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Would there be any similar problems from abolishing daylight savings time, or is that idea fairly safe?
by sillysaurusx 3y ago
Would there be any similar problems from abolishing daylight savings time, or is that idea fairly safe?
- Analemma_ 3y agoNo, abolishing DST is very safe. My sense is that there's a certain type of programmer who gets a little too hopped up on "abolish DST" arguments, and also is sick of time-zone bugs in their code, so jumps straight to "abolish time zones! everyone can all live on UTC!". Such people need to be gently informed that is a terrible, extremely radical, and totally unworkable proposal, and this article is trying to do that.
- HideousKojima 3y agoWhat about my perfectly reasonable and rational idea to have infinite time zones, all based on solar noon for whatever longitude you (or the system) are currently located at? I'll even compromise, we can limit the resolution to a single geographic second instead of infinite. If only the idiots in charge would accept my brilliance.
- jhbadger 3y agoThat's traditionally how things worked prior to railroads in the second half of the 19th century. Every city and town would use the official time on a public clock (often on the town hall) based on solar noon. It's the railroads that demanded time zones to make their scheduling easier.
- jhbadger 3y agoTell that to China, where there is one time zone for the country (when by geography there would probably be three or four for an east-west oriented country like it is). Yes, the official time is far closer to solar in Beijing than it is in Urumqi, but it is hardly unworkable.
- Analemma_ 3y agoChina is the proof that it's unworkable! In Xinjiang, even though everyone is "officially" on BJT, lots of shops publish hours in local solar time and that's what a lot of people use for their actual lives. If an authoritarian government can't make people use time that's three hours out of sync with the sun, what hope is there to get liberal democracies to get people using time that's eight, nine, ten hours out of sync? It will just mean everyone uses informal local time standards, and now instead of making things simpler you've blown up the complexity by orders of magnitude.
- rtkwe 3y agoIt doesn't really work in China though. It seems to because so much of the population is along the coast and roughly aligned with the enforced time but you see people deviating from the official time in the West where the desync becomes obnoxious.
- sjducb 3y agoYou’d get a lot more car crashes. In the UK it causes the peak morning commute to be in daylight
- digging 3y agoThat's an interesting take, since reducing care crashes is one of the main arguments for abolishing DST time changes.
- chgs 3y agoMost commentators, especially on HN, live in latitudes close to the equator (say south of 55N) Sunrise in Glasgow if the U.K. was on UTC+1 year round would be as late as 0945 in December, civil twilight wouldn’t start until an hour after people leave for school.
- digging 3y agoI'm not sure what is the argument here. That car crashes meaningfully rise when people drive in the dark? That's possible, but car crashes and other fatalities increase after the time shift in both directions. The problem is the confusion and the disruption in sleep patterns, not the light levels.
- arethuza 3y agoAlso in Scotland - I'm quite happy with the current arrangement - it means mornings aren't too bad in winter (going to and returning from work in the dark would be miserable) and it means we get glorious light evenings in summer.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoOne nuance often forgotten is that DST is most helpful at high latitudes and approaches zero at the equator.
- jccooper 3y agoThe world worked fine before 1908-1967 when DST was introduced.
- chgs 3y agoThere was a limited time between standardised time across a country or region, and the creation of DST. Before the 1800s the day began when the sun came up, this varied every day. Clipping this to specific hour is far more sensible for a global community.
- throw0101d 3y ago> Before the 1800s the day began when the sun came up, this varied every day. See (variable-length/unequal) temporal hours: > Adapting the European clock designs to the needs of Japanese traditional timekeeping presented a challenge to Japanese clockmakers. Japanese traditional timekeeping practices required the use of unequal time units: six daytime units from local sunrise to local sunset, and six night-time units from sunset to sunrise. > As such, Japanese timekeepers varied with the seasons; the daylight hours were longer in summer and shorter in winter, with the opposite at night. European mechanical clocks were, by contrast, set up to tell equal hours that did not vary with the seasons. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_clock#Temporal_hours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_clock#Temporal_hours * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hour#Unequal_hours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hour#Unequal_hours * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unequal_hours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unequal_hours
- rabbits77 3y agoMore than safe, it would be the best option to abolish it completely. In brief, our bodies evolved in the the movement of the sun, not numbers on a clock, so called solar time. Standard time aligns the numbers on the clock the best with solar time for most all of the world. There are some exceptions along the equator and at the poles at different times of year, but those are exceptions that have been, and can continue to be, handled well by people in those areas. https://savestandardtime.com/ https://savestandardtime.com/
- chgs 3y agoSo in the summer you want school to start 4 hours after sun up, but in winter you want it to start 1 hour before?
