思考与写作qntm.org
所以你想废除时区
So you want to abolish time zones
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导读
这是 qntm 的一篇长文，讨论「彻底废除时区、全世界统一用 UTC」这个设想：它先把常见主张推到极致，设想全球共用一个时钟后生活会变成什么样，再逐条分析由此产生的沟通与作息问题。文章用「给地球另一头的叔叔打电话」这类例子，说明时区的本质是把「几点」和「白天黑夜」绑定，方便人类理解和交流。结论倾向于认为时区（或类似机制）仍会以某种形式被重新发明出来。
为什么经久不衰：它把一个看似简单的技术提议层层推演到底，暴露出时间、作息与协作之间的真实权衡，因此多年来反复被拿来讨论。
HN 评论精选
24 小时制并不怪异，作者高估了统一时钟在语言习惯上的障碍；人们真正想废除的是夏令时而非时区。
我在一个数字显示普遍用 24 小时制的国家长大，作者把这种习惯写得像异类，让我有点不快。没人会说「oh-four」来表示凌晨四点——只有在 12 小时制是常态、需要额外说明是「军用时间」时才这么说。如果英语国家改用 24 小时制，多半也会像其他地方一样自然地继续数下去，说「13 点」毫无别扭。另外文章让我困惑：真的有人主张废除时区吗？大多数被时区困扰的人（尤其是要直接处理日期时间逻辑的程序员）想消灭的其实只是夏令时。
pluma查看英文原文
As someone who grew up in a country where 24 hours are the norm for digital displays, I'm a bit miffed that the author seems to portray that as alien and weird. You wouldn't say "oh-four" to indicate four AM. You only need to say "oh-four" if the 12 hours system is the norm and you need to clarify you're talking about "military time". You wouldn't need to say "twelve hundred hours" either. I'd recon if English speaking countries switched to the 24 hours system, they'd likely just do what everybody else has done: keep counting. It'd be far more natural to say "it's 13 o'clock" (just as you would say "it's one o'clock" when it's obvious from context whether it's in the middle of night or early afternoon). And "midnight" and "midday" would likely still refer to the "solar time" in the scenario where everybody uses UTC (though it's obvious the author is really just getting at how we would re-invent time zones eventually out of necessity). I'm not really sure what the article is on about, though. Did anyone ever really argue that we should abolish time zones in general? As far as I can tell most people who are annoyed with time zones (particularly programmers who have to deal with them a lot if they need to deal with date time logic directly) would only want to get rid of DST.
文章的反例站不住脚：现实中人们事先约定时间，按时区换算反而增加负担。
文中的例子实在太傻了。它假设你莫名其妙就知道地球另一端现在是凌晨 4:25——你之所以知道，正是因为你意识到各地时刻不同；而一旦知道这点，无论有没有时区，你都得算一算能不能打电话。更糟的是，现实中我们很少瞎猜然后随手拨号，而是先用短信或邮件约好时间。有时区时对话是这样的：「什么时候方便打给你？」「8 点到 10 点之间都行」——然后你还得换算；没有时区，答案对你立刻就是可用的。而且你往往根本不知道对方在哪个时区。同理，商家公布营业时间后，人们不用做算术就能知道能不能在 9:45 打给英国的 AmCo。
ogre_codes查看英文原文
Their example is silly and I can’t get over how silly. It starts with the assumption that somehow you know it’s 4:25am in another country across the world. How do you know this? Because you are aware there are difference in time of day between one place and the next. Armed with that knowledge you are required to do math about appropriate calling times regardless of whether there are time zones or not. But it’s even worse than that. Most of us don’t just take a crapshoot and guess whether it’s normal waking hours and shoot off a random phone call. Knowing when it’s a good time to call someone is more important and often you arrange calls before hand via text or email. With time zones the conversation (via text message or email I assume) goes something like this: Q: “When can is a good time to call you?” A: “Any time between 8am and 10am is fine”... now you have a math problem to solve to know when you can call. Without time zones, the answer is immediately clear and relevant to you. Quite often you don’t even know what time zone the other person is in. Likewise, businesses can post their hours publicly and people don’t have to do math to figure out whether they can call AmCo in the UK at 9:45.
关键区分是「时段」与「精确时刻」，时区只在两者之间做了粗糙的绑定。
令人沮丧的是，文章始终没把「一天中的哪一段」和「具体几点几分」区分开。有时我们想知道现在是早上、中午还是夜里，有时我们只是要在 1:00 准时同步。这是两回事，而时区只以表面化、不一致甚至误导的方式帮上忙（文中也提到了）。页面上的回复讨论到了这一点。
aimor查看英文原文
It's frustrating that the article never fully separates 'part of day' from 'time of day'. That is, sometimes we want to know if it's morning or mid-day or night, and other times we want to synchronize at specifically 1:00. These are different things and time zones only help in superficial, inconsistent, and misleading ways (as mentioned in the piece). There are replies on the page that discuss this point.
中国统一用单一时区的现实说明方案可行，且时区边界混乱得远超文章设想。
一派胡言。先说个简单事实：横跨五个时区的中国根本不用多个时区，全国同一时间，看起来运转良好。再看时区本身有多离谱：它们不是笔直的竖线，而是到处曲折，甚至出现互相跳过的「时区孤岛」，除了问 Google 没人搞得清。至于给叔叔打电话那个刻意构造的例子——直接问他什么时候方便打就是了，这本来也更礼貌，而且他说「2 点」时你绝不会搞错。
transfire查看英文原文
What a bunch of hoo-wee. Lets start with the simple fact that China, which covers five time zones, doesn't use them. It's that same time in China no mater where you are in China, and they seem to be getting on just fine. Next consider just how insanely inconstant the time zones actually are. They aren't straight lines up and down, rather they zig-zag all over the place --sometimes even skip over one another in "time-zone islands". There is no way to know any of this except to ask Google. And as for the contrived example of calling one's Uncle. Just ask him what a good time is to call. That would be the polite thing to do anyway. And hey, you won't get it wrong when he says "2 o'clock".
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