -- you go to work at 21:00 on Wednesday and come home at 06:00 Thursday. Basic concepts like "tomorrow" start to come apart at the seams. (Yes, shift workers already deal with this; no, that doesn't make it easy.)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- anoonmoose 6y ago

I don't think it's useful for everyone but the military and people who grok log files. Knowing that 6am is early is good, imagine how confused you'd be if you travel overseas but the timezone is always the same, you'd have to re-learn what time the morning is etc and constantly try adapt if to your situation. The current local systems we use have function we take for granted.. I just have a UTC clock on all my devices (along side my local time) and I find that's the most useful. Local time is what I use primarily, UTC for international calls.

4gotunameagain 6y ago
I think you have been bamboozled by the poster above my friend
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  The more charitable interpretation of their comment is that it was earnest, not that they thought some elementary sarcasm would make for a great, funny HN comment.
- bamboozled 6y ago
  Care to elaborate ? If you’re suggesting i missed some sarcasm, it doesn’t matter because this is a fairly common belief I’ve heard from others.
johnchristopher 6y ago
> Knowing that 6am is early is good, imagine how confused you'd be if you travel overseas but the timezone is always the same, you'd have to re-learn what time the morning is etc and constantly try adapt if to your situation. Few people travel overseas in their lifetime anyway. If you happen to do it a lot then I am sure you'd get used to shifting the numbers.
- bamboozled 6y ago
  Then the point of them having to use UTC anyway , if all they are concerned with is local time, why should they care about UTC?
dade_ 6y ago
Except culturally, in some places 8 am is basically 6 am in North America.
- dheera 6y ago
  Considering Spain and Hungary are in the same timezone, and eastern and western China are in the same timezone, this kind of thing happens a lot.
dheera 6y ago
I use UTC on all my devices as well and I think in UTC for my personal life. I think the entire world using a single time zone is a great idea.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Don't be surprised then if people stop actually using wall clock time and start saying things like "3 hours after sunrise" or "2 hours before dinner" or something, as both of those are much more comprehensible absent any other context than just saying 17:30Z. There is a large demand for the concept of a local time, and people are always going to use it.
  - rapind 6y ago
    I disagree. We're inundated with time displays. Right now I have 5 time displays within 20 feet (computer, stove, microwave, phone, watch). I could imagine some people would continue to reference sundown / sunup for relevant situations (kids, get home by dark) the same as they already do, but not for anything time sensitive (like say a meeting). There's just no way I would schedule a call for "3 hours past sunset" even if I was forced to tell time in binary.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      You're incorrectly generalizing from yourself to most people. Most people think in local time and would continue to do so regardless of whatever you attempt to do to impose something else on them. Also, think of how deleterious the abolition of local time would have on communication. Right now I can say something like "I received an urgent call at 3am" and you know immediately what that means. But if I said "I received an urgent call at 17:00Z", a lot of the meaning is lost. You'd have to know where I live, i.e. what my local time zone is, and then do some quick mental math to determine what actual time of day 17:00Z means for me. With local time, that calculation is already done for you! Local time is just too damn useful of a concept. It really truly is better than global time for most uses. Global time is really only useful for scheduling global meetings and computer stuff. Even within the US, all of our scheduling is done by US timezones.
rapind 6y ago
Would it really take that long for people to forget local time and meridians was even a thing? I'm not generally interested in big or frivolous changes, but my god, having the entire world on one clock would save so much grief (mostly internalized so we don't even notice the annoyance anymore). I saw we suck it up, and do it for future generations.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish
  - rapind 6y ago
    I spotted a few straw man's in that post. To think it would be hard to find out when the sun comes up in Australia is pretty ridiculous in the information age. I'm constantly meeting across time zones and it's no less difficult (moreso with DST). An interesting comparison would be dates. January in Sydney is summer time, and you just have to know that you aren't booking a beach vacation there in July.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      Their point is even full daylight doesn't mean people are awake.

corin_ 6y ago

For communicating internationally, it's much easier to think "it's 10am there, what does that mean in terms of whether this person I know is likely to be asleep/working/etc" than to think "it's 10pm here" then try to remember what's going on at the same-named 10pm on the other side of the world.

skrause 6y ago

So You Want To Abolish Time Zones: https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish

dkersten 6y ago
I don’t find that argument at all compelling. I didn’t reread it all again now so am replying somewhat from memory, so won’t address all the points, just the main ones I remember: that it boils down to “but then I won’t know if it’s the middle of the high/the business is open in other country!”, except this is already true: Countries have weird time zones like how China has a single time zone even though the country spans the area of three. Apparently Palestine and Israel have different time zones despite being the same physical location. It gets dark at different times depending on how close to the equator you are. If you want to know if it’s night or day somewhere, you already have to look it up, so nothing would change if time zones were abolished. Similarly, businesses already have varied opening hours so again you have to look it up. Hell, without time zones it would be easier because if the website says “you can call us between 0900 and 1700“ you know that you can call them when your clock is between those times, no need to mentally time zone adjust. My point is that the arguments against laid out in that post, by and large, are already the case so things don’t really get any harder, certainly not after we adjust to the idea, but without time zones we have a single consistent time, we just adjust our schedules based on our local day/night. Hell, if more people work from home and more companies hire foreign remote workers, a shift from local to global time would benefit everyone.
- thw0rted 6y ago
  You forgot to cover the part where day names lose meaning -- you go to work at 21:00 on Wednesday and come home at 06:00 Thursday. Basic concepts like "tomorrow" start to come apart at the seams. (Yes, shift workers already deal with this; no, that doesn't make it easy.)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
anoonmoose 6y ago