I mean, if you lose the game, you lose the game. You don’t say “hey you made me lose the game! Don’t do that!” Because that’s not how the game works. If you “make” someone lose the game, tough luck.
Swatch Internet Time (or .beat time) is a decimal time system introduced in 1998 by the Swatch corporation as part of their marketing campaign for their line of “.beat” watches.
I could be wrong, but I’m fairly certain watches existed in 1998.
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.
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.
Yeah removing them is not a good idea. But they do need a nice global time complement for anything that is international such as broadcasts on the internet. I hate converting time zones to figure out when an event or broadcast starts.
That would be listed in plain terms on a website no conversion needed. I really only deal with individuals though, so they list their hours on teams and only some of them follow business hours anyways.
Ok, it’s still more trouble than just remembering “France is +6 from where I am so I can call any business over there at 8am local no problem.”
The only proponents of getting rid of time zones are people who only think about how it fits their own situation while ignoring that in the vast majority of cases it makes things simpler to have time zones.
but regardless, imagine if you are meeting with 10 people all in different time zones. some in Arizona which doesn’t have DST. most don’t work 8-5 or whatever because thats old fashioned and sucks life from you. I’d rather know when you work on a single single clock. no confusion. it would take a couple months for everyone to adjust to their new clock and then everyone would be in sync. yeah its a fantasy, but things are more connected every day. think of the boon for travelers and airlines.
Yeah I tend to agree, I schedule things with people across the world regularly and coordinating the time zones and business hours is a pain. If everyone used the same clock it would eliminate part of that issue.
Then a simple fix would be to not plan any meetings or calls for first or last thing in a day. Also, all work is expected due by first thing in the morning. So send that shit off as soon as you are done with it and its not a problem.
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.
My point is you use UTC to plan international meetings but keep timezones for day to day stuff. Better yet with computers meeting planning software takes timezones into account.
When I do a when2meet with my colleagues everyone fills it in their local time and it’s fine, and then the calendar event is timezone aware as well so it’s completely a non issue.
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”.
Look okay so I have the basic theory behind the film alright?
Eventually the crew of the Enterprise realizes that every planet with intelligent life they’ve ever visited has some kind of bean.
Every star system.
Every galaxy.
Background:
Long before the dawn of humanity (and every other civilization in the known universe), billions of seeding ships full of a variety of gene-modified ruggedized advanced beans were sent out through the cosmos.
Who sent the beans? The last civilization of a distant supercluster, who had known several millennia of intergalactic stability and connection (over thousands of galaxies, countless people). But in the last few centuries they had suffered a horrible war with something invading from the deep black. A majority of the galaxies were wiped out within the first few decades, but a distant arm of the supercluster fortified hard and held out. They desperately hoped to overcome it, but they had only succeeding in slowing it.
Witnessing so much annihilation, many knew this was the end of life here. There were attempts to salvage life, many generation ships were sent out but they always prematurely lost connection.
…
But they sent beans.
GOOD beans.
They established life in corners of the universe where life would have otherwise been impossible! They grew in the most fucked up conditions, there were beanstalks in methane oceans and spreading around supervolcanoes.
There were beans on Earth, before there were single-celled organisms. They established the foundation for life.
We’re not here by divine decree.
We’re here, because the aliens sent beans.
(Potential addition/twist: Fungus. Rarely found beyond Earth, almost always seen as a poisonous pest, humans being uniquely similar to fungi becomes an important plot point. Recently there has been a horrble fungal pest on Earth ruining beans in particular, but also attacking many other plants at an increasing and alarming rate. Human and animal fungal infections have gotten far more aggressive. Eventually; Mushroom zombies.)
(Spolier alert: The enemy from the deep black was fungal in nature. It feeds on worlds and builds mycelium networks through fibrils stretching through cold space off anything it can. Solid planets, asteroids, gas giants. Touching them, growing on them, eventually slowing them through a weak but persistent and increasing resistance. Growing like mold, but ever larger, always reaching for the network it moves through. (Only thing it can’t touch are stars, but it can feed from them.) After consuming everything it can reach, it sends out spores and slowly dies as it has sapped all energy from its hosts.)
If I remember my history accurately, that’s because tanks were a new British secret weapon. The whole reason they’re even called tanks is because that was the code name, they referred to them as water tanks.
I was raised Mormon (LDS) and there are parallels; basically they believe Mormonism is the one true and complete denomination of Christianity and once you learn this, you need to spread that truth (mandatory 2 year missions for men, and a STRONG culture of missionary work through life), also, no one goes to hell in Mormonism except those who learned this truth and then later denied it/left it (called a son of perdition).
So my parents believe I’ll go to hell without the likes of Hitler because he never was taught “the truth” lol
Not saying anyone deserves eternal punishment for finite sins, but I do believe I’m more moral than Hitler - so it seems a but unfair to me. And silly for them to believe it’s true.
I can tell you are an ex-Mormon. You are still thinking like a conservative. You are thinking of a hierarchy where you are more moral than Hitler. You believe it’s unfair that Hitler has a better outcome than you.
