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Comment by birdmanjeremy | Hacker News Reader

PDT FOREVER!

This. As a parent, I would love to have daylight after work so that I can enjoy some time with my kid outdoors. It is depressing to pick up your child when it is already dark outside.

And I can get behind that, which is why I say we can be either PST or MST, I don't really care which. (MST being functionally equivalent to PDT.)

Frankly, I just want us to choose something and lock it in. PST, MST, UTC, or whatever. Just don't make me change my timezone ever again.

UTC is a terrible choice, I don't even know what time I would wake up in UTC. My family in NC would never know what time to call. I'd be OK with PST or MST/PDT. I'd prefer more light in the evenings though, I work an early schedule and don't actually care if it's light when I go to the office.

> I don't even know what time I would wake up in UTC.

You’d probably wake up about the same UTC time that you currently wake up, whatever that is. Do you imagine that if your state switched to UTC everyone would just begin a free for all and show up to school and work just whenever? Of course not.

> My family in NC would never know what time to call.

Probably the exact same time they call now. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t be able to figure it out.

It would be complicated to answer questions such as "what time does school starts in your county"?

Today if you are American and I am French, if I say "we start at 8:30 and finish at 16:30" you would understand immediately. In UTC you would need to convert.

Of course UTC helps when we need to agree on the time to have a call.

I guess the advantage vs drawback depends on the kind of messages people usually convey

> It would be complicated to answer questions such as "what time does school starts in your county"?

That question is difficult to answer now. I live in Seattle and our schools aren’t consistent even within the city. The variance in start time among public schools is >1 hour.

I don’t actually want UTC. But I’d take it over the current crap.

I feel compelled to post https://qntm.org/abolish .

EDIT: Ah, of course someone already posted it in this thread.

I feel compelled to point out that I specifically said I do not want UTC. :) I simply hate the daylight savings time switch so much that I’d choose standardization on UTC over it. I’d much, much prefer constant standard or daylight time (with time zones) over UTC though.

Well yes, I mean every timing relative to the day/night cycle will be difficult. "What time do your kids go to bed?" , "what time are the main news?", etc. Saying 13:00 will not help me.

OTOH everything which is international will be easier.

This is a trade-off.

Now - I am also against DST, but would realistically keep immutable timezones.

Not so fast. Having grown up in a permanent DST on the 63th parallel, I can say that waking up and walking to school in constant darkness is also quite depressing. So much so that health officials in Iceland are now debating towards moving Iceland back closer to the solar noon (GMT-0100 from GMT) citing public health reasons.

Conversely as a parent I prefer daylight early in the morning so that I can enjoy it alone without the hindrance and distraction of my kid.

Which illustrates the difficulty of finding a compromise even for a simple example as that.

As an early riser, PST forever!

I vote we do a half hour compromise.

> I vote we do a half hour compromise.

Please no, just stop

Fun fact, Nepal's timezone is UTC+5:45.

Afghanistan is +4:30 , which is different from both Iran and Pakistan

Afghanistan also borders China, and the time jumps three and a half hours at the border.

Most places in Xinjiang have an unofficial local time that they use in addition to official Chinese standard time. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time

One can imagine in Kashgar the ridiculousness of Beijing time is even more noticeable than in Urumuqi.

Doesn't really affect things though since there is no road through the Wakhan corridor to reach China, and no road over the mountain pass. If you want to drive it is a very long way via the karakoram highway via Gilgit in Pakistan. Travel from AF to CN is generally done by flying to Dubai, Delhi or Islamabad first.

Many historic timezones have 15 minute offsets. In the era before American railroads synchronized timezones to the hours, Louisville, KY, as one example close to home, was often UTC-5:45. (It's GE's fault that Louisville and consequently most of the US I-65 corridor wound up EST rather than CST.) I don't expect to win arguments that the city should return to UTC-5:45, but I make them anyway to amuse myself.

And that's the important thing. :-)

India, UTC+05:30, all through the year. Despite having widely different climate zones in various regions of the country, there is no "Daylight Saving Time".

Your resolve is weak!

I would accept your compromise in the winter, but I'm keeping my 8:30 sunset in the summer.

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