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Comment by chrisper | Hacker News Reader

Do you like the idea of having to remember that stores in japan open at 23:00 UTC, somwehere else at 3:00 UTC etc.?

That sounds like a way less annoying issue than trying to schedule things across borders

Unless you’re proposing everyone on earth work during the same hours, you’re still going to have to know the standard working hours in the region they’re in. Time zones are basically a standard version of that. Not to mention, a single solar day makes dealing with weekends/holidays way harder.

No, it just shifts the problem to needing to know which are the working hours at each location you want to interact with. Timezones and Daylight Saving are completely different issues that appear related. Both have flaws, but at least local timezones are a sensible abstraction for general societal behaviour in a given location.

If you want a fixed standard time, we already have UTC, - get used to it and the offset of the _local_ times you need to know.

https://qntm.org/abolish

Yes!

Also, just like you don't need to remember timezones today (you can just google them), you won't need to remember daylight hours (or whatever the terminology will end up being) in a single timezone future (because Google will know)!

Then think only in UTC! Global Infrastructure has been using this single timezone for over 40 years.

Also, once you know the easy-to-remember-or-lookup offsets of the locations you interact with you can even translate in your head to save others the effort.

> because Google will know

Yes! Why have a single, standard system known as timezones when each and every calendaring app can have their own "not a timezone" timezone mappings. That way Apple, Google and Microsoft can have three incompatible mappings between UTC and local time.... er.... accepted local customs. It will be great!

I bet the Japanese would remember that pretty quick. If I visit Japan, I don't know customs and practices of local business and have to look things up or go with a local anyway. I certainly don't like people forgetting what timezone I'm in and scheduling important meetings for 6pm on the Friday before a long weekend, or having to stop and look stuff up because I can't remember whether or not I'm in sync with the next state of over during this time of year. The fact is time is different everywhere but we hide that in the way we represent it, making it harder to deal with it.

> scheduling important meetings for 6pm on the Friday before a long weekend

Have you ever considered that people might be just assholes? :)

I consider that all the time, but people I work with often have no idea I spend most of my time in another timezone.

You already have to do that - if you're in France and it's within a couple of hours of when the sun is highest in the sky the shops are probably shut. On a Sunday they probably don't even open at all.

I already have to deal with the fact that shops in Australia close at 5pm (local time), not at 10pm like they do in my home country.

This is a weak argument for keeping timezones around imo.

Do you often find it necessary to remember when stores open in other countries? Even within my town all the stores open/close at different times from each other.

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