60 ms·

EU to stop changing the clocks in 2019

• matthewmacleod 8y ago
  I was casually in favour of this; I recently mentioned it to my mother in passing, and she pointed out that the UK had trialled this in 1968-1971. She was (surprisingly to me) immediately opposed to it - living in Scotland, she recalled that it was basically dark until 10am, and resulted in a bunch of upheaval as children were no longer able to travel safely to school by themselves, among other things.
  • another-cuppa 8y ago
    That makes no sense. The clocks change in the summer, not the winter, and in summer Scotland sees about 20 hours of sunlight.
    • gizmo385 8y ago
      Clocks change twice a year, not once a year.
      • another-cuppa 8y ago
        Huh? How could they change once a year? The point is winter time is GMT and summer time is the change. The UK did remain on BST once, but that was during the war (interestingly it also went to double summer time in the summer).
      • IshKebab 8y ago
        He means the clocks are offset in the summer and not the winter. If we stop changing the clocks and just stick on GMT all year it won't affect anything in winter.
      • gtspotscom 8y ago
        Technically correct. But it's more like "clocks change once a year and then that change is reverted"
    • arankine 8y ago
      We had 4 hours of night in the highlands and that was hard to sleep through.
    • matthewmacleod 8y ago
      Sure, but in the case I was talking about the UK switched to BST (i.e. GMT+1) year-round. This has the effect of making it darker on winter mornings.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • raverbashing 8y ago
    Seems like they picked summer time, not winter time as the default
  • renjimen 8y ago
    They could push the school start time back. It would be better for kids everywhere, not just Scotland.
    • yegle 8y ago
      I figure it will not be easy to change the school start time, since parents are also need to change behavior with the school start time change. In the end maybe this will be easier to just have a consistent schedule to change the school start time. In the end we invent DST again.
      • golangnews 8y ago
        It really would not be difficult to move school later - school hours are already out of sync with 9-5 of 9-6 or the other hours parents work, if anything it’d be welcome.
        • de_Selby 8y ago
          Of course it would. School starts at roughly the same time as normal work hours. Most schools start a little before here to allow parents get to work after dropping off their kids. You couldn't just change school hours in isolation without causing a lot of disruption.
          • golangnews 8y ago
            School hours are 9-3:20 where I live, so they are nowhere near in line with working hours as you need time to get to work and not many jobs finish that early. Most schools run breakfast clubs and after school clubs as a result.
        • skinnymuch 8y ago
          School began at 7:50 am for us. So that time worked well for parents and 9-5 sort of times. It gave enough room for 8-4 or 8-5 parents and long commute parents. Or parents who want to drop off and come back home first. If you make the school start time 9 am as well, if a parent helps their kid get ready and/or has to be around until the kid leaves for the bus and/or has to drop them off, they wouldn’t be able to unless their commute is short. I don’t think school times can be pushed much. Maybe 30 min max without seriously disrupting parent’s schedules if that’s a concern.
  • IshKebab 8y ago
    Just open schools later in winter then. Also that's really just due to the choice of time zone, not how clocks are changed in the summer.
    • bonzini 8y ago
      So if everything will switch to a later time in winter, it's the same effect as moving clocks forward in the summer? It's not so easy to start school later, because the parents might have fixed entry/exit times at work. DST sucks but it has the advantage that everything synchronizes on when to switch.
    • SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
      Don't change the clocks, just do everything an hour later! Seems like the worst of both worlds.
      • hannasanarion 8y ago
        Why? If you want to do some particular thing during sunlight, schedule it that way yourself, don't force everyone else to change our clocks and lose an hour of sleep for your convenience
  • de_Selby 8y ago
    I feel the same way, the further north you are the bigger a factor it becomes. I can see issues with icy roads on winter mornings too. Daylight savings makes sense, just not everywhere. The change is happening now though. Even though it would lead to darker mornings I'd still support adopting summer time here in Ireland. Dark evenings when you get home from work are just too depressing.
    • jedberg 8y ago
      > I feel the same way, the further north you are the bigger a factor it becomes. On the other hand, the further north you go, the more they already deal with this. DST or not, kids in Alaska go to school in the dark for a good part of winter. Somehow they survive.
  • baxtr 8y ago
    It depends. If they keep wintertime, that won’t happen
  • krupan 8y ago
    According to a quick internet search, Scotland has about 8 hours of sunlight in the winter and about 18 hours in the summer. You'd have to shift by about 4 hours to keep sunrise at the same time in both mid winter and mid summer. I'm guessing that's not what they were doing and that right around December 21st the kids are going to school in the dark no matter what, or else the sun was coming up at 3 am in the summer. Either way, a one hour shift wasn't making that big of a difference.
    • matthewmacleod 8y ago
      An hour can make a big difference! Inverness gets about 6:30 daylight during the winter, with sunrise at about 9:00 and sunset around 3:30. Shifting to year-round summer time would move sunrise to 10:00; an hour can be the difference between "I can see things" twilight and "It's basically night". I'm not really that bothered myself, having worked weird hours for a long time. But I can definitely see problems it could cause.
  • jayflux 8y ago
    The idea of a trial was again brought up in 2010 - 2012, it was rejected due to the same reasons, I think Scotland weren’t happy about it. https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-12/daylightsaving.html https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-12/daylightsaving....
  • henrikschroder 8y ago
    > living in Scotland, she recalled that it was basically dark until 10am, and resulted in a bunch of upheaval as children were no longer able to travel safely to school by themselves Meanwhile, in Scandinavia, this is the reality of November, December and January for everyone. Entire countries manage to go to school and work when it's dark outside...
• logifail 8y ago
  >> The decision to tackle the issue was prompted after the Commission launched an online survey. Some 4.6 million Europeans answered the survey — three million of those respondents were from Germany — with 80 percent of them voting to scrap the practice. At first glance that approach appears to be a deeply flawed way to make policy which affects 28 member states. What would happen if the commission started asking for more policy-making input from citizens via online surveys?
  • dabockster 8y ago
    Online surveys are a horrible idea for this kind of information gathering. You have effectively zero idea if the respondents are even in the EU. All it takes is a VPN subscription to completely trash an online survey of this nature.
    • duedl0r 8y ago
      funny argument. you think it's a horrible idea, propose a flawed way to do it, and debunk it to serve your initial idea. :) how you do think online voting is done? you really think a simple VPN is enough? oh, and btw.. I send my tax statement online. let's hope the russians don't have a VPN connection to Switzerland :)
      • nostromo 8y ago
        One doesn't even need a VPN -- anyone can submit a response. It's basically on the honor code. https://ec.europa.eu/info/consultations_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/consultations_en
        • lagadu 8y ago
          So? It's not a vote, it's a consultation. The idea being that anyone can give their input on the matter so it doesn't matter who is responding. The voting part, if it comes to that, comes later by the European Parliament.
