11 ms·

Where to hate daylight saving time and where to love it

119 points by mmastrac 11y ago

reustle 11y ago
The interactive graph part isn't loading for me due to some HTTPS error
- grogenaut 11y ago
  are you on a new dell?
- bad_user 11y ago
  You probably have HTTPS Everywhere installed.
ajmurmann 11y ago
I disagree with the premise of this article. I don't care if the sun is out when I have to wake up or not. I dislike doing something incredibly dramatic like changing what time it is and having to force myself into a different rythm because some people might or might not be happy that now there might or might not be more sun in the evening.
- grecy 11y ago
  >I don't care if the sun is out when I have to wake up or not. This isn't about what you - or for that matter millions of people - do or don't want to do. After all, if we only did what we wanted to do, none of us would pay tax. This is about reducing energy consumption by attempting to have people sleep when the sun is down, and be awake when the sun is up.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    > This is about reducing energy consumption by attempting to have people sleep when the sun is down, and be awake when the sun is up. That is very much debatable: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-daylight-saving-times-save-energy/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-daylight-savi... http://www.nber.org/papers/w14429 http://www.nber.org/papers/w14429
  - echaozh 11y ago
    Even if energy can be saved... why not make the companies set different office hours at different times of the year, rather than make people reset their watches? If companies' office hours are not to be messed with, why are the people's lives? I really cannot understand the logic behind this. People should be free to choose if they want to sleep more when the sun is down, right? And with Capitalism, you should tune the price of energy consumption to make people save more, instead of making strange laws.
    - kspaans 11y ago
      Power meters that record the time when energy is used rather than the "dumb" ones that just record total usage are still relatively new.
    - grecy 11y ago
      >If companies' office hours are not to be messed with, why are the people's lives? Daylight savings isn't messing with anyone's life, it's changing the arbitrary read-out on a human-invented device, nothing more. >People should be free to choose if they want to sleep more when the sun is down, right? Of course, anyone can sleep as much or as little as they please. There might be school and employment consequences to that, but you can still do it. You can also drive a car as fast as you please - but there might also be consequences to that.
      - rtpg 11y ago
        >Daylight savings isn't messing with anyone's life, it's changing the arbitrary read-out on a human-invented device, nothing more. a human-invented device that affects when you're supposed to show up at your desk if you have a "normal" job (9-5)...
      - hueving 11y ago
        That argument holds no water. Changing a readout on many human invented devices will drastically impact people's lives (bank account balances, work schedules, directions to the hospital, etc).
      - ryandrake 11y ago
  - Kiro 11y ago
    Still, the author makes it sound like this would some kind of crazy thing when it's the reality for a lot of people in the world.
jedberg 11y ago
In 1974 the US basically had DST the entire year to save energy. Being on year round DST would save us the most energy, because most people use energy at night for artificial lighting. The main argument against it is that "kids have to go to school in the dark." Well you know what? Look at these maps. How many kids already have to go to school in the dark? Why does it matter? Even the kids would rather have more light after school so they can play. And if you ask a farmer about it, they'll tell you "the animals don't read clocks". To them it doesn't really matter, they get up with the sun regardless of what the clock says.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > Being on year round DST would save us the most energy And if we redenominated the dollar, people could be several times richer than they are now!
- barrkel 11y ago
  When I was a kid I went to a country school and lessons didn't start until 9:30, to accommodate dark mornings. If it's better for children, only children need necessarily adjust, provided school is also serving its industrial daycare function. I get up around 8 and sleep between 1 and 2. So naturally I'm in favour of DST all year round.
- zanny 11y ago
