7 ms·

DST as we have it seems suited to a world that still has a third of the population working outside in the fields. A world where work start time and sunrise were

DST as we have it seems suited to a world that still has a third of the population working outside in the fields. A world where work start time and sunrise were inextricably linked. Most people would be far better served by our timezones sticking with summer time year round so we can have brighter evenings. I'm far enough north that one of my commutes will be in darkness, by skewing it to the morning one when it's around the equinox I am guaranteed no daylight in personal time: I'm either commuting, in a permanently illuminated office, or at home -- in winter darkness. I would be far happier with more evening light.

pkulak 7y ago
It's pretty unhealthy to wake up in the dark. And schools generally let out in the early afternoon, so summer time would just send kids to school in the dark for the winter.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  If you're at far enough north latitudes you don't have much of a choice; daylight isn't long enough in winter and there's not enough of it to go around to all times when you'd want it. Optimizing for daylight in the morning when the earliest risers are waking, at the expense of having it go dark soon after lunchtime, isn't a great trade-off.
  - jerf 7y ago
    To put some concrete numbers around that, by meaningless cosmic coincidence, it happens that around the 45 latitude line, the summer/winter oscillation occurs at nearly exactly 1/3rd and 2/3rds, that is, in winter you get 8 hours of daylight and 16 of darkness, and in summer you get 16 hours of daylight and 8 hours of darkness. The 45th runs through the northern United States, putting nearly all of Canada in an even more extreme environment, and runs through the middle of Western Europe and the southern part of Eastern Europe. So it's a very significant portion of the northern hemisphere that is subject to these conditions, both by geography and by population centers. So, it's not just a few stragglers at the poles or something; it's a major chunk of civilization. As it happens, not much of the land mass of the southern hemisphere is south of 45S. See https://www.mapsofindia.com/worldmap/latitude-longitude.html https://www.mapsofindia.com/worldmap/latitude-longitude.html , for instance.
    - akhosravian 7y ago
      Combined population of Europe and Canada is under 600 million. While it’s certainly a large part of this website’s audience, I think it is a stretch to call it a “major chunk of civilization”.
      - perl4ever 7y ago
        It's closer to 800 million, and "major" doesn't mean "majority".
  - pkulak 7y ago
    > earliest risers are waking I don't think there's any reason to turn this into an us vs them thing. Where I live, at only about 45 degrees, permanent DST would have the sun rising at 8:50 in the dead of winter. I don't think I've ever known anyone who wakes later than that.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      At some point places far enough north are just going to have to adjust hourly schedules by the season anyway. Daylight vs standard time doesn't fix it.
    - dasil003 7y ago
      Isn’t that because you live very far west in your time zone (eg. Bordeaux)? In the true center of a time zone at the 45th parallel I’d expect 0800-1600 daylight on the winter solstice.
    - balfirevic 7y ago
      > I don't think I've ever known anyone who wakes later than that. There are a lot of us. And considering all of the ways society makes life harder for night owls (including being incredulous that we even exist, as shown here), I'm surprised permanent DST is even on the table. But I'll take it.
      - dtech 7y ago
        Ayep, somehow you're lazy if you prefer sleeping at 2AM and waking at 10AM, and hardworking if you prefer sleeping at 10PM and waking at 6AM.
      - bungle 7y ago
        I am a night owl, and permanent DST is worse. I would not like that. Usually for us, night owls, it is hard to switch from standard time to dst as we need to wake up one hour earlier. The early riser society is already against us. On winter time, because of all the darkness at north (I live in Finland), it would be hard to get up as the sun is not helping. Standard time during winters at least helps a bit as you can wake up with some sun light. Sure the downside is that it is dark after work. But for me it would be dark, no matter what. I am not leaving my work at 2pm to enjoy the light, which is gone at 4pm. On summer it is never dark, so you can jog at 2am just fine.