• shmerl 8y ago
  Good.
• crististm 8y ago
  Bike shedding at its finest.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • shmageggy 8y ago
    Definitely not. Changing clocks has known connections to health risks including traffic fatalities. Lots of people hate it for good reason. A couple of internet searches should be enough to convince you that it's a real issue. If you are unsure of what search terms to try, I suggest "fuck dst"
    • majewsky 8y ago
      This is a good summary in a 4-minute video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br0NW9ufUUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br0NW9ufUUw
• rootbear 8y ago
  I'm not in favor of permanently being on Summer time, which is one of the options. Humans are already too disconnected from the physical world, I'd hate to see us completely lose the association of "Noon" with the Sun being at it's highest point in the sky. Yeah, I know. Hopeless romantic... But I'd love to see the end of Daylight Saving Time. I hate the biannual screwing of my body clock.
  • spullara 8y ago
    Summer time only for me. I have no interest in it getting dark near 5pm. (SF Bay Area)
    • lr 8y ago
      I am in NYC, which is pretty far east in the timezone (although not as east as others), and I still vote for DST being the permanent time.
      • ghaff 8y ago
        Boston is quite a bit further east (and north). Personally, I'd go for year-round DST (or Atlantic Time which would effectively be the same thing). You'll never resolve individual preferences though. Some won't want sun at 4AM in the summer; others won't want dark at 4PM in the winter [ADDED: or kids waiting around for school buses in pitch dark]. Get far enough north (and much of Europe is much further north) and there isn't enough light to go around at some times of the year. I used to care more. Now my schedule is mostly flexible enough that I can largely choose when in the day I want it to be light.
        • bostonpete 8y ago
          Permanent DST improves both of your examples (sun rising too early in the summer and setting too early in the winter). The argument against permanent DST in Boston is how dark it would be when kids go to school. Of course the counterarguments are "Alaskans do it" and "you can just adjust school schedules (and the work schedules of all the affected parents...)". In theory, those are both options, but are less desirable for many than the status quo
• ergothus 8y ago
  I've always wanted to abolish not only DST, but time zones in general. Sure, it's cool that noon means the sun is high, but increasingly the cost of managing anything across zones (or across days, or both) is notably higher than the relatively rare cost of learning "I moved to a new state, my work hours are during daylight, 3pm-11pm". When coordinating we can just use the same times. "Conference call will be at 5pm." "That's early for me, can we make it 6pm?" Instead of "Okay, call will be at 9am" "In what time zone?" "Eastern". "that's 6am for me, can we make it 8?" "You mean 10am? Sure". I had a road trip to the grand Canyon. Nothing like crossing from Pacific, to Mountain, to AZ (with no DST) and into federal land in AZ (with DST). Coordinated with another couple coming to the same spot from a different direction. It was...non-trivial...and we often gave up on actually knowing when something was, being happy if we were coordinated within a few hours.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • foepys 8y ago
    You will achieve nothing by getting rid of timezones, really. Instead of calculating timezones, you will start to calculate when people actually want to sleep, which is actually harder without set "zones". So you end up with "awake/business zones" instead of timezones.
    • henrikschroder 8y ago
      To make it even worse, these "awake zones" will start spanning multiple weekdays. So, when is Sunday, again? Is that the period of daylight that starts at 21:00 on Saturday and lasts until 09:00 Sunday? Or is it the period that starts at 21:00 on Sunday and lasts until 09:00 Monday? When's your business open, again? Timezones are extremely useful.
      • matz1 8y ago
        Either way you still have to lookup the business hours. Timezone are dumb.
• wiredfool 8y ago
  Summer time really only matters for a few weeks of the year in the farish north of Ireland. (Coincidentally, right around now) when the sunrise and sunset are changing the fastest. We're losing 4 minutes of daylight a day now as we slam towards equinox. Middle of the summer? Sky never really gets dark. Though, with brexit over the horizon, it's conceivable that Ireland and Northern Ireland will end up on two different sides of daylight savings. Which will be all sorts of annoying.
  • albertgoeswoof 8y ago
    > it's conceivable that Ireland and Northern Ireland will end up on two different sides of daylight savings. Which will be all sorts of annoying. This won’t happen, both NI and ROI would oppose it on both the union and republican sides. It makes no sense, neither does brexit and the NI browser will stop brexit, it is an unsolvable problem.
• walrus01 8y ago
  it's certainly not the weirdest thing that has ever been done, the Chinese government has tried to enforce a single time zone across a incredibly wide range of longitude.
  • mywittyname 8y ago
    And western Chinese have their own unofficial timezone because it's an annoyance.
    • walrus01 8y ago
      Just when you thought it couldn't get any weirder, here's a copy and paste from the Wikipedia article for Chinese time zones. Currently, timezone usage within Xinjiang is roughly split along the ethnic divide, with most ethnic Han following Beijing time and most ethnic Uyghurs following Ürümqi Time.[10][unreliable source?] Some local authorities are now using both time standards side by side.[11][12] Television stations schedule programmes in different time standards according to their nature.[5] The coexistence of two timezones within the same region causes some confusion among the local population, especially when inter-racial communication occurs. When a time is mentioned in conversation between Han and Uyghur, it is necessary to either explicitly make clear whether the time is in Xinjiang Time or Beijing Time, or convert the time according to the ethnicity of the other party.[13][14][15] The double time standard is particularly observable in Xinjiang Television, which schedules its Chinese channel according to Beijing time and its Uyghur and Kazakh channels according to Xinjiang time. [16]
• geoalchimista 8y ago
  While I think moving away from daylight saving time (DST) is generally a good thing, but why EU not individual nations? Do nations under EU have no authority to determine whether they observe DST or not? In the US, the federal government does not dictate whether a state observes DST or not.
  • roel_v 8y ago
    Right,because when I go shopping in another country 1p minutes from here, I want to have to worry about what time zone they're in... Like in Queensland/NSW, that's just silly there.
    • IshKebab 8y ago
      You can't really have timezones without... being able to cross timezones. What's your point?
      • roel_v 8y ago
        That countries within the EU should be within the same timezone when they're on the same longitude, duh. Imagine West- and Southern Europe all having different choices on whether they observe DST and when it starts... Sure there are many places on Earth where it happens, but it's a major inconvenience. Hence, we need supranational coordination.
  • majewsky 8y ago
    Most of the EU's rules and laws have been lobbied for by the industry because the industry loves standardization.
    • jobigoud 8y ago
      Not sure where your comment is coming from, but who doesn't love standardization on an engineers discussion board?
