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I like daylight, so I'm a DST fan. In 1973 we had year round DST, But it was abolished the next year. Why you ask? Hey this is the US, to save the children

by russell 15y ago

I like daylight, so I'm a DST fan. In 1973 we had year round DST, But it was abolished the next year. Why you ask? Hey this is the US, to save the children of course. A couple of kids were killed waiting in the dark for their school bus, with a resulting national uproar and a switch back to ST/DST. The internet company where I work has an interesting solution to the problem. At the fall change they shut down all the servers at 12:50 and restart them at 1:10. Total downtime is 80 minutes. I have always thought that UTC would have been simpler. Another company made monitoring systems for electrical power distribution, which could not be shut down for the convenience of IT, o it had to deal with a 23 hour day in the spring and a 25 hour day in the fall.

gst 15y ago
That's not a solution, but sounds more like a thedailywtf.com posting. DST has not been any problem on most operating systems for a long time now. And for well written applications it should not be any issue either.
- arohner 15y ago
  Having supported python & rails webapps running on postgres, the biggest problem is not the OS, but the DB and programming language. Postgres for example, can't change timezones without rebooting. Python & Ruby/Rails both have poor support for handling timezones properly. The proper solution is to of course run the backend in UTC all the time, and just convert to local time when displaying, but if you already have legacy code...
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
mikeash 15y ago
> I like daylight, so I'm a DST fan. Does not follow. DST doesn't increase the available daylight. Maybe your particular habits are helped out by DST, but the above implication doesn't work.
- pconf 15y ago
  Sure it does. If you get off of work at 5:00 year-round then DST give you an extra hour of daylight where you can use it. In the winter it gets dark too early to use that hour so it switches back. Winter's non-DST clocks also save energy by allowing people to sleep/heat/drive after sunrise.
  - mikeash 15y ago
    One could use that extra daylight without DST by simply doing things in the morning, or having a different work schedule. Obviously, DST is nice if you have a work schedule that lets you take advantage and you aren't a morning person. But again, that's all dependent on your habits, not simply liking daylight. A morning person with a normal work schedule could very well say that they like daylight and therefore are against DST.
    - pconf 15y ago
      What you say is true but since it applies to a relatively small percentage of the population the energy savings of year-round DST would be negative. We know this because that is what happened when there was year-round DST, during Jimmy Carter's presidency, as a result of the Arab oil embargo. From an environmental and energy perspective the current DST calendar is nearly ideal.

by russell 15y ago

gst 15y ago

That's not a solution, but sounds more like a thedailywtf.com posting. DST has not been any problem on most operating systems for a long time now. And for well written applications it should not be any issue either.

arohner 15y ago
Having supported python & rails webapps running on postgres, the biggest problem is not the OS, but the DB and programming language. Postgres for example, can't change timezones without rebooting. Python & Ruby/Rails both have poor support for handling timezones properly. The proper solution is to of course run the backend in UTC all the time, and just convert to local time when displaying, but if you already have legacy code...
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

mikeash 15y ago

> I like daylight, so I'm a DST fan. Does not follow. DST doesn't increase the available daylight. Maybe your particular habits are helped out by DST, but the above implication doesn't work.

pconf 15y ago
Sure it does. If you get off of work at 5:00 year-round then DST give you an extra hour of daylight where you can use it. In the winter it gets dark too early to use that hour so it switches back. Winter's non-DST clocks also save energy by allowing people to sleep/heat/drive after sunrise.
- mikeash 15y ago
  One could use that extra daylight without DST by simply doing things in the morning, or having a different work schedule. Obviously, DST is nice if you have a work schedule that lets you take advantage and you aren't a morning person. But again, that's all dependent on your habits, not simply liking daylight. A morning person with a normal work schedule could very well say that they like daylight and therefore are against DST.
  - pconf 15y ago
    What you say is true but since it applies to a relatively small percentage of the population the energy savings of year-round DST would be negative. We know this because that is what happened when there was year-round DST, during Jimmy Carter's presidency, as a result of the Arab oil embargo. From an environmental and energy perspective the current DST calendar is nearly ideal.