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Time to Dump Time Zones

nytimes.com

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Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#131

Post by acqq »

rtpg wrote: post #114
salmon30salmon wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who live in our Ivory Tower of the software industry that may be true, but the 9-5 concept is not outdated for a vast majority of working humans on the planet. Lets not project our reality onto the rest of the world.

Here's a fun thing though: Japan adopted the 9-5. But Japan is on solar time, and thus the sun comes up at 4 AM during the summer in Tokyo. Japan also doesn't do DST. So 9-5 is actually 11-7 in "equivalent sunlight" The idea of time zones is to keep people in sync, but most of the world is not even on a "12PM=Solar Midday" schedule! So when the sun comes up at 4, if feels weird, because it doesn't match what you see…

Are you sure you got it right?

If I understood correctly, Akashi is the "standard" (as in, fixed from Greenwich) reference in Japan, some 270 miles west of Tokyo, that means that the Sun is at the highest point just some minutes before 12 in Tokyo, which is not significantly different from what happens in London when the DST is not active? England sees the highest Sun at around 1 pm when the DST is active, but that's only one hour, give or take the minutes of seasonal variations from the real solar time, and that really only when DST is active, and Japan, as you say, doesn't do DST, and has the similar seasonal variations.

Therefore I don't understand your "11-7" equivalence.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#132

Post by [deleted] »

pixie_ wrote: post #45
pfarnsworth wrote: post #29

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…

We need permanent daylight savings time. Yesterday sunset was around 6pm in LA. Today it will be at 5pm. At least I had a little bit of daylight after work, now it's just depressing.

[deleted]

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#133

Post by majewsky »

grey-area wrote: post #126
salmon30salmon wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who live in our Ivory Tower of the software industry that may be true, but the 9-5 concept is not outdated for a vast majority of working humans on the planet. Lets not project our reality onto the rest of the world.

the 9-5 concept is not outdated for a vast majority of working humans on the planet. Lets not project our reality onto the rest of the world. On the contrary, the 9-5 concept has never applied to the vast majority of working humans on the planet (agriculture, health, factories, sales, even most offices don't keep those hours). With growing communication across time zones, their difficulties have only recently become…

> the 9-5 concept has never applied to the vast majority of working humans on the planet (agriculture, health, factories, sales, even most offices don't keep those hours)

Also, reproductive work (nursing children, taking care of the sick and elderly, cleaning the house).

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#134

Post by beambot »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #29

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…

This example fails in my experience. You know not to call international in the middle of the night only after jumping through the mental gymnastics of timezone differences anyway. You'd have to do the same with a single time base.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#135

Post by cyberferret »

emodendroket wrote: post #120
cyberferret wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the current concept of time is also based on the outdated industrial age concept of a 'working day' being 9-5. I doubt many of the people on HN for instance, work those set hours in this day and age. Nowadays it is purely a convenience factor to keep the worker drones in the same hive so they can gather for the next interminable meeting. With the rise of remote working, and other forms of communication tools, no…

> With the rise of remote working, and other forms of communication tools, no one has to be constrained by those arbitrary work hours any more No, that's completely untrue for the vast majority of workers.

Because convention dictates that they have to be in the office between 9-5, or because those are the only times that they can actually do the work they are paid to do?

I appreciate that factory assembly line workers, shopkeepers and many others have to have set hours, but even so, does that have to conform to the 9-5 standard?

An example using Banks, an ancient entity that exemplified the 9-5 ethos: Here in Australia, most banks don't open their doors until 9am, then close promptly at 4pm. Their reasoning - they have to prepare floats and cash drawers in the morning and cash up at the end of the day, thus the restrictive times.

Problem is - everyone else in town has to work between their designated 8am and 5pm, thus are otherwise occupied during the bank's opening times too, which makes visiting the branch office an impracticality.

Except during lunch hour. And when do the banks send most of their staff on lunch? That's right, between 12pm and 1pm, which is when everyone else can actually get there and experience short staffing at its absolute worst.

