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Comment by Vvector | Hacker News Reader

The primary issue is when the day changes in the middle of the local day. Assume everyone adopts UTC. Then in California, midnight will happen at 5pm local time.

  * Friday UTC 2300 = local time 4pm PST  - This is Friday
  * Saturday UTC 0100 = local time 6pm PST  - Is this Saturday?
  * Saturday UTC 2300 = local time 4pm PST next day  - This is still Saturday?

When would Saturday afternoon be? We'd have to change our vocabulary, and I don't see that worth it.

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We don't have to change any vocabulary. Noon and midnight happen at different times in different places and that would be fine. We know it's fine, because that's how it currently is in China.

Most servers run on UTC under the hood, and a lot of big organizations have experience already in terms of doing all timekeeping calculations in UTC. It may seem weird, but works pretty well in the long run -- and not having to deal with corner cases like DST or geographical ambiguities around time is extremely valuable.

Have you ever thought about what it's like to live near the edge of a timezone? In a city where half the city uses one time and half uses the other?

"Let's go see a movie Saturday afternoon." "I need this done by Thursday." All these statements are common and completely understandable by everyone. Change to UTC, and the statements are ambiguous. It will confusing for so many people, with no obvious benefit.

China is fine, because the day doesn't change during daylight.

Yeah, computers should use UTC. It's easy for them to convert to/from local time for the user. This is what computers are good at.

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