    • ploika 8y ago
• egwor 8y ago
  There's a significant cost to this work. Machines have to be upgraded: OS's changed, libraries updated. They did this in Russia and it caused us a headache due to python libs that needed updating and then OS changes. etc. etc.
  • webdevetc 8y ago
    time zones change all the time. Most OS's automatically take these changes into account, I believe. ( see https://serverfault.com/questions/192858/updating-systems-olson-timezone-database-version https://serverfault.com/questions/192858/updating-systems-ol... for a bit of info, but I think it is often included in OS updates rather than having to do it manually normally.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database https://www.iana.org/time-zones https://www.iana.org/time-zones But of course there will be many legacy systems that assumes that all of Europe is on the same zone.
    • jobigoud 8y ago
      Taking the change into account for the current time is relatively easy, but date/time libraries in programming languages need to be updated so that you can write a calendar application with, say, a recurring event spanning across the change, or count days since a specific date in the past.
      • hyperpape 8y ago
        Even with DST, the actual date DST starts differs unpredictably from year to year. I don't think this introduces any new problems.
        • gsnedders 8y ago
          In the EU, the start date is predictable: the last Sunday in March. The end is equally predictable: the last Sunday in October.
          • 8y ago
• bdz 8y ago
  >given member states until April to decide if they will remain on summer or winter time Oh this will be fun. Imo every country should be in the same time zone but I can imagine say Netherlands stay in summmer, Belgium in winter, Germany in summer, Poland in winter. Sounds fun! I hope it's just a vague article and they mean member countries from the same timezone should decide together where they stay. Given there are 3 timezones in the EU it shouldn't be a big problem (or yes) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_European_Summer_Time#/media/File:Time_zones_of_Europe.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_European_Summer_Time#/...
  • pavlov 8y ago
    It’s not like EU countries are all in the same timezone now...? Presumably the big countries will coordinate and the small ones will follow suit where it makes economic sense. This is also an opportunity to fix timezone assignments that don’t work very well at the edges: for example Spain shouldn’t be on CET.
    • _ph_ 8y ago
      If you look at the map in the article, currently the largest part of the EU is in one timezone, which is increadibly convenient. It would be sad to have that split apart. Especially if that means, that the time zones are split apart in any other matter than an clear east-west sorting.
      • tener 8y ago
        Working with team with 1h time zone difference on a daily basis. Makes little difference. I guess 2h would be more noticeable but still fine. OTOH 6h difference is a real killer. You have very small window for real time communication. The fallback is email but that can be very inefficient.
      • pmontra 8y ago
        Countries in the north have long hours of light in summer and long hours of darkness in winter. Shifting time by one hour doesn't seem to make any difference, but I live in the south so I have no direct experience. We have light from about 5 AM to 10 PM in June with DST. That's very convenient. Maybe I'd go for double DST, even more convenient: people still sleep here at 6 AM. DST in winter would mean to get out in the dark at 8 AM, Scandinavia like. I don't look forward to it, but I don't look forward to darkness at 9 PM in summer and useless light at 4 AM. So I voted for keeping the current system (I lost) and for permanent DST (a useless vote because it will be decided country by country).
• hcnews 8y ago
  Nice, I hope US can do the same one day. DST changes twice a year are an unnecessary burden. I am also not too hopeful about US changing considering its federal-state model. In EU, multiple countries can agree on a decision, but US states are adept at bikeshedding and not getting anything done :(
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • kibwen 8y ago
    This is a bit needlessly cynical, because individual states already have the power to choose whether or not to observe daylight savings time. Arizona and Hawaii already don't, and there are bills in the Florida and Massachusetts legislatures to do the same. The only federal regulation that applies here is that states wouldn't have the option to choose between summer or winter time as their permanent time, as the EU states can. IOW, US states are allowed to disregard the observance of DST, but they can't change their time zone without federal congressional approval.
    • AnssiH 8y ago
      > IOW, US states are allowed to disregard the observance of DST, but they can't change their time zone without federal congressional approval. Interestingly, that seems to be the exact opposite of EU where countries can choose their own timezones but (currently) have to observe DST.
    • reaperducer 8y ago
      Arizona and Hawaii already don't And Indiana. Except for the part that's part of the Chicago market. And about a quarter of Arizona actually does change time. The Navajo Nation goes with New Mexico/Denver time.
      • zamadatix 8y ago
        Indiana started observing DST across the whole state in 2006.
• baxtr 8y ago
  Summer time is really difficult for kids in winter. How are they supposed to be awake when it’s 8:30am and still dark outside?
  • jiveturkey 8y ago
    just adjust the start time of school
  • alangpierce 8y ago
    One solution (which may or may not be reasonable) is to have a norm where individual schools/offices/stores adjust the start time a few times throughout the year as sunrise changes. DST is basically a way to force everyone to do that together. A synchronized time shift has a lot of advantages, but also is forced even on places that don't need it (some latitudes, some types of businesses), and in some cases the 1-hour shift isn't enough, so it's not clear to me which approach is better.
  • IshKebab 8y ago
    Erm, their parents can wake them up, or they have an alarm. Exactly like it already works.
    • baxtr 8y ago
      Ok, I’ll admit: difficult for parents too! ;)
  • mcv 8y ago
    My kids don't seem to care how dark it is. They can be happily awake in the middle of the night.
    • zaarn 8y ago
      Kids do care a lot. The natural biorythm is synced to sunlight hours and going to school while it's dark out could either disrupt the rythm or alternatively have kids being half asleep in school later. This also goes for adults but there is less risk that it would lead to developmental issues later on.
• djschnei 8y ago
  Yay gigantic centralized authorities!
  • ghaff 8y ago
    Right. Just do like China and make it all one timezone. ADDED: </s> in case it wasn't obvious (as was, I'm assuming, the parent).
    • djschnei 8y ago
      There are basically no downsides!
    • reaperducer 8y ago
      Yes. Because Lisbon, Portugal should be the same time as Van, Turkey when Turkey joins the EU.
      • jedmeyers 8y ago
        > when Turkey joins the EU I would bet $100 that we will see an EU member (excluding UK) leave the EU before Turkey joins.
        • louisswiss 8y ago
          Not sure about that, but I'd bet the same amount that the UK is back in the EU before Turkey joins.
        • kenneth 8y ago
          No chance we let Turkey join the EU after the mess of the last few years.
      • 13415 8y ago
        Turkey will not join the EU anytime soon because it currently doesn't have the required human rights track record and has destroyed its fragile democracy.
      • 8y ago
• reaperducer 8y ago
  I've always felt that if you can't handle changing a clock twice a year, then there's probably something fundamentally wrong with your ability to handle much more complex problems. Like deciding what's for lunch.
