4 ms·

Why is it obvious that 3:30 PM bad as the middle of the night is bad? I'm all for a universal world-wide time. then we'd just have to learn what time is middle

Why is it obvious that 3:30 PM bad as the middle of the night is bad? I'm all for a universal world-wide time. then we'd just have to learn what time is middle of the night for what location, but we have digital aids for that. It solves all timezone bs. My guess is is that we whine for about a month and then it becomes normal for ie. 14:00 to be middle of the night depending on you location.

carl_dr 5y ago
Out of interest, have you read https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish?
- teekert 5y ago
  Interesting but I feel that all questions are answerable with another definition of time relative to "solar noon" (some kind of icon with the sun on an arch comes to mind, my Amafit Smartwatch uses this). Also the article does not take into account that our phones may warn us "that Uncle Steve in Melbourne is probably asleep", for example. The date line? Yeah lets put that in the center of the Pacific.
toomanyducks 5y ago
I personally tried this for a few weeks: I set my clocks to GMT, and converted everyone else's silly little timezones into one unambiguous number. All I accomplished was memorizing the offset between GMT and local time and getting marginally quicker at the required arithematic to convert between them. It didn't even solve any problems, because a) nobody else was doing it, so, shrug, and b) I immediately lost all context for the earth's rotation, and that turned out to be a massive pain in the ass. I think the very least we can do, though, is get rid of DST.
- fullstop 5y ago
  Swatch tried to do this ages ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time
- adrian_b 5y ago
  I have done exactly the same, but I am happy to continue like this after switching to GMT about 20 years ago. Adding/subtracting the local time offsets when necessary is easier for me than trying to think in local times and DST. Moreover, I have not lost the context for the earth's rotation, but I am better aware of it, by remembering which is the GMT time of the noon where I live. During summers (i.e. with DST), the noon is delayed here by about 75 minutes from 12:00, so keeping in mind the correct UTC time of the noon makes me more aware of the Sun position. There are many places where the time difference between noon and 12:00 local time is much larger, making the official local time pretty useless for determining the Sun direction.
  - johannes1234321 5y ago
    Just curious: How far east/west from Greenwich are you? - Depending on that meaning of colloquialisms can become weird (what is today/tomorrow? What is "around noon" etc.)
    - adrian_b 5y ago
      Noon is when the Sun is at maximum height, so it is approximately half time between sunrise and sunset. The time of the noon varies from place to place depending on the longitude. In the beginning, every major town had its own local time, with noon at 12:00. After the time zones were introduced, noon should have been everywhere some time between 11:30 and 12:30. With DST, you can have a difference of up to 90 minutes between noon and the official 12:00, but there are countries which occupy more than one time zone, but do not bother to have so many time zones as necessary to minimize the differences between noon and 12:00, so there are places where there can be more than 2 hours between the true noon and 12:00. It does not matter how far east/west you are but only how the time zones are set in your country, together with the DST. If you would want to use the traditional boy scout technique of finding the south using a watch and either the Sun or the Moon, you would need to know the hour of the true noon in that place, otherwise the angular errors would be excessive.
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      In the town where I live, there is a belltower, with a clock that used to be set to local time. It is West of Greenwich, so the bell tolled the hours several minutes after GMT.
- dnautics 5y ago
  Yeah UTC/GMT is not intended for personal use, but try managing a SAAS product that has two user shards, US and EU, and keeping aggregated incident reports on your favorite monitoring system sane without UTC.
globular-toast 5y ago
> we have digital aids for that Like a clock that you can adjust so that 0:00 is the middle of the night?
kibwen 5y ago
We already have universal world-wide time: UTC and TAI. You can use these today, and nobody can stop you.
Vvector 5y ago
> It solves all timezone bs. So when does Monday start? 14:00 UTC in your location?
- teekert 5y ago
  Why not?
  - Vvector 5y ago
    Monday 13:30 and Monday 14:30 are now a week apart for you. But for someone in the next timezone, it is 1 hour apart. Basically you are replacing Time Zones with Day-of-Week Zones.
zajio1am 5y ago
> I'm all for a universal world-wide time. then we'd just have to learn what time is middle of the night for what location, There is one thing that is highly inconvenient and to have day border during working hours.
iso1210 5y ago
Because you'd get up on Monday and then book a table for after work on Tuesday. The ambiguity of defining "today" would be problematic. Now sure people who work night shifts have that, but it's a small number of people and a small number of services that are open 24/7.
dylan604 5y ago
Isn't 3:30pm in the middle of the night a regular occurence during parts of the year for people at certain lattitudes?

