3 ms·

People's eyes glaze over when I rant about this. But yes, I fantasize about a world where you could say "let's set up a video call at 6" and there's no mental m

People's eyes glaze over when I rant about this. But yes, I fantasize about a world where you could say "let's set up a video call at 6" and there's no mental math when there's geographic distance involved. Biggest downside I can think of, apart from the entire population groaning about making the switch, would be the confusion from reading literature from the before times. Oh, and all blood, sweat, and tears of all the devs who created timezone code going down the drain.

t0mas88 3y ago
Some industries do this using UTC. For example flight departure and arrival times are in UTC on all paperwork. And also the meteo reports and forecasts, and airspace restrictions, and airport opening times etc. Mostly out of a necessity that fights tend to cross timezones and planes come and go from all over the world and they don't want to have to figure out everywhere what the local time is. Really only passenger info screens convert to local time.
psd1 3y ago
The biggest downside would be the date rolling over during a record-keeping period. But this is already a problem and people handle it just fine. I mean, we say "tonight" for 02:30 on the following day, so meh.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  No no no. We can't make the world adjust to our crappy code. 24:00 is "mid night". 02:30 is not less 'tonight' than 21:30, assuming no DST.
- iggldiggl 3y ago
  > But this is already a problem and people handle it just fine. I mean, we say "tonight" for 02:30 on the following day, so meh. Because that only affects the comparatively small number of people awake respectively events happening at that time of day. If you move the calendar date change right into the middle of the waking hours of almost everybody else, things get quite a bit more annoying.
  - psd1 3y ago
    I'm willing to make that sacrifice if we can delete python's time zone library.
WorldMaker 3y ago
Swatch tried unsuccessfully to sell people on this idea back in the late 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

t0mas88 3y ago

Some industries do this using UTC. For example flight departure and arrival times are in UTC on all paperwork. And also the meteo reports and forecasts, and airspace restrictions, and airport opening times etc. Mostly out of a necessity that fights tend to cross timezones and planes come and go from all over the world and they don't want to have to figure out everywhere what the local time is. Really only passenger info screens convert to local time.

psd1 3y ago

The biggest downside would be the date rolling over during a record-keeping period. But this is already a problem and people handle it just fine. I mean, we say "tonight" for 02:30 on the following day, so meh.

rightbyte 3y ago
No no no. We can't make the world adjust to our crappy code. 24:00 is "mid night". 02:30 is not less 'tonight' than 21:30, assuming no DST.
iggldiggl 3y ago
> But this is already a problem and people handle it just fine. I mean, we say "tonight" for 02:30 on the following day, so meh. Because that only affects the comparatively small number of people awake respectively events happening at that time of day. If you move the calendar date change right into the middle of the waking hours of almost everybody else, things get quite a bit more annoying.
- psd1 3y ago
  I'm willing to make that sacrifice if we can delete python's time zone library.

WorldMaker 3y ago

Swatch tried unsuccessfully to sell people on this idea back in the late 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time