41–50 of 555 posts
But one thing to ponder: Just like telling time in 24-hour mode is useful, perhaps it will be useful to have some clocks display UTC? Perhaps it'll be useful to talk about international events in UTC?
Perhaps instead of abolishing time zones, we just use UTC as a convention when talking about events that happen across time zones?
The article is upside down. "Perhaps you’re asking why the Greenwich meridian gets to define earth time. " It doesn't. Everybody gets to have their own, proper time. In comparing times, we +/- based on an arbitrary spot, and that's it. Time zones are a great solution to a problem. People want their time in local terms. Everyone waking up and going to bed at different times is an utterly ridiculous concept. FYI - if y…
The article is upside down. "Perhaps you’re asking why the Greenwich meridian gets to define earth time. " It doesn't. Everybody gets to have their own, proper time. In comparing times, we +/- based on an arbitrary spot, and that's it. Time zones are a great solution to a problem. People want their time in local terms. Everyone waking up and going to bed at different times is an utterly ridiculous concept. FYI - if y…
I'd be happy with doing away with Daylight Savings Time.
^This. Lets tackle the thing that's definitely a good idea, and much easier to manage before shooting for the metaphorical moon.
Getting rid of Daylight Savings makes complete sense, and it's something we should really pursue. Getting rid of Time Zones is ridiculous. People know that 6am roughly is morning, and 6pm is roughly the evening. When you're dealing with someone internationally, you know not to call them at midnight their time because there's a high probability they may be sleeping. Having time roughly follow a standard around the wor…
The article is upside down. "Perhaps you’re asking why the Greenwich meridian gets to define earth time. " It doesn't. Everybody gets to have their own, proper time. In comparing times, we +/- based on an arbitrary spot, and that's it. Time zones are a great solution to a problem. People want their time in local terms. Everyone waking up and going to bed at different times is an utterly ridiculous concept. FYI - if y…
I tried that out of curiosity once. It did not last very long. I generally organize my time into days: "I'll work on this today, on that tomorrow, and the other thing on Thursday", and I am awake when the sun is up. UTC made it so that the date changed in the middle of the afternoon, which made that abstraction unworkable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding UTC: when I've tried (as a European) to coordinate online meetings with Americans (working in tech companies) using times given in UTC, it's gone wrong about 50% of the time. Usually caused by people confusing UTC and British Summer Time (UTC+1).
Sadly, that's because they think UTC == GMT (which does have DST). UTC would be the time that computer software operates in and then feeds humans 'human time'. You also can't use 'Zulu' from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_time_zones either, for that same confusion. The problem, like with driving, is that humans are communicating the time to humans, instead of the 'smartest' humans having programmed co…
Google is not the arbiter of all things, but a good clue is that Googling "current time GMT" in the summer will give you the time in Britain as though DST didn't exist.
The article is upside down. "Perhaps you’re asking why the Greenwich meridian gets to define earth time. " It doesn't. Everybody gets to have their own, proper time. In comparing times, we +/- based on an arbitrary spot, and that's it. Time zones are a great solution to a problem. People want their time in local terms. Everyone waking up and going to bed at different times is an utterly ridiculous concept. FYI - if y…
In the west, they use Beijing time, and things like banks and post offices operate on Beijing time, but most other aspects of life just shift. Ie, it's normal to wake up at 10am, etc.
But more future facing...what are we going to do when we have colonies on the moon and Mars? Things are going to spiral fast if we don't stick to uniform time while we're still mono-planet.
As an example, NASA's Mars photos API provide an option to sort by Martian sol instead of earth date: https://api.nasa.gov/api.html#MarsPhotos