80
Why don't the whole planet just use UTC+00:00 / Universal Time without time zones?
(programming.dev)
this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
80 points (73.5% liked)
Ask Lemmy
33125 readers
1074 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Because that would be a nightmare. "I'll meet you for lunch at 2AM", "No, I had a huge breakfast yesterday". You would need to relearn the times every time you went to a different place, "oh, right, the restaurants only serve lunch until 10AM" or "Sorry sir, but there's an extra fee for night time services starting 1PM". Those are much more likely day-to-day phrases than scheduling a meeting with someone from another continent. And you don't gain anything by this, because whenever you're communicating across timezones you can simply use UTC as a standard and everyone knows how to convert that to their own time. So there's no good reason and a lot of drawbacks.
I am baffled that needs explanation!
Only because we're already familiar with the current way of doing things, though. If we had all been on UTC for our entire lives, it would be a simple matter of getting to a new place, asking when local noon is, and going about our business.
"Hey, when is local noon here?"
"'bout 0330."
"Cool, thanks. Want to get together for drinks tomorrow night? Say, around 1045?"
They're all just numbers. They have no inherent meaning, only what we imbue then with.
It would get a little bit tricky with the date switching over in the middle of the day, of course. In my mind, that's the biggest reason.
So every time you deal with somebody in a different location, you can't assume anything about the hours and times you have to ask them or go look it up Even if you have a decent idea where they live because you're not going to know the time disparity of every city out there.
So… like it is already? Ever tried to call someone in a different time zone? It’s fine-ish 1 or maybe 2 hours off, but much beyond that still requires a minimum of research.
Your ring up a person, they go "why the fuck are you calling me at 09:45?", sounding really upset. You don't understand why. He's in a place where that means it's the middle of the night and as a local he understands it.
Oooor
He could just say "do you know what time it is here? It's two am!" and you'd understand.
No, in this hypothetical scenario, he wouldn't complain about it being 0945 because he's grown up in a world where that's ambiguous. He's going to say, "Don't you know it's the middle of the night here?!"
No he hasn't. Never moved a or traveled outside his own city.
That why this "make everyones time the same" is about as smart as an idea as shoving Lego up your nose.
Okay, I get it, you don't know time zones already so you have to research every time but most people don't think of the other people please.
Why exactly is asking for "what time is the local noon" more convenient than asking "what timezone is this"?
How is "local noon is at 2:45" somehow easier to adjust to than "adjust your clock by X hours"? You don't need to relearn every thing like what time breakfast is served when local noon is 08:50.
Answer quickly, if noon is 0330 what time is dinner, what is a 9-5 job and what time do you expect to have breakfast. There are lots of adjustments you will need to make, whereas with the current system you know that as a general rule you can expect dinner at around 8, most people to work 9-5, and places to serve breakfast at 8 or 9, so you switch your clock when you arrive and you're done.
If you're a local who never moved timezones z then yeah it makes no difference what the numbers are, you would get used to waking up at 9PM and switching date midway through the day, there might even be 2 different words for tomorrow, one for the next day one for the next date, but the moment you traveled to a different location all of your years of being used to general time where things happen go out the window, it's much more of a hassle than adjusting your clock and assuming times will be mostly similar.
Yep. I can tell you that dinner would be around 0930, but you're right that the other calculations are tougher.
I'm not saying this would be better. Either system has trade-offs. I'm saying that each of them would be equally weird from the other side.