  Tangentially related, there are also studies showing that schools that force kids to get up at 6:30 also produce lower performing students because kids stay up late everywhere and then never get enough sleep. If you want to keep the public school work week, it would make significantly more sense being 9-5 or even 10-6 Monday to Thursday rather than 8-3 Monday to Friday. We aren't going home to work the farm, and we aren't setting insanely early sleep schedules to get up with the sun to till the fields. These ancient time systems cause legitimate harm for the sake of posterity.
  - bryanlarsen 11y ago
    Note that those studies apply to High Schools. Young kids are notoriously early risers. Here in Ottawa, Canada, they've stumbled on a good solution. To save money on busing, they've staggered the school start times to allow bus sharing. In my area, that means the buses drop elementary kids off for an 8 o'clock start and then pick up high school kids for a 9 o'clock start. As far as your suggestion of running four 8 hour school days instead of five 6 hour days, I certainly hope you're talking about high school. 6 hours is already too long for my 6 year old, I can't imagine 8 hours.
dikaiosune 11y ago
Living in one of the places that doesn't do DST, it's always struck me as bonkers to go through that twice a year.
retroencabulato 11y ago
In the US
- Loque 11y ago
  aaa there we go, someone else disappointed to read the article and scroll down to see the interactive map is a map the US only...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- lukevdp 11y ago
  Did you read the end of the exact same sentence as the one you posted: "but I’m a geographer and must always disagree with any and all spatial claims, by anyone. I live in the same time zone where I grew up, but the sunrise/set times are almost an hour different between the two places."
Asmod4n 11y ago
Always hate it, why? It kills people.
empressplay 11y ago
I live near Melbourne and if there wasn't DST, in mid-summer the sun would rise at 4:30am. Pass.
- arethuza 11y ago
  Even with British Summer Time the sun rises at 4:30 in the summer here in Scotland (and we're not that far North) - what's the problem with it?
freemanindia 11y ago
As someone who lives in India (no DST) but interacts frequently with people in the USA. I hate it. Maybe it was rational before mass globalization, but now that many of us interact regularly across time zones and national borders it complicates time, which should be sacrosanct.
- DrScump 11y ago
  Bear in mind that the USA is at higher latitude, so day-length variations are far more pronounced as you approach the solstices.
imron 11y ago
Those light map images are based on the premise that 5pm is a reasonable time for sunset, which is something I disagree with. I like DST because I like light evenings. I can put up with dark mornings, but don't take away my light evenings.
- paulojreis 11y ago
  Where I live (Portugal), I'd like to have the DST offset permanently. This would mean sad winter mornings but arriving home still in daylight. A fine trade-off for me.
  - meric 11y ago
    9pm sunset would be great, I sleep at midnight. I'd be able to have some sunlight from 6pm to 9pm, and be able to sleep in the dark.
- mootothemax 11y ago
  >Those light map images are based on the premise that 5pm is a reasonable time for sunset, which is something I disagree with. When daylight savings rolls around each year, I always make the same comment: god it feels civilized to be going home when it's still light outside!
  - lagadu 11y ago
    At least you live in a place where DST makes a difference. It doesn't help a bit in northern Europe, I'm pretty sure we only do it to keep time parity with central Europe.
- glandium 11y ago
  More than DST, what is enjoyable is not having the sun at the zenith at 12pm. In France, it reaches the zenith is at ~1pm without DST and ~2pm with DST. This makes for nice sunny evenings. I now live in Japan, where it's at the zenith at ~12pm all year long (no DST), and it's ridiculous. Where I am, the sun is up at 4:45am and down at 7pm in the summer. In the winter, the sun is up at 7am and down at 4:45pm.
NDizzle 11y ago
5pm is a horrible time for sunset. When are you going to play catch with your kids?!
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  When do I play catch with my kids? In the summer time. In the winter, I go skating with my kids after dark, which works well under the flood lights.
tmd83 11y ago
