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  3. Why don't the whole planet just use UTC+00:00 / Universal Time without time zones?

Why don't the whole planet just use UTC+00:00 / Universal Time without time zones?

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  • G [email protected]

    Sunrise at 06:00 UTC in one timezone would occur at 03:00 UTC three timezones over, I mean. The relationship between standard time and local, solar noon based time (sunrise, noon, sunset, midnight) is going to have a flexing relationship across different places on Earth. So if you're travelling or even communicating across timezones, you haven't fixed anything by using UTC since daily activities (sleep, meals, etc.) are still correlated to when the sun is up or not. Timezones communicates that daily relationship with time pretty effectively without having to do a lot of thought about it all the time.

    baronvonj@lemmy.worldB This user is from outside of this forum
    baronvonj@lemmy.worldB This user is from outside of this forum
    [email protected]
    wrote on last edited by
    #22

    Sunrise at 06:00 UTC in one timezone would occur at 03:00 UTC three timezones over

    Right, but I wouldn't want to keep my daily routine aligned to a different time zone than where I am.

    So if you're travelling or even communicating across timezones, you haven't fixed anything by using UTC since daily activities (sleep, meals, etc.) are still correlated to when the sun is up or not

    Exactly. So why would I want to adjust my alarm to 3am after travelling 3 time zones? I only care about relating the time between two zones for real-time communication with people in the other zone. And I'm not getting up at 3am for them.

    G 1 Reply Last reply
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    • H [email protected]

      Time zones were the result of railroads getting towns to abandon their town specific clocks because of railroads.

      H This user is from outside of this forum
      H This user is from outside of this forum
      [email protected]
      wrote on last edited by
      #23

      This really fails to acknowledge the hodegpode, anything goes chaos that was towns choosing their own noon based around someone with a watch and a bell looking at the shadow on a stick a few times a year.

      Sometimes standardization isn't simply a terror induced by capitalism, and has accrual benefits.

      H 1 Reply Last reply
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      • kolanaki@pawb.socialK [email protected]

        Because who the hell wants to say it's 11 in the morning while it's dark out?

        tal@lemmy.todayT This user is from outside of this forum
        tal@lemmy.todayT This user is from outside of this forum
        [email protected]
        wrote on last edited by [email protected]
        #24

        "No one," sourly thought a reader in Longyearbyen, Norway. "No one, dammit."

        Longyearbyen experiences midnight sun from between 18 April and 24 August (128 days), polar night from 27 October to 15 February (111 days), and civil polar night from 13 November to 29 January. However, due to shading from mountains, the sun is not visible in Longyearbyen until around 8 March.

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        • V [email protected]

          Swatch Internet Time tried doing something like that

          tal@lemmy.todayT This user is from outside of this forum
          tal@lemmy.todayT This user is from outside of this forum
          [email protected]
          wrote on last edited by
          #25

          tried

          https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.mirkodi.swatchbeatclock/

          Can still do it!

          1 Reply Last reply
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          • baronvonj@lemmy.worldB [email protected]

            Sunrise at 06:00 UTC in one timezone would occur at 03:00 UTC three timezones over

            Right, but I wouldn't want to keep my daily routine aligned to a different time zone than where I am.

            So if you're travelling or even communicating across timezones, you haven't fixed anything by using UTC since daily activities (sleep, meals, etc.) are still correlated to when the sun is up or not

            Exactly. So why would I want to adjust my alarm to 3am after travelling 3 time zones? I only care about relating the time between two zones for real-time communication with people in the other zone. And I'm not getting up at 3am for them.

            G This user is from outside of this forum
            G This user is from outside of this forum
            [email protected]
            wrote on last edited by
            #26

            I don't understand what you're asking here. I'm saying if you kept UTC in every place on earth, you'd still have to relate those hours to a solar based local time. If you wake up at 6UTC in London and then travel to Moscow, the sun in Moscow would rise 3 hours earlier (guessing, not sure exactly what time time difference is). So if Moscow was also keeping UTC, they would set their alarms for 3UTC to wake up with the sun. If you travel to Moscow, you'd wake up at 3UTC with the sun, which is the equivalent of 3am London time, but is around sunrise locally. This is just how time zones work, so I have no idea where the confusion is.

            baronvonj@lemmy.worldB 1 Reply Last reply
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            • H [email protected]

              This really fails to acknowledge the hodegpode, anything goes chaos that was towns choosing their own noon based around someone with a watch and a bell looking at the shadow on a stick a few times a year.

