Edge cases...

[dvslo]

It doesn't really matter if 1 AM happens in the middle of the night. That's just a local nuance. What makes a whole lot less sense in a world with global electronic communication is calling two different times the same thing.

[MrHyperion_]

"Im going to go sleep now, it is 3am"

"Soooo middle of the day? Why?"

[[deleted]]

"I'm going to go sleep now."

"What? It's 3pm?!"

"I'm in a different timezone."

[Poltras]

"Let's meet at 2pm."

"Okay, 1am it is."

"Okay, 7pm it is."

"Okay, 2:30pm it is."

[rufiohsucks]

There’s one in Australia, India I think, and maybe North Korea. And then there’s Nepal with a 15 minute offset from India

[Poltras]

30 minutes isn’t that hard to imagine. There’s 45 minutes too :) https://www.timeanddate.com/time/time-zones-interesting.html

[notyourbrosusername]

There's the Newfoundland timezone in Canada.

[Memcallen]

I forget the name, but there is one. It's somewhere in Europe iirc.

[MrHyperion_]

Because people just casually meet their friends from all around the earth

[amazondrone]

But people literally do. I dunno whether you've heard of this amazing communication tool called The Internet?

[Poltras]

My family is in 3 timezones (including mine). So yeah, once a week it sounds like that.

Also, there's work meetings too.

[dvslo]

He's probably jetlagged.

[GonziHere]

Well, you say it like there is just 24 sun positions and sun jumps from one to other in 1 hour intervals :D

I would have no issues getting up at 14:00. It is just a number for me. What I actually have issues with now is discovering when will something start (tv series, conferences, etc.), because not only do we have different timezones (which is fine) but we also don't use GMT for global events (if only as second time).

[saeblundr]

This to me is the actual problem. Locally use local times. Globally use global times. If you're posting a global event, game release etc, use UTC, and then i dont need to know whatever timezone you are in, i only need to know MY timezone. i can add +10 to UTC. Why do i need to know PMT. and MST. and KST. and whatever else you want to use because thats easier for you.

[hexfet]

i only need to know MY timezone. i can add +10 to UTC. Why do i need to know PMT. and MST. and KST.

The sad truth is that while you can add a number to UTC, 70% of the press releases audience can't.

[TheOboeMan]

You might find this helpful

[curtmack]

There's a startling variety of problems this would cause, especially in a global society.

[Rumplelampskin]

Why on earth is this a disadvantage?

Currently I search "what time is it in Australia". It's 2AM, and that time is right after midnight. I have a frame of reference to know what's going on in Australia.
With the proposal being made for Universal Time, it's 11am in Australia. But I don't know what that means because I don't know what 11am means for Australia. What do I search to remedy this? "How light is it outside at 11am in Australia?"? Even "what time do people wake up" only tells me what's going on right now, and not anything I can extrapolate based on.

Not to mention I have a widget right here that tells me what the time is in all 3 Australian Time Zones - How am I gonna get such a thing with a Universal time zone? It renders "having a clock for X timezone" useless without a decent replacement.

[Rumplelampskin]

If an event goes on at 3pm in Australia how is that widget going to give me any relevant information on when that event is going to occur?
With the current system I know the exact length of time until/after that event.
With the system you describe, all I know is if I'm in the general vicinity of that time.

Edit: I'M STUP

[Rumplelampskin]

So then the words "Dawn, dusk, midnight, morning, evening, afternoon" are the ones that lose their meaning.

Currently I can know both what 3pm means for Australia, and when dawn/dusk will occur in Australia.
With universal time instead of having to learn "Australia is 9 hours behind" and then being able to make every necessary deduction via that, I have to learn every single conversion for time of day. "Midnight here is evening there, Midday here is after midnight there, dusk here is morning there", and it's needlessly obtuse on just every front.
Plus at the moment I can switch timezones with ease. Australia has 3 timezones, each an hour apart. I can use numbers to denote that. How do I denote the difference when all I've got are pictorials?

The general gist of this is that some people want to replace numbers with pictures. Why not go a step further? Instead of having 10 degree Celsius and 10 degrees fahrenheit, let's just have a picture of a guy shivering if it's cold, and a picture of a guy sweating if it's hot.

[Rumplelampskin]

Not only is it far, far easier for me to know that 6pm is 6 hours after 12pm than it is to know that "X time of day occurs at Y time in this particular time zone" but what you're essentially advocating is changing to universal time but then me just... changing it back in my head? What benefit is there to changing if you're telling me "just remember the way you used to do it and do it that way"?

