4 ms·

Unless you can propose a proper way to locally represent time where a person is currently present in relation to the position of the sun then no, time zones wil

Unless you can propose a proper way to locally represent time where a person is currently present in relation to the position of the sun then no, time zones will never go away. I know time zones suck for us as programmers but it's a practical way to separate different regions that will experience different times of day differently. As long as we have clocks and times with "midnight"s and "noon"s, time zones will exist. I assume once we truly become an interplanetary species and colonise multiple planets, we will begin to use different methods of time since 24 hour/365 day clocks are going to be an Earth only thing but that's for future scientists to decide. There were proposals for daylight savings to go away but that seems to have disappeared into the ether for some reason.

IgorPartola 2y ago
Just because you personally are used to a specific type of clock doesn’t mean you can’t imagine a different kind. Submarines use 24 hour clocks and give no hecks about where the sun is. The solution is to just use UTC. That’s it. That means in NYC you’d get to work at 13:00 and go home at 21:00, which used to be 9am-5pm. That’s it. Your whole transition has been completed. The rest is just what your calendar says. Niece’s recital on Thursday at 19:00, beers with Greg at 23:00 on Friday, etc. It really isn’t hard to imagine.
- hugh-avherald 2y ago
  Why don't people just do this then? There's no overwhelming obligation on individuals to use the local timezone. I also think that your using the example of submarines -- notoriously an onerous lifestyle that very few are capable of living -- pretty much torpedoes your implicit suggestion that this would not be too much of a change.
  - rswail 2y ago
    > pretty much torpedoes your implicit suggestion that this would not be too much of a change. You did that on porpoise I hope.
  - IgorPartola 2y ago
    The reason it is hard being on a submarine isn’t because of the clock. That’s like saying that it is hard to be a construction worker because the hard hats aren’t fashionable. And the reason why people don’t just do that is because it is a network effect problem. We all need to buy into it. Like the metric system or driving on the same side of the road. And people do this. Haven’t you seen people who routinely talk to people outside their timezones sign their email with their location and/or UTC work hours?
- coldpie 2y ago
  > The solution is to just use UTC. That’s it. Okay. I work in Minneapolis and need to schedule a meeting with someone in London. How do I know what UTC time is during daylight hours for both participants? Well, we can use a formula that will tell us where the sun in the sky for a given longitude. But that's kind of a chore. So let's break ranges of longitude into zones and create a lookup table. Hang on a minute... I've just traveled to Tokyo from Minneapolis. What time do I need to set my alarm to, to wake up an hour before most businesses open? Well, I can use trigonometry to figure out what UTC time the sun will rise at this location on Earth. But that's kind of a chore, so presumably each city will have an offset from UTC time that they all agree on to begin business hours. Hang on a minute...
- vundercind 2y ago
  Traveling would be so much more disorienting. Forgetting what the local daytime range is and checking the position of the sun to guess whether you're closer to the front or back half of the day. Having to consult a table to figure out exactly how much you're going to inconvenience the person giving you a ride from the airport. Accidentally running into rush hour because you forgot that 1100 is 5:00 here. LOL.
  - IgorPartola 2y ago
