Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by WayToDoor | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

WayToDoor

So You Want Continuous Time Zones [0] ? Or maybe you want to abolish them entirely [1] ?

[0] https://qntm.org/continuous

[1] https://qntm.org/abolish

View on HN

The solution is obviously Swatch Internet Time.

Those links have many falsehoods like claiming that UTC is a time zone. UTC±00:00 or Z is, but not UTC; "Continuous Time Zones" is self-contradictory.

Abolish them entirely. Your second link is silly and is not a serious counterargument.

It's just as valid as a non-silly post.

If you get rid of time zones, people will replace them with an ad hoc system that does most of the same things but worse. The current implementation could be improved some, but time zones in general are close to the least worst option.

I think having a unified time everywhere is a really obvious advantage. Time being measured differently based on geographic location is completely silly. You would still need to look up how a different location is scheduled but you also need to do that with timezones so there's no disadvantage, only an advantage.

We do have a unified time everywhere, UTC.

Putting time zones on top means people have to look up less.

UTC is effectively a timezone.

Putting tomezones on top means people have to look up more.

Please explain how you would do unified time without UTC?

I would use UTC of course. Why would you do anything else?

Then I don't understand what point you were making when you said "UTC is effectively a timezone."

But if it was notably more convenient, I would expect to see more people using it right now, even when it's not the default.

It's a matter of compatibility, e.g. you're not going to start measuring length in meters when everyone else in your country is using feet. That's why I said UTC is a time zone, nobody uses it outside of the UTC time zone, therefore nobody uses it outside of the UTC time zone.

I mean each city used to have their own time zone and we got rid of that.

The next step is to just get rid of the country-sized timezones. Sure the sun doesn't rise in US West as US East at the same time but it also doesn't rise at the same time in Florida as it does in Maine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com