              Sometimes standardization isn't simply a terror induced by capitalism, and has accrual benefits.

              H This user is from outside of this forum
              H This user is from outside of this forum
              [email protected]
              wrote on last edited by
              #27

              It wasn't a hodgepodge; it was a system designed to the requirements of the day. Every town setting their own clocks to the local high noon wasn't a bad idea for a while. Hell, the ability to transfer the knowledge of time from another part of the world only came about a few generations before.

              It wasn't until the railroads started operating where it became important for different cities to have the same time down to the minute. Until then, local noon worked well enough.

              H 1 Reply Last reply
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              • kolanaki@pawb.socialK [email protected]

                Because who the hell wants to say it's 11 in the morning while it's dark out?

                andyburke@fedia.ioA This user is from outside of this forum
                andyburke@fedia.ioA This user is from outside of this forum
                [email protected]
                wrote on last edited by
                #28

                For no time zones? πŸ™‹β€β™‚οΈ

                sxan@midwest.socialS 1 Reply Last reply
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                • P [email protected]

                  Why isn't this a popular thing?

                  F This user is from outside of this forum
                  F This user is from outside of this forum
                  [email protected]
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #29

                  I see this argument all the time. Forget all the tradition, "people like noon near solar noon", all that.

                  Date changes mid day some places and not others would be a nightmare for so many things.

                  What're you doing on the Tuesday half of June 15/16th?

                  artisian@lemmy.worldA W 2 Replies Last reply
                  4
                  • G [email protected]

                    I don't understand what you're asking here. I'm saying if you kept UTC in every place on earth, you'd still have to relate those hours to a solar based local time. If you wake up at 6UTC in London and then travel to Moscow, the sun in Moscow would rise 3 hours earlier (guessing, not sure exactly what time time difference is). So if Moscow was also keeping UTC, they would set their alarms for 3UTC to wake up with the sun. If you travel to Moscow, you'd wake up at 3UTC with the sun, which is the equivalent of 3am London time, but is around sunrise locally. This is just how time zones work, so I have no idea where the confusion is.

                    baronvonj@lemmy.worldB This user is from outside of this forum
                    baronvonj@lemmy.worldB This user is from outside of this forum
                    [email protected]
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #30

                    I mistook your original comment about the alarm clock. I wasn't reading it as the clocks in all timezones being set to UTC and rather that you wanted to keep your daily routine aligned with the daily solar cycle of the time zone you left.

                    G 1 Reply Last reply
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                    • M [email protected]

                      Well, that is neat. When using metric and celsius:

                      • 1 kilometer is 1.000 meters.
                      • 1 square meter of water weighs exactly 1 tonne. (1.000 kilo also known as a kilokilo)
                      • The vastly superior metric dozen is exactly 10.
                      • Water freezes at exactly 0 degrees.
                      • 1 meter of water takes exactly 100 minutes - a metric hour - to completely evaporate when heated to 100 degrees. Doing so requires exactly 1 kilowatt of power.
                      saltsong@startrek.websiteS This user is from outside of this forum
                      saltsong@startrek.websiteS This user is from outside of this forum
                      [email protected]
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #31

                      Your last point is wrong, at least as you have stated it. Evaporation time is based on surface area, and the required power is based on volume, but you expressed the amount of water as a length.

                      Still, metric is way better.

                      1 Reply Last reply
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                      • andyburke@fedia.ioA [email protected]

                        For no time zones? πŸ™‹β€β™‚οΈ

                        sxan@midwest.socialS This user is from outside of this forum
                        sxan@midwest.socialS This user is from outside of this forum
                        [email protected]
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #32

                        Do you also want the day to change from Sunday to Monday in the middle of your Sunday morning? Or do we change days at different hours everywhere?

                        andyburke@fedia.ioA 1 Reply Last reply
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                        • H [email protected]

                          The cultural relationship with time is more important than its absolute measurement.

                          saltsong@startrek.websiteS This user is from outside of this forum
                          saltsong@startrek.websiteS This user is from outside of this forum
                          [email protected]
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #33

                          Tell that to the trains.

