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The Time Zone Rebels of the World

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Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#31

Post by bombtrack »

protomyth wrote: post #30
bombtrack wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Ha, no. I think I was just trying to make it non-specific because it could happen along any tz border. I added the article in case someone wanted specific locations.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#32

Post by Larrikin »

matt_kantor wrote: post #27
js2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 conc…

Is there any argument for the abolishment of time zones that doesn't boil down to them simply being annoying for programmers and server admins to set up initially?

Right now if I travel anywhere in the world I'll have a basic idea of when the sun rises and sets, when stores are open, hottest time of the day, when people are usually working, sleeping, etc.

Going with your argument, I would not only have to keep track of the sun set and rise shift but as well as the working hours in that particular part of the world. If I ever go there I have to learn the times of everything since they are completely different from where I live.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#33

Post by EdwardDiego »

hudibras wrote: post #20

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…

> 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.

New Zealand routinely goes to UTC+13 with the aid of daylight savings.

Our business team are in Germany, so we have three different time offsets between us over a year as daylight savings in both countries come and go.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#34

Post by splattne »

melvinmt wrote: 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…

Who remembers the Swatch Internet Time? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#35

Post by eru »

Larrikin wrote: post #32
matt_kantor wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conc…

Is there any argument for the abolishment of time zones that doesn't boil down to them simply being annoying for programmers and server admins to set up initially? Right now if I travel anywhere in the world I'll have a basic idea of when the sun rises and sets, when stores are open, hottest time of the day, when people are usually working, sleeping, etc. Going with your argument, I would not only have to keep track…

> Is there any argument for the abolishment of time zones that doesn't boil down to them simply being annoying for programmers and server admins to set up initially?

It's not just initially. Politicians around the world tend to temper with them continuously. (Same with public holidays.)

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#36

Post by windowsworkstoo »

jlangenauer wrote: post #19

It is here I can get to quote the famous justification why Queensland does not observe daylight saving like the sensible rest of Australia: Because it would fade the curtains. (Interestingly, I'm not sure if this is apocryphal or not: I thought it was Flo Bjelke-Peterson who said it, but I can't find a source.)

Oh, it was a real argument that people actually believed...there were some other rippers - the cows milk turning sour due to the "extra" sunlight was one that is particularly memorable.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#37

Post by sandworm101 »

Where is Saudi Arabia in this story? When I was there in the 90s I saw maps of time zones that listed Saudi Arabia as still using solar time. That was long after the official switch in the 60s. I understood the official "solar time" line as a nod to religion. Nobody was setting watches every sunset but the calls to prayer certainly moved with the sun.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#38

Post by fapjacks »

kijin wrote: post #26
bcheung wrote: 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.

Yes, I set all of my infrastructure to UTC and then keep the clock on whatever UI I'm using set to display distance from UTC in my current timezone (and current Unix timestamp in UTC). I feel like timezones are an important tool for humans, and it's so easy to customize your development machine's clock to take care of these calculations for you. It's also millions of times easier to think in terms of events that happen across a system with wide distribution if everything is set to UTC, where a lot of companies and people will have to then start counting and scribbling arithmetic to keep track of what happened when, in two or more timezones.

Re: The Time Zone Rebels of the World

#39

Post by evanb »

melvinmt wrote: 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…

Having the hour be the same everywhere is something that I can get behind, until I start to worry about when the "day" changes. Let's say you're in some unfortunate place where 12am happens at local noon. When someone says "let's get lunch on Tuesday" what do they mean?
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