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Time to Dump Time Zones

nytimes.com

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Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#121

Post by arcticfox »

ProxCoques wrote: post #116
minznerjosh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hits the nail on the head. Abandoning time zones would only make sense if there were no more need for time translation. But you'd still need to translate for the sake of biological clocks, and without time zones it would become more challenging to communicate that translation. I would be in favor of doing away with DST and also eschewing AM/PM in favor of a 24-hour clock. I'm surprised this article didn't mentio…

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?

You're correct. We call the 24-hour clock "military time" and basically no one uses it casually.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#122

Post by emodendroket »

cyberferret wrote: post #108
wsinks wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far you have the most levelheaded comment I've seen (out of 4... not a big sample size), but just wanted to agree. We all need to get off our high horse and be more specific, at the risk of smaller readership. For global teams that are making software, GMT / 24 hour clocks are great. But lets not project our reality onto the rest of the world. I love that comment!

The opposite is also true - don't imagine a 1930's production line factory or bank clerk as the reality of a majority employee population working day. Farmers, truck drivers, pilots, bakers, hospitality workers, nurses, street sweepers, security guards and a thousand other jobs are NOT bound to a 9-5 working time. Indeed, outside of government or large corporations, I struggle to find many professions that ARE bound…

I think first, second, and third shift are pretty much just as rigid if not more so.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#123

Post by barnacs »

kryptiskt wrote: post #24

So you want to abolish time zones ( https://qntm.org/abolish )

If I want to talk to Uncle Steve, I don't really care what time it is either here or there, or what it signifies. All I care about is whether we can communicate synchronously at the time or not. If he doesn't want to be disturbed for whatever reason, he can mute/turn off his phone and I can send him an asynchronous message. Problem solved.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#124

Post by emodendroket »

jack9 wrote: post #117
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…

> But this editorial is pretty light on actually supporting that. Why would it need to? This smacks of not having tried to understand the many, varied, and changing rules trying to tie locality to time. One inch into US Arizona's boundaries and you're off by an hour, if you are at one point in the calendar vs another. How many man hours have gone into maintaining this system, and continue to?

Yes, it's arbitrary, but we're on a continuum somewhere between every couple feet the time changes a few minutes and no adjustment at all and it feels to me like we're close to a happy medium.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#125

Post by 131hn »

Having all clocks of the world in sync will be a bless, but there remain a gap in time information, so people will add location offset by themselves (we mostly use time to describe life in our timezone) "yes it's 4 am, and i'm in paris". That location offset will be nothing but current timezones, with an inverted logic. I know we are all on different schedule and rythm, but 7am is a good time for breakfast, everywhere, 12h30 feels fine for lunch, kids go to bed by 8pm, and we should sleep at 2am. I guess timezone make life easier for 80% of the world ( i dont think it's 99% anymore)

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#126

Post by grey-area »

salmon30salmon wrote: post #87
cyberferret wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the current concept of time is also based on the outdated industrial age concept of a 'working day' being 9-5. I doubt many of the people on HN for instance, work those set hours in this day and age. Nowadays it is purely a convenience factor to keep the worker drones in the same hive so they can gather for the next interminable meeting. With the rise of remote working, and other forms of communication tools, no…

For those who live in our Ivory Tower of the software industry that may be true, but the 9-5 concept is not outdated for a vast majority of working humans on the planet. Lets not project our reality onto the rest of the world.

the 9-5 concept is not outdated for a vast majority of working humans on the planet. Lets not project our reality onto the rest of the world.

On the contrary, the 9-5 concept has never applied to the vast majority of working humans on the planet (agriculture, health, factories, sales, even most offices don't keep those hours). With growing communication across time zones, their difficulties have only recently become more obvious, previously this sort of communication was rare, now it is becoming commonplace.

The solution to not being sure if someone is working at a given hour is to schedule a call, preferably using a sane shared timekeeping standard which doesn't change hours at the whim of politicians.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#127

Post by emodendroket »

edblarney wrote: post #19

The article is upside down. "Perhaps you’re asking why the Greenwich meridian gets to define earth time. " It doesn't. Everybody gets to have their own, proper time. In comparing times, we +/- based on an arbitrary spot, and that's it. Time zones are a great solution to a problem. People want their time in local terms. Everyone waking up and going to bed at different times is an utterly ridiculous concept. FYI - if y…

> It might be remotely possible to put an entire nation on one time - i.e. put America on 'Mountain Time' - it might be possible to convince New Yorkers and Californians that they are getting up earlier/later etc.. But even that wouldn't be very useful in the end.

China does this, but I think for more or less the same political reasons they falsely claim that everyone in China speaks one identical language and everything else is a "dialect" of it.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#128

Post by jack9 »

emodendroket wrote: post #124
jack9 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But this editorial is pretty light on actually supporting that. Why would it need to? This smacks of not having tried to understand the many, varied, and changing rules trying to tie locality to time. One inch into US Arizona's boundaries and you're off by an hour, if you are at one point in the calendar vs another. How many man hours have gone into maintaining this system, and continue to?

Yes, it's arbitrary, but we're on a continuum somewhere between every couple feet the time changes a few minutes and no adjustment at all and it feels to me like we're close to a happy medium.

It's not quite that simple. Timezones change (less often than postal codes, but across the world, it's still a bunch of maintenance changes). Getting rid of timezones would be simpler and reduce a monumental number of bugs (as well as code and potential problems). See the Russian changes!

https://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#129

Post by emodendroket »

barnacs wrote: post #84

I'd go even further and divide every human settlement into multiple districts with schedules shifting gradually between them. Like, in one "district" of the city most people would be sleeping, it would be quiet and somewhat dead, while at the same time a few "districts" over in the same city businesses would be open, including banks, offices and other stuff on extremely strict schedules currently. Yet in another dist…

Sounds like a completely unworkable mess.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#130

Post by emodendroket »

jack9 wrote: post #128
emodendroket wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's arbitrary, but we're on a continuum somewhere between every couple feet the time changes a few minutes and no adjustment at all and it feels to me like we're close to a happy medium.

It's not quite that simple. Timezones change (less often than postal codes, but across the world, it's still a bunch of maintenance changes). Getting rid of timezones would be simpler and reduce a monumental number of bugs (as well as code and potential problems). See the Russian changes! https://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/

OK, sure, but so what? The fact that it takes effort to maintain doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.
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