Time to Dump Time Zones • Hacker News Board

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#321

Post by Hydraulix989 » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 5:25 AM UTC

grzm wrote: post #85

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But the current concept of time is also based on the outdated industrial age concept of a 'working day' being 9-5.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…

The working day is based on when humans naturally want to be active. Remote work, while increasing, is a fraction of work that's actually done. Humans are wired (in the majority) for the day, and our time conventions match that.

Yes, it's tough being an outlier. I am a night owl, not a morning lark -- this is my biologically-determined chronotype, not something I do because I'm lazy.

It's always been a struggle to force myself to conform to society's idea of "normal hours," especially in high school when I had to wake up at 6 AM.

I realize most people struggle relating to this; try imagining starting your day at 10 PM, if you're a "normal" morning lark.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#322

Post by wan23 » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 5:30 AM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #301

bluejekyll wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah agree completely. And keeping zones is important to understand workdays. I wouldn't mind dropping named time zones completely in favor of UTC+Offset, I always end up looking that up, annoyingly. Or just name the zones based on the offset. So NY would be -5. We could for humans write time with the ecoding, similar to ISO-8601, but it would just be 15:30-5 for 3:30pm EST. While we're at it. Can we make all the mon…

28 is perfect because it's divisible by 7. So every day lands on the same day of every month and every year. Every 1rst is a Sunday. But really, while we are on the topic of reform, is there any particular reason the week should be 7 days? Or that there should be a week at all? Time keeping is also weird. Base 24 and 60 is so arbitrary. Make it base ten, and you can express date and time easily. Right now is 6.976. T…

Your radical time standard reform undoes your first change - it's already based on the number 12, remember? 24 is two 12-hour periods - A.M. and P.M. and 60 minutes/seconds is 12 five-minute/second periods (the numbers on a clock).

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#323

Post by imron » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 5:36 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #320

imron wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Urumqi is not rural, it's the capital city of Xinjiang. I agree though that they're likely behind the Internet curve compared to say Silicon Valley, but surely screwing up the days of tens of millions of people to make life slightly more convenient for people who have a lot of Internet interactions doesn't really make much sense. For those people, surely they could just adopt a single timezone as a frame of reference…

Yeah, it probably doesn't make sense today, but as the Urumqians, like the rest of us have more and more of their interactions with people in other places, it will make more sense each year. I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right about the adoption. Assuming I'm right and this makes sense, the people who need it the most will start using it between them, more and more people will join them, and…

Who knows, maybe Internet time will become a thing after all:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#324

Post by inimino » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 5:38 AM UTC

minznerjosh wrote: post #61

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…

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…

DST is mentioned in the first two paragraphs.

> We need to deep-six not just daylight saving time, but [time zones]

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#325

Post by contingencies » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 5:38 AM UTC

The author James Gleick wrote The Information which was recently recommended to me but I found a bit slow-going and obtuse. It didn't really resonate with me coming from a comp-sci pragmatist background, though some here may enjoy it.

As far as TZ's go, IMHO one of the biggest issues is the TZ database which itself lacks support for i18n and many modern pragmatic concerns. I once made a proposal to modernize it but it fell on deaf ears... it is, understandably, fairly conservatively maintained.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#326

Post by reflexive » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 5:38 AM UTC

AckSyn wrote: post #166

bonoboTP wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. School start could be shifted to 9 AM or 10 AM. The clock should show 12 at noon. The clock is not the problem. The problem is that people are required to start their day at a too early time. Fix: increment the time requirements.

I find this argument extremely short sighted. Why is starting work early in the day a problem? And why is going to bed at a decent hour to give you an 8 hour sleep period before you have to wake up for work or school a problem?

> Why is starting work early in the day a problem?

It's only a problem if it requires you to get up while it's still dark. Otherwise, I agree with you - go to bed at a decent hour so you can get 8 hours of sleep before sunrise.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#327

Post by solatic » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 5:38 AM UTC

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…

> 9 o'clock this morning

Changes to "two hours after sunrise". Which is more accurate in a globalized world anyway, because 9:00 is sometimes an hour after sunrise and sometimes several hours after sunrise, depending on where you live.

> Mental sanity checks

If you're setting a remote meeting with someone several hours flight away, you will have access to their calendar. Their calendar will include their normal and extended business hours, and probably their typical sleep hours too.

There are older people who go to bed at 19:00 right after their supper and are up by 5:00, and there are younger people who will be out partying all night, go to sleep at 5:00, and wake up at 12:00. Expecting everyone to abide by the same 9-5 schedule, even in the same current-day timezone, is social tyranny.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#328

Post by reflexive » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 5:42 AM UTC

bluejekyll wrote: post #274

eutropia wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.mithrandir.com/Tranquility/tranquility.html I think you're proposing this, 13 months named for scientists, one day outside the year.

Yes. Perfect. I've never seen that before. Thanks for sharing. It will never sell in the US though, the mere inclusion of Darwin will make it a political nightmare as people would be convinced we're atheists trying to kill their god.

> people would be convinced we're atheists trying to kill their god

When the reality is much less exciting... replacing the old gods with a deified version of Science.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#329

Post by macspoofing » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 5:43 AM UTC

raldi wrote: post #68

pixie_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

>That's really tough on people (or children) who have to be at work/school by 9 or even 8

In what way? People (and kids) survive wars and famines I'm sure we can handle a little bit of darkness. But if you really really can't, there's no reason why in winter, school couldn't start an hour later. Probably a good idea regardless.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#330

Post by frik » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 5:44 AM UTC

Time to dump summer vs normal time. Switching twice a year, and every other country choose a different date or doesn't switch... It's time to stop switching between summer and normal time.