I’m asking you to think more like a liberal. Think about the actual outcome. Imagine two restaurants, one has Hitler forever one does not. If given a choice which would you choose? I’m saying that letting in Hitler indicates the quality of people in that location. Wouldn’t spending eternity with people like him be hell?
Haha, I see. There’s some really good ex-Mormon jokes about how the highest tier of heaven (Celestial Kingdom) is boring and white and reverent and then the third tier (Telestial Kingdom) is a 24/7 rave. If given a choice on where I want to spend my afterlife, I’d probably consider the company I’d end up spending eternity with.
General connotation of Hell though is that it’s a miserable place
This also implies the most moral Mormons would stop spreading “the truth.” They would sacrifice themselves to save the many. When has religion actually dealt with morality though?
Haha, I love this idea. Unfortunately with more context on the religion, it’s obvious why none of them would come to this conclusion. So there’s actually 3 tiers of Heaven (and then Hell which is called “outer darkness”). Only by knowing “the truth” and completing all your ordinances on Earth, can you get into the top tier (the “Celestial kingdom”). Without those things, you can only get into the second tier by being a good person, no higher. Everyone else gets tier 3 - which is said to be such a paradise that if we knew how great it was we’d opt out of life early to get there. But also in the lower levels we’re supposed to have eternal regret for not being worthy of better.
So Mormons believe that by spreading the truth they’re enabling a person to achieve a higher tier afterlife. Outer Darkness isn’t really a concern because “why would anyone ever deny the one true religion and one way to have true happiness on Earth, after they’ve received it.” When I was taught these lessons, I was even told that sons of perdition were exceptionally rare because almost no one ever leaves the church. Never expected to become one myself! The internet has not been good for the Mormon church and in recent years they’ve been bleeding members and trying to rebrand.
I guess you could say that I came to your conclusion, but in reality I just don’t believe the religion is true and see parts of it as harmful so not really… I’ll probably joke around with my siblings with your idea though
This is fascinating. I’m reminded of a Mormon guy I (barely) knew that was murdered. If he didn’t have the chance to complete his ordinances, well, I guess no kingdom for him - through no fault of his own. Does he get a pass or is he screwed into lousy second heaven for all eternity?
The story: He was murdered by another Mormon guy over a woman. Murderer thought the woman was his last chance to find love and decided he was serious about it. It’s likely he murdered another guy the woman was dating a year or two before, but that case was ruled a suicide and closed - by the time the known murder occurred, all evidence had been destroyed.
It’s a bit complicated, but the answer is it is sort of possible for anyone who is dead and didn’t have their ordinances done to get to the highest kingdom. Mormons famously baptize dead people, they also do other ordinances for dead people. The belief is that it allows the dead person to then accept or deny the ordinances. They believe that in the afterlife before resurrection there is still the opportunity to be taught the Mormon gospel. That combined with someone doing your ordinances for you and you’re good.
They believe dead people are doing missionary work to other dead people in the spirit world before resurrection (which I think happens after the second coming). I’ve heard that the second coming won’t happen until everyone (alive and dead) has had the opportunity to accept the Mormon truth.
We have UTC/GMT my dudes. Just count times by that and boom, no time zones. You can even remove a colon, meaning you just end up with 4 numbers, like 1700 for 17:00 UTC (5pm Greenwich time)
I tried to have a discussion about this on reddit about how everyone should just use utc and he called me a lunatic because his working day would start at 3am instead of 8am, completely misunderstanding that utc 3am would be a different time to his current 3am and he just could not get his little head around it.
I’ve said this all my life and I can’t wait for the day we all shift to a single tike zone. While we’re on the topic, we also need to change a few more things - single global currency, zero customs duties, no passports, and the metric system with a single kind of 240v electrical socket/plug (my own preference being the UK plugs).
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?
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
Sorry, let me rephrase: while you can make a good approximation of the average person’s schedule in many places due to 9-5 culture, it will, at best, still be just that—an approximation and there will be a significant number of people who didn’t follow it. If you need to know a specific person’s availability, you will still have to remember details about their routine, and then also convert their time zone to your own or clarify “whose time” you’re talking in. That adds an extra burden on top of the whole AM/PM confusion that can occur as well.
If Alice lives in a timezone 4 hours behind yours, and you both have work until 5pm in each respective timezone, you’ve probably already calculated that difference and just kind of know that she’s not off work until 9pm, and she’s doing the same mental calculation that you’re off work around the time her clock hits 1pm. This doesn’t even take into account other obligations or scheduling.
Point is that there’s already lots of memorization going on. What difference is it if you wake up at t=2.25 global vs 8:00AM local if it’s light out and most others around you get up at the same time and work for a roughly equal interval to 9hrs including the unpaid lunch? Communicating with people further away requires figuring out schedules regardless.
Of course, nobody is used to dealing with the time in this matter. Transition difficulties aside, however, it’s not objectively any more difficult than the juggling of coordination we already have to do. People just seem to have a weird attachment to everything having “normal” times even when it’s all quite relative in this case.
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.
I collaborated with folks for many years in far eastern Russia - the only hard part was tracking DST and adjusting standing scheduled meetings accordingly.
Holidays that weren’t shared were much more of a pain to deal with than the time difference.
en.wikipedia.org
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