    So like when you fly from London to NYC and have no idea how long the flight actually is because it leaves at 10am and arrives at 9am? Timezones explicitly make travel harder, not easier.
- teo_zero 2y ago
  > NYC you’d get to work at 13:00 and go home at 21:00 And if you plan to meet your colleagues after dinner, would you say "see you tomorrow?".
- ta1243 2y ago
  OK, you're in LA. You finish work at 2300 on Monday. You have plans to go to the theatre on Tuesday after work. Is that 0100 on Tuesday (after finishing at 2300 on Monday) or 0100 on Wednesday (after finishing at 2300 on Tuesday)
  - iggldiggl 2y ago
    Along the same vein… how are public holidays supposed to be handled? Do those always start and finish at midnight UTC, even if midnight UTC happens to be right during the middle of the solar day (and everybody's waking hours)? Or does every place define a specific time (aligned to solar midnight or some other suitable point during the night) for when holidays are supposed to start and end, which is basically reintroducing timezones through the back door?
- Tor3 2y ago
  >That means in NYC you’d get to work at 13:00 and go home at 21:00, Fine.. so I'm going to have a teleconference with a company in NYC. Due to what you wrote above I now have an idea of what UTC time window to plan for - after all, I want to be able to reach them during their working hours. Then on Friday I have to schedule a teleconf with a company in Japan. When do they work, relative to UTC? You forgot to add that, so I have to find it somewhere. Hm, wouldn't it be nice if my computer could keep track of the working hours everywhere in the world. Let's make a database of that.. There's just one issue: How is this any better than using the timezone system we already have? Using that, I can figure out the local time in those places, and I can safely assume that they'll at least be working from around 09:00 local time. Having to instead keep track of their working hours relative to UTC doesn't seem like much of an improvement to me.
  - IgorPartola 2y ago
    You got it exactly right up to the last sentence. Yes it is exactly the same amount of work to figure out how to make a long distance phone call or schedule a meeting. Except for most people it is almost never a problem because most people aren’t scheduling phone calls or meetings with unfamiliar locations. The benefit is obvious: things that happen at the same time have the same number associated with them. Just like we currently coordinate dates using a shared calendar, we coordinate times. And that has a local benefit as well. Aside from no more daylight savings time which we can achieve using other means, we also know when world events happen as they are being reported, we know when certain things take effect for countries that span multiple timezones now, we know the exact difference between any two given time points without asking “but where are they happening?” Again, imagine that we had unified time and some country somewhere said “hey we are using the same format but doing our own variable offset from it”. That would be absolutely asinine. We are used to timezones and think they benefit us because of that familiarity. In reality we have had variable time even in the same timezones before and it was universally a bad idea that was shut down soon as people started traveling. Oh and consider that due to cultural differences your example of scheduling meetings is already flawed: do you know if Tokyo wraps up the workday at 4pm or 6pm? Is there an hour or two hour lunch break in Barcelona? When do people actually come to work in Rome? Are banks open on Saturdays in Baghdad? Timezones do not solve these issues whatsoever so you still need to do the lookup of “when are people actually around” when scheduling a meeting outside of your culture.

