• ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    It’s really not arguing just to argue. What you’re talking about is just timezones with extra steps, so why not stick to having a time zone?

    Right now, I’m GMT-5, and if I’m scheduling something, I can look in their slack profile and see that they’re GMT-8, and adjust accordingly. If we get rid of timezones, I have to know where they are, and what normal working hours are where that is. The simplest way to do that is a big table of offsets from some standard starting point, which is exactly what a time zone is.

    • tsonfeir
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      1 year ago

      I woke up at 7am.

      What time was it for you when I woke up?

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I woke up at 14:00 GMT. Did I wake up early, or sleep in?

        A time without an associated time zone or location is always lacking sufficient information to convey the full context of what the time means.

        Timezone issues arise when events cross timezone boundaries. If we use timezones, it can be tricky to know what specific points in time correspond to in other timezones without additional information. If we all use GMT, it’s difficult to know what a time actually means without additional information.
        Since we care about where the sun is in the sky, and also when events happen relative to one another, it’s not an easy situation to just make work.

        It’s why a proper timestamp includes timezone offset information, since that’s easier to work with that geospatial coordinate offset.