Since its hackernews I think its fair to comment that I hate it because it makes the already difficult time programming even more difficult. Now I don't just have to save timezone somewhere but also the offset (to be full proof) of the time. How about the UI? Does anyone know of a timepicker UI pattern (I haven't seen any) that allows you to input the duplicate hour during DST > ST switch? I don't have to suffer through this change but it seems like something that will affect people's rhythm a lot and make them mess up things twice a year. What would be the health and other cost of that would be? Hmm just thought about it and looked it up. It seems that people use ~10% their energy budget in lighting. So I don't see even in terms of energy usage that being worth it? Specially since using better lights would have a much more savings. [1] https://nplainsnorthernnotes.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/graphic-2011-04-home-energy-use-legacy.jpg https://nplainsnorthernnotes.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/gra...
- 7Z7 11y ago
  >fool proof?
Kiro 11y ago
> but I’ll grant that waking up before the sun is miserable Uhm, where I live this is inevitable most winter months. I don't see any problems with it and seldom hear anyone complain.
iopq 11y ago
Ugh, waking up at 6:30 AM. I've done it once, never again. I refuse to work for a company where I have to wake up at 6:30 AM to get to office.
jkot 11y ago
There is nothing to love about DST. It just messes up sleep cycle and daily routine. When you will have small children you will understand.
- imron 11y ago
  The flip side is having an extra hour of daylight in the evening to be able to go outside and play catch/whatever with your children.
  - yen223 11y ago
    There's no "extra" hour of daylight. The sun doesn't care how we set our clocks.
    - edwinjm 11y ago
      Read before you reply. Imron says "in the evening" :-S
      - yen223 11y ago
        If "the evening" refers to the period when the sun sets, then DST doesn't change anything. You still have so much daylight, no matter how you set your clock.
    - imron 11y ago
      If I get home at 7 and it's dark then it doesn't really lend itself to going outside. In daylight savings I still get home at 7 but now there is an hour of daylight left. So even though there is still the same amount of daylight in the day, due to the rescheduling of the work day with respect to daylight, there is an extra hour of daylight in the evening
      - yen223 11y ago
        Wouldn't it be easier to redefine office hours so that people can go home at 6, instead of redefining everyone's concept of time?
bufordsharkley 11y ago
The biggest flaw with this visualization is that it doesn't allow you to expand DST to the entire year, or increase it to double/triple/quadruple DST. I assume that it would simply be too heartbreakingly beautiful to witness it, and it was withheld for our own good.
jrapdx3 11y ago
Opinions about DST vary, perhaps reflecting how a person's "internal clock" functions. Biological differences play a role, some people are natural early risers, others tend to stay up late. I'm in the latter category so I strongly favor DST, but I can see how others might hate it. It's exacerbated living north of the 45th parallel. Officially we get about 16 hours of daylight/nighttime at the solstices. However, it's actually much worse than the raw data suggests. Living in the shadow of hills to the west, among tall trees, in a rainy climate with frequent heavily overcast skies, after DST goes off, by 3:00PM the sky is already dark. No wonder a lot of people around here look forward to March and return of DST. The morning effect is minimal, winter sunrise comes quite late. At year's end it's after 7:50AM, so it's dark on the way to work no matter what the weather and DST would not make the morning commute any dimmer. OTOH >16 hours of summer daylight is amazing and delightful. The place just comes alive. While we can't legislate the seasons, keeping DST longer than we do would at least be a small token of compensation.
exDM69 11y ago
I would have liked to see maps of the whole world. I live in Helsinki, 60 degrees North, and the sunrise today is 08:40 and the sunset is 15:33. It's still going to get a lot darker before the solstice. Quite frankly, at this point it doesn't really matter if it is offset one hour in either direction. But the abrupt change of DST really takes a toll. The timing is also unfortunate, because on the last days of summer time there's still a bit of sunlight after regular work hours, but the change to winter time practically removes the last lit hours from the day if you work somewhat regular office hours. I would like to see the daylight savings time abolished and going to permanent summer time here.
- tempestn 11y ago
  > I would like to see the daylight savings time abolished and going to permanent summer time here. Daylight savings time is summer time. Sounds like you would like to run on daylight savings time year-round (as would I).
  - jstsch 11y ago
    Ditto. Here in NL the transition from DST to regular time is super abrupt. Yes, a few more hours of sun in the early morning, but it means no light in the evenings at all (sunrise at 8:20, sunset at 16:40 - so heading to work in the dark and leaving the office in the dark, bleh).
