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The Time Zone Rebels of the World

hopesandfears.com

21–30 of 46 posts

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#21
A lot of servers are just set to UTC even if they are in a different time zone. It simplifies a lot of headaches and translation bugs.

It would be nice to get rid of time zones and daylight savings time. People are so slow to change. Who cares if the sun doesn't come up until 4 PM where you are at. Stores, schools, etc can just change what hours they are open.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#22
> Russia actually changed Crimea’s time, effectively moving the territory’s time two hours forward to Moscow Time. The peninsula of Crimea is completely unattached to Russia and the decision has no real geographical basis

I am most definitely not defending Russia's actions, but Crimea is nearly due south from Moscow.

[1]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Crimea/@50,34,5z

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#23
post #11
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For global communication, it helps to form a mental model of the other side. When you pick up the phone to call someone else, knowing it's 1am there would typically indicate you should likely think twice before calling. It's a crutch to enable a more convenient mental model for most people to relate to what time of day it is 'over there'. Otherwise, sure, there's no real point.

right, but I never know what time it is there. I only know what time it is here. And maybe I have a relative sense that there is 6 hours east of here. Often I don't even know where it is I'm talking to. I called the help desk, I have no idea what continent picked up the phone. "office hours are 22-6 UTC" would be much simpler than "office hours are 9-5 EST. hmm ...is that european standard time, or east coast of the…

All you have to do is Google "time in Chicago" or "time in Perth" to find the current time there.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#24
Observance is a state matter, and only two of five mainland states have chosen to participate. Therefore, continental Australia became five time zones for six months out of the year, a decision that has created a bull-headed debate among all its states.

This has an error - three of five mainland states and one territory observe daylight saving time (SA, VIC, NSW and ACT).

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#25
post #21

A lot of servers are just set to UTC even if they are in a different time zone. It simplifies a lot of headaches and translation bugs. It would be nice to get rid of time zones and daylight savings time. People are so slow to change. Who cares if the sun doesn't come up until 4 PM where you are at. Stores, schools, etc can just change what hours they are open.

Getting rid of timezones is not as good an idea as you might first imagine. http://qntm.org/abolish

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#26
post #21

A lot of servers are just set to UTC even if they are in a different time zone. It simplifies a lot of headaches and translation bugs. It would be nice to get rid of time zones and daylight savings time. People are so slow to change. Who cares if the sun doesn't come up until 4 PM where you are at. Stores, schools, etc can just change what hours they are open.

It's really annoying when I order a new VPS and it is set to whatever time zone the company's headquarters are located in. As if I give a damn about what time it is in PDT! I don't know about abolishing time zones in the real world, but at least for servers it makes total sense.

That, and the missing UTF-8 locale, are among the most annoying defaults that I routinely encounter on newly ordered servers.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#27
post #12
post #5

"Urumqi simply adjusted their operation schedules to reflect natural waking hours, therefore, a store may be open from noon to 10 PM." This is exactly why I would propose a single timezone for the entire world. Time notation is just numbers, after all. Why we still attach importance to having 12pm appear at the middle of the day boggles my mind. Why can't we just have different parts of the world start at different s…

"So you want to abolish time zones": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902765 -> http://qntm.org/abolish

To simplify the first chunk of that webpage, all you need to know is Uncle Steve's sunrise offset from you, same as now. If his sunrise is 6 hours after yours, don't call him until you've been awake for 6+ hours.

Also, the lifestyle/local weirdness complaints towards the end are still relevant today. If Uncle Steve works the night shift I shouldn't call him at his solar noon whether there are timezones or not.

I concur with tvon that days of the week get very tricky without timezones, but I think the other complaints in that article are overblown.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#28

When I was in the Navy, my ship visited Petropavlovsk during the summer and they were on UTC+13. That was weird to begin with, what with the theoretical limit on only twelve time zones each direction from Greenwich. But then after the visit, we headed due south and then crossed directly over into the UTC+10 time zone for Guam. So one night we set the clocks back three hours. Nice if you were asleep, not so nice if yo…

Cross the border from China to Afghanistan, and you'll have a 3½ hour timezone change.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#30
post #13

Indiana is a very strange case. I had a business meeting there once where we met at the guys house. Coming down from Michigan I looked up the city hall just to make certain the time zone. Well it turns out this particular guys subdivision was on a different time zone. He explained that the subdivision, being technically outside the city, voted to adopt the another time zone because the majority worked in a county wit…

I grew up in a northern, rural part of the US along the MST/CST divide. Our county was MST, so everyone's homes, schools, events, etc. were all MST. A significant portion of the area was employed by one of a few large mining/synfuel operations, which were headquartered an hour east in the capital, so they ran according to CST. Most employees wake up in one time zone, drive 5 minutes to work, spend the day in a differ…

Out of curiosity, is there some reason you are not directly mentioning the state of the two towns?
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