top | item 46959122

(no title)

anileated | 19 days ago

Things you will have in context when traveling: "it's going to be cold", "it's likely to rain", "it's going to be government conference so there will be extra delays with transport", "it's going to be %holiday% so everything's going to be closed all week", etc.

You're so used to it you don't even question that, and if you add to that "@x is when sunset usually happens"... somehow I think the world will not come crashing down.

discuss

order

nickorlow|19 days ago

I don't think the world would come crashing down, but what's the point if it's just another thing to memorize?

The total cost/effort of timestamp translation in systems is not as high as people make it out to be.

anileated|18 days ago

> just another thing to memorize

Not knowing what time it is for my Australian colleagues at all without checking my phone every single time is worse. Remembering N timezone offsets (remember DST and half-hour offsets, too) is worse. Doing UTC translation or adding "my time/your time" every time is worse.

If you talk mental overhead, current system is like 10x of that than global time.

We agreed to meet at "8pm their time" but unless I literally put it into my TZ-enabled calendar app every time the chance I mentally translate it to my TZ wrong is unacceptably high. With global time, meeting would be @123 and that's it. I can keep it in my head or write it down on paper, no confusion and full precision every time. I don't even need to know if it's day or night if it's a remote call with the other side of the Earth, maybe me or my colleague works late, who cares, but I know what time it is there at any moment.

> is not as high as people make it out to be.

It's not just timestamp translation and all the errors that come from that, it's all the rest of it, waste standardizing timezones and moving them around, having to convert time all the time, missed meetings, etc.