[simonkagedal]

I think it's a really cool idea. I signed up because I had a brain fart and thought that "EST" was "European Standard Time" (I was of course thinking of CET).

So yeah, the current window wouldn't work for me, but that's fine. Everything doesn't have to be for everyone. We all live in our bubbles anyway; creating artificial rules could actually be ways of creating new, unexpected interactions.

This being said – if you were to adjust the rules to accommodate more people, I don't think it should be "open from 7:39 to 10:39 in whatever your local time zone is", because that feels like it would just destroy the whole idea – that everyone is there at the _same_ time. Also, it would still exclude people who work evenings.

An alternative solution would be to have multiple windows. For example, if you have one starting at 7:39 PM EST and another one at 7:39 AM EST, there would be more chances that there is some time during the day for people around the globe to check in. Depending, of course, on many things: time zones, sleep habits, work schedule, ability to briefly slack off during work, etc. It would remain true to the idea while opening up for some more people. Just a thought.

I also think each window could be smaller, maybe like just one hour?

[josephg]

> So yeah, the current window wouldn't work for me, but that's fine. Everything doesn't have to be for everyone. We all live in our bubbles anyway; creating artificial rules could actually be ways of creating new, unexpected interactions.

I like the idea that something like this could be open for 3 hours in the evening local time. Like, you'd get totally different communities coming on at different times, and having completely separate experiences together. But some other people would bridge the gap.

While you're online, every hour some people would be forced to leave and some other people could join.

[usrusr]

A moving window would be just like what you already get with somewhat global communities. E.g. hn while Europe and Africa is mostly sleeping vs hn while the Americas are mostly sleeping. As I understand it, seven39 is not so much about only being allowed to chime in during a specific time window, but about it being offline outside that window. You could have multiple instances from date line to date line, but they'd have separate content and user identities (even if some people might have accounts in different timezones).

What I really don't get, it completely blows my mind: why hasn't this concept been completely chewed through, explored to hell and back, back in the days when everybody and their dog tried to invent some new variation of social media website (and get bought up by Yahoo when they ran out of runway or grew tired of it)? Age of the yo app? Feels almost as if the convertible wasn't invented before 100 years after the automobile.

[StefanBatory]

It was always a small source of joy on Discord to see Americans getting on the server while East Asians would go to sleep, with us Europeans being in the middle. It always feels so cute for some reason I can't explain, but I do love that every time.

[unsupp0rted]

This happens on Reddit- you'll make a comment that makes sense to Europeans or Asians, and it gets n upvotes. Then America wakes up and all of a sudden it gets n downvotes.

It's especially interesting in local expat communities: in Asia local time, you'll make a comment that is the ground truth and it gets n upvotes from locals and other foreigners in-country. But then the children of immigrants in America who are associated with that country wake up, and suddenly 8 hours later you're a monster.

[twic]

One approach might be to have many instances, like we do with Discord etc, and have the admins choose a timezone, so an instance for French people would be on Paris time, etc.

Or even just choose the start of the time range directly. French joggers might prefer a different time to French Counter-Strike players.

[daveguy]

Personally, I think we need less balkanization + telephone game rather than more.

[hiergiltdiestfu]

I can see the addicts rewinding their clocks already :)

[mentalgear]

like a tavern

[shaky-carrousel]

An isolated subdomain for each timezone, with no way to interact between them, cet.seven39, est.seven39, etc.

[op00to]

They could be allowed to interact but only with a delay that caches interactions until the next window. If I post at 8pm my time, it should wait until 8pm your time to make it appear on your instance.

[drowntoge]

One simple script that automatically connects to your account on the current time frame's server and unifies all into a single timeline will kill the fun.

[jofzar]

I think a good alternative would be it's open twice, 7:39am and 7:39pm.

Makes it available for other regions but also the same (silly) idea.

[leke]

I think there could be different sites for different continents like https://www.seven39.eu

[greg_V]

you could have the same site, but running different servers to serve different timezones / locales. kind of like old-school video game servers

[sschueller]

Why not let the user pick the 3 hour window and not let them change it for another period after it was just changed?

[diggan]

Or, have N available 3 hour windows, and if you've interacted (viewed the website/posted) in any way with the website during one of those periods, you cannot use the other periods for that day.

So basically the same idea, but letting the decision be more dynamic.

[croisillon]

now i want to see a map with all timezones called EST but meaning something else in each one

[phatfish]

Not a map, but there is a list of semi-standard time zone abbreviations here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_zone_abbreviation...

CST and BST are a couple of common ones with overloads. Use the ISO standard for your time stamps guys. I have to work with one API that uses these ambiguous abbreviations in a key time stamp field (faceplam).

[simonkagedal]

It was a total brain fart though – I know what EST is and I know that my time zone is CET; just had some neurons misfiring!

[7bit]

WDYM? There is exactly one time zone called EST.

[Jeremy1026]

Sounds like something Randall from xkcd would cook up.

[stronglikedan]

A window based on region is like free load balancing.

[bazmattaz]

Why not allow the user to start a “session” at any time of day and then they only have 3hrs from that time

[deadbabe]

You could also just use a different time zone each day.

[simonkagedal]

Yeah. There are many fun experiments one could do. Now I got this idea instead: what if it opened up on 07:39 PM on January 1st, but then the window moved forward 3 minutes and 56.7 seconds each day so that it was back on 07:39 PM a year later. That sounds like it would be extremely useless, but fun.