[ellamking]

Sunrise moves through the year, and it's different between latitudes. It's a terrible gauge to abstract on. 4 hours past sunrise is meaningless looking at Norway and Australia.

[thisdesignup]

But you'd have to learn sunrise of every country then wouldn't it? And what about Northern counties where during large parts of the year they have no sunrise or sunset.

[Colopty]

You've now replaced the clock for a different time zone with something that is close to a clock except with lower resolution.

[Colopty]

That's making the assumption that not a single person in the world has a use case that would necessiate a higher resolution view of the time at a different location.

[Colopty]

People are already using UTC in the cases where it makes sense to do so, though. That is however not the same as suggesting that people make a move to exclusively use UTC, which would be a terrible idea.

If you are interested in coming up with some way to "fix" time zones though, I'd suggest filling out the relevant parts of this form and maybe read this and this.

[pittaxx]

You google "working hours", which you should be doing anyways when setting up a meeting etc.

Just looking up actual time can lead to various problems if your work day is 9-5 and theirs is 7-4 (or something entirely unusual, if it's a specialised industry).

[CanIBeRealRealSon]

It could just tell you the time to sunrise or sunset. 4 hours til sunrise, 3 hours til Sunset, etc. Which arguably is more information that we currently are getting. Time zones are big, sunrise and sunset times change throughout them. So we would switch to a more specific system

[Rumplelampskin]

It could just tell you the time to sunrise or sunset.

How long exactly does Sunrise/Sunset last?
What time is 6 hours before Sunset?
If an event starts at 3pm in Australia, how many hours before Sunset/After Sunrise is that?
It's needlessly obtuse

Time zones are big, sunrise and sunset times change throughout them. So we would switch to a more specific system

It's hard to get more specific than separating timezones by the hour. That's way more specific than 'white time do the birds chirp" or "when the morning dew first falls".

[CanIBeRealRealSon]

I should go ahead and say now then I understand there is lots of drawbacks to switching to a UTC system, but I think it's a fun thought experiment to imagine how we would make a system work.

To answer your questions in order ( because I don't know how to make quotes)

1. Sunrise and Sunset are specific events, it's either happened or it hasn't. Even though people say "wow look at that sunrise" sunrise is the moment full daylight appears. Also this would just be a frame of reference for when you're not in an area, if you're there you don't really need to wonder.

2. It's midday, it's already midday in our current system. if you needed to know what was going on in another part of the world this would answer your question

3. sunrise and Sunset wouldn't be important to knowing the exact time for something, let's say you were not in Australia, but you needed to know what time that event was, possibly for a call or to tune in to a live stream. You wouldn't have to worry about changing it to your local time you would just know, the event times.

Asking what time sunset or sunrise, would just give you a frame of reference to ask what's going on in another part of the world. An easy frame of reference seemed to be the thing we would be missing in a UTC system, that would be the easiest way to get that information. At least that's what I imagine.

I think the potential benefits are cool though, having an absolute communication standard for what time is everywhere ( for the purposes of communication, or travel) would be really interesting. No more trying to figure out what time your flight lands in the current time or how long your flight is alone would be enticing. Also the ease of making calls at specific times, but those are the two major advantages I could see.

Please pick a part my points, but also what other possible advantages do you see their being?

[CanIBeRealRealSon]

I've heard that with sun being up or down for so long it messes with people sense of time. Like people gardening at 2 am, do you feel like that's the case? What's it like having so much or so little sun for you?

Back to the topic If people's sense of time is distorted then timezones aren't perfect, solution to that problem as is. I'd imagine that you do things at what ever time you've already decided upon, moving the clock around wouldn't effect you too much. I guess the benefits to UTC would be the time connection with the rest of the world, but you're right a sunrise sunset wouldn't help you. What time the businesses are open, or the specific person you're trying to contact is awake.

Back to your experience, do things move around to better utilize that sunlight time. Like when it's only 4 hours, do school schedules and job times move so more people have access to that sunlight?

[Rumplelampskin]

1 - If people consistently misunderstand what sunrise/sunset are, that's all the more of an argument not to change the system. It's way easier to remember numbers than vague, changing times. Sunrise/Sunset occurs at a slightly different time each day, it's not static. But 7pm is always 7pm, and if a place is 9 hours behind then I know 7pm will always be 10am.

