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Time to Dump Time Zones

nytimes.com

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Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#481

Post by Dylan16807 »

hammerdr wrote: post #186
the8472 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone would need this on their smartwatch/hololens/whatever. https://www.die.net/earth/

This. # Before abolishing time zones I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. What time is it there? Google tells me it is currently 4:25am there. It's probably best not to call right now. # After abolishing time zones I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. What time is it there? Google shows me a daylight map (First result https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html) It's probably best not to call r…

Except that people's hours are not based on solar noon, they are based on whatever the country has arbitrarily chosen. If you look at a daylight map, you can be misled by multiple hours. Or if we're near a solstice and they're far from the equator, there will be gross inaccuracies. So you still need a translation into "local time". That means either doing math in your head, or having the computer reply "four hours and 35 minutes until start of business". Both of those are more awkward than taking "4:25" and classifying it in your head the same way you classify your own times.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#483

Post by raldi »

CaptSpify wrote: post #467
raldi wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but "society adjusts" works both ways: Society also adjusts to turning the clocks back and forth. The question isn't whether society can adjust, but rather which society prefers: winter morning sunlight or not changing clocks. If two people come to opposite conclusions on that point (as you and I do), there's really nothing left to do but agree to disagree.

A small subset of society (school-children) needing to adjust is much less of a hassle than everyone adjusting though. I'd be curious to see how many subsets of society would prefer changing their clocks, vs keeping them the same.

It's not just schoolchildren. People on HN have a skewed perspective here because we generally don't get in trouble if we're not at work by 9:00 (or earlier). Those who do are more likely to appreciate the extra hour of winter morning sun.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#485

Post by norea-armozel »

This is definitely not an issue I think that can be solved by merely doing away with time zones. Time zones at least in the US were part of coordinating arrival and departure times for the railroad which was a big problem when two towns that were mere miles apart were on two different times (sometimes by an hour). I think the real problem is that every governing body involved with time measures seems to think theirs is the best. UTC is awesome but by itself it's not enough to synchronize with local habits which are dictated by solar time (even when considering the most extreme ranges of time zones).

At the heart of the matter is how do you fix time zones such that governments respect solar time over their own desired time frame fork human activity? Honestly, I have no solution beyond a fierce beating of the average legislator/bureaucrat. Because honestly timezones should be in 15 degree slices around the Earth since that approximates well with the shape of it. Mind you, for people living near or at the poles is going to be a mess for them regardless of how you settle it but the majority of humans a simple 15 degree slice of the Earth gets the time zone problem as close to a solution as possible. But the odds of any major government (or even local government) adopting this is nil. So I just pray no one actually tries to reform the existing timezones otherwise we'd might get something worse.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#486

Post by raldi »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #469
raldi wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean in California or somewhere else? If California, how do you explain the fact that Sacramento has considered this many times, most recently two months ago, and always decides to keep things the way they are? http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-sac-essenti... There are two possibilities: California's representatives are representing the will of the people, or they're not. Occam's Razor would poi…

> There are two possibilities: California's representatives are representing the will of the people, or they're not. Occam's Razor would point toward the former, but if you have evidence of the latter, what is it? You don't have to be so condescending. There is plenty of complexity that you're ignoring to reduce it to a quip like that. First off is the obvious possibility that being on the same schedule as 95% of the…

But in 2005, the US Congress reviewed and modified daylight saving. That shows inertia can be overcome when the populace wants it. There wouldn't have been any issues of synchronicity. And yet Congress decided to keep DST.

Again, do you believe they misrepresented the will of the people? If so, what evidence is there to support that claim?

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#487

Post by restalis »

zeta0134 wrote: post #214
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…

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…

Why having (7-days) "weeks" at all? Divide 28 into 7 groups of 4 days each and use these. Three days of work followed by one off, how does it sound?

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#488

Post by reflexive »

jedberg wrote: post #479
reflexive wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most workers today would prefer going to work in the dark and having daylight after work. Daylight in the morning suppresses the action of the pineal gland. This helps you wake up. Getting up in the dark may sound like fun but it's fighting against your own body. http://www.more.com/lifestyle/exercise-health/finally-humans...

Artificial lighting has long solved that problem.

Do you have a link? Because I don't think the light bulb in my ceiling has solved that problem.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#489

Post by reflexive »

cheiVia0 wrote: post #421
reflexive wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true if your only goal is to maximize the amount of daylight you have after work - taken to its logical conclusion, you would just go to work in the middle of the night and get off in the morning. However, if you add the constraint that you never want to go to bed before sunset, you will improve by adjusting the clock so sunset is at a relatively constant time.

Sunset changes day to day, are you really adjusting your clock every day to match sunset?

Adjusting twice annually (forward and back) is a compromise between adjusting every day and never adjusting.

Four adjustments might be preferable for people closer to the poles, at the expense of people closer to the equator.

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