carl_dr 5y ago

Out of interest, have you read https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish?

teekert 5y ago
Interesting but I feel that all questions are answerable with another definition of time relative to "solar noon" (some kind of icon with the sun on an arch comes to mind, my Amafit Smartwatch uses this). Also the article does not take into account that our phones may warn us "that Uncle Steve in Melbourne is probably asleep", for example. The date line? Yeah lets put that in the center of the Pacific.

toomanyducks 5y ago

I personally tried this for a few weeks: I set my clocks to GMT, and converted everyone else's silly little timezones into one unambiguous number. All I accomplished was memorizing the offset between GMT and local time and getting marginally quicker at the required arithematic to convert between them. It didn't even solve any problems, because a) nobody else was doing it, so, shrug, and b) I immediately lost all context for the earth's rotation, and that turned out to be a massive pain in the ass. I think the very least we can do, though, is get rid of DST.

fullstop 5y ago
Swatch tried to do this ages ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time
adrian_b 5y ago
I have done exactly the same, but I am happy to continue like this after switching to GMT about 20 years ago. Adding/subtracting the local time offsets when necessary is easier for me than trying to think in local times and DST. Moreover, I have not lost the context for the earth's rotation, but I am better aware of it, by remembering which is the GMT time of the noon where I live. During summers (i.e. with DST), the noon is delayed here by about 75 minutes from 12:00, so keeping in mind the correct UTC time of the noon makes me more aware of the Sun position. There are many places where the time difference between noon and 12:00 local time is much larger, making the official local time pretty useless for determining the Sun direction.
- johannes1234321 5y ago
  Just curious: How far east/west from Greenwich are you? - Depending on that meaning of colloquialisms can become weird (what is today/tomorrow? What is "around noon" etc.)
  - adrian_b 5y ago
    Noon is when the Sun is at maximum height, so it is approximately half time between sunrise and sunset. The time of the noon varies from place to place depending on the longitude. In the beginning, every major town had its own local time, with noon at 12:00. After the time zones were introduced, noon should have been everywhere some time between 11:30 and 12:30. With DST, you can have a difference of up to 90 minutes between noon and the official 12:00, but there are countries which occupy more than one time zone, but do not bother to have so many time zones as necessary to minimize the differences between noon and 12:00, so there are places where there can be more than 2 hours between the true noon and 12:00. It does not matter how far east/west you are but only how the time zones are set in your country, together with the DST. If you would want to use the traditional boy scout technique of finding the south using a watch and either the Sun or the Moon, you would need to know the hour of the true noon in that place, otherwise the angular errors would be excessive.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    In the town where I live, there is a belltower, with a clock that used to be set to local time. It is West of Greenwich, so the bell tolled the hours several minutes after GMT.
dnautics 5y ago
Yeah UTC/GMT is not intended for personal use, but try managing a SAAS product that has two user shards, US and EU, and keeping aggregated incident reports on your favorite monitoring system sane without UTC.

globular-toast 5y ago

> we have digital aids for that Like a clock that you can adjust so that 0:00 is the middle of the night?

kibwen 5y ago

We already have universal world-wide time: UTC and TAI. You can use these today, and nobody can stop you.

Vvector 5y ago

> It solves all timezone bs. So when does Monday start? 14:00 UTC in your location?

teekert 5y ago
Why not?
- Vvector 5y ago
  Monday 13:30 and Monday 14:30 are now a week apart for you. But for someone in the next timezone, it is 1 hour apart. Basically you are replacing Time Zones with Day-of-Week Zones.

zajio1am 5y ago

> I'm all for a universal world-wide time. then we'd just have to learn what time is middle of the night for what location, There is one thing that is highly inconvenient and to have day border during working hours.

iso1210 5y ago

Because you'd get up on Monday and then book a table for after work on Tuesday. The ambiguity of defining "today" would be problematic. Now sure people who work night shifts have that, but it's a small number of people and a small number of services that are open 24/7.

dylan604 5y ago

Isn't 3:30pm in the middle of the night a regular occurence during parts of the year for people at certain lattitudes?