  • bitdivision 8y ago
    I rarely have to deal with changing a clock. The real pain is having to deal with DST and strange timezones while programming.
  • anoonmoose 8y ago
    You could say the same exact thing with regards to the time on the clock, though. Like, there's no reason that sunrise couldn't be at <arbitrary time>. If we used one worldwide timezone you'd just...wake up at different times depending on where you are instead of it BEING a different time depending on where you are.
  • ljm 8y ago
    Well, turning a dial on your wrist or pressing a few buttons is one thing, but when it comes down to code you're looking at a lot more complication than that. Knowing how to correctly handle time as a programmer is anything but trivial. It's so not-trivial we even have a database of historical changes in timezones and DSTs in order to maintain backwards compatibility for it.
  • tachyonbeam 8y ago
    Is that your argument against simplifying things? That people should be able to handle unnecessary complexity?
  • logifail 8y ago
    After years of trial and error, we've determined that the simplest way to change the clock in one of the in-built appliances in our kitchen is to kill its electrical power completely for a few minutes (by tripping the appropriate MCB in the consumer unit), then powering it back up. When the power is restored, the appliance knows it's experienced a power cut, and asks for the current time. Yes, this is completely ridiculous. No, I don't know why they designed the UI this way.
• bsimpson 8y ago
  I seriously considered taking time off a few years ago to lead a multi-state referendum to get the whole Pacific time zone to join Arizona in opting out of time changes. While researching it, I learned that you can legally either switch to PDT in the summer or remain on PST year-round, but the federal government doesn't allow a state to permanently be in PDT. So, if the western states opted out of daylight savings time changes, they'd be an hour behind Arizona year-round, which would mean earlier sunsets year-round too. I gave up when I realized the choices were either lobby the federal government to change the regulation or change the entire culture of the western US to start and end its business day earlier.
  • JoblessWonder 8y ago
    California is actually voting on it this fall. Although like you mentioned it is dependent on the federal gov allowing it: https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_7,_Permanent_Daylight_Saving_Time_Measure_(2018) https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_7,_Permanent_...
    • SCAQTony 8y ago
      People here in Southern California exercise and prefer extra sunshine. Farmers here are against the repeal as well. Even popular mechanic endorses DST as a good thing: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a18011/in-defense-of-daylight-saving-time/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a18011/...
      • btilly 8y ago
        Do you have a source for farmers liking it? Every reference that I have seen agrees with https://agamerica.com/myth-vs-fact-daylight-saving-time-farming/ https://agamerica.com/myth-vs-fact-daylight-saving-time-farm... that farmers don't like DST. In fact the original reason to introduce it was to save energy, and it doesn't do that either. I know that I will vote for the repeal.
        • 8y ago
• another-cuppa 8y ago
  The clocks changing really does mess up my sleep for a good couple of weeks every time. This year I might just ignore the change and continue operating an hour out of phase.
• noja 8y ago
  My phone updates automatically. My computer updates automatically. My alarm clock uses a time signal. Only my oven needs adjusting. If we wanted to, we could change the clocks every month.
  • RussianCow 8y ago
    My body, however, does not update automatically to a one-hour loss in time.
    • noja 8y ago
      1 hour's time difference spread over six months. We could even change it daily.
      • hannasanarion 8y ago
        And how is that better than not changing at all?
  • lucb1e 8y ago
    But we should do whatever makes things better, not just consider whatever we could do.
    • noja 8y ago
      Sure, but I've never seen it suggested, so here I am. I think adjusting time to the seasonal movement of the sun isn't a bad idea, but a twice yearly hourly jump is bad.
• southerndrift 8y ago
  It took years to prepare for the year 2000 transition. Is it really wise to make that transition within several months? There should be plenty of systems that have to be updated.
  • lucb1e 8y ago
    What was the y2k transition?
    • astrodust 8y ago
      From two digit dates like 99 to four digit dates like 1999. There was also the 2005 DST extension that screwed up everything because Windows XP didn't get a patch in time and everyone's calendars were screwed up for months.
      • lucb1e 8y ago
        Oh, it's that after all. I thought there were some timezone changes also put through in 2000 or so.
        • astrodust 8y ago
          There was a sort of rivalry in the Pacific to jockey to the front by wrangling time-zones: https://www.csmonitor.com/1999/1201/p1s4.html https://www.csmonitor.com/1999/1201/p1s4.html Other than that I don't think there was anything remarkable in play. Everyone was too busy patching systems for Y2K to deal with other issues.
  • zaarn 8y ago
    Timezone updates happen on almost a monthly basis, your computer has a file called the Timezone database which is maintained by a few volunteers. All timezone updates go through there and unless the application you wrote is written by someone who thinks they can do better than everyone involved in time-handling code so far, your application will stop using DST once the EU decides to stop using DST.
• Raphmedia 8y ago
  I have a delayed circadian rhythm. Managing to live on time is already really hard for me. Changing the clocks twice a years for me means a few weeks of jetlag every year. I wish I lived in the EU.
  • comboy 8y ago
    Just based on your observations? I'm asking because I wanted to check how mine looks like. Smartwatch heart rate doesn't seem to be a good enough measure and I have no easy way to check my core temperature every hour. So is there any scientific way to check one's own circadian rhythm at home? Preferably without stopping drinking coffee ;)
    • Raphmedia 8y ago
      At home, your best bet would be some kind of DIY Arduino / Raspberry Pi + temperature sensors.
      • comboy 8y ago
        I have enough of those at home.. in every room.. But as far as I understand it, even measuring temperature with a medical thermometer like when you do when you have a cold wouldn't be enough. You need a core body temperature. And I don't feel like inserting thermometer in my ass every hour. Installing arduino there is also not something that I'm willing to consider.
        • Raphmedia 8y ago
          I did mean personal thermometers in the expansion port, not room thermometers.
          • comboy 8y ago
            I'd rather keep it as an expulsion port.
  • 8y ago
• OliverLassen 8y ago
  I never understood why the time is not just forwarded an half hour, and then kept there. Best of the 2 worlds
  • lucb1e 8y ago
    I think having whole-hour timezone offsets is much easier. The only exception is if every nation on earth agrees and shifts by half an hour, which I very much doubt is going to happen: some countries even have regions that do or don't observe DST (such as the USA).
• encoderer 8y ago
  After the DST transition last fall I did some analysis using our dataset at Cronitor: After removing jobs that ran every hour, just a little under 20% of jobs ran twice. Most versions of Crontab handle DST changes correctly but there are a lot of ways to scheduled jobs and this will be a win for a simpler spec creating more reliable systems that are easier to reason about.