  - bonzini 7y ago
    You do not have to be that far north. In Italy, which is pretty much the optimal latitude for DST and also very close to the "right" longitude for its time zone, the sun rises around 8am in the winter, which would be 9am with year-round DST. Schools start between 8am and 8:30am (the latter for elementary school), which would be dark.
    - saghm 7y ago
      Not to try to take this conversation off-topic, but there are some reasonable arguments for starting schools later too; it's not like the time schools starts is immutable and we have to design our time system around that
- tolmasky 7y ago
  IIRC the flip side is we waste a lot of energy by allocating the hour of sunlight to the morning where many people are still asleep vs. the afternoon when almost everyone is awake and thus needs to turn on lights and heat.
  - pkulak 7y ago
    Maybe a long time ago when lights actually used a lot of energy. For me, it's all about the heat. And if my family gets up in the dark, when it's coldest, and the heat pump turns on, that's probably my biggest energy draw of the day. If I can wait just an hour for the sun to come up and the air to become even a few degrees warmer, my heat pump just became a lot more efficient.
    - jimmaswell 7y ago
      The heating system is on all day, is it not? Why does the clock make a difference? I guess if you have no pets you might turn it down while you're not home but it still has to stay on some to keep the pipes from freezing.
      - MereInterest 7y ago
        During the night, most people are under blankets, and so the temperature doesn't need to be as high. If people wake up earlier in the morning, it is colder when they get out of bed. They then turn up the thermostat in the morning, and never turn it back down as the day goes on. When Indiana implemented DST in 2006, power consumption increased by ~1%. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-daylight-saving-times-save-energy/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-daylight-sav...
      - taeric 7y ago
        I think the point is few places need heat as much during the day as they do at night. Do they? Just look at the daily high/low. The low is at night. This would be a neat graphic. What does this do to the average temperature morning and evening.
eMSF 7y ago
Why don't you go to work an hour earlier? Now, of course not everybody gets to choose their working hours; but chances are, with the loss of productivity in the early and dark winter mornings, those that don't get to choose get their shifts moved an hour later, negating any supposed benefit. Some people take for granted that they can wake up and function in pitch black just as well, despite never having tried that. Where I'm from, if it were permanent DST year around, at the end of this month the sun wouldn't rise until 10 in the morning - and I'm as close to the equator you can get in this country! (Now of course it's not pitch black right until the sunrise, but if the sun rises at 10, it is pitch black at 8).
- rectang 7y ago
  > Why don't you go to work an hour earlier? Because I can't. The companies I've worked for have all scheduled required hours according to common business hours. > Now, of course not everybody gets to choose their working hours Only a tiny fraction of the population gets to set their own hours.
  - eMSF 7y ago
    >Only a tiny fraction of the population gets to set their own hours. Well, yes. I was thinking more of flextime. From what I've seen, relatively few people come in as early as possible, even though statistically speaking they should be 50-50 on the DST issue (and favour more daylight after working hours).
    - shantly 7y ago
      K-12 school start times don’t flex. Before-care and dropping off early at daycare cost money.
  - _ph_ 7y ago
