Why don't the whole planet just use UTC+00:00 / Universal Time without time zones?
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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.
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!
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This sounds like something legitimately terrifying, but I'm struggling to make it concrete. Could you expand on the example a bit?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]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
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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.
Yeah, that doesn't sound like a major PITA. At all.
"What's the date?"
"I don't know; what's the time?"
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Why isn't this a popular thing?
Momentum
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Milliseconds since the epoch is the only true time
2 more bits could have kept us in the same epoch pretty much forever. What were they thinking??
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Because timezones were a result of town specific clocks, which were a result of people liking certain hours happening generally in line with where the sun is, like "noon" which still technically refers to when the sun is at its highest point.
Its a simple matter to define noon as whatever utc time you want for wherever you are
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Why isn't this a popular thing?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Here are some reasons told through what-if.
TL;DR:
People like to sleep in the dark generally, and businesses that close are open when more people are awake. -
2 more bits could have kept us in the same epoch pretty much forever. What were they thinking??
wrote on last edited by [email protected]You get over 584 million years in 2^64 ms. 66-bit computers are a bit tough to come by!
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You get over 584 million years in 2^64 ms. 66-bit computers are a bit tough to come by!
Unix time is 32bit seconds, not milliseconds
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Why isn't this a popular thing?
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Yeah, that doesn't sound like a major PITA. At all.
"What's the date?"
"I don't know; what's the time?"
Have you ... have you never stayed up past midnight?
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Tell that to the trains.
Trains still accepted that noon should be near the middle of the day. Time zones came from railroads trying to standardize time.
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Trains still accepted that noon should be near the middle of the day. Time zones came from railroads trying to standardize time.
kind of my point. Trains need accurately measured time in order to run properly.
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Because we like midnight to happen at night, and noon to happen during the day
wrote on last edited by [email protected].
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Why isn't this a popular thing?
because despite all the technological advancement, we still live enclosed in these self-ambulatory lumps of flesh that crave the sun.
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Why isn't this a popular thing?
So if I'm in Vancouver BC it would go from Friday to Saturday in the mid afternoon? Is Friday night the first night of the weekend or the last night of the work week?
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wrote on last edited by [email protected]
Not very convenient if a date change happens during your typical workday and that your meeting is from Monday 23:00 oâclock until Tuesday 1:00 oâclock. I mean, sure, we could deal with it, but locally it only adds new complexity.
Sure, you could talk with anyone in the world and agree on a time without misunderstandings, but as soon as you want to know if people in the other country are even awake at that time, or if itâs during business hours, you need to do the same calculations as before and need to look up how many hours the schedule is shifted in that country, similar to before.
My Anki deck (flashcards app) would like to know when itâs the next day. It now uses a standard (configurable) value worldwide (4:00 oâclock, to allow for late nights). If we used UTC everywhere, a standard value wouldnât make any sense, and you would have to know the local offset, and change it when you are traveling.
Taking about traveling: instead of just changing the time zone on your devices and be done with it, you need to look up what time you should go to sleep and wake up and at what time the stores open to fit the local schedule and none of the hours that youâre used to would make any sense. Letâs have dinner at 19:00 oâclock. No, wait, thatâs in the early morning here.
We already have UTC as a standard reference, and we donât need to adopt it for local time, as long as the offset is clear when communicating across borders. Digital calendars already take time zones into account, so when Iâm inviting people from overseas, they know at what time in their local timezone the meeting starts.
The issue is not the time zones, but the fact that we live on a sphere revolving around a star and that our biological system likes to be awake when itâs light outside.
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Why isn't this a popular thing?
It would make it even harder for people to understand when it was in a different timezone. Right now I know that 11pm is late for anyone on thier own timezone. But with no timezone, I would say, the meeting is at 23:00. Thats mid morning for me, what is that for you... the answer is way less exact, and harder to covert.
So you day is my day minus half a morning? -
Why isn't this a popular thing?
Most people don't have to deal with booking a meeting a few timezones away or anything else where it would be an advantage on a regular basis.
It's convenient if the date, and possibly weekday, changes at night.
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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.
That's different, your day remains Wednesday their day remains Tuesday, they're talking about going to lunch on Tuesday and coming back on Wednesday, do you call that your Tuesday lunch? Tuesday Dinner? Wednesday breakfast? Wednesday lunch?