  • tzs 8y ago
    In 1984 I had a coworker who booted his Unix workstation and found that the date was Jan 1, 1970. The battery that powered the clock that kept the time when the system was off had died. He set the time to the correct time. Cron then tried to start every cron job that would have run between Jan 1, 1970 and the current date in 1984. That's about 120k instances for every hourly job, 5k instances for every daily job, 700 instances for every weekly job, and a mere 170 instances for every monthly job. That completely locked up the workstation. It was hilarious.
  • zaarn 8y ago
    My solution for that: Set all servers to UTC and use smearing NTP servers. UTC doesn't have summertime, so the clock doesn't suddenly change and the smearing NTP will prevent leap seconds from doing the same. Timezones should be accounted for in the UI, not the backend.
• jofaz 8y ago
  I have lived in Phoenix, Arizona my whole life. I didn't know what DST was until I was in high school. The entire concept feels bizarre to me. The only time I've run into confusion when coordinating a meeting with another time zone is during the DST change. Yes, this week we are two hours behind but next week it is only one, etc.
• JoblessWonder 8y ago
  FYI, California is voting on no longer changing the clocks this November. It requires the federal government to sign off on it... but it will be voted on at least: https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_7,_Permanent_Daylight_Saving_Time_Measure_(2018) https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_7,_Permanent_...
• NeoBasilisk 8y ago
  I've never understood people having significant trouble adjusting their sleep schedule by one hour twice per year. Do these people never travel? You don't fly somewhere 3-4 time zones away and stay there for a week and then come home and adjust? I barely even feel a one hour change.
  • jedberg 8y ago
    The increased incidence of both heart attacks and car accidents after each time change would indicate that yes, a lot of people have trouble with the change.
  • lucb1e 8y ago
    > You don't fly somewhere 3-4 time zones away and stay there for a week and then come home and adjust? No, never. I'm no great traveler, but across 8 countries only one of them was in a different timezone (+1h).
• User23 8y ago
  Canceling seasonal time change is a terrible idea. How do I know this with certainty? Because the experiment has already been run. https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/30/the-year-daylight-saving-time-went-too-far/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/30/the-year-daylight-sav...
  • jackjeff 8y ago
    This was a year round DST. How about having a year round correct time instead?
• skookumchuck 8y ago
  Benjamin Franklin's worst idea.
• tzs 8y ago
  Here's the fundamental problem: 1. In places far enough from the equator but not too close to the arctic or antarctic (which includes most of the US and Europe), most people want seasonal changes in when things start relative to sunrise. 2. This can be accomplished by changing the clock times of things (e.g., the office opens at 8 AM in winter and at 7 AM in summer), or by changing the clocks (the office opens at 8 AM, and we set the clocks forward an hour in summer and set them back in winter). 3. In the past, changing the clocks was definitely easier than changing the times of things. Times showed up on signs and in print. Changing all of that would be a pain. Clocks, on the other hand, are designed to be easy to change. (Signs could be dealt with by a one time change to show both summer and winter time, but it would probably still cause confusion to people around the date of the switch each year). The places with static schedule displays are somewhat diminishing now. Many places that would have once been on paper are now only on a website. Many signs are now actually easily changeable electronic displays that simply do not change often. We are getting to a point where changing the times might actually become as easy as changing clocks. But we probably aren't there yet. (On the other hand, clocks are getting easier to change, too, with them often handling it automatically now). In an earlier discussion here on this, which I got to too late to say anything that would actually be read, I proposed (mostly seriously, but a little bit in jest) a thing I pretentiously named "TZS Time" (name definitely in jest) to address the above issues, and as a side effect also put us in a position to use UTC for coordinating times between time zones while still having an approximation of local time for referring to events in our time zone. Here was the TZS Time proposal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17887952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17887952
• Reason077 8y ago
  It’s nice when the quasi-democratic corporatocratic union that gave us the cookie laws, the link tax, upload filters, and dieselgate does something useful that will actually improve and simplify many people’s lives. Well done EU!
  • komali2 8y ago
    Not a fan of GDPR, I'm assuming? Or wait, is that what you meant by cookie laws?
    • Reason077 8y ago
      I do support many of the data protection principles of the GDPR but not the pop-up requirements for consenting to very ordinary and reasonable uses of (typically anonymous) data. The cookie law predates the GDPR and requires pop-ups to consent to cookie setting, something which duplicates browser functionality and is just really silly and annoying.
      • zaarn 8y ago
        No and No. Anonymous data doesn't require consent and neither do some reasonable uses (ie, shopping carts that work via cookie don't need consent). This has been the case for the "Cookie Law" in the past and now for the GDPR.
  • orf 8y ago
    The EU does a lot to improve peoples lives. You can see the 2018 state of the union here[1]. I particularly like the fact they got rid of all roaming charges, the digital market changes, the digital skills coalition, 30% renewable energy target (especially) and the EU labour authority. Sure, they do some seemingly silly things, but at their scale anyone would. 1. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/soteu2018-brochure_en.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/s...
• pvorb 8y ago
  So let's also switch to the International Fixed Calendar and make it dead simple to reason about time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
• andrepd 8y ago
  I know this is against the bandwagon but still: it was just fine the way it was. Changing the clocks (that is, society's timetable) to match the suntime is a good idea. And countries should absolutely have the freedom to choose what suits them best. Now we're going to have to pick either summer time or winter time, to be on all year. Pick the latter? Bye-bye awesome summer afternoons with the sun setting down at 8:30. Pick the former? Say hello to waking up in darkness with the sun rising at 9 during winter.
  • krupan 8y ago
    "Changing the clocks (that is, society's timetable) to match the suntime is a good idea" Except that's not what we do. The sun doesn't shift rise and set times by an hour on two magic days of the year. You know this right?
    • ipqk 8y ago
      There's a lot of unused sunlight hours in the morning in the summer, so we change our clocks to make use of it. That's how we "match the suntime".
      • incompatible 8y ago
        Or just get up earlier.
        • amanzi 8y ago
          Getting up earlier is definitely an option but you can't make the most of the time if schools and workplaces are still on fixed times.
    • davemp 8y ago
      Of course. It’s called an approximation—I’m sure you know this though. Being a pedant doesn’t lead to interesting and/or productive conversations.
• kenv5 8y ago
  This is going to be terrible to program against
  • insulanian 8y ago
    Why?
• _cerv 8y ago
  I might be one of a dozen people who enjoys a good 4pm winter sunset or a 10pm summer twilight in Seattle.
• coding123 8y ago
  It's funny - we have time, which is this uniform stream of numbers that is ever changing. Then we have the time of day, which is a function that takes the current "time" and formats it for different areas in the world. And instead of placing laws around how the flow of time works, we place laws on how people are allowed to render it and display it.
