9 ms·

Yes! Bravo to Florida. I don't care what timezone California wants to be in—PST or MST—as long as we stop the nonsense of changing between two timezones every

by bhauer 9y ago

Yes! Bravo to Florida. I don't care what timezone California wants to be in—PST or MST—as long as we stop the nonsense of changing between two timezones every year. This coming Sunday is another DST change, and with it will come countless small nuisances, immeasurable drowsiness and lost productivity, and a non-trivial number of injuries or worse. Just pick a timezone and stick with it!

birdmanjeremy 9y ago
PDT FOREVER!
- trimbo 9y ago
  As an early riser, PST forever! I vote we do a half hour compromise.
  - Xeoncross 9y ago
    > I vote we do a half hour compromise. Please no, just stop
    - tlrobinson 9y ago
      Fun fact, Nepal's timezone is UTC+5:45.
      - walrus01 9y ago
        Afghanistan is +4:30 , which is different from both Iran and Pakistan
        Y_Y 9y ago
        Afghanistan also borders China, and the time jumps three and a half hours at the border.
        seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Most places in Xinjiang have an unofficial local time that they use in addition to official Chinese standard time. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time One can imagine in Kashgar the ridiculousness of Beijing time is even more noticeable than in Urumuqi.
        walrus01 9y ago
        Doesn't really affect things though since there is no road through the Wakhan corridor to reach China, and no road over the mountain pass. If you want to drive it is a very long way via the karakoram highway via Gilgit in Pakistan. Travel from AF to CN is generally done by flying to Dubai, Delhi or Islamabad first.
      - WorldMaker 9y ago
        Many historic timezones have 15 minute offsets. In the era before American railroads synchronized timezones to the hours, Louisville, KY, as one example close to home, was often UTC-5:45. (It's GE's fault that Louisville and consequently most of the US I-65 corridor wound up EST rather than CST.) I don't expect to win arguments that the city should return to UTC-5:45, but I make them anyway to amuse myself.
        stretchwithme 9y ago
        And that's the important thing. :-)
    - prakashk 9y ago
      India, UTC+05:30, all through the year. Despite having widely different climate zones in various regions of the country, there is no "Daylight Saving Time".
  - drbacon 9y ago
    Your resolve is weak!
  - birdmanjeremy 9y ago
    I would accept your compromise in the winter, but I'm keeping my 8:30 sunset in the summer.
- dmode 9y ago
  This. As a parent, I would love to have daylight after work so that I can enjoy some time with my kid outdoors. It is depressing to pick up your child when it is already dark outside.
  - bhauer 9y ago
    And I can get behind that, which is why I say we can be either PST or MST, I don't really care which. (MST being functionally equivalent to PDT.) Frankly, I just want us to choose something and lock it in. PST, MST, UTC, or whatever. Just don't make me change my timezone ever again.
    - birdmanjeremy 9y ago
      UTC is a terrible choice, I don't even know what time I would wake up in UTC. My family in NC would never know what time to call. I'd be OK with PST or MST/PDT. I'd prefer more light in the evenings though, I work an early schedule and don't actually care if it's light when I go to the office.
      - dpark 9y ago
        > I don't even know what time I would wake up in UTC. You’d probably wake up about the same UTC time that you currently wake up, whatever that is. Do you imagine that if your state switched to UTC everyone would just begin a free for all and show up to school and work just whenever? Of course not. > My family in NC would never know what time to call. Probably the exact same time they call now. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t be able to figure it out.
        BrandoElFollito 9y ago
        It would be complicated to answer questions such as "what time does school starts in your county"? Today if you are American and I am French, if I say "we start at 8:30 and finish at 16:30" you would understand immediately. In UTC you would need to convert. Of course UTC helps when we need to agree on the time to have a call. I guess the advantage vs drawback depends on the kind of messages people usually convey
FreeFull 9y ago
DST can make sense if you're sufficiently far north/south, but definitely doesn't if you're closer to the equator. And for Florida DST probably never made sense.
- bunderbunder 9y ago
  Even way up north, I'd rather have summer time all year. Having it get dark around 3:30 in the afternoon in the middle of winter is a drag. That said, I've found there's a lot of resistance to the idea among parents. On standard time, it's light out when kids are on their way to school. On daylight time, it would be dark then.
  - saalweachter 9y ago
