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Time to Dump Time Zones

nytimes.com

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Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#281

Post by BurningFrog »

darawk wrote: post #17

Hmm...this is an interesting idea. However, the core of the argument seems to be this: > “The economy — that’s all of us — would receive a permanent ‘harmonization dividend’ ”— the efficiency benefits that come from a unified time zone. But this editorial is pretty light on actually supporting that. The basic argument seems to be that it reduces 'translation costs'. But..does it? What about the benefits of being able…

You already have to ensure virtual meeting participants will be awake. What disappears is the research and lingering doubt about when the meeting really will be in everyone's local time this week.

If you're confused about when your friend woke up, that won't make you miss a meeting/phone call/WoW raid.

This is already a real problem, and the more we interact with people in other time zone in our ever more networked world, the bigger it will become.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#282

Post by grzm »

barnacs wrote: post #280
grzm wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Once you dump the notion of 'local time night is for sleeping, local time 9-5 is for working' all this seems like the next logical step to me." Can you expand on this? I read this as setting up schedules to potentially rotate everyone's sleep/work schedules, independent of the diurnal cycle. Though I wonder if I'm not reading too much into it.

I didn't really mean to imply that, but it would be interesting to see how reliant humans are on ~24 hour cycles apart from convention. It may be more deeply rooted in the way of nature than our work/sleep/leisure schedule within such cycles and changes in temperature and natural light may throw off our biology but with so many advances in artifical lighting and temperature control we shouldn't be so strict as to not…

Thanks for clarifying!

There's been quite a bit of research on circadian rhythms. I've heard that even our gut bacteria follow a daily cycle, slightly independent of other body systems. Pretty wild, eh? And there's been recently research on the effects of artificial light on sleep and circadian rhythms as well.

If we're going to have these kinds of experiments, can I opt out? :)

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#283

Post by BurningFrog »

imron wrote: post #258
darawk wrote: post #17

Hmm...this is an interesting idea. However, the core of the argument seems to be this: > “The economy — that’s all of us — would receive a permanent ‘harmonization dividend’ ”— the efficiency benefits that come from a unified time zone. But this editorial is pretty light on actually supporting that. The basic argument seems to be that it reduces 'translation costs'. But..does it? What about the benefits of being able…

Let's look at the single data point we have where this sort of system is in place - China. It's approximately as wide as the U.S. and it has a single timezone - Beijing time. As you can imagine, if you are living in Beijing, Beijing time works pretty well. It also works pretty well for everywhere else on the east coast. It's not so bad in the middle either. For the people living in Urumqi, or even further west such a…

Yeah, but do the people of rural China really have a lot of internet interactions with the people on the coast?

This cause is driven by our increasing interactions with people in other time zones, and the problem will keep getting bigger as the world gets smaller.

Xinjiang is probably a bit behind that curve, but it will happen there too.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#284

Post by BurningFrog »

inopinatus wrote: post #252
zanny wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So instead of multiple clocks, you tape sticky notes on your one clock when different cities have high noon. You must always do the translation, with or without a universal time zone. The difference is that with universal time, it discards the entire set of translations around scheduling conversion that already happen, and it fixes the horrible mess of anyone living near a time zone boundary being in perpetual schedu…

Or I could just look at my wall. Pro tip for solution designers. Don't tell someone what they "must" do. It's the fast track to being ignored. Especially when a) you're badgering them to conform to some hairbrained sticky note engineering and b) they already have something that works.

The "look at inopinatus' wall" solution does not scale well.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#285

Post by placeybordeaux »

inopinatus wrote: post #150
beambot wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, you don't. You just need multiple clocks on the wall. This remains a widespread solution to determining whether or not your counterpart in Sydney is asleep.

I'd really like to see what a well made custom lit map would look like. What the clocks are approximating here is how long the sun has been shining on a given city.

Something along the lines of this: http://www.solarsystemscope.com/daylightmap/

Could give the viewer both the information they are roughly seeking and something significantly prettier than a bunch of clocks on a wall.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#286

Post by nikatwork »

trjordan wrote: post #271
darawk wrote: post #17

Hmm...this is an interesting idea. However, the core of the argument seems to be this: > “The economy — that’s all of us — would receive a permanent ‘harmonization dividend’ ”— the efficiency benefits that come from a unified time zone. But this editorial is pretty light on actually supporting that. The basic argument seems to be that it reduces 'translation costs'. But..does it? What about the benefits of being able…

Perhaps Hackers News is the wrong audience to suffer this problem, but coordinating meetings between companies (i.e., sales calls) is a mess. When a call winds down and you've got two people on the phone coordinating their calendars, there's this hilarious, awkward dance that happens. "Great, sounds like we have a plan. When should we touch base again?" "Let's aim for Monday. How's your afternoon?" "Monday is no good…

This might be useful: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#287

Post by wernercd »

jhbadger wrote: post #247
zeta0134 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your math doesn't work out there though. If we had 30 day months, we would end up with 360 days spread among 12 months, and an extra 5 days leftover. 28 day months make far more sense, would align nicely with your proposed single New Year's day, and have the added bonus of aligning with our 7-day week system quite nicely. This ends up with 13 months altogether, and hey, it turns out that 28 days is closer to a lunar…

That first example (12 30 day months with 5 or 6 days outside months) was actually used in practice in post-revolutionary France (and again during the Paris Commune). I'm not sure keeping 7-day weeks is really a plus -- the French Revolutionary calendar used 10-day "decades" which align with the metric system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar

Metric? Yeah... us Americans would never go for that garbage... :)

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#288

Post by jwfxpr »

The United States still uses Imperial measurements and Fahrenheit, and the NYT publishes an article arguing for an unnecessary, human-unfriendly re-standardisation of time zone(s)...?

Mmhmmm. The whole world's gonna take THAT idea seriously.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#289

Post by jobigoud »

roel_v wrote: post #191
axlee wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like that everywhere in Europe. Nobody says 'see you at fifteen'. Not really? In France it's perfectly normal to say "Rendez-vous à quinze heures" or "Le film commence à vingt-deux heures trente"

OK, it might be a social construct. I'd never say 'treize heures' to set a time with my Parisian colleagues, and neither would they (to the best of my recollection). Sometimes people would say it, yes, but it'd sound strangely artificial, like read literally from a schedule - which in many cases it would be.

> I'd never say 'treize heures'

One of the main midday newscast is called "Le journal de treize heures".

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#290

Post by reflexive »

parthdesai wrote: post #268
reflexive wrote: post #226

The advantage of daylight savings is I can set my schedule to wake up at the same time each day, while maximizing my daylight hours and never getting up before dawn. Without the shift for daylight savings, the sunrise time in San Francisco varies from 5:47a at the summer solstice, to 8:25a just after winter solstice. If I set my schedule to get up at 8:25a every day, I'd miss a significant amount of morning sunlight.…

And yet by the time i leave my work at 5:30-6 pm, it is pitch dark. I personally would prefer having some daylight after work.

In that case, your ideal daylight savings would move the clock forward in the fall and backward in the spring, so that sunset remains close to the same time year round.
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