5 ms·

Switching DST at the same moment keeps the delta time the same. I'm from one EU country, live in another, I know that the delta between the two is always 2 hou

by 21 8y ago

Switching DST at the same moment keeps the delta time the same. I'm from one EU country, live in another, I know that the delta between the two is always 2 hours. Because EU and US switch DST at different times, in the multi-national software companies I worked there is this two week period when the delta changes, and there are mails and mis-scheduled things all around. It's not a huge thing, but what is the benefit of each country randomly switching times, just for the sake of sovereignty. Next people will advocate using true solar time and getting rid of full hour based deltas.

ojm 8y ago
I use a world clock with the cities I communicate with frequently added. But then again, being in Australia, and most business being done in the US, Europe and Asia, you’re not going to memorise all the time zones.
kodablah 8y ago
> It's not a huge thing, but what is the benefit of each country randomly switching times, just for the sake of sovereignty. It's not just for the sake of sovereignty. The article clearly gives a reason why Finland might want to but other countries might not. Your individual reasons may not apply to someone across the continent just as someone's US east coast reason may not apply to Arizona. That type of thinking ("why not", "just for the sake of sovereignty", "here's my anecdote", etc) is what causes this type of federalist mis-representation so far from the problems of locals. Some people are from one US state and live in another. Despite your anecdote being only yours and ignoring the wishes of entire countries, I don't think it's even a valid point to centralize DST above the country level.
- 21 8y ago
  > I don't think it's even a valid point to centralize DST above the country level What about: - measurement systems (metric, ....) - unicode - electrical grid frequencies (50 Hz in all of EU) - unified road driving rules (green/red lights, ...) - the euro currency - electrical wiring standards/colors - paper sizes (A4, letter, ...) You could argue the same thing for pretty much all standards. Why not let each group of people pick it's own set of rules which perfectly suits them. That is the point of standardization. It drives costs down, just like the invention of the shipping container massively improved transport efficiency.
  - kodablah 8y ago
    > You could argue the same thing for pretty much all standards Of course, and you can argue colors of the sky and everything else. Back to the subject at hand concerning DST, its value is affected by presence of daylight, and that is different for different people. Not sure why you are bringing up a bunch of non-daylight related items into the discussion for comparison. Maybe some standardized law about requiring air conditioning or some law mandating sunglasses at certain hours on the clock would be more apropos. Regardless, comparisons here do nothing but deviate from the DST discussion. Obviously for some things commonality has value and for some things it doesn't, can't just say "let everyone choose everything then" as some form of counter or we cannot discuss productively.
StavrosK 8y ago
I wish everyone would just use UTC for coordination. Then I wouldn't schedule my time around a meeting at "3PM GMT" only to discover that the Brit who scheduled it didn't know it was summertime.
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  This wouldn't fix anything, because people would still have to convert UTC to their local time before agreeing to anything, and they'd make the same mistakes in that process ("Shit, are we +7 or +8 right now?")
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    Not so much, because they'd be more aware of their UTC offset. I usually get people not even knowing that their timezone changes with DST.
- walshemj 8y ago
  The key here is the Brit said GMT aka UTC your the one that messed up here
  - dmurray 8y ago
    No, the Brit thought he was scheduling it for 3pm on his wall clock, because he thought "GMT means the time we use here in London" but London was actually using BST that day. Source: have seen this from many many coworkers who should know better.
    - StavrosK 8y ago
      Yep. As well as a bunch of "10 AM PST" when they meant PDT. Nowadays I have to correct everyone as to their timezone.
      - dmurray 8y ago
        If they use PST in the summer you can be pretty sure they mean PDT, at least, especially if you are somewhere where the abbreviation is unambiguously US Pacific Standard Time. With GMT/UTC there's some chance they were trying to express the time in a "standardized" way.

by 21 8y ago

ojm 8y ago

I use a world clock with the cities I communicate with frequently added. But then again, being in Australia, and most business being done in the US, Europe and Asia, you’re not going to memorise all the time zones.

kodablah 8y ago

> It's not a huge thing, but what is the benefit of each country randomly switching times, just for the sake of sovereignty. It's not just for the sake of sovereignty. The article clearly gives a reason why Finland might want to but other countries might not. Your individual reasons may not apply to someone across the continent just as someone's US east coast reason may not apply to Arizona. That type of thinking ("why not", "just for the sake of sovereignty", "here's my anecdote", etc) is what causes this type of federalist mis-representation so far from the problems of locals. Some people are from one US state and live in another. Despite your anecdote being only yours and ignoring the wishes of entire countries, I don't think it's even a valid point to centralize DST above the country level.

21 8y ago
> I don't think it's even a valid point to centralize DST above the country level What about: - measurement systems (metric, ....) - unicode - electrical grid frequencies (50 Hz in all of EU) - unified road driving rules (green/red lights, ...) - the euro currency - electrical wiring standards/colors - paper sizes (A4, letter, ...) You could argue the same thing for pretty much all standards. Why not let each group of people pick it's own set of rules which perfectly suits them. That is the point of standardization. It drives costs down, just like the invention of the shipping container massively improved transport efficiency.
- kodablah 8y ago
  > You could argue the same thing for pretty much all standards Of course, and you can argue colors of the sky and everything else. Back to the subject at hand concerning DST, its value is affected by presence of daylight, and that is different for different people. Not sure why you are bringing up a bunch of non-daylight related items into the discussion for comparison. Maybe some standardized law about requiring air conditioning or some law mandating sunglasses at certain hours on the clock would be more apropos. Regardless, comparisons here do nothing but deviate from the DST discussion. Obviously for some things commonality has value and for some things it doesn't, can't just say "let everyone choose everything then" as some form of counter or we cannot discuss productively.

StavrosK 8y ago

I wish everyone would just use UTC for coordination. Then I wouldn't schedule my time around a meeting at "3PM GMT" only to discover that the Brit who scheduled it didn't know it was summertime.

Analemma_ 8y ago
This wouldn't fix anything, because people would still have to convert UTC to their local time before agreeing to anything, and they'd make the same mistakes in that process ("Shit, are we +7 or +8 right now?")
- StavrosK 8y ago
  Not so much, because they'd be more aware of their UTC offset. I usually get people not even knowing that their timezone changes with DST.
walshemj 8y ago
The key here is the Brit said GMT aka UTC your the one that messed up here
- dmurray 8y ago
  No, the Brit thought he was scheduling it for 3pm on his wall clock, because he thought "GMT means the time we use here in London" but London was actually using BST that day. Source: have seen this from many many coworkers who should know better.
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    Yep. As well as a bunch of "10 AM PST" when they meant PDT. Nowadays I have to correct everyone as to their timezone.
    - dmurray 8y ago
      If they use PST in the summer you can be pretty sure they mean PDT, at least, especially if you are somewhere where the abbreviation is unambiguously US Pacific Standard Time. With GMT/UTC there's some chance they were trying to express the time in a "standardized" way.