  - masklinn 11y ago
    > Sounds like you would like to run on daylight savings time year-round (as would I). Most Europeans (and probably americans?) would definitely benefit from shifting their timezones by 1h and keeping it there. Hell, Central European Time could probably shift by 2h, the timezone goes from Spain to Poland, Warsaw currently gets sundown at 1530! (Lille which is roughly the same latitude gets sundown at a more respectable 1647)
    - vetinari 11y ago
      The fun is, that in Warsaw the delta between CET and solar time is much less, than in Lille. See: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2572317/Are-YOU-living-sync-Amazing-map-reveals-manmade-timezones-countries-false-sense-sun-rises.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2572317/Are-Y... (Yes, dailymail, but at least they have a nice maps).
brc 11y ago
Permanent DST - aren't we just arguing to move the prime meridian 30 degrees to the west and pushing everyone's time zone out? Or would it just be easier to get everyone to agree to go to work an hour earlier? Where I live we have no DST. As I live at the eastern edge of the time zone, the sun comes up at 4:30 am and is all done by 7pm on the summer solstice. It's a stupid time zone. But efforts to get DST implemented have been very difficult and strongly resisted from people living further west.
amai 11y ago
Russia had continuous day light savings time from 2011 to 2014 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Russia#Daylight_saving_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Russia#Daylight_saving...). "However, many Russians in the north complained about darker mornings in winter." So they went back and permanently adopted winter hours (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29773559 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29773559).
upofadown 11y ago
Bah, if we want to start work, say, an hour after sunrise we can just do that now. We can trivially make an alarm clock that calculates sum position at a particular location. There is no technical reason that we need to argue over changing local time some even number of hours when we can do it exactly.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
CWuestefeld 11y ago
My complaint with DST isn't so much about when we have to get up, but about what it does to commuting with respect to sun position. For anyone who lives to the west of their job - and that seems to be a lot of people - and has relatively normal office hours, you're going to go through a time period in the spring and fall where the sun is in drivers' eyes as they're commuting. In the morning, just after the sun rises, it will be blinding drivers going east, and in the evening, before sunset, it'll blind drivers going west. Given the geography, there's not much to be done about that. If we just wait a couple weeks (for any given person), the times will progress enough so that they'll no longer be affected. But when you throw DST into the equation, it resets progression of sunrise and sunset times. After we've made it through those couple weeks where the sun is in your eyes, suddenly the time change hits, pushing the time back into your commuting drive again. Thus, the number of days I need to spend in dangerous driving conditions, with myself and other drivers partially blinded by the rising or setting son, is more-or-less doubled by DST. It seems to me to be a significant safety issue.
- Retric 11y ago
  I highly recommend wearing sunglasses while driving. This does not eliminate the sun issue, but it helps not just deal with the sun but also those few seconds of temporary blindness when you get reflections. That said, the most useful thing I found was to change my commute around glare issues.
  - degenerate 11y ago
    I don't like sunglasses, so I had windshield tint installed instead: http://i.imgur.com/Npc7z1D.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Npc7z1D.jpg (not my car, just a sample)
    - Retric 11y ago
      Careful, that's illegal in several states.
  - CWuestefeld 11y ago
    DST or not, good polarized sunglasses are a great idea. It helps not just for the direct sun in your eyes, but also glare reflecting off other cars, pavement, etc. Don't go spending $100+ dollars on it, you can get something good for under $30.
emergentcypher 11y ago
The entire idea of daylight savings time is idiotic. In a thousand years we will be looked back on and they will sneer at our lack of intelligence for adopting such a silly ritual.
cies 11y ago
I hate DST for a whole other reason: politicians "changing time" seems like a ridiculous idea to me. I think office/school hours should sometime opt for a summer/winter schedule instead. But then I would also not mind to have the whole world on the UTC clock instead of timezones :)