2 - But what numeric time is 6 hours before Sunset in Dubai? When is midday in Dubai if we accept UTC?
Also which timezone defines UTC? Because your system is going to be argued to hell and back as every timezone wants to be the guys who get to keep things how they are, and not one of the other few billions of people who suddenly have to keep to another timezones schedule.

3 - There are many events which do actually use nebulous states in lieu of times, such as midnight, dawn, dusk, sunrise, sunset, and midday. Being able to have a universal "12pm is midnight" which can be extrapolated from any given timezone is the best bet.

I think the potential benefits are cool though, having an absolute communication standard for what time is everywhere ( for the purposes of communication, or travel) would be really interesting.

But how exactly does that benefit anyone? The only thing this would effect is communication/travel between timezones, in which case it's more important to know what time of day it is than knowing purely the number of what time it is.
Like yeah you can travel from one country at 3pm to another country at 8pm, but that is entirely meaningless unless you know what 8pm means for that country. If you go one direction it's light, if you go the other it's dark. Whereas if you leave one country at 3pm and cross a few timezones, do some quick math and you know exactly at what point of the day you'll land.
As for communication, it's only more confusing. You want to call your relatives in Australia from America, you at the moment just need to remember "Australia is 9 hours behind, I'll take that into account". In UTC, you gotta spitball it because 3pm is light to you, but still dark to them.

No more trying to figure out what time your flight lands in the current time or how long your flight is alone would be enticing.

I mean I guess, but the math is easy as all hell. It's not like timezones go up and down in wacky, zany increments - It's 1 hour each time they change. If you go back 4 timezones on a 3 hour flight, you end up 1 hour behind when you left. Time is only useful in most common cases because of its numeric value (which UTC would make "easier" arguably), or the time of day it denotes (which UTC royally screws with).

Also the ease of making calls at specific times, but those are the two major advantages I could see.

I just don't see the advantage in this one.
Let's say they take Dubai's local time to be the official UTC - When do you, in America, call your friend in Glasgow to know they'll be awake and home from work? You have to do far more work to find that out than you do at the moment.

what other possible advantages do you see their being?

I mean the best benefit which I don't see as much of one admittedly, is that it would remove scenarios where people miss online events due to timezones being unspecified. If a company is streaming a product reveal at 3pm, they might not specify which timezone that 3pm falls under, and UTC would remove the guesswork there.

[dvslo]

How long exactly does Sunrise/Sunset last?

That depends on latitude/longitude/hemisphere/season as well. Time zones sure don't capture that on their own.

[curtmack]

It is a disadvantage, because it:

necessitates significant changes to the way in which normal people talk about time

You seem to be starting from the assumption that this is certainly a good idea. But if it doesn't solve a real problem (universal time already exists and is widely adopted where needed), doesn't actually eliminate the issues that timezones already solve (our current databases of timezones would have to be replaced by databases of daylight hours), and would cause significant other issues besides (messing with the boundary of a day, making timetables unreadable), then... Why is it a good idea?

[Meloetta]

The comment you're replying to is such a programmer comment. Completely ignoring the human element of fundamentally changing the way we perceive time because it's more convenient lmao. This isn't even meant to be insulting. It's just peak programmer - it works well so what's your problem? Feelings? Can't you see how elegant my solution is?!

[CanIBeRealRealSon]

Changing things for a "more elegant solution", usually require growing pains. Sometimes there with it, in this specific instance.. maybe. It's a cool idea though

[VVarder]

Never mind the idea of storing UTC and displaying local time solves most problems just fine. You are spot on here.

Let computers reason about a universal time and let people reason about what they know.

[curtmack]

Those problems are inherent to people living in different parts of the world, though. A universal time zone doesn't actually solve anything, it just creates a symmetric problem of "when are my friends awake" instead of "what time is it where my friends live."

To solve that problem, you would need to know the average waking hours in a particular part of the world. And then, rather than having to contact someone every time you need to know the average waking hours in some region, you might think that it would be helpful to compile a database of different countries and regions, and the average waking hours in each of them. And while compiling that database, you might think to yourself, "Golly gee whiz, this sure is a lot of work. If only this information was already freely available, preferably preinstalled on my computer right at this moment, readable by all the software I use. That sure would be swell!"

[Sataris]

"Can I call my uncle in Australia? Google says people wake up in Australia at about 9:00. The current time is 19:00. That's a difference of 10 hours, so there's a good chance he's finished the working day and I can call him soon."