• bcheung 8y ago
  This is great news for simplicity. I hope that we can eventually just all use UTC. > asked the President and Congress to pass an act that would allow California to adopt year-round DST The states need to ask permission for that? What ever happened to "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
  • conception 8y ago
    That died pretty quick https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCulloch_v._Maryland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCulloch_v._Maryland
  • Lxr 8y ago
    Everyone using UTC would be chaos. Imagine organising a remote meeting - you’d have to figure out which hours each party would be awake, by googling “waking hours in Germany” for example.
    • anticensor 8y ago
      And you just reinvented timezones yet informally.
• martimarkov 8y ago
  It’s stupid to allow countries to select their own zone. If you are enforcing this you might as well just say you are stuck in UTC+1/2/3 and that’s that. You shouldn’t have Bulgaria and Greece be in different time zones. Or am I missing a reason why that would make sense?
  • glibgil 8y ago
    > Bulc said EU member states would have until April 2019 to decide whether they would permanently remain on summer or winter time > "In order to maintain a harmonised approach we are encouraging consultations at national levels to ensure a coordinated approach of all member states," Bulc said. Why pick a fight before even knowing what every country wants? Maybe they all want winter time or they all want summer time. It sounds like they are talking about that now
    • martimarkov 8y ago
      Aaah wait... I might have misread/misunderstood. So all countries will be in either summer or winter time? Then that makes sense. My bad. I thought each one can individually choose which seemed like a bad choice.
• trumped 8y ago
  next thing you know, they'll drop the penny.
• DonHopkins 8y ago
  Hurray! I'm going to have a Daylight Saming Time party on that day, and there will be no excuse for arriving an hour late or early.
• edoo 8y ago
  Let's just get the world to UTC already.
• elihu 8y ago
  My first thought reading this article was: "I can't believe the EU uses daylight savings time. I thought the US was the only country that would ever go along with that kind of nonsense." Then I read this part: > The practice, which was used as a means to conserve energy during the World Wars as well as the oil crises of the 1970s, became law across the bloc in 1996. > All EU countries are required to move forward by an hour on the last Sunday of March and back by an hour on the final Sunday in October. ...and my second thought is: "wow, the EU members must give a lot more control to their central government, in the US the states do whatever they want with their timezones and would scoff at that kind of micromanagement." Now, you're saying that the states actually are substantially constrained by federal regulation and I am much less optimistic than I was about our current mechanisms of government and democracy when it comes to dealing with timezone policy.
  • ThJ 8y ago
    I don't see how this is different from what the United States federal government attempted with the Metric system back in the 1970s. Granted, the effort failed, but more due to cultural inertia than due to any resistance from the states, as far as I'm aware of. It makes sense for a trade bloc to maintain the same changeover dates for timezones, while leaving the timezone offsets up to each country, because this makes timezone conversions predictable, which I imagine is handy whenever cross-border scheduling is needed. You could call it micromanagement, but do remember that the member states vote over these things, so it's not like they didn't have a chance to reject it. One thing to remember about the EU is that anything that can be implemented at a higher administrative level is something that you, the government of the member state, are no longer responsible for. If you need to implement an unpopular but necessary measure, all you have to do is get the bigger member states to go along with it, and presto, you can wash your hands of it, with responsibility diluted across the Brussels bureaucracy and no one in particular to blame.
    • KayEss 8y ago
      And then some idiots do a referendum and the state ends up voting itself out of the union?
  • 8y ago
• flingo 8y ago
  That site has Ireland's time zone wrong. It's actually GMT+1 with DST in the winter. In computing, it actually matters.
• Proven 8y ago
  You know it's hopeless when even determined central planners from the EU are tapping out on this
• jbhatab 8y ago
  I'm so confused why everyone is against DST. It is such a benefit to all of my friends who live on farms and do physical labor.
• zmmmmm 8y ago
  I find the passion on this topic really weird. Yes, it's a minor annoyance twice a year. On the scale of annoyances I have to deal with, it doesn't rate in the top thousand. The traffic every single day, the late trains, random bad weather when I'm not expecting it.... are all significantly more annoying. And for the price of that inconvenience I get an extra hour after work where I can enjoy the outdoors during summer for a whole 6 months of the year. Gardening, dining outside, going for walks, playing sport etc. I can get people find it a little annoying and even disagree with it ... but I am perplexed by how passionate people seem to be about it.
• dionna767675 8y ago
  Are you wanting a change in life are you making the money you dream of do you work more then you have free time do you have alot of money leftover after you pay all of your bills if not this company will show you how to build a residual income that will grow bigger over time why get the same amount of paycheck every payday then pay all of your bills then end up with the same amount of money in your pocket you had last payday then turn around and do it again again and again over and over it's time to get out of that circle thats not taking you nowhere in life this is a real legitimate company that have members all over the world for more information click below https://businessschoollearninghowtorunabusiness.wordpress.com/2018/09/12/work-online-join-for-free-get-paid-weekly-commission/ https://businessschoollearninghowtorunabusiness.wordpress.co...
• Solar19 8y ago
  Why is being an hour behind Arizona a negative? Pacific Time is already an hour behind AZ/Mountain Time during the winter, when you're off DST. California has always been in a different time zone than AZ. As an Arizonan, I like that we don't have to change our clocks. DST doesn't make sense for us – we don't need more hours of sunlight. DST leads to subtle bugs. On Android, Google Calendar changes the times of events/appointments of Arizona users when DST starts. It's insane, and they've been doing it for years. They've screwed up so many schedules that I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action suit.
• achalkley 8y ago
  First they ban memes. Now the ban changing clocks. What happens if I travel from Spain to Italy. I'd still need to change my clock.
• openloop 8y ago
  Good riddance.
• mikejb 8y ago
  I wonder how long it will take people to complain that it gets dark too soon in summer/it's too dark in the morning in winter. I understand the frustration and inconveniences that occur with the time changes, but I worry that people voted based on the downsides of the status quo without considering the downsides of the alternatives.
  • lolikoisuru 8y ago
    >In the past, academic computer science was useless but practical programmers were good. At least here in Finland I doubt anyone will even notice the difference.
    • mikejb 8y ago
      Not sure whether that reply is aimed at the right parent; if I'm wrong, can you elaborate?
• mrb 8y ago
  After the EU does this, 90%+ of the world population will have abandoned DST changes. The only holdouts will be North America, a few Middle Eastern & African countries, some Brazilian provinces, and 4-5 other small countries or provinces. Sounds like a repeat of the Imperial vs Metric system divide. Why does the USA always have to be the odd major modern country using obsolete customs? Is there a cultural explanation?