119 points by mmastrac 11y ago

reustle 11y ago

The interactive graph part isn't loading for me due to some HTTPS error

grogenaut 11y ago
are you on a new dell?
bad_user 11y ago
You probably have HTTPS Everywhere installed.

ajmurmann 11y ago

I disagree with the premise of this article. I don't care if the sun is out when I have to wake up or not. I dislike doing something incredibly dramatic like changing what time it is and having to force myself into a different rythm because some people might or might not be happy that now there might or might not be more sun in the evening.

grecy 11y ago
>I don't care if the sun is out when I have to wake up or not. This isn't about what you - or for that matter millions of people - do or don't want to do. After all, if we only did what we wanted to do, none of us would pay tax. This is about reducing energy consumption by attempting to have people sleep when the sun is down, and be awake when the sun is up.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > This is about reducing energy consumption by attempting to have people sleep when the sun is down, and be awake when the sun is up. That is very much debatable: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-daylight-saving-times-save-energy/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-daylight-savi... http://www.nber.org/papers/w14429 http://www.nber.org/papers/w14429
- echaozh 11y ago
  Even if energy can be saved... why not make the companies set different office hours at different times of the year, rather than make people reset their watches? If companies' office hours are not to be messed with, why are the people's lives? I really cannot understand the logic behind this. People should be free to choose if they want to sleep more when the sun is down, right? And with Capitalism, you should tune the price of energy consumption to make people save more, instead of making strange laws.
  - kspaans 11y ago
    Power meters that record the time when energy is used rather than the "dumb" ones that just record total usage are still relatively new.
  - grecy 11y ago
    >If companies' office hours are not to be messed with, why are the people's lives? Daylight savings isn't messing with anyone's life, it's changing the arbitrary read-out on a human-invented device, nothing more. >People should be free to choose if they want to sleep more when the sun is down, right? Of course, anyone can sleep as much or as little as they please. There might be school and employment consequences to that, but you can still do it. You can also drive a car as fast as you please - but there might also be consequences to that.
    - rtpg 11y ago
      >Daylight savings isn't messing with anyone's life, it's changing the arbitrary read-out on a human-invented device, nothing more. a human-invented device that affects when you're supposed to show up at your desk if you have a "normal" job (9-5)...
    - hueving 11y ago
      That argument holds no water. Changing a readout on many human invented devices will drastically impact people's lives (bank account balances, work schedules, directions to the hospital, etc).
    - ryandrake 11y ago
- Kiro 11y ago
  Still, the author makes it sound like this would some kind of crazy thing when it's the reality for a lot of people in the world.

jedberg 11y ago

In 1974 the US basically had DST the entire year to save energy. Being on year round DST would save us the most energy, because most people use energy at night for artificial lighting. The main argument against it is that "kids have to go to school in the dark." Well you know what? Look at these maps. How many kids already have to go to school in the dark? Why does it matter? Even the kids would rather have more light after school so they can play. And if you ask a farmer about it, they'll tell you "the animals don't read clocks". To them it doesn't really matter, they get up with the sun regardless of what the clock says.

thaumasiotes 11y ago
> Being on year round DST would save us the most energy And if we redenominated the dollar, people could be several times richer than they are now!
barrkel 11y ago
When I was a kid I went to a country school and lessons didn't start until 9:30, to accommodate dark mornings. If it's better for children, only children need necessarily adjust, provided school is also serving its industrial daycare function. I get up around 8 and sleep between 1 and 2. So naturally I'm in favour of DST all year round.
zanny 11y ago
Tangentially related, there are also studies showing that schools that force kids to get up at 6:30 also produce lower performing students because kids stay up late everywhere and then never get enough sleep. If you want to keep the public school work week, it would make significantly more sense being 9-5 or even 10-6 Monday to Thursday rather than 8-3 Monday to Friday. We aren't going home to work the farm, and we aren't setting insanely early sleep schedules to get up with the sun to till the fields. These ancient time systems cause legitimate harm for the sake of posterity.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  Note that those studies apply to High Schools. Young kids are notoriously early risers. Here in Ottawa, Canada, they've stumbled on a good solution. To save money on busing, they've staggered the school start times to allow bus sharing. In my area, that means the buses drop elementary kids off for an 8 o'clock start and then pick up high school kids for a 9 o'clock start. As far as your suggestion of running four 8 hour school days instead of five 6 hour days, I certainly hope you're talking about high school. 6 hours is already too long for my 6 year old, I can't imagine 8 hours.

