I feel that this is what we should be using instead of the current illogical time system.
Honestly, all we need to do is eliminate time zones. It wouldn’t solve all the problems with time systems, particularly for programmers, but it would go a long way to solving the practical problems humans face, as well as eliminating one of the biggest machine problems.
Just everyone switch to UTC. As I write this it is 10:51 UTC. Anyone in the world can convert that to their local purpose. In eastern Australia, 10:51 is mid evening. In the UK it’s late morning. In western United States it’s late at night. If we always used UTC, people would just be used to this pretty quick.
Maybe programmers should learn to do their job correctly instead of asking the whole planet to fix their simple problem for themselves.
The biggest machine problem ? That must be a joke!
It really isn’t that simple.
If all your system cares about is recording incoming events at a discrete time, then sure: UTC for persistence and localization for display solves all your problems.
But if you have any concept of user-defined time ranges or periodic scheduling, you get in the weeds real quick.
There is a difference between saying “this time tomorrow” vs. “24 hours from now”, because of DST, leap years, and leap seconds.
Time zones (and who observes them) change over time. As does DST.
If you allow monthly scheduling, you have to account for some days not being valid for some months and that this changes on a leap year.
If you allow daily scheduling, you need to be aware that some hours of the day may not exist on certain days or may exist twice.
If you poll a client device and do any datetime comparisons, you need to decide whether you care about elapsed time or calendar time.
I worked on some code that was deployed to aircraft carriers in the Pacific. “This event already happened tomorrow” is completely possible when you cross the international date line.
Add to all of this the fact that there are different calendars across the world, even if the change is as small as a different “first day of the week”.
It’ll never happen because approximately 0 people think about it outside of programmers.
approximately 0 people think about it outside of programmers
It comes up all the time. Any time people are scheduling something between different time zones and run into trouble figuring out “is that your time or my time?” That’s an issue that would be resolved by not having time zones.
Anyone who works with people in different time zones. Which is a lot more of us as we go remote.
Eliminating time zones would make things worse. Right now you know that from 10am to 3pm local things will be opened with close to 100% certainty. Remove time zones and now you have to find out what are normal opening hours for the country where you’re trying to call.
I think that it’s harder to all be in the same time zone. You then have to remember each zone’s working hours instead of the offset from your time.
I don’t see how it’s easier to get rid of time zones.
It’s stupid to remove timezone.
No it’s not. Time zones are a source of incredible confusion for programmers and are the cause of countless computer bugs that affect billions of people.
If we all used UTC time, you’d get used to it. You’d simply get up at xx:00 and have lunch at yy:00, etc. The numbers we use now (like 6 or 12) are completely arbitrary. You would get used to your day cycle using different numbers and the next generation would think literally nothing of it.
I get your logic but no amount of bugs will ever be enough to justify making the entire world change their idea of time.
It would be a mess talking to anyone about time where you do not live.
Say that you wake up at 06:00, everyone understands. Remove all time zones and now you wake up at 14:53. Anyone not native to your location would have no clue where in the sky the sun is relative to you and what that actually means for your day.
Would 14:53 for you post removal be compared to 06:00 or 09:00 pre removal? What if oyu are porned post removal and do not have the frame of reference for the old system. How would you go about it then?
I can see the merit in keeping time zones.
Could you imagine traveling without time zones? It would be actual hell.
Normally you wake up at 1300, but then you travel to japan, you don’t know when they wake up. So maybe you ask the hotel staff or maybe people will start putting signs up “Japan wakes up at 0300”. I mean it’s cool you don’t need to change your watch or wait for your phone time to update when the plane lands, but how do you know when lunch is? When do you go to sleep? If a meeting you’re having is at 1000, is that way late in the day meeting? Or is that a super early meeting and maybe you should get to bed early the night before. You would have no clue unless you do it on the regular.
Now, you could just download an app that tells you what time it is where you’re at currently relative to what you normally use (so in Japan while they think it’s 0300, your phone says 1300) so this would make these way easier for you since all the times are just normal. Every time you move around you just tell the app where you’re at and it adjusts the time is displays annnndddd…oh wait I just re-invited time zones.
Why?
Their value is so that we all can imagine what the sky looks like when we say “seven am”.
But why is that important?
Because it’s what make the time have a meaning. The time when you eat, when you go to sleep or wake up, when you go to work,…
In fact, you’re looking at it the wrong way. The time is localised because that’s how it make sense for people. And that’s how it make sense for physics too. Relativity means each place has its own time.
The question should be why do you want to change this?
I’d be with you if they were static - but the current situation of timezones that change regularly is a nightmare.
Are you talking about winter time vs summer time? Then it’s a whole other matter, completely irrelevant to timezones.
No, I’m talking about timezones themselves changing. Countries regularly change details about timezones.
You should have been there for it’s christening.
We’re getting rid of minutes/hours/seconds
YAY!
We’re getting rid of daylight savings time
YAY!!!
We’re getting rid of timezones
Yu…wait how the HELL is that supposed to work?
And we sat there, waiting for the other shoe to drop, crickets.
So how do you tell someone when your day starts? How do you coordinate multi content projects? What’s the minimum time segment? Just under 90 seconds. So no more microwaving for 30 seconds, or do we start with fractional beats?
It was just early internet clickbait.
Actually it’s not that difficult, as you can see on the wiki page time is shown in
@392.51
So yeah there are fractions.
Also I don’t really see the problem without timezones, so if it’s @451 maybe that is night for you and morning for me.
It would actually make traveling easier, because you will immediately see what time it is for your family at home.
Instead of the hours at a place being the same (like 19:20 is in the evening for everyone), now we keep the time the same but we have different experiences at certain beats.
It would actually make traveling easier, because you will immediately see what time it is for your family at home.