    But common business hours are set, as the name says, by the common business. And many things in our day to day life in the end are determined by the sun. So if there is a permanent offset in the wall clock, business hours are going to shift to compensate. So changing the time zone might have a short-term impact, but long-term, will be compensated away. Most people have difficulties to raise in the dark, so the day to day schedule will be adjusted so that they have to raise in the dark only for a short part in the year, like 2 months. A time setting which would mean to get up in the dark for 4+ months is going to trigger a compensation. And of course, as a consequence, French people do many things "later" than in Germany, be it work, lunch or dinner times.
dsego 7y ago
Back in communist time people used to work 7-15h, or even 6-14h. Why not just return to that? Then you have the whole afternoon again. Here 8-16h is still considered the norm, but looks like we're importing the american 9-5pm, not sure why.
- baq 7y ago
  It’s more about when school opens and closes and not business hours.
  - labawi 7y ago
    Either way. Personally, I find it silly that we should change out time keeping because we do things at x o'clock. If the causes of our schedule don't change, over time we will drift back to the same thing only with a different digit on the clock. Then, I guess we can repeat the shifting excercise.
  - _ph_ 7y ago
    And schools open at the earliest time they can expect the pupils to be awake. And that is mostly determined by sunrise.
    - baq 7y ago
      if only. where I live, school opens at the earliest time teachers and parents can be awake due to schools not being big enough to accommodate the amount of pupils, children be damned.
      - dsego 7y ago
        My primary school had morning and afternoon shifts rotating every week.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      Well, I believe the way it is commonly done in some places is that the openings are staggered so they can run the buses three times. So whether the sun is up depends on which grade you are in.
BeetleB 7y ago
> DST as we have it seems suited to a world that still has a third of the population working outside in the fields. A world where work start time and sunrise were inextricably linked. I think this origin of DST has been debunked, and it doesn't even make sense. If it were to suit those who worked in the fields, then we would have DST in winter when the sun sets early (4pm here)! Where I live (heavy farming community), the sun sets at 9pm in summer. Without daylight time it would set at 8pm. A lot of restaurants/businesses close at 9pm. Working the fields till sunset means you don't get to go enjoy your time anywhere after work. Furthermore, if your work is linked to sunrise and sunset, then having daylight or not is relatively irrelevant. You'll follow the sun no matter what your watch is telling you the time is.
- jandrese 7y ago
  Cattle don't care about DST. The only thing it dies for farmers is screw up their delivery schedule.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Around the equinox sunrise is probably around 8:30-9am here, sunset around 3:30-4pm. Twilight I guess an hour each way. That makes sense when you need daylight to work - which is back when far more worked outside. Core business hours and timezones seem to fit around that minimum daylight. It makes a lot less sense to tie daylight hours, when they are in short supply, to the time now most of us are in permanently illuminated offices and factories.
  - elf25 7y ago
    the number on the clock when the sun rises carries no meaning or purpose.
  - cpcallen 7y ago
    > Around the equinox Solstice, surely? At the equinox the sun should rise and set at the same hour (on a 12-hour clock).
- reaperducer 7y ago
chrisseaton 7y ago
> when it's around the equinox I am guaranteed no daylight in personal time Do you not get a weekend?
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Do we really need the HN pedantry of specifying every nth detail like "on working days" in a sentence when I am talking of working practice? That should be enough to imply work days. :)
perl4ever 7y ago
"DST as we have it seems suited to a world that still has a third of the population working outside in the fields. A world where work start time and sunrise were inextricably linked." I don't get it. If sunrise is what matters, DST is irrelevant. As someone said, the cows don't consult the clock when they need milking.