                          H 1 Reply Last reply
                          0
                          • F [email protected]

                            I see this argument all the time. Forget all the tradition, "people like noon near solar noon", all that.

                            Date changes mid day some places and not others would be a nightmare for so many things.

                            What're you doing on the Tuesday half of June 15/16th?

                            artisian@lemmy.worldA This user is from outside of this forum
                            artisian@lemmy.worldA This user is from outside of this forum
                            [email protected]
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #34

                            This sounds like something legitimately terrifying, but I'm struggling to make it concrete. Could you expand on the example a bit?

                            S 1 Reply Last reply
                            0
                            • sxan@midwest.socialS [email protected]

                              Do you also want the day to change from Sunday to Monday in the middle of your Sunday morning? Or do we change days at different hours everywhere?

                              andyburke@fedia.ioA This user is from outside of this forum
                              andyburke@fedia.ioA This user is from outside of this forum
                              [email protected]
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #35

                              Everyone changes days at the same time. That's the point.

                              You would get used to the switchover being in the middle of your working/waking day.

                              This wouldn't be a big deal and if it were the status quo I bet someone, if not you, would be saying how dumb having everyone on different days would be in the mirror universe version of this thread.

                              sxan@midwest.socialS 1 Reply Last reply
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                              • F [email protected]

                                I see this argument all the time. Forget all the tradition, "people like noon near solar noon", all that.

                                Date changes mid day some places and not others would be a nightmare for so many things.

                                What're you doing on the Tuesday half of June 15/16th?

                                W This user is from outside of this forum
                                W This user is from outside of this forum
                                [email protected]
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #36

                                This happens anyway. I literally have meetings every week where it's Tuesday night for everyone else on the meeting, and Wednesday morning for me.

                                N 1 Reply Last reply
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                                • baronvonj@lemmy.worldB [email protected]

                                  I mistook your original comment about the alarm clock. I wasn't reading it as the clocks in all timezones being set to UTC and rather that you wanted to keep your daily routine aligned with the daily solar cycle of the time zone you left.

                                  G This user is from outside of this forum
                                  G This user is from outside of this forum
                                  [email protected]
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #37

                                  Ahh, no! I was agreeing with the top comment that using UTC everywhere would cause more problems. Glad we're on the same page now!

                                  1 Reply Last reply
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                                  • artisian@lemmy.worldA [email protected]

                                    This sounds like something legitimately terrifying, but I'm struggling to make it concrete. Could you expand on the example a bit?

                                    S This user is from outside of this forum
                                    S This user is from outside of this forum
                                    [email protected]
                                    wrote on last edited by [email protected]
                                    #38

                                    Take some place currently having UTC+12 time zone, say Marshall Islands. Midnight by UTC, the moment date changes, is exactly noon there. So how should people there talk about time? There is no "Tuesday the 15th of May" there, because every day is one part one date, other part another date

                                    So yeah. For computers and programmers "whole planet lives in UTC" might look like a boon (for a time I myself wished for it), but only until they start facing other, more twisted problems

                                    1 Reply Last reply
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                                    • andyburke@fedia.ioA [email protected]

                                      Everyone changes days at the same time. That's the point.

                                      You would get used to the switchover being in the middle of your working/waking day.

                                      This wouldn't be a big deal and if it were the status quo I bet someone, if not you, would be saying how dumb having everyone on different days would be in the mirror universe version of this thread.

                                      sxan@midwest.socialS This user is from outside of this forum
                                      sxan@midwest.socialS This user is from outside of this forum
                                      [email protected]
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #39

                                      Yeah, that doesn't sound like a major PITA. At all.

                                      "What's the date?"

                                      "I don't know; what's the time?"

                                      andyburke@fedia.ioA 1 Reply Last reply
                                      0
                                      • P [email protected]

                                        Why isn't this a popular thing?

                                        S This user is from outside of this forum
                                        S This user is from outside of this forum
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                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #40

                                        Momentum

                                        1 Reply Last reply
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                                        • S [email protected]

                                          Milliseconds since the epoch is the only true time

                                          S This user is from outside of this forum
                                          S This user is from outside of this forum
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                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #41

                                          2 more bits could have kept us in the same epoch pretty much forever. What were they thinking??

                                          S 1 Reply Last reply
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