dikaiosune 11y ago

Living in one of the places that doesn't do DST, it's always struck me as bonkers to go through that twice a year.

retroencabulato 11y ago

In the US

Loque 11y ago
aaa there we go, someone else disappointed to read the article and scroll down to see the interactive map is a map the US only...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

lukevdp 11y ago
Did you read the end of the exact same sentence as the one you posted: "but I’m a geographer and must always disagree with any and all spatial claims, by anyone. I live in the same time zone where I grew up, but the sunrise/set times are almost an hour different between the two places."

Asmod4n 11y ago

Always hate it, why? It kills people.

empressplay 11y ago

I live near Melbourne and if there wasn't DST, in mid-summer the sun would rise at 4:30am. Pass.

arethuza 11y ago
Even with British Summer Time the sun rises at 4:30 in the summer here in Scotland (and we're not that far North) - what's the problem with it?

freemanindia 11y ago

As someone who lives in India (no DST) but interacts frequently with people in the USA. I hate it. Maybe it was rational before mass globalization, but now that many of us interact regularly across time zones and national borders it complicates time, which should be sacrosanct.

DrScump 11y ago
Bear in mind that the USA is at higher latitude, so day-length variations are far more pronounced as you approach the solstices.

imron 11y ago

Those light map images are based on the premise that 5pm is a reasonable time for sunset, which is something I disagree with. I like DST because I like light evenings. I can put up with dark mornings, but don't take away my light evenings.

paulojreis 11y ago
Where I live (Portugal), I'd like to have the DST offset permanently. This would mean sad winter mornings but arriving home still in daylight. A fine trade-off for me.
- meric 11y ago
  9pm sunset would be great, I sleep at midnight. I'd be able to have some sunlight from 6pm to 9pm, and be able to sleep in the dark.
mootothemax 11y ago
>Those light map images are based on the premise that 5pm is a reasonable time for sunset, which is something I disagree with. When daylight savings rolls around each year, I always make the same comment: god it feels civilized to be going home when it's still light outside!
- lagadu 11y ago
  At least you live in a place where DST makes a difference. It doesn't help a bit in northern Europe, I'm pretty sure we only do it to keep time parity with central Europe.
glandium 11y ago
More than DST, what is enjoyable is not having the sun at the zenith at 12pm. In France, it reaches the zenith is at ~1pm without DST and ~2pm with DST. This makes for nice sunny evenings. I now live in Japan, where it's at the zenith at ~12pm all year long (no DST), and it's ridiculous. Where I am, the sun is up at 4:45am and down at 7pm in the summer. In the winter, the sun is up at 7am and down at 4:45pm.

NDizzle 11y ago

5pm is a horrible time for sunset. When are you going to play catch with your kids?!

bryanlarsen 11y ago
When do I play catch with my kids? In the summer time. In the winter, I go skating with my kids after dark, which works well under the flood lights.

tmd83 11y ago

Since its hackernews I think its fair to comment that I hate it because it makes the already difficult time programming even more difficult. Now I don't just have to save timezone somewhere but also the offset (to be full proof) of the time. How about the UI? Does anyone know of a timepicker UI pattern (I haven't seen any) that allows you to input the duplicate hour during DST > ST switch? I don't have to suffer through this change but it seems like something that will affect people's rhythm a lot and make them mess up things twice a year. What would be the health and other cost of that would be? Hmm just thought about it and looked it up. It seems that people use ~10% their energy budget in lighting. So I don't see even in terms of energy usage that being worth it? Specially since using better lights would have a much more savings. [1] https://nplainsnorthernnotes.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/graphic-2011-04-home-energy-use-legacy.jpg https://nplainsnorthernnotes.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/gra...

