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Europe pushing for lunar time zone

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Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#191

Post by smallerfish »

Taywee wrote: post #39
rascul wrote: post #8

I would be happy if we got rid of timezones, got rid of daylight savings time, and got rid of 12 hour clocks.

With timezones: * I want to call my friend in Germany. What time is it for her? I guess I'm UTC-7 and she's UTC+1, so she's 8 hours ahead of me. I know that everybody around the world typically wakes up between 6 and 9 AM and goes to sleep between 8 PM and midnight, and she's an early bird, so she should be awake. * They said the meeting was going to be at 8 o'clock, but they are in a different time zone, did they me…

> * I want to call my friend in Germany. It's the same time here as there. It rises at 13:00 here, but she's a quarter of the way way around the world. I have to look up their typical waking hours. She's an early bird, so is she on the early side of that, likely. What time does the sun rise there? How much does that change over the seasons?

You look up her profile in teleappnal, and it says she's online, so you give her a call. Easy. Or, you book a calendar appointment like anybody civilized, and she either accepts or rejects it. (Telephones are another abhorrent Victorian invention which we'll get rid of, and sooner than you think.)

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#194

Post by noworld »

2000UltraDeluxe wrote: post #181
reportgunner wrote: post #169

I don't get it, why don't we just use UTC ?

There's a whole lot of social conventions tied to local time, sunrise/sundown, and the circadian rythm in general. Sure, it'd be possible but we'd have to concieve a lot of new cultural concepts to replace the ones invalidated by the shift to UTC, and find new ways to remind people that it's impolite to call people in the middle of the night. In the long run, a list of time zones aren't that much more complicated to…

I don't think they meant replace all time zones with UTC, but just put the Moon on UTC.

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#195

Post by detrites »

bb123 wrote: post #138
detrites wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is obviously a software problem that could be solved universally at the OS level. We have all kinds of low-level protocols for coordinating all manner of things. Distilling a coherent system of agreeing on a timezone difference, between two communicating entities and presenting that to the user at any time would be quite basic. We have location data for all, at all times. We have a local, accurate clock. There's…

Why do we need to make it a software problem? The existing system makes it a trivial mental calculation.

The amount of people complaining here about how difficult it is to keep a handle on illustrates it's not a trivial mental calculation, even for HN. I would agree, especially when coordinating multiple, distant parties.

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#196

Post by prmoustache »

mschuster91 wrote: post #156
TeMPOraL wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I hate timezones with a passion but the more I think about them, the more I recognize they're the least bad option available. They correctly optimize for making most common cases trivial, while rare cases relatively easy. I think it needs to be said here: cross-timezone scheduling and datetime math are extremely rare relative to people's daily experience. It may not be obvious to us here, because we're much mor…

The worst problem with timezones IMO is that they are way too big [1], compared to what they should be if the world were equally divided into 24 hour "strips". Europe for example has CET which stretches all the way west to Spain, despite UTC+1 ending somewhere along the French-German border - so Spain and France are 1 hour "ahead" despite not needing to. [1] https://www.timeanddate.com/time/map/

Add to that cultural and climate differencies and it makes it even harder to schedule things. Like there is not a huge difference between France and Spain in term of solar hour, but rhythm is different because people in the south are used to take their lunch break when at the hottest moment of the day and tend to stay outside and up longer because they are most pleasant in the summer.

Most people in europe keep scheduling meetings between 14 and 16 which is pretty much lunch time here in Spain so most of the time I am having lunch during my video calls or take a quick bite in between calls without a proper break.

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#197

Post by benj111 »

ACS_Solver wrote: post #124
likis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Having some sort of agreed upon world timezone would be neat though ..." Don't we already have that with UTC / Zulu time?

Do you encounter people using UTC regularly? While it's the closest we have to a world timezone, in my experience people don't use it much outside of a technical context. I usually see Americans treat Eastern Time as a standard, with references to Pacific sometimes. In the EU, where I am, CET is the usual timezone used for specifying a time internationally. And regardless of the location, it's very common for people…

I use it all the time. But then I live in the UK.

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#198

Post by [deleted] »

cornholio wrote: post #125

I am a proponent of a Martian timekeeping system where each day has 24 hours 39 minutes and 35.244 seconds and all the rest of time units have standard lengths. For example, at midnight your martian clock would show the time as 24:39:35 for a fraction of a second, then wound back to 00:00:00. The calendar then would track the Earth calendar as close as possible, with shortened months to accommodate for the longer day…

[deleted]

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#199

Post by BurningFrog »

crote wrote: post #145
cornholio wrote: post #125

I am a proponent of a Martian timekeeping system where each day has 24 hours 39 minutes and 35.244 seconds and all the rest of time units have standard lengths. For example, at midnight your martian clock would show the time as 24:39:35 for a fraction of a second, then wound back to 00:00:00. The calendar then would track the Earth calendar as close as possible, with shortened months to accommodate for the longer day…

Wouldn't that get incredibly confusing with the calendar always being slightly off, despite using the same names? At that point why not just stick to a integer day count for the date. Having a non-integer number of hours in a day might also get confusing. It would be near-impossible to make an analog clock, for example, and stuff like dividing up a day into three shifts would be really cumbersome. For day-to-day life…

People under 30 don't use the "circular clock" anyway. Mars will do fine without it.

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#200

Post by aflag »

Taywee wrote: post #39
rascul wrote: post #8

I would be happy if we got rid of timezones, got rid of daylight savings time, and got rid of 12 hour clocks.

With timezones: * I want to call my friend in Germany. What time is it for her? I guess I'm UTC-7 and she's UTC+1, so she's 8 hours ahead of me. I know that everybody around the world typically wakes up between 6 and 9 AM and goes to sleep between 8 PM and midnight, and she's an early bird, so she should be awake. * They said the meeting was going to be at 8 o'clock, but they are in a different time zone, did they me…

"* I want to call my friend in Germany. It's the same time here as there. It rises at 13:00 here, but she's a quarter of the way way around the world. I have to look up their typical waking hours. She's an early bird, so is she on the early side of that, likely. What time does the sun rise there? How much does that change over the seasons?"

In both cases you need to do some maths. You know early birds wake up at 11 where you live. If you know she's 8h ahead, just add 8. So, 19 is when you should call.

For calling people nothing really change. Adapting when moving somewhere else is the tricky bit. If I move to another city or country I just adjust my clock and automatically know when things will be open, working hours, etc. Otherwise, whenever you move you have to keep mentally reminding yourself that the work day starts at 12 here, not 7 like I'm used to and so on.

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