- patmorgan23 3y agoSchools can change their schedules if the shorter daylight hours are a problem.
- chgs 3y agoAnd businesses can to match them. And bus companies. And everyone else Or we could simply change the common time everyone uses and not have to reprint everything.
- rypskar 3y agoGo far enough from equator and that will happen anyway, or for some of us sunset at parts of the summer and sunrise parts of the winter are both NaN. But the change between standard and DST makes a big difference for some weeks during spring and fall
- rabbits77 3y agoUnder the existing DST system (1 hour difference from Standard Time) they currently go to school (wait, children in school in the summer?) 3 hours after sun up but that's not seen as a problem?
- 3y ago
- frankus 3y agoStandard time keeps noon relatively close to the middle of the day, and midnight pretty close to the middle of the night (which, as the article suggests, is the entire point of having timezones). Summer "daylight time" tweaks that by an hour (or two?) in order to make customary "waking-up time" closer to the summer sunrise. Permanent daylight time just shifts everything over one timezone to the east, which to me seems kind of silly (along the lines of the "these go to 11" bit in Spinal Tap) but does have the benefit of not having to rename things like "the 11 o'clock news".
- elboru 3y agoIt is, my region (outside the US) got rid of it and I couldn’t be happier. Other than a few systems/apps with the wrong time causing some inconveniences, I didn’t hear of major issues.
- Scarblac 3y agoIn the Netherlands I would really hate to be on winter time in the summer (the period of the year that evening light after dinner is long enough to do outside activities becomes much shorter) and summer time in winter would be absurd. I hope they never change it.
- elboru 3y agoGood point, my region is not as far from the equator as the Netherlands so those issues are not that noticeable.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoYou're not a slave to the clock, get up earlier in the Summer if you want. No one is stopping you. :-D
- Scarblac 3y agoThere is my work, my wife's work, and the two kids are in different schools. They'd all need to change. Also everything else. There is a way to do that, it's called summer time.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoKids get out early... like 2PM. Unless you're a bank teller you can start an hour early. It will make you look like a harder worker +1. Your kids will grow up quickly and you could change jobs over a year or two if it is particularly inflexible. Whatever your situation, it is a short period of your life that can and will change. A time system doesn't have to solve everyone's problems, in fact it couldn't if it wanted to. Basically the point is to solve your own problems as you see fit, not push one solution onto everyone else.
- bena 3y agoArizona doesn't have any issues. They're standard time year round. We _should_ abolish DST. The issue is that there are people who want to abolish Standard Time because, I don't know, they have weird notions about how awesome it is to have the sun up at 8pm. Or don't understand that there are just fewer hours of sunlight in the winter in general. Yeah, it's going to get dark earlier, it's a thing that happens every year. It's better to have early morning sun than late evening sun. And the last time we tried abolishing standard time, everyone hated it and we went back to switching between daylight and standard. But places that abolish daylight savings time never go back. It's a case where people are particularly stubborn about wanting to validate their feelings rather than do the thing that would actually work. Because people bitch and bitch about standard time in the winter and think they're bitching about the time system. When really, they're just bitching about it being winter, but they don't realize that.
- vel0city 3y ago> It's better to have early morning sun than late evening sun. Is there actual data backing that up or just your opinion? I personally really enjoy more hours of sun in the afternoon and early evening. As an office worker most of my mornings are just waking up and getting ready for work, not normally lots of time for recreation. Having more hours of light later in the day aligns with my free time hours better.
- bena 3y agoThis is kind of what I'm talking about. There is data backing up that early morning sun is better. It being light out when kids go to school and when we drive to work is more important. There are also things about our circadian rhythms and what not. The "more hours of sun" is only an issue in the winter. In the summer/spring/fall, the sun goes down at reasonable enough times for you to still do all of your recreation. But in the winter, the sun is going to go down earlier anyway. And what sort of after-work recreation are you doing that requires the sun to be out?
- jcranmer 3y agoThe problem with abolishing DST is you have to decide if you want to have year-round summer time or year-round winter time. Many people say they want year-round summer time, but the last time the US attempted it, support for it plummeted after just one winter on summer time and DST was restored. (FWIW, scientists are almost universally in agreement that year-round winter time is the best compromise, but it's by far the least popular option.)
- Ekaros 3y agoI'm proponent of year round winter time. And allowing changing of schedules when possible. If people want to work earlier let them or have them negotiate for that. On most areas I don't see reason why it could not be done.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoNoon should be "high", in other words, when the Sun is highest. I think that is closest to winter time.