7Z7 11y ago
>fool proof?

Kiro 11y ago

> but I’ll grant that waking up before the sun is miserable Uhm, where I live this is inevitable most winter months. I don't see any problems with it and seldom hear anyone complain.

iopq 11y ago

Ugh, waking up at 6:30 AM. I've done it once, never again. I refuse to work for a company where I have to wake up at 6:30 AM to get to office.

jkot 11y ago

There is nothing to love about DST. It just messes up sleep cycle and daily routine. When you will have small children you will understand.

imron 11y ago
The flip side is having an extra hour of daylight in the evening to be able to go outside and play catch/whatever with your children.
- yen223 11y ago
  There's no "extra" hour of daylight. The sun doesn't care how we set our clocks.
  - edwinjm 11y ago
    Read before you reply. Imron says "in the evening" :-S
    - yen223 11y ago
      If "the evening" refers to the period when the sun sets, then DST doesn't change anything. You still have so much daylight, no matter how you set your clock.
  - imron 11y ago
    If I get home at 7 and it's dark then it doesn't really lend itself to going outside. In daylight savings I still get home at 7 but now there is an hour of daylight left. So even though there is still the same amount of daylight in the day, due to the rescheduling of the work day with respect to daylight, there is an extra hour of daylight in the evening
    - yen223 11y ago
      Wouldn't it be easier to redefine office hours so that people can go home at 6, instead of redefining everyone's concept of time?

bufordsharkley 11y ago

The biggest flaw with this visualization is that it doesn't allow you to expand DST to the entire year, or increase it to double/triple/quadruple DST. I assume that it would simply be too heartbreakingly beautiful to witness it, and it was withheld for our own good.

jrapdx3 11y ago

Opinions about DST vary, perhaps reflecting how a person's "internal clock" functions. Biological differences play a role, some people are natural early risers, others tend to stay up late. I'm in the latter category so I strongly favor DST, but I can see how others might hate it. It's exacerbated living north of the 45th parallel. Officially we get about 16 hours of daylight/nighttime at the solstices. However, it's actually much worse than the raw data suggests. Living in the shadow of hills to the west, among tall trees, in a rainy climate with frequent heavily overcast skies, after DST goes off, by 3:00PM the sky is already dark. No wonder a lot of people around here look forward to March and return of DST. The morning effect is minimal, winter sunrise comes quite late. At year's end it's after 7:50AM, so it's dark on the way to work no matter what the weather and DST would not make the morning commute any dimmer. OTOH >16 hours of summer daylight is amazing and delightful. The place just comes alive. While we can't legislate the seasons, keeping DST longer than we do would at least be a small token of compensation.

exDM69 11y ago

I would have liked to see maps of the whole world. I live in Helsinki, 60 degrees North, and the sunrise today is 08:40 and the sunset is 15:33. It's still going to get a lot darker before the solstice. Quite frankly, at this point it doesn't really matter if it is offset one hour in either direction. But the abrupt change of DST really takes a toll. The timing is also unfortunate, because on the last days of summer time there's still a bit of sunlight after regular work hours, but the change to winter time practically removes the last lit hours from the day if you work somewhat regular office hours. I would like to see the daylight savings time abolished and going to permanent summer time here.

