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Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

nytimes.com

101–110 of 282 posts

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#101
> The problem? Florida doesn’t have the authority to adopt daylight saving time year-round.

> The federal government controls the nation’s time zones, as well as the start and end dates of daylight saving time. States can choose to exempt themselves from daylight saving time — Arizona and Hawaii do — but nothing in federal law allows them to exempt themselves from standard time.

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I vote we do a half hour compromise. Please no, just stop

Fun fact, Nepal's timezone is UTC+5:45.

Many historic timezones have 15 minute offsets. In the era before American railroads synchronized timezones to the hours, Louisville, KY, as one example close to home, was often UTC-5:45. (It's GE's fault that Louisville and consequently most of the US I-65 corridor wound up EST rather than CST.) I don't expect to win arguments that the city should return to UTC-5:45, but I make them anyway to amuse myself.

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#103
post #32
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arizona doesn't observe DST and hasn't since 1968. It works great, and the rest of the country should follow suit, IMO. We're no longer a nation of farmers whose work depends on daylight.

It was never about the farmers. It was always about saving fuel during wartime. Farmers dislike DST.

If I ever get a time machine and meet George Hudson, I will punch him squarely in the face. He wanted some time after work to look at insects, and because of that we have DST.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hudson_(entomologist)

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#104
post #17

I wouldn't mind everyone moving to UTC. Sure, only people in Greenwich would be able to eat lunch at 12 noon. But at least it would simplify my life as a programmer.

No it wouldn't -- users of your applications will still want to see "human" time in different areas, so rather than a (relatively) well defined Timezone standard, you'll need to keep a table of accepted working hours, meal times, etc for each region.

At least now you can tell them that it's 5pm in their selected area so they can decide what that means.

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#105
post #75
post #17

I wouldn't mind everyone moving to UTC. Sure, only people in Greenwich would be able to eat lunch at 12 noon. But at least it would simplify my life as a programmer.

I'd rather they just remove numbers from most 'clocks' (for humans) and instead define things like "morning" "lunch" "evening" as official designations relative to UTC (but humans would normally not see that offset) and list times like... (City) Morning + 2.5 hours

What? No really, time with numbers seems to work just fine.

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#107
post #10

Yes! Bravo to Florida. I don't care what timezone California wants to be in—PST or MST—as long as we stop the nonsense of changing between two timezones every year. This coming Sunday is another DST change, and with it will come countless small nuisances, immeasurable drowsiness and lost productivity, and a non-trivial number of injuries or worse. Just pick a timezone and stick with it!

Is it really that big of a deal? It has never bothered me. If waking up a hour early totally messes up your life it might be time to reconsider your priorities.

It's not that it messes up anyone's life terribly. It's a minor inconvenience, but it slightly inconveniences hundreds of millions of people, and that adds up. If everyone is slightly drowsy, and 0.1% of people have slightly slower reflexes and get in a car accident, that is not to say that those people 'need to reconsider their priorities'. That means that the policy hurts that many people, and the society needs to evaluate whether the benefits outweigh that hurt.

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#108
post #10

Yes! Bravo to Florida. I don't care what timezone California wants to be in—PST or MST—as long as we stop the nonsense of changing between two timezones every year. This coming Sunday is another DST change, and with it will come countless small nuisances, immeasurable drowsiness and lost productivity, and a non-trivial number of injuries or worse. Just pick a timezone and stick with it!

DST can make sense if you're sufficiently far north/south, but definitely doesn't if you're closer to the equator. And for Florida DST probably never made sense.

[deleted]

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#109
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or any country, since timezones only have a 1 hour granularity. If you're in Edinburgh (same longitude as Plymouth) this is quite noticable. Be interesting to see the consequences of hyper-local timezones where the sun is always over your head at 12 noon. With modern computing it should be possible to have your watch adjust as you drive east-west ...

Time zones can have any granularity desired. Most are 1 hour, several are 30 minutes (including in India and Australia), and a few are 45 minutes (in New Zealand, for example). There’s no rule though about granularity though.

New Zealand's timezones are full hours, not 45 minutes. You might be thinking of Nepal? (Picky - your broader point is of course right.)

Re: Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Florida Says Yes, but It’s Not So Simple

#110
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a terrible idea.

Come on, acting dramatic without offering anything to the discussion is completely useless behavior. Why is it terrible?

Except, instead of converting your time to theirs and thinking "oh, that's too late for them". You have to come up with some other conversion. Hmm, it's 9pm for me on the west coast, so 9pm is 9pm late or early for NYC? What is a normal bed time in NYC?

We would basically be replacing standard timezone conversion with some kind of non numeric system of identifying the time of day in a place by comparing it to normal activities. We would be getting rid of timezones and create something like "activity" zones. It would be a nightmare.

If sunlight had no bearing on human activity, and people didn't tend to follow similar patterns, then utc would be fine.

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