  • purpleidea 8y ago
    > Is there a cultural explanation? Yes they're lacking in culture. :P Seriously though, I think culturally they think whatever they're doing must be "the best", irregardless of whatever the rest of the world thinks. And it caused NASA disasters too!
    • lloeki 8y ago
      > they think whatever they're doing must be "the best", irregardless of what <others> think The word that comes to my mind is "arrogance". Is there a better fitting word? (Honest question, not a native speaker)
      • phds 8y ago
        As a fellow non north american, that seems quite fitting.
      • afroisalreadyin 8y ago
        I think the proper academic term for it is "American exceptionalism"
        • kmano8 8y ago
          Even American chauvinism.
    • shrimp_emoji 8y ago
      >I think culturally they think whatever they're doing must be "the best", irregardless of whatever the rest of the world thinks. Funny, one could say the same about Europeans. And it'd be an equally sweeping and divisive claim.
• enz 8y ago
  So, we have to make sure we update our datetime librairies, right?
• blendo 8y ago
  If we stayed on a single time zone, my life would be easier. First, I wouldn't have to avoid starting starting a cron/scheduled job between 1am and 3am -- once a year a 2:30am job may not run, when we skip from 2am to 3am, and once a year a 1:30am job may run twice, when we skip back from 2am to 1am. Your operating system may vary.) Second, most of the world's database date/time fields are in local time. I hate seeing event volumes double for the fall-back hour, and drop to zero for the spring-forward hour. TL;DR: date code sucks.
• FrankyHollywood 8y ago
  I never understood why this is such a binary discussion, either wintertime, or +1 hour for summer. Why not settle right in the middle, +0.5 hour = EU time :)
  • anticensor 8y ago
    These should have been new timezones: UTC: UK, Faroese, Ireland, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal, Iceland UTC+40' (Hamburg time): Corsica, Germany, Switzerland, Italy (Rome and west), Norway UTC+1h (Görlitz time): Austria, Slovenia, Czechia, Croatia, Italy (east of Rome) UTC+1h 20' (Krakow time): Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Montenegro, Albania, Sweden UTC+1h 40' (Braşov time): Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Finland, Estonia UTC+2h: Belarus, Turkey (west of Ankara) UTC+2h 30': Turkey (Ankara and east), Cyprus, Ukraine More timezones but not needing daylight saving.
• AceyMan 8y ago
  Well, isn't this something. Lots to consider (and I'm behind on all the comments atm.) I worked in aviation operations for a number of years (prior profession) and lived and breathed UTC. I wrote this then, so it's ... from last century. (Not in the wayback machine anywhere. I had to dig it back up.) >>>THE UNIVERSAL CLOCK : EXPLAINED by The AceyMan Most anyone who can read a language (as you are doing now) is familiar with 'time' and 'timekeeping'. This short essay hopes to explain the concept of non-local, or universal time, and promote its standardization. Until 1993, the clock that was set as a reference for all local time zones was kept in the United Kingdom. Due to its position at the Greenwich meridian, it was refered to as 'Greenwich Mean Time', or GMT. This clock was the world standard for all time zones, and never changes, ie, no savings time, no adjustments, except for accuracy. It is _defined_ as the world standard for time. So, when a nation or geographical area decides what local time is, they still must have a reference to set it against. (Time is relative, remember). GMT is that standard. For example, in the eastern United States, local (non-daylight) time is 5 hours behind GMT. That is to say, if GMT is 1800 hours (and yes, it uses a 24 hour, or 'military' clock), then US eastern time would be 1300 hours, ie, 1800-500=1300 or 1:00 pm. Now the confusion with local time occurs mainly when either of two things happens. First, when a person moves from time zone to timezone frequently and must make constant calculations to determine what time it 'really' is, or how long he's been awake, driving, burning fuel, running his computer, accruing hours, charging his customers, or any various other important numbers. This is frequent in transportation, especially aviation, where many time zones may be traversed in a short period. Second, when one is working with a worldwide communications system and may be talking with persons outside of your local timezone, sometimes FAR OUTSIDE your local time zone. In this case, GMT is especially useful, because by referring to GMT, one can still know what time that person is referring to, without asking where he is. For example, if you know what GMT is, and I know what GMT is, and I say, "I have to leave to go to a meeting at 1400 GMT", then the other person knows when that person will be leaving. S/he won’t have to ask "well, what's your local time now, so I can figure out how long it is before you go". GMT spares all parties from such time-consuming calculations. GMT should, and this author hopes WILL BE the clock for the world in the near future, as it should be. We owe the widespread use of global communications, particularly the Internet, for this expectation. ### I stand by most of that now (but I would do at least one rewrite says older me, heh). Doing time sums and differences on the fly across multiple time zones is loco. For both fuel and personnel planning. It's not just weather reports and ETD/ETA times. We are crunching time ALL time in air ops, and you have to have a pinned baseline. I think the time has long past to go unified. Then the only question you have to ask someone is "What's your UTC offset?" E.g., in your .plan file or S4B header text. Problem handled. /Acey [edit: unix errata]
• vectorEQ 8y ago
  about TIME
• FullMetalBitch 8y ago
  And another problem to solve in Spain, I bet you all they haven't reached an agreement by April.
• bayesian_horse 8y ago
  Programmers, rejoice!
• kabacha 8y ago
  Can we move to UTC exclusively next please? Enough with vague abbreviations only people who use them understand like EET, PST and whatnot. "I live in UTC+2 and you live int UTC-5, meeting at 15:00UTC?" ain't that easier? I add 2 hours, you take away 5 - math a 6 year old can do. And yet we refer to timezones with some made up meaningless words like Easter European Time - what does that even mean? It's not even accurate description as not all Eastern Europe follows it - pure madness.
  • lloeki 8y ago
    > Can we move to UTC exclusively next please Your phrasing was ambiguous. For a moment I thought you meant https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish. Still, you can't remove the past, and since the names carrying disambiguating meaning (notably DST changes, is UTC+01:00 CET or BST?) even if you remove them for the future the past still exists so you still have to handle them.
    • kabacha 8y ago
      UTC is explicit, you don't need to know anything than your local number. With current system you need to learn what all of these dumb abbreviations mean and their relations to your dumb abbreviation - it's pure madness and I just can't fanthom how this even came to existance when we had GMT since 1884.
  • gadders 8y ago
    Can we go back to calling it GMT as well?
    • dijit 8y ago
      UTC and GMT are similar but not the same. GMT does not observe leap seconds for instance.
      • gadders 8y ago
        TIL GMT != UTC
• zyngaro 8y ago
  what a relief ! At long last ! Thank you EU. This should help a lot of people including me sleeping better !