pkulak 7y ago

It's pretty unhealthy to wake up in the dark. And schools generally let out in the early afternoon, so summer time would just send kids to school in the dark for the winter.

CydeWeys 7y ago
If you're at far enough north latitudes you don't have much of a choice; daylight isn't long enough in winter and there's not enough of it to go around to all times when you'd want it. Optimizing for daylight in the morning when the earliest risers are waking, at the expense of having it go dark soon after lunchtime, isn't a great trade-off.
- jerf 7y ago
  To put some concrete numbers around that, by meaningless cosmic coincidence, it happens that around the 45 latitude line, the summer/winter oscillation occurs at nearly exactly 1/3rd and 2/3rds, that is, in winter you get 8 hours of daylight and 16 of darkness, and in summer you get 16 hours of daylight and 8 hours of darkness. The 45th runs through the northern United States, putting nearly all of Canada in an even more extreme environment, and runs through the middle of Western Europe and the southern part of Eastern Europe. So it's a very significant portion of the northern hemisphere that is subject to these conditions, both by geography and by population centers. So, it's not just a few stragglers at the poles or something; it's a major chunk of civilization. As it happens, not much of the land mass of the southern hemisphere is south of 45S. See https://www.mapsofindia.com/worldmap/latitude-longitude.html https://www.mapsofindia.com/worldmap/latitude-longitude.html , for instance.
  - akhosravian 7y ago
    Combined population of Europe and Canada is under 600 million. While it’s certainly a large part of this website’s audience, I think it is a stretch to call it a “major chunk of civilization”.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      It's closer to 800 million, and "major" doesn't mean "majority".
- pkulak 7y ago
  > earliest risers are waking I don't think there's any reason to turn this into an us vs them thing. Where I live, at only about 45 degrees, permanent DST would have the sun rising at 8:50 in the dead of winter. I don't think I've ever known anyone who wakes later than that.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    At some point places far enough north are just going to have to adjust hourly schedules by the season anyway. Daylight vs standard time doesn't fix it.
  - dasil003 7y ago
    Isn’t that because you live very far west in your time zone (eg. Bordeaux)? In the true center of a time zone at the 45th parallel I’d expect 0800-1600 daylight on the winter solstice.
  - balfirevic 7y ago
    > I don't think I've ever known anyone who wakes later than that. There are a lot of us. And considering all of the ways society makes life harder for night owls (including being incredulous that we even exist, as shown here), I'm surprised permanent DST is even on the table. But I'll take it.
    - dtech 7y ago
      Ayep, somehow you're lazy if you prefer sleeping at 2AM and waking at 10AM, and hardworking if you prefer sleeping at 10PM and waking at 6AM.
    - bungle 7y ago
      I am a night owl, and permanent DST is worse. I would not like that. Usually for us, night owls, it is hard to switch from standard time to dst as we need to wake up one hour earlier. The early riser society is already against us. On winter time, because of all the darkness at north (I live in Finland), it would be hard to get up as the sun is not helping. Standard time during winters at least helps a bit as you can wake up with some sun light. Sure the downside is that it is dark after work. But for me it would be dark, no matter what. I am not leaving my work at 2pm to enjoy the light, which is gone at 4pm. On summer it is never dark, so you can jog at 2am just fine.
- bonzini 7y ago
  You do not have to be that far north. In Italy, which is pretty much the optimal latitude for DST and also very close to the "right" longitude for its time zone, the sun rises around 8am in the winter, which would be 9am with year-round DST. Schools start between 8am and 8:30am (the latter for elementary school), which would be dark.
  - saghm 7y ago
    Not to try to take this conversation off-topic, but there are some reasonable arguments for starting schools later too; it's not like the time schools starts is immutable and we have to design our time system around that
tolmasky 7y ago
IIRC the flip side is we waste a lot of energy by allocating the hour of sunlight to the morning where many people are still asleep vs. the afternoon when almost everyone is awake and thus needs to turn on lights and heat.
- pkulak 7y ago
  Maybe a long time ago when lights actually used a lot of energy. For me, it's all about the heat. And if my family gets up in the dark, when it's coldest, and the heat pump turns on, that's probably my biggest energy draw of the day. If I can wait just an hour for the sun to come up and the air to become even a few degrees warmer, my heat pump just became a lot more efficient.
  - jimmaswell 7y ago
    The heating system is on all day, is it not? Why does the clock make a difference? I guess if you have no pets you might turn it down while you're not home but it still has to stay on some to keep the pipes from freezing.
    - MereInterest 7y ago
      During the night, most people are under blankets, and so the temperature doesn't need to be as high. If people wake up earlier in the morning, it is colder when they get out of bed. They then turn up the thermostat in the morning, and never turn it back down as the day goes on. When Indiana implemented DST in 2006, power consumption increased by ~1%. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-daylight-saving-times-save-energy/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-daylight-sav...
    - taeric 7y ago
      I think the point is few places need heat as much during the day as they do at night. Do they? Just look at the daily high/low. The low is at night. This would be a neat graphic. What does this do to the average temperature morning and evening.

eMSF 7y ago

Why don't you go to work an hour earlier? Now, of course not everybody gets to choose their working hours; but chances are, with the loss of productivity in the early and dark winter mornings, those that don't get to choose get their shifts moved an hour later, negating any supposed benefit. Some people take for granted that they can wake up and function in pitch black just as well, despite never having tried that. Where I'm from, if it were permanent DST year around, at the end of this month the sun wouldn't rise until 10 in the morning - and I'm as close to the equator you can get in this country! (Now of course it's not pitch black right until the sunrise, but if the sun rises at 10, it is pitch black at 8).