Why on earth don't they do a 'double shift', whereby one smaller team comes in at, say 6am to start the preparation and open the doors at, say 7am and work until 1pm. Another team can come in at 11am and work through to 7pm, doing the cashing up and closing the doors at 6pm. That way the bank will be open before and after other people's work times for convenience, and the dreaded lunch hour rush will actually be double staffed for better service.

That 1920's inefficient mindset really has to give way these days.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#136

Post by [deleted] »

boulos wrote: post #99
raldi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without Standard Time, it would have been dark out until 7:40am today here in SF. That's really tough on people (or children) who have to be at work/school by 9 or even 8. By mid-December, sunrise wouldn't be until almost 8:30. In Seattle, it would be dark outside until 9am. Losing an hour of sleep in the spring is rough, but I'd rather do that (and get an extra hour in the fall) than have to get ready in the dark al…

But being at work/school by 8am is part of the disease. Do you think a 7:40 am sunrise is really too late for a 9am arrival? As long as it's not super dark by the time you're in transit, it seems fine to me (and yes, I realize that sunrise in December would creep up to 8:20).

[deleted]

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#137

Post by ci5er »

ProxCoques wrote: post #116
minznerjosh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hits the nail on the head. Abandoning time zones would only make sense if there were no more need for time translation. But you'd still need to translate for the sake of biological clocks, and without time zones it would become more challenging to communicate that translation. I would be in favor of doing away with DST and also eschewing AM/PM in favor of a 24-hour clock. I'm surprised this article didn't mentio…

I get the impression Americans don't use 24-hour clock much. In Europe it's pretty much standard if you want to communicate time reliably. Or am I mistaken about the American love of am/pm?

Your impression is pretty much spot on. We have "military-time" and "24-hour time" available to us in all of our application configurations, but no-one seems to use it. I do because it helps me do time-zone translating transforms to/from UTC in my head more easily, but also because I keep failing to see that little "PM dot" or set the "PM Flag" whenever dealing with times in various applications or alarms. Verbally, speaking with USians, 15.00 is always pronounced "3pm".

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#138

Post by smokey_the_bear »

cyberferret wrote: post #81
minznerjosh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hits the nail on the head. Abandoning time zones would only make sense if there were no more need for time translation. But you'd still need to translate for the sake of biological clocks, and without time zones it would become more challenging to communicate that translation. I would be in favor of doing away with DST and also eschewing AM/PM in favor of a 24-hour clock. I'm surprised this article didn't mentio…

But the current concept of time is also based on the outdated industrial age concept of a 'working day' being 9-5. I doubt many of the people on HN for instance, work those set hours in this day and age. Nowadays it is purely a convenience factor to keep the worker drones in the same hive so they can gather for the next interminable meeting. With the rise of remote working, and other forms of communication tools, no…

I'm guessing you don't have kids. I used to work whenever I wanted, but now my kids have childcare from 8-5:30, and that is when I work.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#139

Post by majewsky »

acqq wrote: post #131
rtpg wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a fun thing though: Japan adopted the 9-5. But Japan is on solar time, and thus the sun comes up at 4 AM during the summer in Tokyo. Japan also doesn't do DST. So 9-5 is actually 11-7 in "equivalent sunlight" The idea of time zones is to keep people in sync, but most of the world is not even on a "12PM=Solar Midday" schedule! So when the sun comes up at 4, if feels weird, because it doesn't match what you see…

Are you sure you got it right? If I understood correctly, Akashi is the "standard" (as in, fixed from Greenwich) reference in Japan, some 270 miles west of Tokyo, that means that the Sun is at the highest point just some minutes before 12 in Tokyo, which is not significantly different from what happens in London when the DST is not active? England sees the highest Sun at around 1 pm when the DST is active, but that's…

I think his error is in assuming that the zenith should correspond to the midway point of your workday. Which is entirely not true: Our society is organized around getting to work first thing in the morning, and having some sunlight left after work hours for social activities.
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