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Comment by geuis | Hacker News Reader

So weird no one else put this in standard American times, considering its an American launch.

  6am PST West coast
  7am Mountain time
  8am Central time
  9am Eastern standard time

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Or perhaps a global time, such as UTC, given the global audience?

I'm just recognizing the facts of the planet we live in. Lots of interested parties are in the US, so it makes sense to also simply add US times. Especially considering its a US company (hopefully) launching from US soil.

I’m so surprised that a country who still clings to the imperial system would have any clue about UTC, the time standard that the rest of the world uses.

The launch is scheduled to 1300 UTC, for us engineering folks.

Its currently 6:10pm in Beijing. Its also 6:10pm everywhere else in China (https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/china).

Because that's a country that doesn't use the imperial system and still insists its the same time as the eastern capital no matter where else in the country people happen to be.

Lets also mention that China is almost the same width as the US, probably larger to be fair.

It probably pays off in efficiency.

I was gonna say it must be weird to see solar noon at 3pm, or live in one of the western provinces and have sunrise at 4:30pm / sunset at 9-10pm for part of the year, but that describes life in the Netherlands too.

UTC (Zulu) is universally used by airplane people. Most have at least heard of it, even if they don't easily do the math.

"airplane people" - technical term

Bit like crab people

Plane people, Plane people, Fly like plane! Lie like people!

The US doesn't use the imperial system.

Going back, I have a clear memory of big events with global viewership being typically advertised with multiple time zones at a time. It was almost a bit of a marketing gag even for financial firms to have a ton of clocks up with labels displaying many different time zones.

So yes, no reason to chose 1 time zone and force readers to do mental math. Just list “London: , Tokyo: , Sydney: , LA: , NYC: , Lagos: , Singapore: , Mumbai: “ etc.

at least they could have used good old internet time.

@490

> I'm just recognizing the facts of the planet we live in.

I think you will find, with absolutely no supporting evidence to back this up, that there will be more people outside of the US watching than from the US.

We don't really use UTC in the US, so for most Americans it wouldn't actually tell them much of anything. EST & PST are the most common.

Nobody elsewhere does either but everyone knows their offset, or at least should around here... this is clearly an event of worldwide importance, so adding a few more timestamps wouldn't hurt

> EST & PST are the most common.

Which is maddening because most of the year it’s EDT & PDT but people still reference them wrong, even in marketing and corporate communications where they really should know better.

Come on folks. It’s time to start using star dates.

But it already has CT, and I guess a lot of US citizens know where they are relative to the other US time zones?

Yeah fair enough. I'm kinda getting concerned that my original comment is generating any discussion at all. Like, I just posted US-centric time zones. I'm not sure why this is a topic for argument or discussion.

Maybe the judgement and blame part before the list of additional time zones?

“So weird that nobody” feels judge-y and blame-y to me, but that was probably not your intent.

Dunno

No way I’m the first pedant on HN to comment PST should be PDT (same for EST). The numbers are correct though.

Missing two other American time zones, Alaska and Hawaii.

9 AM EDT = 8 AM EST

Early start for anyone on the west coast

Alaskan here, where's AKST? :-D

daylight time would be correct for this time of year

96% of the world isn't US-American.

Yep, you are correct.

But 100% of the launch is an American company out of American territory. And the majority of the users of Hacker News are also based in the US.

So for this audience, considering the other facts, I don't see why people are having a problem with an extra comment that simply posts the relevant launch times in terms easier to understand at a glance for an American audience.

Yet you decide to ignore multiple American timezones including Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Alaska, Samoa, Guam and Wake Island

@ta1243 its 2:40am PST. Sorry I can't reply to you directly, apparently HN has some comment thread depth limits. (Who knew?) Yeah sorry I forgot to include all of the time zones covering the entire country and its possessions.

Post edit. I'm not sure what you want. All I did was post the 4 standard American time zones that affect most of the somewhat 330 million Americans living in the continental part of the country.

Why is the original timezone post generating any conversation at all? This is insane.

PDT lol

> And the majority of the users of Hacker News are also based in the US.

Is this really the case?

Even if it’s true, I wouldn’t say this is anything to be proud of or something to uphold. Why not use international standards to make the place more welcoming the the majority of the world?

https://toolhub.tech/blog/Demographics-of-Hacker-News/

The USA accounts for 41% of users according to this site.

> Why not use international standards to make the place more welcoming the the majority of the world?

How do you think the US or China became leading world superpowers? By welcoming every standard and culture of the world?

Oh wait, that is Europe. And look what happened to them. (Spoiler: they are not number 1 any more)

Huh? I don't think Hacker News aims to become a superpower. What's the relevance?

Europe/Warsaw: 15:00 CEST (UTC+2)

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