Time to Dump Time Zones • Hacker News Board

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#401

Post by lmm » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 9:44 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…

> If my friend on the other side of the country says "I woke up at 9 this morning", I have a pretty good idea of what that means. If we used this new system, i'd have to mentally translate.

9 could mean something very different relative to dawn, or relative to their usual working hours, than it does to you.

> If say, I want to schedule a conference call at 3, yes, 3 is the same time for everyone, but i'd still have to do some mental sanity checks to ensure that that time is reasonable for everyone who might be participating.

If you propose a time that's in the middle of the night for them, they can always tell you so. The big breakthrough is that you don't ever end up thinking you've agreed on different times. (E.g. just last weak I had someone from the US try to join a conference call an hour early, because the DST shift over there apparently happens a week later than it does over here).

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#402

Post by lmm » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 9:48 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…

The roads are busier in the evening than they are in the morning. So being able to come home in daylight is more important than being able to go to work/school in daylight.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#403

Post by w-ll » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 9:50 AM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #119

ProxCoques wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

People use the term "military time" interchangeably with "24-hour clock" if that helps.

People do, but also people might not. I can see offering the same setting but with two different labels, or like in a dropdown.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#404

Post by lmm » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 9:51 AM UTC

the_watcher wrote: post #239

apaprocki wrote: post #220

Maybe I'm the contrarian. I don't mind timezones at all. The thing that throws us for a loop is changing the timezone either temporarily due to some custom (Daylight Savings, Ramadan, elections, etc.) or permanently with little notice (populist tendencies in governments). I maintain timezone infrastructure and what I'd rather see is an international treaty that all changes to country timezones require some standard p…

No, you aren't contrarian. Remove timezones, and it still doesn't help me sort out if it's morning in Italy yet, or if business hours have started. In fact, it's more difficult, since I'd then have to figure out what Italian business hours are.

> No, you aren't contrarian. Remove timezones, and it still doesn't help me sort out if it's morning in Italy yet, or if business hours have started. In fact, it's more difficult, since I'd then have to figure out what Italian business hours are.

It's the same amount of effort either way - either you look up the timezone for Italy or you look up the business hours for Italy.

The difference is there are fewer opportunities for mistakes. In particular if you get the lookup wrong (e.g. you looked up India instead of Italy by mistake), the other party notices your mistake and can correct you.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#405

Post by Lazare » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 9:54 AM UTC

I remember when I thought the same thing. Then I spent a couple hours thinking about it, and realized what a terrible idea it was.

In my day to day life, I often need to talk to fellow tech people (engineers, support, etc.) in my own time zone, but also in places such as Sydney (2 hours behind me) or California (20 hours behind me). As a society, we've agreed that tech people like that are generally working 9-5, give or take, and we have a universally agreed mapping of locations to adjustments to local time (aka, time zones).

This means that I can look at a clock and realize "oh, it's only 10am, I shouldn't expect a reply to my email to that guy in Sydney yet". Even if I'm dealing with a place I'm not really familiar with, I can look up the timezone, or just google "time in Berlin", and I now can translate appropriately.

But what if we abolished that mapping (aka, timezones)? Presumably every location would just continue on about their life as before. Sydneysiders with desk jobs would stop working 9-5 AEST, and would start working 19-3 UTC; New Yorkers in similar roles would be working 4-12 UTC. Sounds odd, but it would quickly start to seem normal.

Problem: We just abolished the mapping tables that let me adjust for local time. It was trivial to work out that my Sydney colleague was probably out to lunch at 12:45 AEST, but how am I meant to know if he'll be out to lunch at at 22:45 UTC?

The only way to make this work is to have or create some form of mapping that tells me the adjustments to make to bring Sydney schedules in line with my own schedule. Eg, "I go to lunch at 00:30 UTC, and Sydney is about 2 hours behind me, so they'll be at lunch now". Because without that table, I simply have no clue what (or rather when) people in Sydney are doing.

But that table is just another word for time zones, the thing we abolished. Even better: While there are work arounds, most of them are very difficult to computerize. For example, I could check the corporate website of the guy I'm trying to call, and see if they have office hours (in UTC), and then try an work out when they'll be at lunch, but my calendar app wouldn't be able to do that. It needs a formal, agreed upon table of adjustments. Which would be time zones, whatever we want to call them.

TL;DR: This is an idea that makes a lot of sense to people who only have to deal with people who are geographically close to them. If you're actually dealing with people around the world, time zones are not an inconvenience, they're critical.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#406

Post by rocqua » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 9:55 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…

A 7 day work week seems to be optimal for most. Specifically, the 5 days on / 2 off. Apparently, medical staff working 10 / 4 have issues, and attempts at running e.g. 7/3 also don't go over very well.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#407

Post by sschueller » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 10:09 AM UTC

Swatch tried to do that a 'very' long time ago: https://www.swatch.com/en/internet-time/

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#408

Post by usrusr » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 10:13 AM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #176

ci5er wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

"Verbally, speaking with USians, 15.00 is always pronounced "3pm"." It's like that everywhere in Europe. Nobody says 'see you at fifteen'. 24 hour clock is merely for writing things down. I mean it would already be an improvement if the US would catch up with that, just saying that a 24 hour clock isn't said out loud as such. (not disagreeing or anything with you I guess, just adding some information).

While it is not uncommon to say "at three" instead of "at fifteen" in German, this only ever happens when context sufficiently avoids ambiguity. The language does not even know a generic qualifier for 12-based times (like am/pm), you would have to use the correct time of day name (non/afternoon/evening) for disambiguation. Much easier (and therefore much more common) to say "fifteen" instead. (for the second half, first half can only be specified the complicated way)

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#409

Post by captainmuon » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 10:19 AM UTC

Another radical idea, we could do the opposite: Use local astronomical time everywhere.

One reason unified time zones were introduced were train timetables. I haven't used one directly in quite a while, instead I've used websites, apps and public displays. They could all accommodate for the fact that different train stations had slightly different times.

Unified time is also important for TV show airing times. But scheduled TV is getting less and less important compared to video on demand. (Also if you really wanted to, future set-top boxes could modify the text of announced times on-the-fly. Text-to-speach has become pretty good :-))

I believe this would also encourage places to adjust their opening hours relative to sunlight, which would probably be healthier and better for the environment in the long run.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#410

Post by 3chelon » Mon, Nov 07, 2016, 10:21 AM UTC

dcosson wrote: post #175

ProxCoques wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Unlike most of the imperial system, farenheit, etc, Am/pm seems to actually make some sense with analog clocks/watches. In places where you primarily use 24 hour time I guess you're always just translating from the clock in your head?

I suppose having grown up with 24-hour digital clocks since they first appeared in the 1970s, and most of the clocks around the house and on various devices being 24-hour digital, and using public transport which operates in 24-hour time, there is no "translation" that occurs, most Europeans are simply bilingual in 12/24 hour times.

1745 to me just means what 5:45pm means to you, but I never translate it in my head. In fact, if I'm texting someone older who I think might not naturally use 24-hour time, I have to translate to 12-hour time and it always feels odd to write the am/pm suffix.