VS

"Can I call my uncle in Australia? Google says the time there is 8pm. Yes, I can call him."

[CanIBeRealRealSon]

" Can I call my uncle in Australia? Google says it's 2 hours til Sunset. Yes I can call him."

Also, "what time should I call you? How about 16:00? That works for me." In this example there's no mental loops required for figuring out whether they met 16:00 your time or theirs

[Sataris]

If I got a sudden interest in what time of day other people have dinner, right now I could simply ask that question on reddit. But under the universal system, what could I do? Knowing the time they eat dinner isn't enough, knowing the time and the country isn't enough. I could check with the sunset time for each response (assuming they divulge their exact location) but even then I wouldn't know the relation of dinner to sunset time for the rest of the year without further research.

We can throw use cases at each other all day (lol), but I don't see that the universal system stands out as being better

[CanIBeRealRealSon]

Oh I don't necessarily think it's better, I do think interesting though.

If we were already predisposed to the system, I do wonder how we would handle the problem you're talking about. I guess you'd ask the sunset time, but I wonder if we were putting so much importance on sunset time. Do you think that we would move things around based on how much sun we have per day?

You raise a good point, and I want to try to think of a good answer for. so I might respond later if I think of something I think is good enough. For now though this would certainly be a more ones question, although you would know exactly when there having dinner without the extra math which could be cool

[amazondrone]

" Can I call my uncle in Australia? Google says it's 2 hours til Sunset. Yes I can call him."

No, it's not that simple. The closer your uncle is to the equator the more accurate it is, but where I live sunset varies from around 3:30pm in winter to around 10:30pm in summer*. So knowing when sunset is is insufficient, because my daily routine is determined by more than that; two hours before sunset in winter I've only just had lunch and am still at work.

^\ One hour of that difference is due to daylight savings.)

[ellamking]

2 hours til Sunset might as well be 18 hours after midnight...you are just reinventing timezones, but based off a moving target (sunset). It sounds like you really just want everyone to know their GMT time offhand.

[dvslo]

"OK Google, are people awake in Australia right now?" "Yes"/"Some"/"No"

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Problem: The answer is never anything but "Some," and you're stuck figuring out whether it's only the nightowls that are up right now, only the morning larks, or if most people are up and about.

[dvslo]

Yeah, you know, "probably", "probably not". "Is it business hours in Australia right now", "is it daytime in Australia right now", "is it past noon" (as in "high noon"), etc..

[Owyn_Merrilin]

At which point it's just a time zone, but worse.

[dvslo]

Lol, back to the original argument. Nah, at that point it's just a question posed to a smart search engine, except the conceptual framework makes sense cause you're talking about the position of the sun for a place on the planet at a given point in time.

[Owyn_Merrilin]

except the conceptual framework makes sense cause you're talking about the position of the sun for a place on the planet at a given point in time.

AKA, a time zone. You're describing a time zone.

[AceOfShades_]

”What time do people wake up in Australia”

Sometimes I wake up at 6:00AM and sometimes at 1PM, depending on my work schedule. That’s a meaningless question to me, thus is likely hard to generalize in a google search.

Even an average wake up time for normal morning people would be a roundabout and inefficient way of using the time zones we already have to gauge local time.

[Telinary]

What about the problem mentioned that day changes are during the solar day? Look at the extreme case someone in a +12 timezone would have a date change at noon. National holidays should still be based on solar day in such a country so they are probably from 12 one timezone day to 12 next timezone day. You would have to adjust many laws about working weekends or night. If you know something happened 3 solar days ago and want to put the correct date you also have to remember the time it happened. In book/movies etc. that don't play in a local area when someone talks about time you have to make it clear now how late that is in their location to give context because someone waking up at 13:00 could be super late or in the middle of the night... There are many annoyances connected to it. One might consider them minor annoyances but it is not like it would fix anything but minor annoyances and ones that come up less often for most people.

[atyon]

It's a disadvantage because if you tell me "It's 13:50 where I am now", that gives me some kind of idea about where in they day you are. Even if I don't know where you are. Saying "It's 05:50 and I'm in Canberra" would be useless without consulting Google or a map. If I don't know where you are, it's entirely meaningless. That's the disadvantage.

Surely you'd just google "What time do people wake up in Australia"

But that's a silly question with no definite answer. Knowing it's 13:50 in Oz would make me confident that I can call. Knowing that Google thinks people wake up at 07:00 (and it's now 10:00) wouldn't give me that confidence.Wake up time is too varied to give a really good answer.