tempestn 11y ago
> I would like to see the daylight savings time abolished and going to permanent summer time here. Daylight savings time is summer time. Sounds like you would like to run on daylight savings time year-round (as would I).
- jstsch 11y ago
  Ditto. Here in NL the transition from DST to regular time is super abrupt. Yes, a few more hours of sun in the early morning, but it means no light in the evenings at all (sunrise at 8:20, sunset at 16:40 - so heading to work in the dark and leaving the office in the dark, bleh).
- masklinn 11y ago
  > Sounds like you would like to run on daylight savings time year-round (as would I). Most Europeans (and probably americans?) would definitely benefit from shifting their timezones by 1h and keeping it there. Hell, Central European Time could probably shift by 2h, the timezone goes from Spain to Poland, Warsaw currently gets sundown at 1530! (Lille which is roughly the same latitude gets sundown at a more respectable 1647)
  - vetinari 11y ago
    The fun is, that in Warsaw the delta between CET and solar time is much less, than in Lille. See: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2572317/Are-YOU-living-sync-Amazing-map-reveals-manmade-timezones-countries-false-sense-sun-rises.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2572317/Are-Y... (Yes, dailymail, but at least they have a nice maps).

brc 11y ago

Permanent DST - aren't we just arguing to move the prime meridian 30 degrees to the west and pushing everyone's time zone out? Or would it just be easier to get everyone to agree to go to work an hour earlier? Where I live we have no DST. As I live at the eastern edge of the time zone, the sun comes up at 4:30 am and is all done by 7pm on the summer solstice. It's a stupid time zone. But efforts to get DST implemented have been very difficult and strongly resisted from people living further west.

amai 11y ago

Russia had continuous day light savings time from 2011 to 2014 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Russia#Daylight_saving_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Russia#Daylight_saving...). "However, many Russians in the north complained about darker mornings in winter." So they went back and permanently adopted winter hours (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29773559 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29773559).

upofadown 11y ago

Bah, if we want to start work, say, an hour after sunrise we can just do that now. We can trivially make an alarm clock that calculates sum position at a particular location. There is no technical reason that we need to argue over changing local time some even number of hours when we can do it exactly.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

CWuestefeld 11y ago

My complaint with DST isn't so much about when we have to get up, but about what it does to commuting with respect to sun position. For anyone who lives to the west of their job - and that seems to be a lot of people - and has relatively normal office hours, you're going to go through a time period in the spring and fall where the sun is in drivers' eyes as they're commuting. In the morning, just after the sun rises, it will be blinding drivers going east, and in the evening, before sunset, it'll blind drivers going west. Given the geography, there's not much to be done about that. If we just wait a couple weeks (for any given person), the times will progress enough so that they'll no longer be affected. But when you throw DST into the equation, it resets progression of sunrise and sunset times. After we've made it through those couple weeks where the sun is in your eyes, suddenly the time change hits, pushing the time back into your commuting drive again. Thus, the number of days I need to spend in dangerous driving conditions, with myself and other drivers partially blinded by the rising or setting son, is more-or-less doubled by DST. It seems to me to be a significant safety issue.

Retric 11y ago
I highly recommend wearing sunglasses while driving. This does not eliminate the sun issue, but it helps not just deal with the sun but also those few seconds of temporary blindness when you get reflections. That said, the most useful thing I found was to change my commute around glare issues.
- degenerate 11y ago
  I don't like sunglasses, so I had windshield tint installed instead: http://i.imgur.com/Npc7z1D.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Npc7z1D.jpg (not my car, just a sample)
  - Retric 11y ago
    Careful, that's illegal in several states.
- CWuestefeld 11y ago
  DST or not, good polarized sunglasses are a great idea. It helps not just for the direct sun in your eyes, but also glare reflecting off other cars, pavement, etc. Don't go spending $100+ dollars on it, you can get something good for under $30.

emergentcypher 11y ago

The entire idea of daylight savings time is idiotic. In a thousand years we will be looked back on and they will sneer at our lack of intelligence for adopting such a silly ritual.

cies 11y ago

I hate DST for a whole other reason: politicians "changing time" seems like a ridiculous idea to me. I think office/school hours should sometime opt for a summer/winter schedule instead. But then I would also not mind to have the whole world on the UTC clock instead of timezones :)