• elwesties 8y ago
  I am truely astounded by the support to abandon DST. I absolutely love being able to come home and play with my daughter at the beach before it gets dark in summer those are the best times of my life. That extra hour of light is incredible.
  • century19 8y ago
    You can still start work earlier, or your kids can start school earlier. Workplaces plus schools could have winter timetable.
  • rtpg 8y ago
    During this member states could decide to stick to year long summer time. It’s not like winter time is very useful and “noon = sun above head” is not a really useful property of time at this point
  • lower 8y ago
    In the survey, most people said that they want to keep summer time all year. In Germany, this is what is currently favoured.
• fuzzbuzz 8y ago
  I dont really think this is a good idea. It boils down to when do you want the sun to be up? 4 in the morgning to 21 in the night, or 5 in the morning and 22 in the night? Since the majority of the people like to be up later at night than waking up early, it is better for everyone to turn the clock one hour. Its better for people. Its wellfare. The clock is turning an hour automaticly any way. Its not a big deal for the clocks, but it is a big deal for the poeple seeing less day light.
  • akerro 8y ago
    There was a survey from EU https://ec.europa.eu/info/consultations/2018-summertime-arrangements_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/consultations/2018-summertime-arra... and afair over 80% people voted for ending the DST https://uk.blastingnews.com/world/2018/08/eu-to-propose-ending-daylight-saving-time-after-public-survey-002701193.html https://uk.blastingnews.com/world/2018/08/eu-to-propose-endi...
    • fuzzbuzz 8y ago
      Well, I still think DTS is a good thing.
  • matteuan 8y ago
    Whether is better or not is debatable. Indeed, there are studies that show daylight saving has negative effects on human health. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#Health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#Health
    • fuzzbuzz 8y ago
      Thanks. A nice read. A pleuthora of pros and cons. No quantitative messure of what is best though.
• ako 8y ago
  I don’t understand the reasoning behind getting rid of DST. Why do people find it easier to change office and school times, than to change sleeping times? Why not sleep from 11-7 in winter, and 10-6 in summer. If you do this, there’s no sleep impact due to DST. If you can’t make this adjustment, changing office hours will also be impossible.
  • jeltz 8y ago
    As a Scandinavian DST gives me little benefits, we have to cope with the huge difference between winter and summer anyway, so having to learn how to handle a sudden jump in time too is just annoying. Maybe DST is worth the hassle for people in the US and Southern Europe, but as a Scandinavian I am happy it is will be gone.
• prerok 8y ago
  I always thought that DST is unnecessary and did not really understand the rationale behind it. I mean, sure, in 1916 it might have made sense to conserve those cca. 3% in home electricity consumption. Today, however, spending more time at home in the heat may introduce additional costs through higher use of air condition. I guess wikipedia's article on DST rationale can explain better than I can :) That said, doing away with DST is IMO not necessary. People are already used to it and there is little confusion, even if people have to be reminded each year. How the benefits compare to the drawbacks I cannot judge, there are different arguments either way. But... The way the EU decided to approach this is worse. Every country will be able to decide whether they want to keep summer time or they want the "normal" time? I think that's another example where the compromise just destroys every benefit of the proposal. I live in a small country where a lot of our businesses work with neighbouring countries. There is even a significant percentage of people that live here but go to work to another country. So, the kids' kindergarten will use a different time than your workplace? I think this will create much more confusion and stress if the different countries choose different times than the problems we have now with the switching. I guess there are countries that have this problem already (if the neighbouring country is in a different time zone) but still we may introduce the problem to places that did not have it before.
  • timjver 8y ago
    >but still we may introduce the problem to places that did not have it before. And perhaps in some places this will cause the problem to disappear. I think it will be fine.
  • asenk 8y ago
    I don't think that's a highly informed comment. As far as I'm aware choosing time zones has always been a member state decision, where as clock time changes have been regulated by EU in order to be uniform. Nothing changes in regards to time zone regulation. It's just a political expression to say that you can choose to be in "summer time". In reality there's no such thing as permanent summer time. The reason why it's politically expressed this way is because there is a strong majority consensus that summer time probably isn't useful, but there's isn't one about which time zone should be used. So expressing it this way makes it easier for the politicians.
• _nalply 8y ago
  Probably Switzerland will follow. The head of the federal institute of metrology declared in a newspaper that there are good reasons to avoid time differences to neighbouring countries. It will be more difficult to organise traffic (for example railroad traffic).
• xnomad 8y ago
  This is just like the Brexit vote. The populous doesn't know what they are voting for. When they realise all that daylight at 4:30 AM is wasted while they are sleeping it will be too late. As others have mentioned a lot of the DST opponents are confused and actually hate the switch from DST to standard time. I love DST I look forward too it every year.
  • StavrosK 8y ago
    That's why nearly everyone voted to keep DST year-round. Given that, I don't understand what you're trying to say.
• CalRobert 8y ago
  If europe goes to all dst it means we won't have the 9AM California/5 pm London meeting time. It'll probably go 8/5 or 9/6 half the year. Not looking forward to it.
• Td5g 8y ago
  UTC everywhere. No dst, no timezones.
  • bad_user 8y ago
    That is impossible. UTC also implies ... Earth and its rotation ;-)
• nomercy400 8y ago
  One year to change/update all computer systems dealing with time! Have they gone mad? I'd expected at least a few years before this would be implemented, so that society could adjust to this. Actually, 5-6 months, because EU countries can decide to delay the decision until April.
  • hugg 8y ago
    It's a conspiracy to get consultants contracts!
• yAnonymous 8y ago
  The EU should introduce a law that requires the sun to adjust to our time, not the other way around. Considering the technical expertise of the parliament members, I'd fully expect it to pass.
• beerlord 8y ago
  I hope that nightclubs and parties recalibrate their hours. Now that we have lost an hour of daylight in Summer, we will have to wake up and go to work earlier manually.
• hmf 8y ago
  There was the EU wide poll wether or not to keep DST. Roughly 80% voted in favor of abandoning DST. Can someone enlighten me what happened just now and what will happen next? EU Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc made some announcement, but did the commission vote/decide on the matter just now? (If not, what is the news in the article?) What are the next steps?
• flatfilefan 8y ago
  Interesting enough Russia adopted DST changes following Europe in 1981-4 (then as USSR) and finally dropped it in 2014. Looks like a data point for DST efficiency study. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Russia
• botverse 8y ago
  I think this is a step in the good direction, but I think getting rid of the time zones altogether is the right thing to do[0]. [0] https://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-forget-the-daylight-savings-time-debate-we-need-to-get-rid-of-time-zones-altogether https://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-forget-the-day...
• hnal943 8y ago
  Finally some good news out of the EU