So what? Time doesn’t mean anything anymore. What time is dinner? What time do they get up? What time do they go to bed? When can you call?
What time does someone in Moscow go do bed? How about LA?
You’re no longer lumping them in to timezones. Someone on one side of the us is exactly 5 hours off the other side now. Places work in chunks. Every last place just opens and closes at different times.
It would just be chaos.
Right know, if i vaguely know what quarter of the US you live in, I can tell what time you get up, exactly when your banks open, when you’re eating dinner, when you should be done work. You’re not going to say that’s just trash right?
I don’t think time doesn’t have meaning with a system like the beats system. It’s just that the meaning is more personal. For you 600 beats is dinnertime and for me it’s the moment the alarm clock wakes me up.
Dinner is still at 600 for you and your entire city or country or state (depending on how big your country is).
But for larger countries it can be that most stores close at 600 but some open earlier and close at 550 or something.
At this moment we have a system that also can be pretty confusing. Like when you have a meeting with people in different timezones. Oh we meet at 14:30? Like our 14:30 or yours? Or when you do stuff with computer systems and 2 servers are in different timezones, it’s a nightmare
Just to counter, you’d still know this. Forget beats and say there was a single time zone with the normal time system. So right now you know that Eastern time is -5 and people generally do shit 9am to 5pm, and if you live in London you’ll minus 5 from your time yo know the things you mentioned. In a single time zone system, you’ll just know those guys in that region of the US generally do shit from 4am to 1pm. It’s the same thing as remembering a time zone and minussing 5 each time. It is however helpful to coordinate stuff. Like a call at 10am is 10am for everyone (the amount of daylight would differ but you’ll still pick up the phone at 10am). Or a flight that takes off at noon and reaches at 7pm would be exactly the same time everywhere.
The questions you raise all seem to have trivial answers. You can just… tell people those things? How is telling someone when your day starts any worse than telling them your time zone?
Also, coordinating projects across multiple continents becomes easier, since without timezones everyone just naturally communicates the correct relative times to each other. None of this “my time” or “your time” nonsense.
A timezone is a constant (barring DST shenanigans) offset, which works for all the hours of the day. I can look at my watch here in Germany and I know that it’s 8:15 in New York right now. So I know that it’s still early in the day for my buddy Jeff.
In the same-time everywhere logic, I would need to remember specific times, like “people in New York usually start working at 15:00 and stop at 24:00”, which is just plain inefficient.
Again, how is remembering whatever the New York offset is from your own work hours any different than remembering their time zone? If you have a remote coworker in a different time zone do you not already think things like “they’re not at their desk until 10 so I can’t schedule anything with them before that”?
The inconvenience you’re describing already exists and doesn’t change, you’re just used to the current specifics.
Our time syatem is not illogical and if you think it is you haven’t thought about the consequences. The only bad thing about timezones is how far they swing away from their ideal position sometimes.
We also need to switch to 13 months at 28 days each. Makes things so much easier.
I’d personally prefer 12 months with 30 days each, a 6-day week (makes for even rotations in shifts, 4 on 2 off), and an inter-calary week of 5 to 6 days at the new year.
If we’re going for broke on this I’d also want to convert to the dozenal system over decimal, as 12 is more easily divisible by smaller numbers which means easier division for numbers we use more often (like 3 or 4), which means that ¼ would be 0.3 and ⅓ would be 0.4.
A dozenal system is more difficult in multiplication. Decimal: 10^7 =10000000, 10^8=100000000, 10^9=1000000000, etc.
Dozenal: 12^7= 35831808, 12^8=429981696, 12^9=5159780352.
Gets very messy very quick.
In dozenal (duodecimal), 6+6= a dozen, but we write “dozen” as “10”. A dozen dozen is not 144; it is “100”. 3 dozen is not 36; 3 dozen is “30”.
We would have two additional digits between 9 and “10”.
We would have to rewrite our multiplication table entirely. 2 * 6=10. 3 * 6=16. 4 * 6=20. But, when we do memorize the new table, it is just as consistent and functional as our decimal system.
That’s because you’re working in base 10. That person wants to covert to base 12.
12? Ew. As someone who relies on my fingers to count I repudiate such discriminatory system!
You still get to count on your fingers. You use your thumb to count each bone in your 4 fingers to get up to 12. (“10” in the new system). Then you have the option to either continue with your other hand up to 24, or use it as an abacus, keeping your place while you count up to 144 (“100”).
you can still use your fingers. it’s how we got our standard of time. Back then they counted the joints in our fingers minus thumb. 4 sets of 3 for our four fingers and 3 joints per finger. Then 5 sets of 12 to make 60. as they would use the fingers on the other hand to track how many times they counted to 12.
I like that with 13 each month starts on a Monday and ends on a Sunday. Makes that calculation super easy.
Relevant https://m.xkcd.com/320/
I had a roommate for a semester in college who essentially lived on a 40 hour schedule. He’d stay awake for 24 hours straight, then sleep for 16 hours. Not sure if he managed to pass any of his classes that year.
There’s pros and cons., though personally I used this calendar for my fiction writing.
I’d like to find a way to sync the lunar cycle and solar cycles since the earth’s, moon’s, and revolutions around the sun are soooo close (5 days off) plus it’d make sense to keep in theme with the Babylonian-esque base-60 system (where 60 is readily divided and a factor of 360 days, 12 months, 30 days, etc).
Which is pretty much what the Ancient Egyptians did.
*edit: pretty much have 5 “fake days” and add a sixth “fake” day to account for the gradual desync.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
[https://piped.video/-zgX-2ULT68?]](https://piped.video/-zgX-2ULT68?])
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Math checks out, but who do we name the other month after? Another Roman emperor?