rectang 7y ago
> Why don't you go to work an hour earlier? Because I can't. The companies I've worked for have all scheduled required hours according to common business hours. > Now, of course not everybody gets to choose their working hours Only a tiny fraction of the population gets to set their own hours.
- eMSF 7y ago
  >Only a tiny fraction of the population gets to set their own hours. Well, yes. I was thinking more of flextime. From what I've seen, relatively few people come in as early as possible, even though statistically speaking they should be 50-50 on the DST issue (and favour more daylight after working hours).
  - shantly 7y ago
    K-12 school start times don’t flex. Before-care and dropping off early at daycare cost money.
- _ph_ 7y ago
  But common business hours are set, as the name says, by the common business. And many things in our day to day life in the end are determined by the sun. So if there is a permanent offset in the wall clock, business hours are going to shift to compensate. So changing the time zone might have a short-term impact, but long-term, will be compensated away. Most people have difficulties to raise in the dark, so the day to day schedule will be adjusted so that they have to raise in the dark only for a short part in the year, like 2 months. A time setting which would mean to get up in the dark for 4+ months is going to trigger a compensation. And of course, as a consequence, French people do many things "later" than in Germany, be it work, lunch or dinner times.

dsego 7y ago

Back in communist time people used to work 7-15h, or even 6-14h. Why not just return to that? Then you have the whole afternoon again. Here 8-16h is still considered the norm, but looks like we're importing the american 9-5pm, not sure why.

baq 7y ago
It’s more about when school opens and closes and not business hours.
- labawi 7y ago
  Either way. Personally, I find it silly that we should change out time keeping because we do things at x o'clock. If the causes of our schedule don't change, over time we will drift back to the same thing only with a different digit on the clock. Then, I guess we can repeat the shifting excercise.
- _ph_ 7y ago
  And schools open at the earliest time they can expect the pupils to be awake. And that is mostly determined by sunrise.
  - baq 7y ago
    if only. where I live, school opens at the earliest time teachers and parents can be awake due to schools not being big enough to accommodate the amount of pupils, children be damned.
    - dsego 7y ago
      My primary school had morning and afternoon shifts rotating every week.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    Well, I believe the way it is commonly done in some places is that the openings are staggered so they can run the buses three times. So whether the sun is up depends on which grade you are in.

BeetleB 7y ago

> DST as we have it seems suited to a world that still has a third of the population working outside in the fields. A world where work start time and sunrise were inextricably linked. I think this origin of DST has been debunked, and it doesn't even make sense. If it were to suit those who worked in the fields, then we would have DST in winter when the sun sets early (4pm here)! Where I live (heavy farming community), the sun sets at 9pm in summer. Without daylight time it would set at 8pm. A lot of restaurants/businesses close at 9pm. Working the fields till sunset means you don't get to go enjoy your time anywhere after work. Furthermore, if your work is linked to sunrise and sunset, then having daylight or not is relatively irrelevant. You'll follow the sun no matter what your watch is telling you the time is.

jandrese 7y ago
Cattle don't care about DST. The only thing it dies for farmers is screw up their delivery schedule.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Around the equinox sunrise is probably around 8:30-9am here, sunset around 3:30-4pm. Twilight I guess an hour each way. That makes sense when you need daylight to work - which is back when far more worked outside. Core business hours and timezones seem to fit around that minimum daylight. It makes a lot less sense to tie daylight hours, when they are in short supply, to the time now most of us are in permanently illuminated offices and factories.
- elf25 7y ago
  the number on the clock when the sun rises carries no meaning or purpose.
- cpcallen 7y ago
  > Around the equinox Solstice, surely? At the equinox the sun should rise and set at the same hour (on a 12-hour clock).
reaperducer 7y ago

chrisseaton 7y ago

> when it's around the equinox I am guaranteed no daylight in personal time Do you not get a weekend?

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Do we really need the HN pedantry of specifying every nth detail like "on working days" in a sentence when I am talking of working practice? That should be enough to imply work days. :)

perl4ever 7y ago

"DST as we have it seems suited to a world that still has a third of the population working outside in the fields. A world where work start time and sunrise were inextricably linked." I don't get it. If sunrise is what matters, DST is irrelevant. As someone said, the cows don't consult the clock when they need milking.