IgorPartola 2y ago

Just because you personally are used to a specific type of clock doesn’t mean you can’t imagine a different kind. Submarines use 24 hour clocks and give no hecks about where the sun is. The solution is to just use UTC. That’s it. That means in NYC you’d get to work at 13:00 and go home at 21:00, which used to be 9am-5pm. That’s it. Your whole transition has been completed. The rest is just what your calendar says. Niece’s recital on Thursday at 19:00, beers with Greg at 23:00 on Friday, etc. It really isn’t hard to imagine.

hugh-avherald 2y ago
Why don't people just do this then? There's no overwhelming obligation on individuals to use the local timezone. I also think that your using the example of submarines -- notoriously an onerous lifestyle that very few are capable of living -- pretty much torpedoes your implicit suggestion that this would not be too much of a change.
- rswail 2y ago
  > pretty much torpedoes your implicit suggestion that this would not be too much of a change. You did that on porpoise I hope.
- IgorPartola 2y ago
  The reason it is hard being on a submarine isn’t because of the clock. That’s like saying that it is hard to be a construction worker because the hard hats aren’t fashionable. And the reason why people don’t just do that is because it is a network effect problem. We all need to buy into it. Like the metric system or driving on the same side of the road. And people do this. Haven’t you seen people who routinely talk to people outside their timezones sign their email with their location and/or UTC work hours?
coldpie 2y ago
> The solution is to just use UTC. That’s it. Okay. I work in Minneapolis and need to schedule a meeting with someone in London. How do I know what UTC time is during daylight hours for both participants? Well, we can use a formula that will tell us where the sun in the sky for a given longitude. But that's kind of a chore. So let's break ranges of longitude into zones and create a lookup table. Hang on a minute... I've just traveled to Tokyo from Minneapolis. What time do I need to set my alarm to, to wake up an hour before most businesses open? Well, I can use trigonometry to figure out what UTC time the sun will rise at this location on Earth. But that's kind of a chore, so presumably each city will have an offset from UTC time that they all agree on to begin business hours. Hang on a minute...
vundercind 2y ago
Traveling would be so much more disorienting. Forgetting what the local daytime range is and checking the position of the sun to guess whether you're closer to the front or back half of the day. Having to consult a table to figure out exactly how much you're going to inconvenience the person giving you a ride from the airport. Accidentally running into rush hour because you forgot that 1100 is 5:00 here. LOL.
- IgorPartola 2y ago
  So like when you fly from London to NYC and have no idea how long the flight actually is because it leaves at 10am and arrives at 9am? Timezones explicitly make travel harder, not easier.
teo_zero 2y ago
> NYC you’d get to work at 13:00 and go home at 21:00 And if you plan to meet your colleagues after dinner, would you say "see you tomorrow?".
ta1243 2y ago
OK, you're in LA. You finish work at 2300 on Monday. You have plans to go to the theatre on Tuesday after work. Is that 0100 on Tuesday (after finishing at 2300 on Monday) or 0100 on Wednesday (after finishing at 2300 on Tuesday)
- iggldiggl 2y ago
  Along the same vein… how are public holidays supposed to be handled? Do those always start and finish at midnight UTC, even if midnight UTC happens to be right during the middle of the solar day (and everybody's waking hours)? Or does every place define a specific time (aligned to solar midnight or some other suitable point during the night) for when holidays are supposed to start and end, which is basically reintroducing timezones through the back door?
Tor3 2y ago
>That means in NYC you’d get to work at 13:00 and go home at 21:00, Fine.. so I'm going to have a teleconference with a company in NYC. Due to what you wrote above I now have an idea of what UTC time window to plan for - after all, I want to be able to reach them during their working hours. Then on Friday I have to schedule a teleconf with a company in Japan. When do they work, relative to UTC? You forgot to add that, so I have to find it somewhere. Hm, wouldn't it be nice if my computer could keep track of the working hours everywhere in the world. Let's make a database of that.. There's just one issue: How is this any better than using the timezone system we already have? Using that, I can figure out the local time in those places, and I can safely assume that they'll at least be working from around 09:00 local time. Having to instead keep track of their working hours relative to UTC doesn't seem like much of an improvement to me.
- IgorPartola 2y ago
  You got it exactly right up to the last sentence. Yes it is exactly the same amount of work to figure out how to make a long distance phone call or schedule a meeting. Except for most people it is almost never a problem because most people aren’t scheduling phone calls or meetings with unfamiliar locations. The benefit is obvious: things that happen at the same time have the same number associated with them. Just like we currently coordinate dates using a shared calendar, we coordinate times. And that has a local benefit as well. Aside from no more daylight savings time which we can achieve using other means, we also know when world events happen as they are being reported, we know when certain things take effect for countries that span multiple timezones now, we know the exact difference between any two given time points without asking “but where are they happening?” Again, imagine that we had unified time and some country somewhere said “hey we are using the same format but doing our own variable offset from it”. That would be absolutely asinine. We are used to timezones and think they benefit us because of that familiarity. In reality we have had variable time even in the same timezones before and it was universally a bad idea that was shut down soon as people started traveling. Oh and consider that due to cultural differences your example of scheduling meetings is already flawed: do you know if Tokyo wraps up the workday at 4pm or 6pm? Is there an hour or two hour lunch break in Barcelona? When do people actually come to work in Rome? Are banks open on Saturdays in Baghdad? Timezones do not solve these issues whatsoever so you still need to do the lookup of “when are people actually around” when scheduling a meeting outside of your culture.