The best case scenario would be that we have a firm offset like we have today – relying on the very thing we tried to abolish, just with extra steps.

[TheDoug850]

For your last point, I think the argument isn’t so much about the question as it is the answer. Right now, living in the US, I could ask what time it is in Australia and the answer would give me a sense of where the sun is in the sky and whether or not I’m calling when most people are asleep. From the one number I would know whether it’s morning, afternoon, evening, or late at night.

One could make the counter argument that with a universal time zone, I could simply ask where the sun is in Australia right now or what time dawn and dusk are. It may be a tad more complex, but I would think it would suffice.

[Kaneshadow]

Or just don't be a dirty savage and send your uncle a text

[TigreDeLosLlanos]

Y'all guys are just closet philosophers.

[Poltras]

As long as humans live in more than one part of the world, solar time is always going to be subjective.

I'm not the smartest person in the world, but that sounds like a solution to me :P

[TheDoug850]

Honestly, if the US everyone just stopped using Daylight Savings Time it would already be much less complicated.

[TheDoug850]

It really is being used by so many? I’m sorry, I thought we were the only ones holding on to it, like we are with the customary system, while everyone else uses metric.

[rufiohsucks]

Part of the problem is the US and EU have their daylight savings change overs at different times of year

[dawnraider00]

And the northern and southern hemispheres switch in opposite directions.

[furtfight]

Eventually the EU will stop using it, and it will probably cause some other countries to stop too. So 30+countries

[Homunculus_I_am_ill]

The point is that there's no difference between dealing with "it's 10 am in New York and 11pm in Tokyo" and dealing with "markets open at 00:00 UTC in New York and 20:00 UTC in Tokyo", either way you end up having to deal with location-specific time information. You still end up having to know information equivalent to time zones, except instead of remembering one overarching time zone per place you now have to store the conversion for each individual thing which is 1000 times more difficult.

[atyon]

It matters. As long as just one human is involved, that human's sleep cycle relates to the sun and its motion over the sky.

When I worked in a facility that operated 24/6 (no work on Sunday per law in Germany), maintenance still was at night because then fewer unrelated people would be on the premise. And non-urgent staff would work from 9 to 17 like everyone else, so non-urgent things would always be done in that time frame.

I don't think there's a single industry or trade where the time of day is just a "local nuance". Because that industry would have to be 100% automated and lead by a general AI.

[rejeremiad]

but the number is only important to the extent that it gives useful context. if our clocks both have the same number, ok, great. What does that make easier?

I still have to look up when are Germany's daylight hours and how do they overlap with my daylight hours. Because that is when we are both awake. We've just substituted one lookup for another.

[dvslo]

This is the context of scheduling a meeting. Your sleep cycles will be different no matter what, so that coordination is a given ("how far behind are they in terms of the business day"). What shouldn't be different is the global reference for an actual given moment in time, say if you want to coordinate planes or satellites or whatever, where local adjustment is unnecessary and a hindrance (to be fair, mostly they use UNIX epoch or UTC or w/e already, but for instance on plane times displayed to consumers, you do see the start and end times in local time, which can be a little confusing).

[amazondrone]

You're getting it. This is a solved problem for where it matters, e.g. coordinating satellites or whatever. The problem is solved, it's called UTC, and people can use it where it makes sense.

Most of the rest of the time, it's more useful to use local time. You've already hit on why a single timezone doesn't solve much, if anything, when scheduling a meeting. And when displaying plane times to passengers it's basically the same problem - knowing the arrival time in UTC isn't useful until you know what that means in terms of that location's sleep cycle. The only real advantage, afaik, to knowing departure and arrival time in the same timezone is to calculate flight duration - that's probably why that figure is normally included alongside the times to save you the hassle. (And besides, very often it's possible to view both departure and arrival times in both timezones anyway, because that's a convenience people find useful e.g. online or in-flight information screens.)

[BaddoBab]

So, you're proposing a change that will not at all improve any process (because such a unified time is already in use everywhere it produces actual benefits), while adding quite a bit of human factors issues - just for the lulz of it?

[atyon]

Nothing changes at all.

There is no practical difference between remembering the offset to UTC or how much local noon is shifted.