    If you're at a latitude that only gets 8-9 hours of daylight in the winter, there just isn't much daylight to go around. If you're adding it to the evening, you're taking it from the morning. While I agree that the sun setting at 3:30 is a drag, I'm not sure pushing that to 4:30 really helps much. During the summer, when you push sunset from 8pm to 9pm, that's at least an hour most people get to use (they are still awake and not working), and you're taking away an hour from 4am to 5am which most people don't (almost everyone is asleep). During the winter, you're taking away an hour of daylight from, say, 7-8am, which most people can use (it will either be during their commute or before their commute, which they can enjoy themselves) to add an hour from, say, 3:30-4:30, which for many people is still going to be in the middle of their workdays. Florida's case isn't quite so bad as that. In Tampa, FL, they are in fact taking away people's 7-8am sunshine in the winter, but they're at least adding sunshine from 6-7pm which will be fairly useful sunlight. I'm just not sure it's useful for anyone much north of Florida to follow suit - you're trading valuable pre-work daylight for during-work daylight.
    - slowmovintarget 9y ago
      For the New England states, they're far enough East that it makes sense for them to join the AST time-zone and do away with DST. Birds start chirping here at 3:30am... that ain't right.
johnpowell 9y ago
Is it really that big of a deal? It has never bothered me. If waking up a hour early totally messes up your life it might be time to reconsider your priorities.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  It's not that it messes up anyone's life terribly. It's a minor inconvenience, but it slightly inconveniences hundreds of millions of people, and that adds up. If everyone is slightly drowsy, and 0.1% of people have slightly slower reflexes and get in a car accident, that is not to say that those people 'need to reconsider their priorities'. That means that the policy hurts that many people, and the society needs to evaluate whether the benefits outweigh that hurt.
- simonbarker87 9y ago
  Don’t know why you are getting downvoted for this. Two of my favourite days of the year are when we change the clocks, there is suddenly a shift in what the world looks like at certain times of day and throw things into a different perspective. Permenant DST makes the most sense out of the two options but I like the shift enough that I’d prefer the model we have - I think people’s negativity towards it is due to a dislike of change and a lack of understanding on its origins, it’s sad that the chap who first proposed it didn’t get to see it implemented.
- Kluny 9y ago
  You just get so, so much roadkill on time change day.
- lacker 9y ago
  It is very frustrating to small children who don't understand what is happening, and thus it is also very frustrating to their parents.
snarf21 9y ago
I agree we should just pick one and move on. The one thing that gets forgotten is that noon was picked based on highest sun point (for some latitude) which is fine until we start to have a generally accepted day as 8-5. Noon is no longer in the middle of that day. It probably makes the most sense to just split the difference between EST and EDT and call it ENT (normalized) and never change again. This doesn't swing winter or summer days anymore than needs be but still gets rid of having to ever change again. The retailers get the biggest benefit of all the time DXT.
- dpark 9y ago
  Daylight savings time was not put in place to make noon the middle of the day. It was put in place specifically to move noon earlier in the (physical) day. Splitting the time zones would be the worst of all options. It would no longer allow time zones to align on the hour (because most states and nations are unlikely to align on a new set of time zones) and would do nothing to make noon align with the actual middle of the day.
  - orev 9y ago
    You’ve completely misread. No one thinks DST was made to align noon with the sun. I mean, it’s so obvious that’s not the case (noon is aligned with the sun in Standard Time), I can’t believe you would think it was said that way, especially on this site.
    - dpark 9y ago
      The alternative way to read it seems to be “here’s an irrelevant bit of data about the concept of noon, followed by an irrelevant proposal to shift time zones by a half an hour for essentially no reason”. I’m not sure that’s better. Also, noon is not really aligned with the sun in standard time. In some rough sense, sure. But solar noon on one side of a time zone is an hour before/after solar noon on the other side. The nature of time zones scoped to hour blocks guarantees that clock noon will not correspond to solar noon in most of the zone. This is especially true for larger zones like China’s official zone. > especially on this site Because everyone on this site is a super genius and never miscommunicates.
shams93 9y ago
Since I work remote for a company in Arizona I actually get an hour back on Sunday, I lost an hour when it went back my first meeting at 745am now it's going to be a more reasonable 845am.

