3 ms·

I’m with you on the last two but a life without timezones sounds horrible. So many issues, like having to relearn the clock when you are in another timezone. I

by plufz 4y ago

I’m with you on the last two but a life without timezones sounds horrible. So many issues, like having to relearn the clock when you are in another timezone. I’ll meet you for lunch at 06.00! Life is based around the sun. Having some sort of agreed upon world timezone would be neat though, whether that was GMT or something less euro centric. So everyone would understand “we have a zoom meeting at 11.00 WT” instead of having to decide which timezone to refer to.

likis 4y ago
> "Having some sort of agreed upon world timezone would be neat though ..." Don't we already have that with UTC / Zulu time?
- ACS_Solver 4y ago
  Do you encounter people using UTC regularly? While it's the closest we have to a world timezone, in my experience people don't use it much outside of a technical context. I usually see Americans treat Eastern Time as a standard, with references to Pacific sometimes. In the EU, where I am, CET is the usual timezone used for specifying a time internationally. And regardless of the location, it's very common for people to specify a time in their local timezone first and leave it to the other party to figure out what the difference is. I haven't encountered situations like someone saying "let's have a discussion at 16:00 UTC" to set up an EU-US meeting.
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    > let's have a discussion at 16:00 UTC My colleagues and I do this, but we're often involving 3, 4, 5+ timezones. Everyone knows their own offset from UTC, but I easily forgot whether Australia is on DST this month.
  - likis 4y ago
    I agree to an extent, but I don't really see the problem either. If I book a meeting or something through any calendar application, the timezone will be fixed to the local timezone. Let's say I book it for 13:00 in my calendar, it will show up as a meeting at 14:00 in their calendar if they are +1 from me. So whenever I specify a time with someone that could be in a different timezone, I would either make sure that I am using some application that solves it for me, or I would AT LEAST include the timezone. Maybe I'm just not encountering the same problems that you do.
  - benj111 4y ago
    I use it all the time. But then I live in the UK.
bonzini 4y ago
UTC is nice not because it is euro centric, but because there is a lot of sea on the opposite side of GMT and therefore it is pretty easy to place the date change line. There are multi-timezone countries on both sides of the oceans (USA, Russia, and the European Union basically counts as a third) so the date change line has to stay on the sea. There is only one good alternative, which would be to place the date change line in the middle of the Atlantic (between UTC-3 and UTC-2) and the fundamental time zone in Japan or somewhere Australia (UTC+9/UTC+10).
- billpg 4y ago
  I wonder which side Greenland, Iceland and the Falkland Islands would pick.
  - bonzini 4y ago
    Iceland and the Falklands would likely be respectively -9 and +12 from Japan. Greenland is probably the best reason to keep Greenwich as the reference time zone. :) Most of the population (so to speak) is on -13 to -12. I have no idea if the people there have more ties to continental Europe and Iceland, or to Labrador.

by plufz 4y ago

likis 4y ago

> "Having some sort of agreed upon world timezone would be neat though ..." Don't we already have that with UTC / Zulu time?

ACS_Solver 4y ago
Do you encounter people using UTC regularly? While it's the closest we have to a world timezone, in my experience people don't use it much outside of a technical context. I usually see Americans treat Eastern Time as a standard, with references to Pacific sometimes. In the EU, where I am, CET is the usual timezone used for specifying a time internationally. And regardless of the location, it's very common for people to specify a time in their local timezone first and leave it to the other party to figure out what the difference is. I haven't encountered situations like someone saying "let's have a discussion at 16:00 UTC" to set up an EU-US meeting.
- Symbiote 4y ago
  > let's have a discussion at 16:00 UTC My colleagues and I do this, but we're often involving 3, 4, 5+ timezones. Everyone knows their own offset from UTC, but I easily forgot whether Australia is on DST this month.
- likis 4y ago
  I agree to an extent, but I don't really see the problem either. If I book a meeting or something through any calendar application, the timezone will be fixed to the local timezone. Let's say I book it for 13:00 in my calendar, it will show up as a meeting at 14:00 in their calendar if they are +1 from me. So whenever I specify a time with someone that could be in a different timezone, I would either make sure that I am using some application that solves it for me, or I would AT LEAST include the timezone. Maybe I'm just not encountering the same problems that you do.
- benj111 4y ago
  I use it all the time. But then I live in the UK.

bonzini 4y ago

UTC is nice not because it is euro centric, but because there is a lot of sea on the opposite side of GMT and therefore it is pretty easy to place the date change line. There are multi-timezone countries on both sides of the oceans (USA, Russia, and the European Union basically counts as a third) so the date change line has to stay on the sea. There is only one good alternative, which would be to place the date change line in the middle of the Atlantic (between UTC-3 and UTC-2) and the fundamental time zone in Japan or somewhere Australia (UTC+9/UTC+10).

billpg 4y ago
I wonder which side Greenland, Iceland and the Falkland Islands would pick.
- bonzini 4y ago
  Iceland and the Falklands would likely be respectively -9 and +12 from Japan. Greenland is probably the best reason to keep Greenwich as the reference time zone. :) Most of the population (so to speak) is on -13 to -12. I have no idea if the people there have more ties to continental Europe and Iceland, or to Labrador.