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Comment by mmahemoff | Hacker News Reader

When people say Bitcoin is a money standard for the internet, it reminds me of this. A time standard for the internet, similar to UTC but human-friendly.

A few things worked against its adoption.

First, it was too proprietary. A modern initiative based on open standards would have a much better chance of gaining a foothold in niche communities, much like Bitcoin.

Second, it was before its time (no pun intended). The web was already popular, but not very real-time. There was some chat, but it was pretty geeky, not like Skype or Facebook IM now. And hardly any videoconferencing or live-streaming. And not as much distance working as happens now. So there wasn't that much demand for syncing time.

Third, digital phones were locked down by the manufacturers and carriers (watches too). It would be hard for a grassroots movement to grow if no-one could make apps supporting the new time standard.

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"grassroots movement"

Having lived thru it, it was astroturf at most. It was a marketing gimmick to solve a problem that still doesn't exist.

"Here, try this, its just like things that work perfectly such as UTC or Eastern Time, but way more confusing"

Eastern time means nothing to me. How many hours do I go forward or back? How do I know if you're in daylight savings? What if I'm in saylight savings?

Sensible time for wod wode use is still a problem for casual users.

That's kind of the point. NASDAQ trading hours are 0930 to 1600 eastern. At a former job thats what mattered, although we were not in the eastern zone and had sites spread across 5 or 6 timezones. Live where you want but production hours on the production boxes were 0930-1600 eastern. A large chunk of financial world workers live in eastern standard time. They might live anywhere in the world, but that doesn't matter.

With the almost sole exception of the financial world, the rest of the world wide users stick with UTC.

Sure, professionals use real time. We're not talking about anything where time is critical.

We're talking about kids wanting to meet each other on a Minecraft server, or a band releasing a video, or simar casual online meetings.

One example is the ham radio guys scheduling a contact/net on a certain freq and UTC time.

Live "events" like superbowl and the endless self-congratulatory entertainment industry awards. I'll meet you on IRC during the superbowl and we'll comment on the commercials.

To some extent computers and the internet are a tool for making time not so critical. We both need to be available for a phone call, but not for email. To watch the same network TV show we both need to watch about the same time, but we can watch youtube videos anytime. Thats the other oddity of "internet time". If we're going to make obsolete concepts, why not "internet distance" or even worse "internet long distance"

Personally the arrogance of making it based on Swatch's headquarters in Biel ruined it for me.

Plus why would any other watch company now support a time system based on another companies 'headquarters'

It's a shame since it was a good idea.

After sixteen years, it remains a silly novelty and nothing more (I'm surprised to discover it is still even a thing). People aren't going to keep track of two separate times - especially one that is so different from the normal time they keep. All people really need is for us to adopt one universal time, do away with timezones, and deal with the "horrible" fact that some of us will be 9-5ers and some will be 12-8ers and so on.

It seems it would be a far simpler adjustment to make than inventing a new "time".

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