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Time to Dump Time Zones

nytimes.com

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Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#291

Post by cheiVia0 »

bluejekyll wrote: post #160
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…

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…

Workdays are not worth keeping either. With the gig economy, you can't know if someone works at night or during the day, or morning or Sundays or whatever.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#292

Post by pbhjpbhj »

trjordan wrote: post #271
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…

Perhaps Hackers News is the wrong audience to suffer this problem, but coordinating meetings between companies (i.e., sales calls) is a mess. When a call winds down and you've got two people on the phone coordinating their calendars, there's this hilarious, awkward dance that happens. "Great, sounds like we have a plan. When should we touch base again?" "Let's aim for Monday. How's your afternoon?" "Monday is no good…

Aviators/Military solve that by using Zulu time I believe (ie UTC).

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#293

Post by emilburzo »

cyberferret wrote: post #63

Living in a place that doesn't have the concept of daylight saving time, I positively hate the dance that we have to do twice a year with our interstate and overseas brethren to arrange meetings etc. Having been a commercial pilot, I also appreciate the concept of 'Zulu time' where EVERYONE is on the same page as to when an aircraft will depart or reach a particular waypoint. No need to wonder if it is during morning…

I've recently discovered the 'Meeting planner' from timeanddate.com

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

Initially, I was just using it to double-check that my calculations are correct.

But it's so much faster to use it for planning, by just adding everyone's location/timezone and see what works.

And of course include the full link in the calendar event/email for a final check.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#294

Post by bbcbasic »

remoteme wrote: post #188

We should use local relative times based on sunrise. "I start work at 3 past". Meaning he or she starts work at 3 hours after sunrise.

Very hard to coordinate with other people. If someone is 200km East they'll have a slightly different Sunrise time and you need to take that into account when arranging a phone call for instance.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#295

Post by cheiVia0 »

mjevans wrote: post #12

As this version of the thread seems to have more points I'll comment here. I completely agree with everyone using UTC for numeric time numbering. I DISAGREE, with remapping 'noon', 'midnight', 'morning', etc. All of the relative descriptions for when in the local solar day a thing is should be approximate local references. An example: 'lunch' and 'noon' would still be the time in the middle of the local solar day tha…

When you eat lunch (or if you eat it at all) is completely cultural. It should not be used for encoding time.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#296

Post by cheiVia0 »

reflexive wrote: post #290
parthdesai wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet by the time i leave my work at 5:30-6 pm, it is pitch dark. I personally would prefer having some daylight after work.

In that case, your ideal daylight savings would move the clock forward in the fall and backward in the spring, so that sunset remains close to the same time year round.

No, just get up earlier and leave work earlier.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#297

Post by bluejekyll »

wernercd wrote: post #287
jhbadger wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That first example (12 30 day months with 5 or 6 days outside months) was actually used in practice in post-revolutionary France (and again during the Paris Commune). I'm not sure keeping 7-day weeks is really a plus -- the French Revolutionary calendar used 10-day "decades" which align with the metric system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar

Metric? Yeah... us Americans would never go for that garbage... :)

I think you mean "we Americans..."

And yeah. I mean 10 is only divisible by 2 and 5 where 12 is much more flexible in giving us 2, 3, 4, and 6. At least that was my grandfather's argument.

I annoying need to keep Metric and Standard wrenches and such for working on various things. Eventually it won't matter as the US will mostly source parts built over-seas where it will only make sense to adopt metric. And then the Standard system will only be left on road signs and temeratures, oh that's pretty much already happened.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#298

Post by glandium »

I agree with the sentiment in many of the threads that this is an awful idea, OTOH, there is some level of condusion with time zones in the US: I don't live in the US, but the few times I went there, it took me a while to figure the whole "8|7c" thing for TV programs, where, AIUI, east and west coast get to have programs at the same local time (8), but obviously not the same absolute time, and states in the middle get to have programs at the same absolute time as the east coast, but earlier in their day (7).

Or did I get it wrong, and the whole thing is even more confusing?

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#299

Post by robotmlg »

trjordan wrote: post #271
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…

Perhaps Hackers News is the wrong audience to suffer this problem, but coordinating meetings between companies (i.e., sales calls) is a mess. When a call winds down and you've got two people on the phone coordinating their calendars, there's this hilarious, awkward dance that happens. "Great, sounds like we have a plan. When should we touch base again?" "Let's aim for Monday. How's your afternoon?" "Monday is no good…

I once scheduled an interview with someone on the West coast (I'm on the east coast). I emailed him in the morning "How about 4 o'clock?" That afternoon around 2 I checked my email again and got his response "great, you can call me at 1." I freaked out for a second thinking I had missed the appointment, only to realize he meant 1 pm his time == 4 pm my time.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#300

Post by henrikschroder »

baddox wrote: post #164
jedberg wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet even with DST, kids in Alaska manage to get to school despite the sun coming up at 10am. This whole "for the kids@ argument is the worst one. Most workers today would prefer going to work in the dark and having daylight after work. Even farmers will tell you DST doesn't make a diffence to them anymore (or ever). The animals get up with the sun regardless of what the clock says. I agree with OP -- in today's m…

You didn't actually make many claims to counter the "for the kids" argument. The fact that kids in Alaska do that is unsurprising, but how does it affect them? I think it's pretty uncontroversial to say that Alaska is not one of the most appealing places to live for most people, and all else being equal, I suspect kids and parents would rather the sun come up before school.

At the latitudes of Alaska, the length of the day shrinks very rapidly around the time of the daylight savings switch. A bit more than a week after the switch, sunrise has moved back one hour, thereby eliminating any further effect of daylight savings. Making a single one-hour shift makes absolutely no sense at all.

At the latitudes of California, the length of the day doesn't shrink as fast, and the effects of the daylight savings switch last over a month. There's a little bit of sense in having it here, but not a lot.

Europe lies much farther north than the US, and the Scandinavian countries are on roughly the same latitudes as Alaska. In the winter it is dark when you go to school/work, and it is dark when you come home from school/work. Seasonal mood disorders are a thing, but daylight savings time doesn't help one bit, there's simply not enough sunlight in the day, and shifting it back and forth doesn't do squat.

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