by bhauer 9y ago

birdmanjeremy 9y ago

PDT FOREVER!

trimbo 9y ago
As an early riser, PST forever! I vote we do a half hour compromise.
- Xeoncross 9y ago
  > I vote we do a half hour compromise. Please no, just stop
  - tlrobinson 9y ago
    Fun fact, Nepal's timezone is UTC+5:45.
    - walrus01 9y ago
      Afghanistan is +4:30 , which is different from both Iran and Pakistan
      - Y_Y 9y ago
        Afghanistan also borders China, and the time jumps three and a half hours at the border.
        seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Most places in Xinjiang have an unofficial local time that they use in addition to official Chinese standard time. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time One can imagine in Kashgar the ridiculousness of Beijing time is even more noticeable than in Urumuqi.
        walrus01 9y ago
        Doesn't really affect things though since there is no road through the Wakhan corridor to reach China, and no road over the mountain pass. If you want to drive it is a very long way via the karakoram highway via Gilgit in Pakistan. Travel from AF to CN is generally done by flying to Dubai, Delhi or Islamabad first.
    - WorldMaker 9y ago
      Many historic timezones have 15 minute offsets. In the era before American railroads synchronized timezones to the hours, Louisville, KY, as one example close to home, was often UTC-5:45. (It's GE's fault that Louisville and consequently most of the US I-65 corridor wound up EST rather than CST.) I don't expect to win arguments that the city should return to UTC-5:45, but I make them anyway to amuse myself.
      - stretchwithme 9y ago
        And that's the important thing. :-)
  - prakashk 9y ago
    India, UTC+05:30, all through the year. Despite having widely different climate zones in various regions of the country, there is no "Daylight Saving Time".
- drbacon 9y ago
  Your resolve is weak!
- birdmanjeremy 9y ago
  I would accept your compromise in the winter, but I'm keeping my 8:30 sunset in the summer.
dmode 9y ago
This. As a parent, I would love to have daylight after work so that I can enjoy some time with my kid outdoors. It is depressing to pick up your child when it is already dark outside.
- bhauer 9y ago
  And I can get behind that, which is why I say we can be either PST or MST, I don't really care which. (MST being functionally equivalent to PDT.) Frankly, I just want us to choose something and lock it in. PST, MST, UTC, or whatever. Just don't make me change my timezone ever again.
  - birdmanjeremy 9y ago
    UTC is a terrible choice, I don't even know what time I would wake up in UTC. My family in NC would never know what time to call. I'd be OK with PST or MST/PDT. I'd prefer more light in the evenings though, I work an early schedule and don't actually care if it's light when I go to the office.
    - dpark 9y ago
      > I don't even know what time I would wake up in UTC. You’d probably wake up about the same UTC time that you currently wake up, whatever that is. Do you imagine that if your state switched to UTC everyone would just begin a free for all and show up to school and work just whenever? Of course not. > My family in NC would never know what time to call. Probably the exact same time they call now. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t be able to figure it out.
      - BrandoElFollito 9y ago
        It would be complicated to answer questions such as "what time does school starts in your county"? Today if you are American and I am French, if I say "we start at 8:30 and finish at 16:30" you would understand immediately. In UTC you would need to convert. Of course UTC helps when we need to agree on the time to have a call. I guess the advantage vs drawback depends on the kind of messages people usually convey

FreeFull 9y ago

DST can make sense if you're sufficiently far north/south, but definitely doesn't if you're closer to the equator. And for Florida DST probably never made sense.