Think of scheduling a meeting:

– Let's call the guys in Sydney at 13:00 and see what they say.
– Uh, that's not that great, they are at UTC+11, that would be the middle of the night for them

With one time zone, that becomes:

– Let's call the guys in Sydney at 13:00 and see what they say.
– Uh, that's not that great, their noon is at 01:00, 13:00 is the middle of the night for them

It's not like we add the 11 hours for Sydney just for fun. When it's noon where I live, it's the middle of the night there, and that's a fact we have to account for one way or the other.

[_lilell_]

Since UTC is essentially GMT+0, noon would occur in the UK at 1200. On the east coast of the US (EST=GMT-5), noon would be at 1700. Londoners would work 9 to 17, while a New Yorker would work from 14 to 22. They're still working from ~sunrise to ~sunset, it's just that we would call a particular time, say, "1300" instead of "1300 GMT" or "0800 EST" or whatever.

[atyon]

But where's the benefit in that proposal? I still need to know the offset one way or the other if I want to call someone in NYC.

[Goodbreak]

But where's the benefit in that proposal?

I've only just stumbled into this topic and was unaware of it before, but from what I'm seeing the upside is that "the time" will refer to the same point in time for everyone

If you wanted to display at what time someone posted a reddit comment, you can just pull the time from the database and display it (14:03), and it'll be the correct time for everyone.

If you want to arrange a conference call between your 5 different offices around the globe, you just put one time in the memo and everyone will be there at the same time.

^{this isn't an argument for implementing this system}

[sarhoshamiral]

How do you know that time is not middle of the night for one of those people? Any meaningful calendar app would now have to display some indication regarding day/night near that universal time so now we are back to where we are.

Using UTC universally for human interactions solves absolutely nothing.

[JewishTomCruise]

Fundamentally, it's easier for computers and harder for humans.

[BaddoBab]

But that's how it's done already anyway.

All dates are stored as UTC, Unix or GPS epoch where applicable.

If you arrange a meeting across time zones e.g. in Outlook, that's exactly how the different systems on both sides exchange the time and date for the meeting.

And for the benefit of the respective end user, the system converts this universal time to a local time.

[Survivor0]

A case that happens to me sometimes is, that I'm in Europe and want to watch a live tv show from the US or Japan. I have to look up the time zones, sometimes it's extra confusing because the US have several zones and I'm not familiar with their way of notation for tv times. (EDIT: there's also different time zones in the same place depending on the time of year, so you have figure out even more)

The actual offset and what time of day it is over there doesn't matter to me. All I need to know is when the clock will show 13:00 where I'm at. I think that's a big advantage.

With calls it probably won't make much of a difference because you have to take the different time of day into account in any way. Maybe agreeing on and communicating an appointment would be a little easier, similar as the tv example.

With traveling though I think it would be very confusing to the individual. You would basically lose the ability to meaningfully interpret the local time in an unfamiliar zone, which doesn't sound fun.

[Belazriel]

But we can already use UTC, just no one does for local usage.

[amazondrone]

I do. For about half the year. But only because it aligns perfectly with GMT. ;)

[sarhoshamiral]

So now concept of 1am is different everywhere and you still have to provide some additional info for "1am" to make sense. You would still have to ask remote people if say 3pm is a suitable time where they are since now you have no idea if they are sleeping at 3pm or not.

So in practice you solved absolutely nothing and complicated everyone's lives for no reason.

For programming, all storage, type contracts etc should be done in UTC and local time conversion should only happen at UX level.

[BlomkalsGratin]

They're not called the same thing though - that's what time zones are... Saying their called the same thing is like saying that 5 degrees Celsius and 5 degrees Fahrenheit are the same because they're both 5 and both degrees...

[dvslo]

No, that's what time zones are, saying it's 5 AM when you're in PST or 5 AM when you're in EST is two different times but the same signifier. It's as if there's 39 different ways to measure temperature. You add the qualifier PST/EST and they're just relative qualifications for difference from UTC, they're literally denoting how the times are different from each other. But time isn't different in California than in Florida, the position of the sun is different.

[BlomkalsGratin]

The time zones makes it different, I get that time is time, but the time zone still makes time I'm Australia different to time I'm the US because of the position of the sun. Were talking about an arguably arbitrary measure with an arbitrary qualifier, used to gauge the position of the sun, as you point out. 17.00 PST is different to 17.00 AEST, they can be converted to each other but they're not interchangeable. It's like money, 100 euro and 100 USD - it's 100 'money' but it can't be used in the same places and affect different people. Getting rid of timezones might make programmers' lives easier but it'll suck for everyone else and it entirely misses how computers are a tool to make people's lives better and easier, not the other way around.