bunderbunder 9y ago
Even way up north, I'd rather have summer time all year. Having it get dark around 3:30 in the afternoon in the middle of winter is a drag. That said, I've found there's a lot of resistance to the idea among parents. On standard time, it's light out when kids are on their way to school. On daylight time, it would be dark then.
- saalweachter 9y ago
  If you're at a latitude that only gets 8-9 hours of daylight in the winter, there just isn't much daylight to go around. If you're adding it to the evening, you're taking it from the morning. While I agree that the sun setting at 3:30 is a drag, I'm not sure pushing that to 4:30 really helps much. During the summer, when you push sunset from 8pm to 9pm, that's at least an hour most people get to use (they are still awake and not working), and you're taking away an hour from 4am to 5am which most people don't (almost everyone is asleep). During the winter, you're taking away an hour of daylight from, say, 7-8am, which most people can use (it will either be during their commute or before their commute, which they can enjoy themselves) to add an hour from, say, 3:30-4:30, which for many people is still going to be in the middle of their workdays. Florida's case isn't quite so bad as that. In Tampa, FL, they are in fact taking away people's 7-8am sunshine in the winter, but they're at least adding sunshine from 6-7pm which will be fairly useful sunlight. I'm just not sure it's useful for anyone much north of Florida to follow suit - you're trading valuable pre-work daylight for during-work daylight.
  - slowmovintarget 9y ago
    For the New England states, they're far enough East that it makes sense for them to join the AST time-zone and do away with DST. Birds start chirping here at 3:30am... that ain't right.

johnpowell 9y ago

Is it really that big of a deal? It has never bothered me. If waking up a hour early totally messes up your life it might be time to reconsider your priorities.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago
It's not that it messes up anyone's life terribly. It's a minor inconvenience, but it slightly inconveniences hundreds of millions of people, and that adds up. If everyone is slightly drowsy, and 0.1% of people have slightly slower reflexes and get in a car accident, that is not to say that those people 'need to reconsider their priorities'. That means that the policy hurts that many people, and the society needs to evaluate whether the benefits outweigh that hurt.
simonbarker87 9y ago
Don’t know why you are getting downvoted for this. Two of my favourite days of the year are when we change the clocks, there is suddenly a shift in what the world looks like at certain times of day and throw things into a different perspective. Permenant DST makes the most sense out of the two options but I like the shift enough that I’d prefer the model we have - I think people’s negativity towards it is due to a dislike of change and a lack of understanding on its origins, it’s sad that the chap who first proposed it didn’t get to see it implemented.
Kluny 9y ago
You just get so, so much roadkill on time change day.
lacker 9y ago
It is very frustrating to small children who don't understand what is happening, and thus it is also very frustrating to their parents.

snarf21 9y ago

I agree we should just pick one and move on. The one thing that gets forgotten is that noon was picked based on highest sun point (for some latitude) which is fine until we start to have a generally accepted day as 8-5. Noon is no longer in the middle of that day. It probably makes the most sense to just split the difference between EST and EDT and call it ENT (normalized) and never change again. This doesn't swing winter or summer days anymore than needs be but still gets rid of having to ever change again. The retailers get the biggest benefit of all the time DXT.

dpark 9y ago
Daylight savings time was not put in place to make noon the middle of the day. It was put in place specifically to move noon earlier in the (physical) day. Splitting the time zones would be the worst of all options. It would no longer allow time zones to align on the hour (because most states and nations are unlikely to align on a new set of time zones) and would do nothing to make noon align with the actual middle of the day.
- orev 9y ago
  You’ve completely misread. No one thinks DST was made to align noon with the sun. I mean, it’s so obvious that’s not the case (noon is aligned with the sun in Standard Time), I can’t believe you would think it was said that way, especially on this site.
  - dpark 9y ago
    The alternative way to read it seems to be “here’s an irrelevant bit of data about the concept of noon, followed by an irrelevant proposal to shift time zones by a half an hour for essentially no reason”. I’m not sure that’s better. Also, noon is not really aligned with the sun in standard time. In some rough sense, sure. But solar noon on one side of a time zone is an hour before/after solar noon on the other side. The nature of time zones scoped to hour blocks guarantees that clock noon will not correspond to solar noon in most of the zone. This is especially true for larger zones like China’s official zone. > especially on this site Because everyone on this site is a super genius and never miscommunicates.

shams93 9y ago

Since I work remote for a company in Arizona I actually get an hour back on Sunday, I lost an hour when it went back my first meeting at 745am now it's going to be a more reasonable 845am.